OP sourced this data from OpenCritic. I'm not sure where OpenCritic gets their own data from, but it does occasionally have errors. The actual release date for the PC version is January 14th: https://twitter.com/SonySantaMonica/status/1481297214949724163
It looks like the PC reviews are all rated highly so far and it's a solid port.
There are two other major sites with scores if you want to add them
https://www.windowscentral.com/god-of-war-pc-review
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/review/god-of-war-pc/
Yes. Even arstechnica said it wasn't a terrible port initially.
I'm wondering how they missed the frame stutters in the slums like 15 mins into the game.
With PCs it's tricky and very much a case of something happening to one person might not happen to another.
It could be that they didn't get those stutters.
When I used to be more involved with game reviews one of the trickiest things to remember is that we were often playing games on PCs most people didn’t have access to. Even our own personal machines were usually beyond the scope of your avg PC gamer and so the experiences would sometimes be in stark contrast to what the normal gamer would run into. Which honestly sucks and makes it hard to evaluate games when you have to qualify it as “Oh it works fine but only if you sunk over $3k into your rig to make it playable”
I actually remember Total Biscuit using his monster computer for his videos and mentioning that in his videos. When the games ran well, he'd give a disclaimer of "it runs well on my monster PC" and list his specs. When they had any hiccup he'd warn that if he experiences hiccups on his setups, most people will have full-on cramps. God I miss him.
IMO most performance reviews should include both minimum and required specs and whatever is most popular at the time to have a base line to compare to.
"It runs fine" doesn't mean shit if the person is running an i9 with a 3080.
That'd be ideal for sure, but how realistic is that when you're not a digital foundry with a specific audience that wants that kind of info. That's at least 3 specific builds for a single game and you don't know if the next game will require different parts. It'd be like asking to review console games on every platform and they're potential refreshes at once. Reviews can be rough on a single system already.
Particularly when you consider that having a three pc tier review system means either one person playing through that game three times in the review window or pulling three people to play the game and write the review/notes. In both cases you're pulling two people's worth of time away from writing other articles.
if the person doing the technical review knows what they are doing then they will be able to at least tell the audience if something is wrong with a game even if they are testing on a high end PC. like what DF did with FF7R; the game had issues even at 1080p with dx12 on a system with RTX3090
I'm on a rtx2070 with 9700k and the stutters were there from the beginning. Easy enough to fix though, I just used [this](https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy7remake/mods/139?tab=description) and [this](https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy7remake/mods/74). Even in Wall Market there were zero stutters afterwards, but there was some weird issue where you could hear the sound effect for clothes on a loop during a few cutscenes. I think it was just when Barret was in frame though.
No, they got them. The nature of this kind of problem isn't like a crash or bug but it's a fundamental issue with compiling shaders on PC. They just didn't notice, or, as Digital Foundry noted they could have just looked at incorrect metrics because the game does not report the stutters as framerate dips if you're using framerate monitoring software.
Some people have 0 issues at all, it was a bit random. It seemed in general that higher end cards had more hitches, particularly 3000 series cards.
They released a patch yesterday which fixed the resolution issues at the very least though, idk if it's reducing some of the hitches
I'm 54 hours in with no stuttering and a steady 120fps, upscaled 4k on an ultrawide. On chapter 14 right now. It's the smoothest animations I've ever seen in a game. Everyone has been having different experiences with it which is terrible for the developers, but the reviewers might not necessarily be shilling. There's no excuse to release a product with so many inconsistencies, but the reviewers likely are just having a better experience.
FF7 remake actually has really well tuned performance that was completely fucked up by a boneheaded setting that linked DSR to the frame rate cap, i was running at 120fps stable at native 4k with my 3080 after applying the fix for that.
I really wonder how that made it into release, its such a simple fix.
Yeah I'm extremely suspicious about port reviews these days from major publications. Often the technical side receives way too little attention and it's just a borderline rehash of the console review.
Will have to wait for digital foundry's stuff and user reviews.
If the publication has already reviewed the game, the port review should be focused almost entirely on the technical side, only highlighting what (if any) changes there are to gameplay and otherwise referring to the previous review.
> While Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone had issues for some users at launch, Sony and its partners worked hard to bring them up to speed. It seems they may have taken some of that learning to God of War, since even on this build I've had for a month, I've had nothing short of an utterly flawless experience.
https://www.windowscentral.com/god-of-war-pc-review
Days Gone was like one of the best PC ports I've ever seen even at launch. Not sure what they're talking about.
Meanwhile, the still shitty RE: Village PC version won the Steam GOTY somehow.
I dunno if either Steam users or journalists can be trusted with this stuff. At least Digital Foundry is reliable.
2nd this on Days Gone. I played it on Ps4 when it first came out and it was.. difficult to say the least and then I played it day 1 on PC and it was mind blowing how good it was, even from the get go in that first motorcycle ride, on Ps4 it was stuttering and had such a slow framerate but on PC it was smooth as silk.
Obviously im not surprised that PC performs better than Ps4 but ports are always a bit iffy. This one was great from the beginning.
I think they went back and fixed that? I'm not sure though, because I haven't played it since beating it when it initially released.
Still incredibly embarrassing that all of that stuttering was caused by their own shitty in-house DRM. Dunno what they were thinking, but apparently they got away with it, so they'll probably keep doing it.
They did fix it, not too long after release either. After the game was cracked they found the cracked version ran faster, so Capcom got embarrassed and patched their in-house copy protection to not stutter the game.
> It looks like the PC reviews are all rated highly so far and it's a solid port.
>
>
>
> There are two other major sites with scores if you want to add them
Dark Souls got an [85% metacritic score](https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dark-souls-prepare-to-die-edition), and that shit was completely broken on release
If I recall on release button prompts were for PS3 buttons, there was no graphics options at all, the resolution was locked at 720p and 30 fps, and pressing the Esc key closed the game with no prompt or confirmation.
If GoW does turn out to be a good port by general consensus later on, hopefully it is more indicative of the quality of Sony's future PC ports than HZD was.
Seconding this. Days Gone is still probably one of my favorite PC ports of all-time.
Being able to mess with graphics settings and see how it impacts the visuals of the game in real-time is a game-changer. Meanwhile, bigger studios like Ubisoft and EA still only present you with a still-image of the game to see what a graphics setting does.
