Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Domingo said:
Looks like a new patch for the game started rolling out yesterday. It might just be the RTX ray tracing patch, but I'd like to think they're still fixing issues with the game, too.
Gamepad-wise, I'm a big fan of the Xbox's dongle vs. generic Bluetooth. It's an additional $20, but it's bulletproof. Whenever I'd do tests using Bluetooth, I'd see dropped inputs. In the Street Fighter games you can actually see and count input commands, and across 4 different Bluetooth adapters I'd see about 1 out of every 6 inputs drop. It doesn't matter in every game, but it was enough to get me to spend the money for MS's adapter, which drops 0.
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I have found in my uses that Mobo built-in Bluetooth is vastly superior to any dongle I've used outside of the MS stuff. I think the MS dongle is spot on if you don't have Mobo with BT.
 
Just beat the refinery portion near the end of the game (I assume).

I can't be the only person who thought that was an incredible scene. This game isn't as good as the second game, but it really does have some awesome cinematography/direction (Or whatever you want to call it in a game).
 
Mchart said:
Just beat the refinery portion near the end of the game (I assume).

I can't be the only person who thought that was an incredible scene. This game isn't as good as the second game, but it really does have some awesome cinematography/direction (Or whatever you want to call it in a game).
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Yeah it was incredible for a rambo movie. It felt too much to me. Going bigger is not always the solution. When your character becomes invincible that takes away the suspense from the story.
And that's about halfway trough the game if I remember correctly.
 
I've just tried the game with HDR, and wasn't impressed. All the small details were washed out by the overdone vivid radiance. It might look flat without HDR comparatively but at least I can see details and not just bright blobs.

And that's with setting brightness way and I mean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay bellow the level recommended by the game. Had I set it to that I might just get sunburn sitting in front of the screen.
 
M76 said:
I've just tried the game with HDR, and wasn't impressed. All the small details were washed out by the overdone vivid radiance. It might look flat without HDR comparatively but at least I can see details and not just bright blobs.

And that's with setting brightness way and I mean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay bellow the level recommended by the game. Had I set it to that I might just get sunburn sitting in front of the screen.
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Looks great with my panel @ full 10 bit. Might just be your panel / color settings.
 
M76 said:
Yeah it was incredible for a rambo movie. It felt too much to me. Going bigger is not always the solution. When your character becomes invincible that takes away the suspense from the story.
And that's about halfway trough the game if I remember correctly.
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She’s been invincible the entire trilogy. It’s not as if this game is pushing realism. You fight zombie samurai in the second game FFS.
 
Mchart said:
She’s been invincible the entire trilogy. It’s not as if this game is pushing realism. You fight zombie samurai in the second game FFS.
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Yeah, but so far it was only during gameplay. Now that rambo scene made it part of the lore imo.
 
Mchart said:
Looks great with my panel @ full 10 bit. Might just be your panel / color settings.
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It looks great at first glance, but compare it to no HDR. A lot of detail is missing, even on Lara.
Odyssey looks all right so it must be this game.
 
M76 said:
It looks great at first glance, but compare it to no HDR. A lot of detail is missing, even on Lara.
Odyssey looks all right so it must be this game.
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I disagree man. It could be that your panel doesn’t support high enough contrast ratio for HDR but it’s a big improvement on my setup.
 
Mchart said:
I disagree man. It could be that your panel doesn’t support high enough contrast ratio for HDR but it’s a big improvement on my setup.
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Well I've tried again, the problem was that for some reason when switching to HDR the brightness was automatically set to 100. And I didn't know that, I assumed my 30 or 35 setting that I set for standard was still active. And I thought all the extra brightness was caused by the game's HDR mode. So I compensated by lowering the luminance slider in the game. Which acts as a gamma correction of sorts it seems. Therefore the color range became compressed and the details were more washed out as they were supposed to be.

BTW strange bug: if HDR is on I can't turn off vsync or the game will crash. Not that I'd want to play without vsync I just wanted to turn it off for the benchmark.
 
M76 said:
Well I've tried again, the problem was that for some reason when switching to HDR the brightness was automatically set to 100. And I didn't know that, I assumed my 30 or 35 setting that I set for standard was still active. And I thought all the extra brightness was caused by the game's HDR mode. So I compensated by lowering the luminance slider in the game. Which acts as a gamma correction of sorts it seems. Therefore the color range became compressed and the details were more washed out as they were supposed to be.

BTW strange bug: if HDR is on I can't turn off vsync or the game will crash. Not that I'd want to play without vsync I just wanted to turn it off for the benchmark.
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On my setup i'm able to play with HDR on and V-Sync off (Running G-Sync so no need).
 
I thought my crashing issues were over, but they're definitely not. I keep getting "Driver Hung" errors. I went a few days with no issues, but I've gotten that error 4-5 times in the last day. Using the latest drivers, running settings that aren't that aggressive, and not bothering to overclock my video card. The forums on Steam are showing a few other people with similar specs getting this, so I'm thinking it's a 2080 thing.
 
