Gaming Signal: 1UP and Journalistic Integrity?

1UP and Journalistic Integrity?

Yes, I do find those two things to be an oxymoron, but it is something that comes from 1UP's decision to pull a somewhat controversial review of Neverwinter Nights 2. The "review" is found in the link from Joystiq, and should not be considered a review - but does it make it less valid? The person that wrote it is not very pleased by the game that Obsidian released, but the worst part is the way the article was written. I will come back to this after we discuss how we got here...

The entire story is relatively short, but as it is often to happen when a new game gets released, there is a slew of reviews. When looking at those scores, one stands out in the list and that was the 50/100 from 1UP. This kind of number for a game that seems generally approved of started a rumbling in the websphere which appears to have led to 1UP's decision to remove the review. Which, of course, leads us to me

Everybody assumes the review was removed since it was full of cynicism and was a slap in the face to many of the folks who like this type of game. But, I don't think that was why it was removed - the article was poorly written from a grammar and prose perspective. If the author had spent a bit more time working that end of his article, it would have been an excellent counter point to many of the other reviews out there - but he didn't and as such had it pulled.

I am not going to pretend that there is not some amount fanboyism in these initial offerings and that I find it difficult for any game that is just released that has that much depth can be adequately reviewed by release day. Furthermore, our sister site (SFSignal) has broached this topic of what is a review versus a critique already and I am not going to open that can of worms again. I will say that this is just another iteration of that discussion, but this one focuses on games versus books. Reviews for games are not reviews but instead are glorified previews. They put a numerical opinion of the title, and that can help folks who share a similar opinion with the "reviewer" determine if the game is worth the investment of time and money.

Well I have Neverwinter Nights 2 and have about 6 hours in the game now and the story is not too bad. I haven't "rapidclicked" through any dialog yet which is a plus for me. (I rapidclicked all the way through the dialog in KOTOR2. LOL)

The big downer... the NW2 graphics engine. It's a friggin' GPU HOG. I have an 2x 7800GTX SLI rig with a amd64 x2 4800+ cpu and I have to run the game all the way down at 1366x768 to acheive a mere 20fps in outdoor maps. (Indoor maps jump up to about 60fps as you would expect.) Needless to say if an angry hoard of many creatures comes to play (and by play I mean kill me) it becomes a slideshow at 10fps pretty quickly. Orc angry!

Now in comaprison to every other game I have, including the graphics taxing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I can run my rig at the native resolution of my Benq FP241w lcd at 1920x1200 and get 60fps or more. Not so with NW2. Orc sad.

Hopefully some patches to NW2 will up the FPS.

Let me tell you. Bioware would not have had this difficulty.

Posted by Trent on Monday November 06, 2006 at 3:21 PM

I'm glad to see our opinions align, Trent. I'm having the exact same issues. The graphics slowdowns - and there are many in outdoor situations - really hurt my enjoyment of the game. Frankly, I noticed similar issues with NWN1, so this isn't new to me.

It's too bad too, because I thought the plot, as it is, is well done. It seems I'm dealing with an evil conspiracy - not because I'm a hero and that's what I should do, but because I'm caught up in the middle of it. I like that.

However, the 1up commentary has really good points. It certainly isn't as rich a world as Oblivion. When I kill a monster in room A, it never alerts the monsters in room B. There seem to be trigger points on the floor that alert monsters to come out of the rooms, but if I avoid them (by luck) they are ignorant of my slaughter their evil friends just next door.

The levels are small - with long and boring load sequences between almost every transition. This is an overall limitation of the NWN engine - I fault Bioware for this one.

I'd call what is listed on Joystiq as a commentary. It contains good analysis and backs it up. However, it simply isn't a game review. Did the reviewer finish the game (a must, in my opinion)? How about the graphics, the sound, the music?

Posted by Scott on Tuesday November 07, 2006 at 1:03 AM

OK I tried all the fixes and they actually work pretty well.

A few changes though.

I used a value of 75 here (SEFCacheSize=75)and acheived better mem usage. I think this may be % of Ram usable by the game. But at the suggested 50 the ram usage was about 65% of the 2Gb on my unit, where using a value of 75 garnished a usage of 88% on the same maps.

"Possible performace increase for AMD users
If you're an AMD user. There is an nwnamd.exe file in your install folder. Some AMD users say this helps them out considerably, others report no change." The file name of "nwnamd.exe" is incorrect. I cant remember exactly what the name was but it was something like "NWNclient_amdxp.exe" and using this I got more even CPU utilization on both cores of my AMD64 x2 than the regular .exe.

I also turned on the HDR lighting using the nwn.ini file and it worked for me without further FPS penalty.

Hope this helps you guys.

Posted by Trent on Thursday November 09, 2006 at 11:09 AM

I too had better performance based on these changes. That cache variable helped more than I would have thought.

Unfortunately I ran into a problem with the save system - it autosaves less frequently than I thought after you move into the city of Neverwinter. I ended up losing hours of work - ouch. Now I know I have to hit the Quicksave button more often.

Posted by Scott on Tuesday November 14, 2006 at 10:49 AM