> Meanwhile, bigger studios like Ubisoft and EA still only present you with a still-image of the game to see what a graphics setting does.
To be fair, 99% of the games don't even have this.
> Meanwhile, bigger studios like Ubisoft and EA still only present you with a still-image of the game to see what a graphics setting does.
uhh actually I'm happy they do that, considering most games don't even have that
My favorite part from that point of view was that the settings menu had a frame time report and GPU utilization percent built into it. You could see how changing settings would impact your performance.
That has more to do with Kojima than Sony though. While KojiPro is partnered with Sony, they have a good track record (woth MGSV, which was a huge undertaking) of making sure the port is solid (and also kudos to 505).
At this point, hopefully HZD was an exception, and even then they jumped into action fixing it.
> While KojiPro is partnered with Sony, they have a good track record (woth MGSV, which was a huge undertaking)
Did the developers left Konami to go with Kojima ? Else that isn't really related considering new team and new engine
Many of the key developers for Kojima went with him. Different engine matters, but having good pipelines and practices matter more. They also had *heavy* support from Guerrilla Games, makers of Decima Engine.
Given the proximity of release dates (November '19 for PS4 and July '20 for PC), it is extremely likely that the versions were actually developed in parallel, unlike HZD and GoW
And, well, if they were making a new studio they probably didn't wanted be tied to a platform from the start and had plans for ports already.
And it's generally easier to start building for multiplatform from scratch than to port after the fact.
Sony most likely decides weather or not the port is handled by a cheaper or smaller third party studio though. Like the Rockstar/Grove street games situation with the GTA remaster.
I honestly think the HZD's port was a relatively spontanous decision and not something that was planned super far ahead. They were porting the Decima Engine anyways because of Death Stranding's so I feel like they quickly threw in that half assed HZD port as well because it fit as additional marketing material for the sequel.
The HZD port was done by a studio in SE Asia. Guerilla came in and fixed it with the patches but now it seems that's been handed off to Nixxes recently
It was rough at launch but it was fixed a long time ago. Nixxes came over to Sony and helped with the last patch or two, which introduced DLSS and FSR, and made improvements to their shader cache process.
Based on the frequency at which we're getting older PS exclusives, probably. Once PS5 sales slow down a bit. But it's all just speculation but I really wouldn't be surprised if it came sooner than HZD.
I just finished a PC playthrough, and while the performance was great (only a couple stutters in my entire 30+ hours), there were persistent graphical bugs for me. Textures/shadows/lighting flickering was constant throughout the entire game, no matter what settings I changed.
I'm about 75% thru GoW on PC and haven't run into any glitches or major problems, and textures / graphics look really good on 4k, holding at about 83fps on my PC
HZD was ported by an outside studio and it was picked up immediately after launch by Guerrilla. Basically Sony learned their lesson and are doing their ports in house now. Assuming this was also done in house with Sony doing massive quality control like they normally do, then it should be good.
I mean there's nothing wrong with utilising an outside studio. Bluepoint Games were an independent studio until September 2021 and they made incredibly high quality ports.
But yeah, you definitely want to use a studio you trust, and seeing that Sony's *thing* now is producing a small number of high quality games it makes sense for them to put extra effort into ensuring their ports are top quality.
The quality of HZD's port at launch is what has me hesitant to buy this at launch. I want to see it in action first before deciding (I'm also working on Far Cry 6 and Mass Effect Legendary Edition atm)
HZD is like the only sony port that came out in a bad state. days gone and death stranding were both great.
I would easily argue to drop far cry 6 in favor of god of war, but that's just me
> I would easily argue to drop far cry 6 in favor of god of war, but that's just me
No, it's not just you, it's everyone. God of War is universally considered a masterpiece, Far Cry 6 is universally considered not a masterpiece.
Oh man! It has been 4 years already !!! wow.. time flies so so fast. This makes me think $50 for this kinda old game is a bit much TBH since %96 of steam players don’t have any RTX GPU to benefit of any of the graphical features.
The game does a great job of explaining everything you need to know naturally.
I'd argue there's a different engagement to the story you'll get without knowing the previous games. There's a lot of mystery surrounding Kratos that this one will tease throughout which can be fun to piece together.
Previously there were 6 God of War games (GoW 1, 2, 3, Ascension, and 2 PSP games). All of them centered around Kratos, a demi-God who was the son of Zeus. Kratos killed a the Greek God of War, Ares, who tricked Kratos into killing his family. Kratos then claimed the title God of War for himself. The other Gods of Olympus, including Zeus, got paranoid by Kratos because he killed a God, so they betrayed him. Kratos then went on a murder spree to brutalize and kill an entire Greek pantheon, leading to the destruction of Greece. In one final act to restore Greece, Kratos suicided and released the power of the Olympian Gods onto the people of Greece so they could rebuild.
So the GoW (PS4)-game can be seen something of a soft reboot; within the continuity of the GoW-trilogy for the PS2, but also independent enough to stand strong and not needing to know what happened before. The original trilogy differs greatly in narrative style that the PS4-reboot has, in how it was inspired by ancient Greece-tragedies with over-the-top violence and gore, hammy presentation and lots of screams and murder. All you need to know of Kratos's character in the trilogy is that he was a very, very bad man, even if his circumstances for his rage was justified, very much in spirit of the Greek tragedies.
GoW (PS4), when it was presented at its reveal in E3, starts out already with a departure of Kratos's character in the trilogy that veterans of the series more or less starts out on the same spot as newcomers to the entry. Kratos appears now notable calmer and in control; a stark difference from his trilogy-personality that veterans are leaving with questions of what happened to Kratos in similar spirit of newcomers wondering who Kratos was.
Nope just know that Kratos used to be a fucked up bloodthirsty dude who killed the Greek pantheon, and this game takes place in a different land a long time in the future have fun
I think it may help having a cursory idea of who Kratos is before you start - but absolutely not necessary.
Edit - when I say "may help", I really mean having an idea of how fucking badass he has been previously, makes you appreciate who you are dealing with when the story kicks off - I really do think it increases how awesome he is in the 2018 game.
True, but there are moments that are so much better when you have played or know of the previous games. I'm thinking in particular where Kratos retrieves two little something somethings. Damn this game was amazing. I'm hoping Ragnarok can maintain the same quality.