Domingo said:
Looks like a new patch for the game started rolling out yesterday. It might just be the RTX ray tracing patch, but I'd like to think they're still fixing issues with the game, too.
Gamepad-wise, I'm a big fan of the Xbox's dongle vs. generic Bluetooth. It's an additional $20, but it's bulletproof. Whenever I'd do tests using Bluetooth, I'd see dropped inputs. In the Street Fighter games you can actually see and count input commands, and across 4 different Bluetooth adapters I'd see about 1 out of every 6 inputs drop. It doesn't matter in every game, but it was enough to get me to spend the money for MS's adapter, which drops 0.
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The patch was just additional fixes since it seems this game is chock full of issues. I wouldn't expect the RTX patch until next month at the earliest. Maybe even later now that the required 1809 W10 update was pulled for needed fixes.
Domingo said:
I thought my crashing issues were over, but they're definitely not. I keep getting "Driver Hung" errors. I went a few days with no issues, but I've gotten that error 4-5 times in the last day. Using the latest drivers, running settings that aren't that aggressive, and not bothering to overclock my video card. The forums on Steam are showing a few other people with similar specs getting this, so I'm thinking it's a 2080 thing.
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Have not played the game since getting my 2080 Ti, but I have read elsewhere that Turing is currently having issues with this game. May be worth it to do a DDU clean install if you didn't when you swapped out your old video card.
 
I went ahead and re-installed the game and used DDU to remove and re-install the latest Nvidia drivers. I haven't had a chance to play since, but based on the number of 2080 owners complaining on Steam I think it's the game with the issues.
The joys of being an early adopter.
 
NemesisX said:
The game definitely has issues, but I was glad mine was fixed by simply hardwiring the controller into the PC. The Bluetooth driver kept crashing the game. I also read online how the GTX 1080 couldn’t handle this game at 4K. Not sure what garbage hardware the reviewer was using, but I played the entire game maxed out at 4K and HDR with my Sea Hawk 1080. But of course my CPU and GPU are both liquid-cooled and overclocked.

Unfortunately, this is the most beautiful looking terrible game I’ve ever played. I wish they had spent more time on the story. I think the first Tomb Raider is still my favorite.
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I'd imagine "playable" depends entirely on your threshold for FPS. The 2080 Ti can't even do 4K/60 with maxed settings, so I'd imagine you're probably happy with 30'ish FPS.
 
Domingo said:
I'd imagine "playable" depends entirely on your threshold for FPS. The 2080 Ti can't even do 4K/60 with maxed settings, so I'd imagine you're probably happy with 30'ish FPS.
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What are you on about? My Titan X did 4K 60 FPS just fine. The 2080 Ti has no problems in this game.
 
Armenius said:
What are you on about? My Titan X did 4K 60 FPS just fine. The 2080 Ti has no problems in this game.
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Are you maxing out all of the AA settings and setting things like shadows to ultra? Are you playing with vsync on? The RTX 2080 Ti absolutely can't do that and maintain 60fps in 4K. Cranking everything up and running the benchmark shows FPS ranging from 42 to 55 in just the plaza scene.
 
Domingo said:
Are you maxing out all of the AA settings and setting things like shadows to ultra? Are you playing with vsync on? The RTX 2080 Ti absolutely can't do that and maintain 60fps in 4K. Cranking everything up and running the benchmark shows FPS ranging from 42 to 55 in just the plaza scene.
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It can't - But @ 4k I find AA at high wasn't needed. I also found the difference between shadows on medium / high / ultra was almost nothing with a huge cost associated. Between that and having g-sync the dips in some sections are tolerable.
 
Mchart said:
It can't - But @ 4k I find AA at high wasn't needed. I also found the difference between shadows on medium / high / ultra was almost nothing with a huge cost associated. Between that and having g-sync the dips in some sections are tolerable.
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That's generally what I'm doing. Normal 'ol TAA. Shadows set to normal. Screen Space Contact Shadows and Screen Space Reflections seem to definitely hamper things in the misty jungle scenes.
Those settings seem to be enough to get 60 fps on the benchmark, although I have noticed that in the actual game things have bogged down here and there. Again, it seems related to the misty jungle scenes.
 
Domingo said:
That's generally what I'm doing. Normal 'ol TAA. Shadows set to normal. Screen Space Contact Shadows and Screen Space Reflections seem to definitely hamper things in the misty jungle scenes.
Those settings seem to be enough to get 60 fps on the benchmark, although I have noticed that in the actual game things have bogged down here and there. Again, it seems related to the misty jungle scenes.
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I use SMAA T2x.
 
I can't handle anything under 60fps. It drives me nuts. It's the main reason I play on the PC vs. a console. The Xbox One X and PS4 Pro actually have pretty respectable looking versions of games like this, but that framerate kills me. I'll dial back AA settings and lower details if I even see drops below 57-58fps.

