This is simply one of the best horror games ever made.
The atmosphere has been mentioned over-and-over again in other reviews, but there is something more.
This game (from a computer science and engineering perspective) is brilliant; from the advanced Physx water and ice effects, to the wonderfully relevant level design … simply brilliant.
But!!!
It requires know-how to get it working properly: -
1) It has also been mentioned that this game requires NVidia, which is only partially true. The game works perfectly fine on ATI, but obviously without Physx. There was a problem on the “pre-patched” version with shader model 4.0 for ATI, but this is now a thing of the past.
2) Anyone that is computer savvy can run a system in Hybrid mode with an ATI as primary video, and an NVidia as physx. Look up – “ngohq hybrid 1.05ff”.
3) ATI Eyefinity is also AOK, however it is a bit mental. Selecting the proper resolution (eg. 5040x1050) from the games menu will run the game at the correct resolution, but will produce the incorrect FOV. This CANNOT be fixed via registry /ini’s etc…… The only solution (I’ve found) is to set the resolution equivalent to a single screen (eg. 1680 x 1050), then, in game, ALT-TAB to desktop, then switch back to game ……. BAM, FOV fixed. Admittedly the resolution is lower than desired, but it’s “the best she’ll run captin’” for 3 up ATI.
4) Now …. This fair bit of trial and error paid off for me. To improve Physx performance, I’ve found the best combo of Physx dll’s to use. Do this by replacing these 2 files in “…Cryostasis” game directory: -
a. NxCharacter.dll – with 2.7.3.4. This may not be required as I noticed only slight performance improvements, but why not hey? (The one from Unreal Tournament III is perfect).
b. NxCooking.dll – with 2.8.1.52 (or later I imagine, and I'm not sure how much earlier). This really seems to help with smoothing out frame drops and the infamous chug-chug-chug-memory-tripping-over-process-sync issue that I’ve spotted with the main .exe. (BTW – Renaming a PhysxCooking.dll works fine if you can't find an Nx.)
5) If after doing all / any / none of the above you still notice "frame popping", go into the game menu, turn off advanced physx, go back to game, ALT-TAB again to re-fix FOV (which resets when leaving the menu), go back to menu, re-enable advanced Physx, go back to game, ALT-TAB again ..... then all should be smooth.
Seems like all the little loose ends were not tidied up by the dev team, especially the FOV calc from menu leaving - which only seems to calc properly after task switching. Probably easy to fix ..... oh' if we had the source!! But hey, the code is probably a masterpiece of complexity, with a few small caveats.
Hope this helps the community.
Regards,
Badman.
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