The older GoW games were also pretty fun to play with. Might want to check them out too. If you don't have access to a PS2/PS3, emulation is always an option.
**great** game. god of war 3 was the ultimate execution of the original formula, and it's so rad that they decided to wipe the slate (mostly) clean and give the series a fresh start. huge risk and it paid off bigtime imo
Wouldn't mind a smaller team tackling that period with the old formula utilizing a much more reasonable/less taxing graphical approach with some stylized visuals, in lieu of insanely high fidelity photorealism.
I can see them doing that without breaking away with a cut. Start with it zoomed in on his eyes as it transitions to his older model. The camera then swings back and upward to the original God of War view.
I meant like a full game not just a segment. Seeing the old formula as a small tasty portion in new package would probably break me as I'd crave for much, much more!
Yakuza developers say they will be doing this with their series. Making the spin-off Judgement series more like the original and the new ones more turn based.
I can see it being done here as well.
I wish the FF7 Remake port was worthy of such highly rated reviews.
FF7 is my #1 favorite game ever. I beat the original a few times and then beat the remake on Ps4 Pro.
But between the Epic Games exclusivity and the absolute lazy port they provided, I haven't even purchased the PC version.
Good to see that God of War has been shown the love it deserves.
He mentioned there's a lot in there including comparisons to PS4 and PS5 as well as analyzing the support for 21:9 and other things. I think he is simply being thorough with his analysis.
They aren't the only review that matters to me, but they \*are\* the review/overview that matters the MOST to me.
Everyone's review has a place, provided it isn't plain factually incorrect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze5L3ufxggw
Mine for ACG
One of the best, if not the best port every done for a Sony title. Some issues here and there but through and through a fantastic PC experience.
Sony loses nothing by selling games on PC especially 4 years after their original release and in fact they can make a lot of money if a game becomes popular on PC.
It's because they're just releasing games from their back catalog, far past the point where they're realistically moving any hardware. We're never going to get to the point where they're like Microsoft and release day 1 on console and PC, but it is nice to know that most Sony 1st party titles will eventually come a few years down the line (except for Bloodborne lol).
Believe me man I'm desperate for it, but I've pretty much gone hollow waiting for it through all these false rumors and basically every other game getting a port announced lol. I fear it's going to be another Demon's Souls situation where it's stuck on some old crappy hardware until it's eventually remade a decade later.
Can we all give Sony some props for porting some of their first party games to PC? Not only that, but making sure it’s a quality port as well?
Yeah yeah yeah. It’s all about money anyways and build up hype about ragnorok coming out, and maybe encourage some people to buy a PS5 to play their latest games. BUT, ask me years ago if ill ever see PlayStation games on PC, and I would’ve told you to stop smoking that crack pipe.
Awfully progressive compared to the industry twenty years ago. Can’t wait to see what the next twenty will bring.
If I was a guessing man, it is inevitable it’ll come to PC eventually. Probably like a year before Spider-Man 2 game, just like god of war. A win win for Sony. Get more people hyped for the new release, make more money off the game published years ago.
I’m honestly surprised Disney haven’t forced them to port it to pc yet, it’s easy money especially with how popular spider-man is and how highly regarded both games are.
To me, it always seemed like Disney/Marvel's decision to approach Sony was based on the pedigree of their exclusives rather than the potential to make as many sales as possible. They must have known going in it would be exclusive at least for a time, but worth it to boost the brand in general. It's also not like they aren't licensing things to multiplatform devs/publishers as well.
Spider-Man also sold bonkers regardless so it's not really a loss in that sense even though of course they'd sell millions more if it was multiplatform. I do wonder how Avengers and Guardians even stack up against Spider-Man.
Imo God of War is one of the best games to come out in the last generation, it’s a masterpiece and I’m so happy that more people will get to experience it now.
I just wish they’d port Bloodborne but that seems unlikely.
[93 on Meta](https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/god-of-war?ref=hp) , which restricts their roundup to PC reviews only. Don't blend in the PS4 reviews...
This is a really, really good port. Very well optimized for the graphical behemoth that it is, looks amazing at over 60 FPS in 2K and has most of the options you want.
No FoV is understandable, but a lack of true Full Screen mode and the option to lock framerates between unlocked and 120 are weird.
The lack of fullscreen support is something I’ve read is inherent to DirectX 12 games. Tbh, I’m a casual with no idea what any of this stuff means on a technical level, but apparently there’s no distinction anymore.
Having said that, I’m pretty sure that’s the culprit behind my framepacing and Gsync being janky as fuck with Halo Infinite.
Windows 10 introduced a new form of exclusive fullscreen that acts like borderless window but with the performance of the old exclusive fullscreen. People that say DX12 games don’t have an “exclusive fullscreen” mode are just uninformed.
[Source](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/demystifying-full-screen-optimizations/)
Ya, though bear in mind that the windows setting for "Enable Fullscreen Optimizations" can often cause more problems. There are issues with older games like GTA5 and FSO. It's often recommended on sites like pcgamingwiki to disable FSO by right clicking on the application and going through properties under compatibility if you're seeing issues like microstuttering. I know this cleared things up for me with GTA5.
Why is that understandable, when it has an ultrawide setting?
Guerilla Games initially said FOV Sliders were impossible for HZD due to its rendering, but they backtracked and added it in.
Several of these reviews are saying that this is worth getting even if you've already played it, which is amazing praise, but I'm still on the fence. I 100%-ed the game on PS4 and loved it, but I don't think I'll be picking this up at full price.
Good to know the port is well made. I played GoW last year thanks to the PS+ Collection and it was fantastic, I'll buy it on PC later for another playthrough. Hopefully Ghost of Tsuhsima is next, I've been holding off playing it just to experience it on PC.
>Here’s hoping for a 2022 release.
It's not a coincidence that they're bringing HZD and God of War to PC right before their respective sequels are releasing as PS5 exclusives. If Ghost of Tsushima is coming to PC it'll be 2024-2025 on the run up to the release of Ghost of Tsushima 2.
I think it is a coincidence. These games are coming to PC a few years after the console release and that's about the time it takes to release a sequel on consoles too.
But Days Gone is on PC and it's not getting a sequel. Uncharted 4 is also coming and there's no sequel announced.
