XIII - remake of the 2003 FPS

[lightbane]

Other games in Unity don't demand such ridiculous specs. I suppose it's lack of optimization/competence as well.

 

[Bad Sector]

I see this shit more and more lately, with games, especially from "indie" developers, having a 4GB VRAM requirement. Look faggots, if Doom 2016 could work pretty damn well on a 2GB card, plus Witcher maxed out, plus Deus Ex Mankind Divided, plus Fallout 4, plus the Tomb Raiders, hell, even Ass Creed Odyssey and Far Cry 5/New Dawn, you have no excuse for requiring a 4GB gpu.

This makes more sense from indie studios which tend to be very small though: developers like id Software, CDPR, Rockstar, Crystal Dynamics and Ubisoft have dedicated programmers to work on optimizing the graphics and GPU usage for a game whereas smaller studios have programmers doing more stuff than just working on graphics, so there is less time spent on optimization. Taking advantage of modern hardware so you can spend more time on the stuff that matters (ie. the game) can be the difference between the game existing or not (or being a buggy mess), especially when the people who will be affected are a shrinking minority and time will solve the "problem" (ie. they'll eventually upgrade).

Sure, the programmer in me does get annoyed whenever i see a 320p game with 16 colors or whatever needing a 1.5GHz dual core CPU, OpenGL 1.4 and 2GB of RAM at minimum when the game looks like it'd work even on a 60Hz Pentium with a Cirrus Logic graphics adapter, but at the same time Papers Please is a good game and using OpenFL and Haxe most likely helped Lucas Pope to make his game much faster and for multiple platforms than if he used Win32 and C while not really losing much - and by now even handheld PCs meet these requirements.

 

[Bony Hands]

The remake coming out has gotten me to pull the original from my backlog and give it a try. It's good fun, but I could see why people would want a remaster. Let it support modern resolutions and fix any bugs it might have on newer computers, make the menus look better then black text on plain white boxes, just go with the checkpoint system instead of having a manual save that doesn't do anything.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I remember playing the original when it came out and finding it a blast and so unique. I had to abandon it however about a third of the way in because I think I foolishly selected highest difficulty, reasoning, "Hey! I'm a seasoned Doom I & II player, and this must be a comic book cakewalk!" I was trapped inside a shack somewhere with 2 or 3 hitscan helicopters hovering above with 30mm canons blasting away any part of me that protruded just 6" outside the door so I gave up. The remake's art style looks like absolute 4th stage fully metastasized cancer of the gamer's soul. I should break out my old PC ROMs and patch it up for Win10 tho.

 

[RNGsus]

REEEEEEmakes

How long until normies stop mindlessly letting old franchises be used as publicity

I KNOW WHAT THAT IS

 

[ValeVelKal]

So I just started the old XIII and the remake is there.

Is the remake just that - the old one that works better and is prettier - or are the game sufficiently different I should play both.

For the record I read all the XIII comics, which I appreciated though did not love them.

 

[Roguey]

I should break out my old PC ROMs and patch it up for Win10 tho.

I was going to mention how the DRM dumb Ubisoft bundled on the discs have bricked them on modern systems but apparently a fan patch (or a tedious manual workaround) fixed it so that's swell I guess https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/XIII#4-CD_installation_problem

 

[samuraigaiden]

Ubisoft rapes employees, customers and games - albeit in different degrees of literality.

 

[Bad Sector]

Is the remake just that - the old one that works better and is prettier - or are the game sufficiently different I should play both.

From what i've seen (didn't buy the game myself) the remake is a beat-for-beat remake of the old game, except worse and uglier. So it looks like if you have played the original then you do not need play this one and if you haven't played the original then play that one instead.

 

[Gerrard]

Other games in Unity don't demand such ridiculous specs. I suppose it's lack of optimization/competence as well.

When Pillars of Eternity came out I had a Radeon 4850 and all I could get was around 20FPS max if I disabled AA. In a game where the only 3D objects are the characters.

Superhot also has inane system requirements.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Is the remake just that - the old one that works better and is prettier - or are the game sufficiently different I should play both.

From what i've seen (didn't buy the game myself) the remake is a beat-for-beat remake of the old game, except worse and uglier. So it looks like if you have played the original then you do not need play this one and if you haven't played the original then play that one instead.

