The Single Player [Demo]

[Xenofex.XVII]

This thread is for discussing the Demo.

I'll start the discussion:
Is it out yet?

[Milla aka. the Slayer]

Yes

[Orfinn]

And you play it Milla? How is it like, how does it smell, taste and feel like?

Just kiddin

[Milla aka. the Slayer]

No haven't played it. Just know it's out and I'm probably gonna give it a try

[Xenofex.XVII]

Anyone got mirrors/FTP/P2P links to the file?
The links on the main page have overloaded servers.

[Angelspit]

The best I could find was a 21.3 KB/s download on Gamer's Hell, and it took forever to star. A little less than 20 hours left...

[Warlock]

What time was the demo released? I was going to start the download before I left for work this morning but forgot. But now I'm thinking it may not have even been released at that time yet.

[Angelspit]

Around noon here in Eastern Canada, so 6 PM in France.

[Warlock]

Around noon here in Eastern Canada, so 6 PM in France.

Is that EST?

[Marine OKeefe]

I played it and I must say..... its really short, you find out there is a grand total of 6 spells in the game, 3 Melee skills, 3 Ranged skills and a few misc skills. The combat got boring before I finished the demo and the graphics look outdated, Half-Life 2 looks much better.

[Lord_Haart]

But Half life 2 is a futuristic shooter, this is a fantasy melee game. Maybe it's just my newness to this style of game, but I thought it was great.

And it looked awesome on my PC too (much better than say Oblivion at medium specs) - my PC is a 2.4GHz P4 (just above min specs) with 1GB RAM and a Radeon X800Pro. Game ran seamlessly. Saving was quick (not instant, but ~1 second), load times were satisfactory, and remember it still has MONTHS to be optimised - we probably got low end graphics settings (notice how you can't edit them in the demo) because they were afraid of people expecting things to run great at ridiculously high settings, then whinging that it wasn't optimised (btw, in terms of file size, remember this game needs 7GB to install, so while we might have got a little more than we needed, it was pretty ok).

I also expect the skill system etc. to be more fleshed out on release - remember, they can't give it all away in the demo - didn't you see the list of skills for each class? There were WAY more. Also, the focus is clearly (and rightly, imo) meant to be on MP, where having hundreds of skills is nowhere near as useful as combining them into "packages".

In terms of immersion, this game is awesome - again, maybe it's just because I've never really played much FPS before, but the way you move around is cool (bobbing annoyed me at first, but I quickly adjusted) - and it feels alot better than "gliding" like you do in so many games these days.

One addition I would like is an enemy health bar, since I wasn't sure how effective slashing was vs power attacks or kicking. Dismembering people was cool though (I cut off some guys leg at some point).

If you can't be bothered dling it, fine, wait for the reviews (about the actualy game, not the demo) before you by it. I just set my pc to download it overnight. But I found it to be really enjoyable, and I want more. And an MP Demo would be AWESOME.

[Xenofex.XVII]

Just 15 hours of downloading ... And I will see if it works on my comp
EDIT: I have 6% now only 13 Hours to go

[Warlock]

You know, I liked it but yeah, not very satisfying (not enough stuff to kill).

It ran wierd too. First off, none of the movies at the beginning played (i.e. the Ubisoft logo). I don't know if this was a bug or because it was a demo, but I got a big / through the screen for those. It also came up everytime I got hit by a guy. Did that happen for everyone?

The graphics were also a bit unoptimized. I had to run it at fairly low settings to get it to run smooth, and I'm pretty sure I meet the recommended specs for the game (the only *bad* part of my system is the video card which only has 128mb of VRAM - it's a Geforce FX5700). But some of them looked messed up, especially that room with the staircase and water at the bottom (right before the Cyclops), where the light coming from the ceiling was *solid*. It looked like crap. I tried messing with the settings even though they were unplayable turned up, and nothing fixed it. Kind of disappointing.

I tried to play as an Assassin but it didn't work too well. I guess it's like Theif's system where you have to stick to the shadows to be hidden, but it felt like I was running everywhere and I had to hold down the walk or crouch button to stay "stealthy". It would have been better if there was an actual "stealth" ability like in World of WarCraft I think.

P.S. - is it me or did the bow zoom not work? The game said it was set to hotkey 'y', but pressing 'y' didn't do anything. Did I need a special skill first?

[Gaidal Cain]

It ran wierd too. First off, none of the movies at the beginning played (i.e. the Ubisoft logo). I don't know if this was a bug or because it was a demo, but I got a big / through the screen for those. It also came up everytime I got hit by a guy. Did that happen for everyone?

I had that as well.

P.S. - is it me or did the bow zoom not work? The game said it was set to hotkey 'y', but pressing 'y' didn't do anything. Did I need a special skill first?

Press and hold left mouse key first, then you can zoom. Right key aborts without shooting.