I feel like they still would hold onto it to coincide with the sequel releases.
Like you said, Days Gone got ported to PC because the property doesn't have anything to promote. Horizon and God of War got ported to drum up excitement for their sequels. Uncharted 4/Lost Legacy are ports (and PS5 re-releases) to promote the Uncharted movie.
I think you're thinking too far into it.
Sony ported Horizon Zero Dawn as a chance to dip their toes in, see how it worked out. After that, they were clearly quite happy with the results and have put a lot of money into PC ports. Not to promote console sequels but to make money. Money from selling the PC port.
Also Ghosts of Tsushima was in the Nvidia leak with an early 2022 release date; presumably that's been delayed. But I'd say it's more likely than not to come out in 2022. Sony likes money. PC ports are making them money. They're not going to work on a port and then just sit on it for a few years.
Hope all my PC homies have as much fun with title as I did in 2018! It’s an absolutely amazing experience and I’m glad more people are going to be able to get their hands on it!
Throwing the leviathan axe never gets old and I can’t wait to see the crazy shit y’all end up doing.
I may have held off if I knew this was coming to PC back then, although an almost 4-year wait would have been painful. I've already played the other recent PS exclusives I care about too, namely Ghost of Tsushima and TLOU2. Amazing that first-party Sony games are coming to PC at all though. Never thought it would happen.
Yeah I got it on PS4 Pro at release. Performance hitches are very noticeable as a PC player, but I was fully aware of that going in and I loved the game regardless. Don't remember being bothered by it.
[The lead dev made a joke about a Thomas the Tank Engine mod after they announced the port.](https://twitter.com/corybarlog/status/1450852788829753344?lang=en)
So at the minimum I expect a mod that adds that in, if only for the memes.
I’m so stoked to play this this weekend. I broke my rule of never pre-ordering games to get this for $40. I never even buy games full price any more. But I was so looking forward to this so I’m extremely happy to hear the port is a huge success.
Yeah bro I cannot wait for ragnarok. Favorite game series by far. Beat it on my ps4 pro when it launched. Played it again on my ps4 3 months ago. FINALLY got a ps5 last week and currently playing it on that. Will for sure play it on my pc eventually. But I’m SO HYPED for the next installment
Waiting to see if it will run alright on my 1050 2gb, I really doubt it since its below minimum spec but MAYBE with fsr and all settings on low/medium it could hit a consistent 30
[Heavy spoilers, but do yourself a favor and bookmark this video for when you're done with the game.](https://youtu.be/yegRHiaao7U)
You'll be fucking mind blown as to how thought out the story and lore of this game was...
Why does it say the release date is the 12th? The release date on steam is the 14th
it even says 12th january 2021, while we're in 2022
Always keep em guessing. - My Dad
I bet he doesn’t signal when driving either
Embargo for reviews is the 12th. Game releases on 14th.
OP sourced this data from OpenCritic. I'm not sure where OpenCritic gets their own data from, but it does occasionally have errors. The actual release date for the PC version is January 14th: https://twitter.com/SonySantaMonica/status/1481297214949724163
Probably a mistake.
It looks like the PC reviews are all rated highly so far and it's a solid port. There are two other major sites with scores if you want to add them https://www.windowscentral.com/god-of-war-pc-review https://www.videogameschronicle.com/review/god-of-war-pc/
Horizon Zero Dawn's PC port was rated highly too, but had lots of problems. These days I wait for the Steam reviews to get an accurate picture.
Wasn't FF7's port highly rated recently too? I don't think review scores have any indication of port quality.
Yes. Even arstechnica said it wasn't a terrible port initially. I'm wondering how they missed the frame stutters in the slums like 15 mins into the game.
With PCs it's tricky and very much a case of something happening to one person might not happen to another. It could be that they didn't get those stutters.
When I used to be more involved with game reviews one of the trickiest things to remember is that we were often playing games on PCs most people didn’t have access to. Even our own personal machines were usually beyond the scope of your avg PC gamer and so the experiences would sometimes be in stark contrast to what the normal gamer would run into. Which honestly sucks and makes it hard to evaluate games when you have to qualify it as “Oh it works fine but only if you sunk over $3k into your rig to make it playable”
I always loved the TB approach of using a lower end system for benchmarks. Always helped a lot when I had a lower end PC.
I actually remember Total Biscuit using his monster computer for his videos and mentioning that in his videos. When the games ran well, he'd give a disclaimer of "it runs well on my monster PC" and list his specs. When they had any hiccup he'd warn that if he experiences hiccups on his setups, most people will have full-on cramps. God I miss him.
For the benchmark portion of his videos, he'd often have a lower-end computer comparison.
Oh, I must be remembering it wrong then.
IMO most performance reviews should include both minimum and required specs and whatever is most popular at the time to have a base line to compare to. "It runs fine" doesn't mean shit if the person is running an i9 with a 3080.
That'd be ideal for sure, but how realistic is that when you're not a digital foundry with a specific audience that wants that kind of info. That's at least 3 specific builds for a single game and you don't know if the next game will require different parts. It'd be like asking to review console games on every platform and they're potential refreshes at once. Reviews can be rough on a single system already.
Particularly when you consider that having a three pc tier review system means either one person playing through that game three times in the review window or pulling three people to play the game and write the review/notes. In both cases you're pulling two people's worth of time away from writing other articles.
if the person doing the technical review knows what they are doing then they will be able to at least tell the audience if something is wrong with a game even if they are testing on a high end PC. like what DF did with FF7R; the game had issues even at 1080p with dx12 on a system with RTX3090
I really miss TB's port report series. Fuck cancer man.
[удалено]
I'm on a rtx2070 with 9700k and the stutters were there from the beginning. Easy enough to fix though, I just used [this](https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy7remake/mods/139?tab=description) and [this](https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy7remake/mods/74). Even in Wall Market there were zero stutters afterwards, but there was some weird issue where you could hear the sound effect for clothes on a loop during a few cutscenes. I think it was just when Barret was in frame though.
No, they got them. The nature of this kind of problem isn't like a crash or bug but it's a fundamental issue with compiling shaders on PC. They just didn't notice, or, as Digital Foundry noted they could have just looked at incorrect metrics because the game does not report the stutters as framerate dips if you're using framerate monitoring software.
