The witcher 2

Niall · May 17, 2011, 19:19:02

Is out on Steam. For some reason there was no pre load so I'm now downloading 16gb

esh · May 18, 2011, 01:06:15

GOG had a pre-load with DRM free versions

Niall · May 18, 2011, 07:08:54

Yeah I know. I prefer using Steam though

.Griff. · May 18, 2011, 15:30:29

What's it like Niall?

Niall · May 18, 2011, 16:19:16

Dunno, I'm in work on a very late break, having a very cr*p day

It's all downloaded (before my connection died on me at midnight) so I'll have a look when I get home. There are masses of bug reports though, but mainly with crossfire/sli users or just ati users. Have a nose on the steam forums to see what I mean.

Think I'll go to the gym after work for a third day in s row to relieve more stress. I'm bleedin knackered!

esh · May 18, 2011, 21:42:26

It's hard!

Niall · May 19, 2011, 07:00:05

I'm playing it on easy. I assumed it would be a bit like Oblivion but it's much better. The movement is odd, when trying to position yourself to loot something, but the combat is fun and the graphics are awesome.

One thing I'd say though is to change memory use from small to very large. I don't know why the default is small as that causes the game to lag immensely and scene take 5 mins plus to load. On very large I'm playing on high settings and it's running silky smooth. I have ubersampling turned off by default which I've left at that.

In a couple of months I'll be getting a dx11 card and if nothing else, it should allow me to bump up the settings to max with no hit.

So far I'd say this is going to easily be game of the year.

esh · May 19, 2011, 14:28:08

It defaults to small for all the fools who will undoubtedly start it with an old 64MB Intel graphics card or something, which could cause major crashes if you try and stuff 512MB of textures onto it.

Basically, if you only allow it to use 64MB texture RAM or whatever, it has to stream it from the disk/RAM to the video card which is much slower.

Niall · May 19, 2011, 14:47:08

Tell me about it. I had to wait 5 minutes for it to load the opening scenes on the tower. Saved, went out of game, changed the setting and the game ran smooth as silk.

Niall · May 27, 2011, 07:36:39

They released the bonus content for this a few days ago. A whopping 5gb download. Yesterday saw the first patch, which I'm downloading now, which is another 9gb! I meant to start it at midnight so it'd be done by now, but I fell asleep after the gym half killed me

So far this game has cost me 17gb for the game, 5gb bonus content & 9gb for the patch. The IDnet monitor went nuts when I downloaded the game last week during peak time. It was telling me my estimated usage would be 89gb

Oo looking at the usage page, I may have gone over it. I totally forgot I'd bought Crysis and Crysis Warhead two weeks ago. Oopsie, that means that bargain game, just cost me full price

esh · May 27, 2011, 10:59:31

How on earth is a patch 9GB!? Is Steam just overwriting the entire game?

Niall · May 27, 2011, 15:51:07

It's adding free DLC and a lot of fixes, but I don't know what else. The detail in the game is amazing at high settings though, so it's probably texture packs, etc. Due to a lot of the graphics I'd say some of the fixes resulted in lifting out some chunks of the game and replacing them. Expensive d/l bandwidth wise, but if it does fix things without causing future issues I suppose it's worth it.

esh · May 27, 2011, 15:59:11

The patch for the gog.com version is 9MB!

Niall · May 28, 2011, 11:13:59

As I left it run overnight I can't really check, but the IDnet bandwidth monitor shows 7.88gb download the night I updated it. Maybe it was just a Steam bug causing a large download, I dunno.