[Warlock]

It ran wierd too. First off, none of the movies at the beginning played (i.e. the Ubisoft logo). I don't know if this was a bug or because it was a demo, but I got a big / through the screen for those. It also came up everytime I got hit by a guy. Did that happen for everyone?

I had that as well.

P.S. - is it me or did the bow zoom not work? The game said it was set to hotkey 'y', but pressing 'y' didn't do anything. Did I need a special skill first?

Press and hold left mouse key first, then you can zoom. Right key aborts without shooting.

Do you need a special skill or something? I was holding the left mouse key and it didn't zoom at all.

[Lord_Haart]

Yep, you need level 1 archery. (costs 1 skill point).

[Gaidal Cain]

You need to press the "y" key as well

[Lord_Haart]

It ran wierd too. First off, none of the movies at the beginning played (i.e. the Ubisoft logo). I don't know if this was a bug or because it was a demo, but I got a big / through the screen for those. It also came up everytime I got hit by a guy. Did that happen for everyone?

Wierd - I had no issues... then again, my graphics card is slightly newer, so maybe that is the root of the problem. I know GFX cards can (and usually do) play a (far) bigger role in how a game looks than the CPU (which is more about how fast it runs, afaik). You can download the intro off the net though, it was released some time ago. Looked sweet at 1280x1000 (whatever average resolution is these days) anyway.

The graphics were also a bit unoptimized. I had to run it at fairly low settings to get it to run smooth, and I'm pretty sure I meet the recommended specs for the game (the only *bad* part of my system is the video card which only has 128mb of VRAM - it's a Geforce FX5700). But some of them looked messed up, especially that room with the staircase and water at the bottom (right before the Cyclops), where the light coming from the ceiling was *solid*. It looked like crap. I tried messing with the settings even though they were unplayable turned up, and nothing fixed it. Kind of disappointing.

Chances are it's the GFX card, since my PC isn't brilliant, but my Radeon X800Pro has served me far better than I could have hoped. If you're considering an upgrade, I'd suggest waiting as long as possible (since the game is still a fair way off, and could be delayed further) since prices will drop and new, cutting edge cards will be released. If you don't want to upgrade, be comforted in the fact that most of the time between now and released will be spent optimising, tweaking, and bugfixing at Arkane.

[Warlock]

It ran wierd too. First off, none of the movies at the beginning played (i.e. the Ubisoft logo). I don't know if this was a bug or because it was a demo, but I got a big / through the screen for those. It also came up everytime I got hit by a guy. Did that happen for everyone?

Wierd - I had no issues... then again, my graphics card is slightly newer, so maybe that is the root of the problem. I know GFX cards can (and usually do) play a (far) bigger role in how a game looks than the CPU (which is more about how fast it runs, afaik). You can download the intro off the net though, it was released some time ago. Looked sweet at 1280x1000 (whatever average resolution is these days) anyway.

The graphics were also a bit unoptimized. I had to run it at fairly low settings to get it to run smooth, and I'm pretty sure I meet the recommended specs for the game (the only *bad* part of my system is the video card which only has 128mb of VRAM - it's a Geforce FX5700). But some of them looked messed up, especially that room with the staircase and water at the bottom (right before the Cyclops), where the light coming from the ceiling was *solid*. It looked like crap. I tried messing with the settings even though they were unplayable turned up, and nothing fixed it. Kind of disappointing.

Chances are it's the GFX card, since my PC isn't brilliant, but my Radeon X800Pro has served me far better than I could have hoped. If you're considering an upgrade, I'd suggest waiting as long as possible (since the game is still a fair way off, and could be delayed further) since prices will drop and new, cutting edge cards will be released. If you don't want to upgrade, be comforted in the fact that most of the time between now and released will be spent optimising, tweaking, and bugfixing at Arkane.

I was looking around the Ubi boards and it seems a lot of people are experiencing it. I think it might be an issue with the card's bink player support (a lot of ppl with Geforce FX cards like me had this problem).

I have been wanting a new graphics card for awhile though, the main problem being that Vista is coming soon, and with that, DirectX 10. So anything I get now won't support it and become obsolete way too fast. It's really annoying.

[slakinator]

I'm running off a 2.6ghz P4, nVidia 6600GT GDDR3 128mb, 1gb ram (cheap generic). I had to lower my standards quite a bit for this game because i can usually max out gfx, but this was very power hungry, almost F.E.A.R like. where its not next gen gfx but very taxing on a comp. i managed to get ~medium gfx with a decent fps ~45. turning off antialiasing is helpful but makes things somewhat pixely. i did turn up my gfx all the way at first and the textures were pretty damn good but the HDR and AA gave dull objects a sheen. the gameplay was excellent and every battle had an enormous amount of possibilities. i luv it when i accidentally hit F and see the orc fly off my foot and into a spiked pallate. i'd give this an 8/10