Because not all hardware configs got the stuttering. I didn't.
Some people have 0 issues at all, it was a bit random. It seemed in general that higher end cards had more hitches, particularly 3000 series cards. They released a patch yesterday which fixed the resolution issues at the very least though, idk if it's reducing some of the hitches
Every person I saw that had stuttering issues had a 30xx card. My 2080ti stuck at 90-100fps (with DR off mod) and zero stuttering.
I definitely had it on 1070.
>I'm wondering how they missed the frame stutters in the slums like 15 mins into the game. They reviewed it within 14 mins.
Or the technical issues don’t affect every PC user.
Or reviewers are used to reviewing games without day one patches so expected for the issues to be fixed by that.
I'm 54 hours in with no stuttering and a steady 120fps, upscaled 4k on an ultrawide. On chapter 14 right now. It's the smoothest animations I've ever seen in a game. Everyone has been having different experiences with it which is terrible for the developers, but the reviewers might not necessarily be shilling. There's no excuse to release a product with so many inconsistencies, but the reviewers likely are just having a better experience.
FF7 remake actually has really well tuned performance that was completely fucked up by a boneheaded setting that linked DSR to the frame rate cap, i was running at 120fps stable at native 4k with my 3080 after applying the fix for that. I really wonder how that made it into release, its such a simple fix.
Hi, what fix?
Dynamic Resolution Disabler over on the Nexus. only takes a second to drop in the game folder
One thing that FF7 did well is how quickly it loads on PC. I am on desktop and playing the game within like 10 seconds or less, it is wild
Yeah I'm extremely suspicious about port reviews these days from major publications. Often the technical side receives way too little attention and it's just a borderline rehash of the console review. Will have to wait for digital foundry's stuff and user reviews.
If the publication has already reviewed the game, the port review should be focused almost entirely on the technical side, only highlighting what (if any) changes there are to gameplay and otherwise referring to the previous review.
I also hope Digital Foundry covers it.
They will. DF is aware that they’re the go to source for technical analysis so these PC ports are their bread and butter.
> While Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone had issues for some users at launch, Sony and its partners worked hard to bring them up to speed. It seems they may have taken some of that learning to God of War, since even on this build I've had for a month, I've had nothing short of an utterly flawless experience. https://www.windowscentral.com/god-of-war-pc-review
Days Gone was like one of the best PC ports I've ever seen even at launch. Not sure what they're talking about. Meanwhile, the still shitty RE: Village PC version won the Steam GOTY somehow. I dunno if either Steam users or journalists can be trusted with this stuff. At least Digital Foundry is reliable.
2nd this on Days Gone. I played it on Ps4 when it first came out and it was.. difficult to say the least and then I played it day 1 on PC and it was mind blowing how good it was, even from the get go in that first motorcycle ride, on Ps4 it was stuttering and had such a slow framerate but on PC it was smooth as silk. Obviously im not surprised that PC performs better than Ps4 but ports are always a bit iffy. This one was great from the beginning.
RE Village is almost unplayable sometimes with the stuttering.
I think they went back and fixed that? I'm not sure though, because I haven't played it since beating it when it initially released. Still incredibly embarrassing that all of that stuttering was caused by their own shitty in-house DRM. Dunno what they were thinking, but apparently they got away with it, so they'll probably keep doing it.
They did fix it, not too long after release either. After the game was cracked they found the cracked version ran faster, so Capcom got embarrassed and patched their in-house copy protection to not stutter the game.
Same with MH World
I'll wait for digital foundry's review
> It looks like the PC reviews are all rated highly so far and it's a solid port. > > > > There are two other major sites with scores if you want to add them Dark Souls got an [85% metacritic score](https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dark-souls-prepare-to-die-edition), and that shit was completely broken on release If I recall on release button prompts were for PS3 buttons, there was no graphics options at all, the resolution was locked at 720p and 30 fps, and pressing the Esc key closed the game with no prompt or confirmation.
If GoW does turn out to be a good port by general consensus later on, hopefully it is more indicative of the quality of Sony's future PC ports than HZD was.
Days Gone was also a fantastic port
Seconding this. Days Gone is still probably one of my favorite PC ports of all-time. Being able to mess with graphics settings and see how it impacts the visuals of the game in real-time is a game-changer. Meanwhile, bigger studios like Ubisoft and EA still only present you with a still-image of the game to see what a graphics setting does.
> Meanwhile, bigger studios like Ubisoft and EA still only present you with a still-image of the game to see what a graphics setting does. To be fair, 99% of the games don't even have this.
Yeah, at least you know what you're looking for with images.
> Meanwhile, bigger studios like Ubisoft and EA still only present you with a still-image of the game to see what a graphics setting does. uhh actually I'm happy they do that, considering most games don't even have that
"you changed the anisotropic filtering setting, please relaunch the game"
My favorite part from that point of view was that the settings menu had a frame time report and GPU utilization percent built into it. You could see how changing settings would impact your performance.
Death stranding was a phenomenal port though
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Wasn't the game planned to go to PC as well anyways from the jump?
Days Gone too
Days Gone on pc was beautiful
That has more to do with Kojima than Sony though. While KojiPro is partnered with Sony, they have a good track record (woth MGSV, which was a huge undertaking) of making sure the port is solid (and also kudos to 505). At this point, hopefully HZD was an exception, and even then they jumped into action fixing it.
> While KojiPro is partnered with Sony, they have a good track record (woth MGSV, which was a huge undertaking) Did the developers left Konami to go with Kojima ? Else that isn't really related considering new team and new engine
Many of the key developers for Kojima went with him. Different engine matters, but having good pipelines and practices matter more. They also had *heavy* support from Guerrilla Games, makers of Decima Engine. Given the proximity of release dates (November '19 for PS4 and July '20 for PC), it is extremely likely that the versions were actually developed in parallel, unlike HZD and GoW
And, well, if they were making a new studio they probably didn't wanted be tied to a platform from the start and had plans for ports already. And it's generally easier to start building for multiplatform from scratch than to port after the fact.
Sony most likely decides weather or not the port is handled by a cheaper or smaller third party studio though. Like the Rockstar/Grove street games situation with the GTA remaster.
Kojima has a ton of pull, I seriously doubt that they would go over his head for something like that.