The gman made a good review for once, using back to back comparisons to illustrate why the remake is shit. I timestamped it to cut to the chase.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Basically the original XIII was a mediocre game with a cool presentation and in the remake the kept the mediocre gameplay but fucked up the presentation.

Congratulations to all involved.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.microids.com/official-statement-by-microids-playmagic-regarding-xiii/

Official Statement by Microids & Playmagic regarding XIII

Greetings,

The highly anticipated remake of XIII, awaited by many fans, came out earlier this week. Unfortunately, players expectations have not been met by the launch version and we hear loud and clear the legitimate criticism and disappointment.

First and foremost, we would like to offer our most sincere apologies for the game’s technical issues. In its present state, XIII does not meet our quality standards and we fully understand players’ frustrations. The pandemic has impacted the game’s production on many levels. Pivoting to home working for the teams has added unexpected delays in the development schedule and the QA process. We hoped we would be able to provide a Day One patch fixing all the issues but the development of this update is taking more time than expected.

We want to assure you that PlayMagic is working hard to solve all the game’s issues. With live monitoring and multiple patches in the upcoming days and weeks, we hope to reach the quality level we all expect for the optimum gaming experience. The first update will be pushed shortly to fix the most urgent issues regarding the controls, frame rate, collisions, rendering and sound. For information about the upcoming patches, please follow this link: https://www.microids.com/xiii-patch-notes/

In addition, we wanted to thank the community for all the feedback. We are reviewing every single comment carefully, passing along the bugs and issues to the development team. Feel free to send us your feedback and questions to: support@microids.com

Finally, know that we are working on a detailed road map highlighting the upcoming free additions to the game content like new levels, weapons, skins and modes for the local multiplayer.

We are aiming to please all the XIII fans and we’ll work relentlessly to achieve our goal.

The teams at Microids and PlayMagic

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I bet that the original has save everywhere, while the remake has checkpoints.

 

[Neuromancer]

I bet that the original has save everywhere, while the remake has checkpoints.

The original game had checkpoints as well - which was the major drawback for me, since in some levels they were badly and scarcely placed and the basic difficulty of the levels also varied a lot.

I remember there were was one stealth level with a long cutscene. When you made one mistake you had replay the whole thing again and again.
I finally lowered the difficulty (I don't remember if I had to replay for this or if you could change the difficulty on the fly) to finally pass this scene.

 

[DalekFlay]

Amazing they blamed Covid for the game not being done yet but... released it anyway? How is that an apology, you're admitting you scammed people with an unfinished product.

 

[Mark Richard]

Something terrible happened here.

 

[baud]

The original is free on GOG right now for the next 40 hours

 

[LESS T_T]

Rework by other developer is coming in September: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1154790/view/3339997189662324654

XIII Remake – A major update coming September 13

To achieve the quality standards and offer an optimal gaming experience, Microids decided to entrust the development of XIII Remake to the French studio Tower Five (Lornsword: Winter Chronicle). Hard at work for more than a year on a major update. This update will be released on September 13th.

On that date, owners of the game will receive a free update and enjoy the game as intended. The development studio reworked the entire game from the Art Direction to the AI and added numerous technical improvements.

 

[Baron Dupek]

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1154790/view/3319737966744767712

XIII Remake - New update available
Hello everyone,

After several months of waiting, Microids and Tower Five studio present you the long awaited update of XIII Remake

You will find significant improvements and fixes along with the much anticipated online multiplayer mode.

The update is free and available today to meet your expectations whether technical corrections, AI or artistic direction the whole game has been reworked by the studio to provide you with the most fluent gaming experience possible.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

So, is this the remake of the remake to make the game more similar to the original?

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

When in doubt, just play the original.

 

[SharkClub]

Watching some of these videos I am struggling to think of a reason why this remake even exists. It just seems to be the original game but worse in every way. What's the point? Why did they even make this? Wouldn't it have been cheaper and more profitable to just remaster it with the original assets and give it a higher resolution and such? I guess they lost the original game's source code?

 

[Bad Sector]

It just seems to be the original game but worse in every way.

Supposedly the remake was remade to fix these issues - in that case that video wont represent its current post-remake-remake status.