In like 99% of other games you can lower the render resolution, but for some odd reason Shadow doesn't offer that option. You can kinda/sorta do it in windowed mode, but there's no way to do it sans borders.
 
damn this might be a new record...the game is already 34% off on Steam...the game must have totally bombed in terms of sales...too bad, as I really enjoyed the entire trilogy
 
polonyc2 said:
damn this might be a new record...the game is already 34% off on Steam...the game must have totally bombed in terms of sales...too bad, as I really enjoyed the entire trilogy
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I don't know about total including digital, but the low physical sales have been making the news rounds. Physical sales in the first week were down 70% compared to the 2013 reboot, and even 25% lower than the initially Xbox exclusive Rise of the Tomb Raider. On Steam, Shadow had a peak concurrent player count just 10% below the first title and 50% more than Rise.

Personally, there is something about this title that I just don't like. It's pretty to look at, sure, but it is lacking substance. The story setup hasn't changed at all over the whole trilogy and it feels very contrived at this point.
 
Hopefully this one perks up as you get further. I'm around 40% completion and it feels like nothing has happened. They're giving me all of these herbs and gun upgrades and I've only fought maybe 10 people, a group of evil foxes, and 3 jaguars.
The game looks absolutely amazing, but there's minimal substance so far. The only challenge has been figuring out which ledges you can grab and which ones you can't.
 
Armenius said:
Personally, there is something about this title that I just don't like. It's pretty to look at, sure, but it is lacking substance. The story setup hasn't changed at all over the whole trilogy and it feels very contrived at this point.
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yeah I can't put my finger on it but something definitely feels a bit off or different about this one...I still think it's a solid game and more of the same exploration and challenge tombs etc but it just feels different for some reason...I think the jungle environment is the reason...it's nice but also a bit weird to navigate and doesn't feel like a real place like the other settings
 
Glad I'm reading the responses here. I was about ready to dump $40 on this game because I really liked the last two, but I think I need to wait for the impending fall or winter sales.
 
This game will be 14.98 middle of next year the other Tomb Raiders gamed came down to 2.99 for the regular one like two years later. Lara is always cheap when it comes to her games.
 
djoye said:
Glad I'm reading the responses here. I was about ready to dump $40 on this game because I really liked the last two, but I think I need to wait for the impending fall or winter sales.
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I was perfectly happy with the $47 I paid for it on GMG. It was worth the money to me, and I enjoyed the conclusion to the trilogy.
 
I've been taking my time with my first play through getting everything I can possibly collect/do. Not sure how far into the story I am, though I feel like I'm close to the end, and I've got 75% completion and about 30 hours in so far. Definitely getting my money's worth but once I'm done I'll no longer really need to come back to it.
 
They rolled out a new patch this morning, so hopefully this will fix some of the 2080 woes people (including me) have had with crashes.
 
I can't speak about how this one turns out (it's slow so far), but I found the previous two to be fantastic. I don't have a ton of context on what's considered successful or not, but Destructoid is claiming they combined for 18 million copies sold. That's not horrible. Hopefully this one is an anomaly. In an age where people have knee jerk reactions to reviews, it's pretty easy to skip this one based on a first impression. As graphically impressive as it might be, you don't really do much of anything for at least the first hour. After that there are massive stretches where it's basically a quicktime event with jumping puzzles.
 
NemesisX said:
I'd hardly call the it a conclusion.
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We must have played a different game because this game 100% closed out the origin story trilogy and ends with her basically being ready for what was the original first game storyline.
 
Today's patch added some nice audio static and crackling for many including myself. Also many people are reporting flickering after the patch but that could partly be on the shitty Nvidia drivers as the last two have caused flickering in other games too.
 
misterbobby said:
Today's patch added some nice audio static and crackling for many including myself. Also many people are reporting flickering after the patch but that could partly be on the shitty Nvidia drivers as the last two have caused flickering in other games too.
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I've notice the audio static a bit. Not much. The flickering through...who the hell reviewed this patch?? In the San Juan town, everything in the background flickers as well as all the waterfalls. Flickering goes away if you disable HBAO+ and enable BTAO. Going to update my drivers since I don't really keep up with the latest anyway...

Sucks, I never had problems until now.
 
misterbobby said:
Today's patch added some nice audio static and crackling for many including myself. Also many people are reporting flickering after the patch but that could partly be on the shitty Nvidia drivers as the last two have caused flickering in other games too.
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The patch notes mention Dolby Atmos, which supposedly isn't even supported in the PC version of the game even though it's in the Xbox One version. That might be the culprit.
 
Domingo said:
The patch notes mention Dolby Atmos, which supposedly isn't even supported in the PC version of the game even though it's in the Xbox One version. That might be the culprit.
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The patch added Atmos to the PC version. It was in the Xbox version since release. You need the Atmos app from the Windows store for it to work, as far as I'm aware.
 
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