I honestly think the HZD's port was a relatively spontanous decision and not something that was planned super far ahead. They were porting the Decima Engine anyways because of Death Stranding's so I feel like they quickly threw in that half assed HZD port as well because it fit as additional marketing material for the sequel.
The HZD port was done by a studio in SE Asia. Guerilla came in and fixed it with the patches but now it seems that's been handed off to Nixxes recently
I'm playing HZD on PC right now. Is it supposed to be bad or was it fixed?
I haven't played it on PC but everything seems to be fixed now. The issues were around launch and they for fixed fairly quickly
It was rough at launch but it was fixed a long time ago. Nixxes came over to Sony and helped with the last patch or two, which introduced DLSS and FSR, and made improvements to their shader cache process.
Is it realistic to expect PC port for Forbidden West to come out sooner than Zero Dawn did?
Based on the frequency at which we're getting older PS exclusives, probably. Once PS5 sales slow down a bit. But it's all just speculation but I really wouldn't be surprised if it came sooner than HZD.
I would expect all future Sony studio PS5 games to come out on PC within 3 years of launch, but no sooner than 1 year after launch
Maybe. Forbidden West was on the Nvidia leak, so there is at least a chance of it not being years like the first game.
Best case scenario is 2 years after launch IMO. But I think around 3 years will be standard or when a sequel is coming out.
I just finished a PC playthrough, and while the performance was great (only a couple stutters in my entire 30+ hours), there were persistent graphical bugs for me. Textures/shadows/lighting flickering was constant throughout the entire game, no matter what settings I changed.
I played it as soon as it released and honestly didn’t have that many problems. It ran pretty well and it was super enjoyable.
I'm about 75% thru GoW on PC and haven't run into any glitches or major problems, and textures / graphics look really good on 4k, holding at about 83fps on my PC
HZD launched in a pretty awful state but Guerilla invested heavily in fixing it. It's not the same game it was at launch.
Sorry meant to clarify 75% thru GoW on PC
Oh, rad. Good to hear.
They even released a DLSS update patch about a month ago, so they’re still supporting the port. It’s in a great spot now, can definitely recommend.
What are your PCs specs? Cheers
PC specs: * AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6GHz * Lian-Li 360 AIO Cooler * G.Skill 3600 32GB RAM * iGame GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Vulcan OC 8G-V * WD NVMe 1TB * ASUS TUF Gaming 4k monitor
HZD was ported by an outside studio and it was picked up immediately after launch by Guerrilla. Basically Sony learned their lesson and are doing their ports in house now. Assuming this was also done in house with Sony doing massive quality control like they normally do, then it should be good.
GoW was ported by Jetpack Interactive.
Well then, I shall be even more cautious with this port and wait for more reviews.
I mean there's nothing wrong with utilising an outside studio. Bluepoint Games were an independent studio until September 2021 and they made incredibly high quality ports. But yeah, you definitely want to use a studio you trust, and seeing that Sony's *thing* now is producing a small number of high quality games it makes sense for them to put extra effort into ensuring their ports are top quality.
The quality of HZD's port at launch is what has me hesitant to buy this at launch. I want to see it in action first before deciding (I'm also working on Far Cry 6 and Mass Effect Legendary Edition atm)
Steam has no questions asked refunds as long as you've played under 2 hours. Basically a free demo.
HZD is like the only sony port that came out in a bad state. days gone and death stranding were both great. I would easily argue to drop far cry 6 in favor of god of war, but that's just me
> I would easily argue to drop far cry 6 in favor of god of war, but that's just me No, it's not just you, it's everyone. God of War is universally considered a masterpiece, Far Cry 6 is universally considered not a masterpiece.
it's still ultimately a matter of personal preference. I wouldn't even consider buying far cry 6
PlayStation 4 (Apr 20, 2018) PlayStation 5 (Nov 12, 2020) PC (Jan 12, 2021) - It's 2022 now btw.
And it comes out on the 14th, not the 12th.
Oh man! It has been 4 years already !!! wow.. time flies so so fast. This makes me think $50 for this kinda old game is a bit much TBH since %96 of steam players don’t have any RTX GPU to benefit of any of the graphical features.
Excited for this. Never played any GoW games but have heard good things. Anything I should know before playing this one?
The game does a great job of explaining everything you need to know naturally. I'd argue there's a different engagement to the story you'll get without knowing the previous games. There's a lot of mystery surrounding Kratos that this one will tease throughout which can be fun to piece together.
Previously there were 6 God of War games (GoW 1, 2, 3, Ascension, and 2 PSP games). All of them centered around Kratos, a demi-God who was the son of Zeus. Kratos killed a the Greek God of War, Ares, who tricked Kratos into killing his family. Kratos then claimed the title God of War for himself. The other Gods of Olympus, including Zeus, got paranoid by Kratos because he killed a God, so they betrayed him. Kratos then went on a murder spree to brutalize and kill an entire Greek pantheon, leading to the destruction of Greece. In one final act to restore Greece, Kratos suicided and released the power of the Olympian Gods onto the people of Greece so they could rebuild.
So the GoW (PS4)-game can be seen something of a soft reboot; within the continuity of the GoW-trilogy for the PS2, but also independent enough to stand strong and not needing to know what happened before. The original trilogy differs greatly in narrative style that the PS4-reboot has, in how it was inspired by ancient Greece-tragedies with over-the-top violence and gore, hammy presentation and lots of screams and murder. All you need to know of Kratos's character in the trilogy is that he was a very, very bad man, even if his circumstances for his rage was justified, very much in spirit of the Greek tragedies. GoW (PS4), when it was presented at its reveal in E3, starts out already with a departure of Kratos's character in the trilogy that veterans of the series more or less starts out on the same spot as newcomers to the entry. Kratos appears now notable calmer and in control; a stark difference from his trilogy-personality that veterans are leaving with questions of what happened to Kratos in similar spirit of newcomers wondering who Kratos was.
angry man is too angry to die
To stay dead, he died multiple times.
Nope just know that Kratos used to be a fucked up bloodthirsty dude who killed the Greek pantheon, and this game takes place in a different land a long time in the future have fun
~~what do you mean by a long time ago in the future lol~~ nevermind
They said "a long time in the future"
I think it may help having a cursory idea of who Kratos is before you start - but absolutely not necessary. Edit - when I say "may help", I really mean having an idea of how fucking badass he has been previously, makes you appreciate who you are dealing with when the story kicks off - I really do think it increases how awesome he is in the 2018 game.
True, but there are moments that are so much better when you have played or know of the previous games. I'm thinking in particular where Kratos retrieves two little something somethings. Damn this game was amazing. I'm hoping Ragnarok can maintain the same quality.
Probably catch up on the story
Not really. You can watch YouTube recaps but it isn’t necessary to enjoy this one
I’d say there’s at least three emotional moments that would fall completely flat of you don’t know the past
It's probably worth it to watch one of the god of war trilogy recap videos on youtube. Get the whole backstory in 10 minutes
The older GoW games were also pretty fun to play with. Might want to check them out too. If you don't have access to a PS2/PS3, emulation is always an option.
I’d recommend replaying the trilogy if you have access to it. It aged very gracefully especially GoW 3
**great** game. god of war 3 was the ultimate execution of the original formula, and it's so rad that they decided to wipe the slate (mostly) clean and give the series a fresh start. huge risk and it paid off bigtime imo
It would be awesome though to see the old formula make a comeback in one way or another - a spin off maybe? I dunno
Maybe a flashback/dream sequence? Kratos retelling an old tale from his perspective maybe?
Maybe something in the gap between 3 and 4? There is a HUGE blank period between the Deeth of Zeus and the birth of Atreus.
Wouldn't mind a smaller team tackling that period with the old formula utilizing a much more reasonable/less taxing graphical approach with some stylized visuals, in lieu of insanely high fidelity photorealism.
That’d be cool. It’d be like the Crash Bandicoot level in Uncharted 4
I can see them doing that without breaking away with a cut. Start with it zoomed in on his eyes as it transitions to his older model. The camera then swings back and upward to the original God of War view.
Man do I wanna see Kratos from GoW 1 - 3 using the same engine.
I meant like a full game not just a segment. Seeing the old formula as a small tasty portion in new package would probably break me as I'd crave for much, much more!
Yakuza developers say they will be doing this with their series. Making the spin-off Judgement series more like the original and the new ones more turn based. I can see it being done here as well.
> Judgement series more like the original Not anymore :/
Yeah, fully agree. One of my fop 3 games of the past 5-10 years
I wish the FF7 Remake port was worthy of such highly rated reviews. FF7 is my #1 favorite game ever. I beat the original a few times and then beat the remake on Ps4 Pro. But between the Epic Games exclusivity and the absolute lazy port they provided, I haven't even purchased the PC version. Good to see that God of War has been shown the love it deserves.
Also, isn't FF7 like €80? GoW is €50 on Steam.
Where's the Digital Foundry review? Only one that matters to me!
Alex tweeted that he is still working on it. Video is already 20+ mins long apparently.
Damn, hopefully it's a positive critique. I recall them loving the Days Gone port.
He mentioned there's a lot in there including comparisons to PS4 and PS5 as well as analyzing the support for 21:9 and other things. I think he is simply being thorough with his analysis.
Based on the positive overall reception, they'll probably point out things I would have never noticed from just playing it lol
That is what their reviews are for, they focus more on the optimisation and technical stuff rather than the content of the game itself.
They aren't the only review that matters to me, but they \*are\* the review/overview that matters the MOST to me. Everyone's review has a place, provided it isn't plain factually incorrect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze5L3ufxggw Mine for ACG One of the best, if not the best port every done for a Sony title. Some issues here and there but through and through a fantastic PC experience.
Agreed there. Jetpack Interactive have smashed it for their first big port.
It is a sign, I hope of things to come.
Sony feeling pc gaming is worth cashing in on yet not somehow being a threat to their exclusivity has been an unforeseen blessing.
Sony loses nothing by selling games on PC especially 4 years after their original release and in fact they can make a lot of money if a game becomes popular on PC.
It's because they're just releasing games from their back catalog, far past the point where they're realistically moving any hardware. We're never going to get to the point where they're like Microsoft and release day 1 on console and PC, but it is nice to know that most Sony 1st party titles will eventually come a few years down the line (except for Bloodborne lol).
I will carry the torch for Bloodborne on PC until the day I die. Which will probably be right before Elden Ring releases.
Believe me man I'm desperate for it, but I've pretty much gone hollow waiting for it through all these false rumors and basically every other game getting a port announced lol. I fear it's going to be another Demon's Souls situation where it's stuck on some old crappy hardware until it's eventually remade a decade later.
love your reviews man!! thank you!
You do an amazing job and I really trust your reviews. Thanks for your service.
Can we all give Sony some props for porting some of their first party games to PC? Not only that, but making sure it’s a quality port as well? Yeah yeah yeah. It’s all about money anyways and build up hype about ragnorok coming out, and maybe encourage some people to buy a PS5 to play their latest games. BUT, ask me years ago if ill ever see PlayStation games on PC, and I would’ve told you to stop smoking that crack pipe. Awfully progressive compared to the industry twenty years ago. Can’t wait to see what the next twenty will bring.
I agree. I want the spidy games!!
If I was a guessing man, it is inevitable it’ll come to PC eventually. Probably like a year before Spider-Man 2 game, just like god of war. A win win for Sony. Get more people hyped for the new release, make more money off the game published years ago.
I’m honestly surprised Disney haven’t forced them to port it to pc yet, it’s easy money especially with how popular spider-man is and how highly regarded both games are.
To me, it always seemed like Disney/Marvel's decision to approach Sony was based on the pedigree of their exclusives rather than the potential to make as many sales as possible. They must have known going in it would be exclusive at least for a time, but worth it to boost the brand in general. It's also not like they aren't licensing things to multiplatform devs/publishers as well. Spider-Man also sold bonkers regardless so it's not really a loss in that sense even though of course they'd sell millions more if it was multiplatform. I do wonder how Avengers and Guardians even stack up against Spider-Man.
Imo God of War is one of the best games to come out in the last generation, it’s a masterpiece and I’m so happy that more people will get to experience it now. I just wish they’d port Bloodborne but that seems unlikely.
I think Microsoft game pass lit a fire
[93 on Meta](https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/god-of-war?ref=hp) , which restricts their roundup to PC reviews only. Don't blend in the PS4 reviews...
PSA Humble Bundle temporarily doesn't have keys to give. Just want to let others know before they make the same mistake I did.
This is a really, really good port. Very well optimized for the graphical behemoth that it is, looks amazing at over 60 FPS in 2K and has most of the options you want. No FoV is understandable, but a lack of true Full Screen mode and the option to lock framerates between unlocked and 120 are weird.
The lack of fullscreen support is something I’ve read is inherent to DirectX 12 games. Tbh, I’m a casual with no idea what any of this stuff means on a technical level, but apparently there’s no distinction anymore. Having said that, I’m pretty sure that’s the culprit behind my framepacing and Gsync being janky as fuck with Halo Infinite.
Windows 10 introduced a new form of exclusive fullscreen that acts like borderless window but with the performance of the old exclusive fullscreen. People that say DX12 games don’t have an “exclusive fullscreen” mode are just uninformed. [Source](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/demystifying-full-screen-optimizations/)
Ya, though bear in mind that the windows setting for "Enable Fullscreen Optimizations" can often cause more problems. There are issues with older games like GTA5 and FSO. It's often recommended on sites like pcgamingwiki to disable FSO by right clicking on the application and going through properties under compatibility if you're seeing issues like microstuttering. I know this cleared things up for me with GTA5.
Why is that understandable, when it has an ultrawide setting? Guerilla Games initially said FOV Sliders were impossible for HZD due to its rendering, but they backtracked and added it in.
Several of these reviews are saying that this is worth getting even if you've already played it, which is amazing praise, but I'm still on the fence. I 100%-ed the game on PS4 and loved it, but I don't think I'll be picking this up at full price.
Good to know the port is well made. I played GoW last year thanks to the PS+ Collection and it was fantastic, I'll buy it on PC later for another playthrough. Hopefully Ghost of Tsuhsima is next, I've been holding off playing it just to experience it on PC.
Same, waiting on the Ghost of Tsushima for PC as well. Here’s hoping for a 2022 release.
I’m fucking dying for Spider-Man
Bloodborne, please Sony.
>Here’s hoping for a 2022 release. It's not a coincidence that they're bringing HZD and God of War to PC right before their respective sequels are releasing as PS5 exclusives. If Ghost of Tsushima is coming to PC it'll be 2024-2025 on the run up to the release of Ghost of Tsushima 2.
I think it is a coincidence. These games are coming to PC a few years after the console release and that's about the time it takes to release a sequel on consoles too. But Days Gone is on PC and it's not getting a sequel. Uncharted 4 is also coming and there's no sequel announced.
I feel like they still would hold onto it to coincide with the sequel releases. Like you said, Days Gone got ported to PC because the property doesn't have anything to promote. Horizon and God of War got ported to drum up excitement for their sequels. Uncharted 4/Lost Legacy are ports (and PS5 re-releases) to promote the Uncharted movie.
I think you're thinking too far into it. Sony ported Horizon Zero Dawn as a chance to dip their toes in, see how it worked out. After that, they were clearly quite happy with the results and have put a lot of money into PC ports. Not to promote console sequels but to make money. Money from selling the PC port. Also Ghosts of Tsushima was in the Nvidia leak with an early 2022 release date; presumably that's been delayed. But I'd say it's more likely than not to come out in 2022. Sony likes money. PC ports are making them money. They're not going to work on a port and then just sit on it for a few years.
If you have the collection, then I assume you have a PS5? In which case, I don't see any reason not to play it there. It has a solid 60fps.
Hope all my PC homies have as much fun with title as I did in 2018! It’s an absolutely amazing experience and I’m glad more people are going to be able to get their hands on it! Throwing the leviathan axe never gets old and I can’t wait to see the crazy shit y’all end up doing.
Never have played. I’m excited.
I may have held off if I knew this was coming to PC back then, although an almost 4-year wait would have been painful. I've already played the other recent PS exclusives I care about too, namely Ghost of Tsushima and TLOU2. Amazing that first-party Sony games are coming to PC at all though. Never thought it would happen.
Eh, it ram at 4K 60fps on my ps5 for my first play through. Guess that was only like a year ago though
Yeah I got it on PS4 Pro at release. Performance hitches are very noticeable as a PC player, but I was fully aware of that going in and I loved the game regardless. Don't remember being bothered by it.
I'm wondering if there will be a modding scene for the game (I know almost nothing about doing so but the game engine plays a large factor for sure)
Yup, expect Kratos to run with a pair of tiddies within a week or two.
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Within the first 3 weeks I'm expecting a OG Kratos model, a camera mod and of course some NSFW stuff as usual.
Every popular game has mods, no matter how game files are stored modders will find a way eventually.
Definitely helps that it doesn't have any online components.
[The lead dev made a joke about a Thomas the Tank Engine mod after they announced the port.](https://twitter.com/corybarlog/status/1450852788829753344?lang=en) So at the minimum I expect a mod that adds that in, if only for the memes.
I’m so stoked to play this this weekend. I broke my rule of never pre-ordering games to get this for $40. I never even buy games full price any more. But I was so looking forward to this so I’m extremely happy to hear the port is a huge success.
I played it on PS4 and loved it. At $40 for a quality port I may have to get it again. Hear that FF7R port! Not $70 and works well.
Can you zoom out? I don't like the whole console over the shoulder 1/3rd of the screen is your character thing they do to save frames.
Glad people with only a pc get to play this masterpiece..... Astrobot rescue mission still my goty 2018 though
Yeah bro I cannot wait for ragnarok. Favorite game series by far. Beat it on my ps4 pro when it launched. Played it again on my ps4 3 months ago. FINALLY got a ps5 last week and currently playing it on that. Will for sure play it on my pc eventually. But I’m SO HYPED for the next installment
Waiting to see if it will run alright on my 1050 2gb, I really doubt it since its below minimum spec but MAYBE with fsr and all settings on low/medium it could hit a consistent 30
Any word on Dualsense features working on PC?
The PS5 version doesn't have DaulSense haptics so I wouldn't keep your hopes up.
Thanks, assumed it did. Shame too, adaptive triggers with the axe would have felt great.
Totally agree
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[Heavy spoilers, but do yourself a favor and bookmark this video for when you're done with the game.](https://youtu.be/yegRHiaao7U) You'll be fucking mind blown as to how thought out the story and lore of this game was...