One title that’s not currently on our Big Games Of 2008 Wot We Should Post Many Words About list is Assassin’s Creed. Mostly that’s because it’s already available on console, and across the sinister mass of the internet you’ll find many a proferred opinion on it, filled with love, hate, hate towards people who love it, hate towards people who hate it or, most commmonly, bitching about its cutscenes. Judging by regular mentions in our threads, it’s a game that causes strong feelings amongst you lot too, so perhaps you don’t need us to give you the skinny on this one. But you do still need us, right? Right?
Also, we really don’t know whether there’ll be much, if anything, different about the impending PC port. Until now. The first truly concrete piece of information’s just in, and it’s a stonker. The minimum system requirements for it are, well, a little shocking.
Processor: Dual core processor 2.6 GHz Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or better recommended)
RAM: 2 GB (3 GB recommended)
Video Card: 256 MB DirectX 10.0–compliant video card or DirectX 9.0–compliant card with Shader Model 3.0 or higher (512 MB video card recommended)
The most demanding PC game ever? Quite possibly. Seeing a dual core CPU as a stone-cold must-have is unusual enough, but the bit I keep staring at in disbelief is “3GB recommended.” Oh Em Gee. 2GB’s only just becoming the accepted RAM stickage for a new PC, but who has three bloody gigs of the stuff? (Um. Except me. But I nicked mine from mates who work on hardware mags). Thinking about this, I had a flashback to the glory days of Planetside. There was something like outrage amongst my peers that the game needed a whole gigabyte of RAM to run well – some felt it was an obscene amount of memory to have, a crazy luxury, like underwear made of diamond.
I can think of two reasons for this ridiculous hardware asking price. One (the obvious one) – the game simply hasn’t been optimised for PC. It smacks of someone just pulling the big Port lever and then slapping it straight onto a disc without spit’n'polishing it up for non-360/PS3 hardware. Why? The game’s picked up a bit of a bad rep in some quarters; perhaps there’s been a decision that PC sales will be too minimal as a result to justify the time and extent of making the port scaleable to lower-end systems. Or perhaps focus-grouping has suggested only very dedicated PC gamers, those with the flashiest graphics cards and ultra-RAM, are interested in Assassin’s Creed. Or calculation had it that cost of reworking the engine significantly outweighs potential profit. Or maybe it’s the more traditional excuses of piracy (on that note, here’s a Call of Duty 4 developer expressing his dismay at piracy levels) and flagging PC sales. Perhaps all of the above. If minimal optimisation is to blame, I’d doubt it was a decision made lightly, at any rate.
Two – This version of the game is vastly more beautiful and silky-smooth than its already gorgeous console cousin. It’s going to fill every last byte of those three gigs with untold wonders, and denying the game to the mere 63% of gamers with less than 2Gb RAM was deemed worth the sacrifice to make this happen.
Hmm.
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HMMM. What about people on the PC GAMER staff who don’t own a 360? Or people on the NGAMER staff who don’t own a ps3? I’m betting to be a gaming journalist you need to be a “serious” gamer, but I bet not everyone who writes for these magazines owns all 3 consoles, both handhelds and an amazing pc.
I think you can be a serious gamer without being an “inordinately rich gamer”, especially as, like I said, with a few exceptions (including Mass Effect), most 360 games are on PC anyway. I’m not going to spend 200 quid on a console just for 3 games.
My pc, ps2, wii and DS keep me satisfied, and as I spend all my free time on them, I think I can call myself a “serious” gamer. Still, it’s just a word. It’s all subjective! Barthes. Derrida. Bla bla bla bla.
@John P:
In many ways, the Nintendo DS and Indie PC gaming now stand as the true markers of the ’serious’ gamer, by whcih I mean, people who take gaming seriously for its own sake, rather than just an enjoyable waste of time.
People who understand the indie PC gaming sector and the DS seem to love gaming for its own sake, and appreciate the inherent beauty and limitations and of games-as-art.
The term “serious gamer” should never be predisposed toward owning a certain platform. It seems more apt to use it when describing the number of hours one spends playing games, regardless if they’re mashing a gamepad or a mouse. Sort of like a ‘petrol-head’ who spends more hours tinkering with his one and only car then most people do in a life time.
I really do hope that AC is utterly magnificent on a PC, and warrants the massive increase in required horsepower over consoles (by almost twice? three times?). The likely truth though is still lazy developer syndrome, and failing to optimize all the bang for the buck like they did for the consoles.
@John P; ɹǝʌo llǝɟ ı poƃ ʎɯ ɥo
I think the attempt to locate a “serious” gamer is a misplaced one. But if you REALLY want to find one you should go to Korea, where it’s all about PCs. The 360, “the frat boy of consoles”, doesn’t get a look in.
As I said, to me being a serious gamer means taking gaming seriously, i.e. treating it as art worthy of study, rather than just a fun way to waste time.
The half-assed nature of console->PC ports suggests that the developers think similarly.
And yet it’s console ports I’ve often had the most luck with. Silent Hill 2, 3 and 4 all had very solid PC ports. AND… deep breath in they support Nvidia dual view! Why is it “proper” PC games don’t even let you select your graphics driver? All three mentioned SH games, GTA San Andreas, and a few Japanese games I’ve tried (such as the utterly sublime Ys: Oath In Felghana) allowed me to use the TV connected to the second DVI simply by selecting Nvidia Dualview as the output. End result: video goes to secondary monitor, instead of the primary.
Sorry for this somewhat off-topic little rant, chaps, but there ARE good console->PC ports out there. And with a good Logitech gamepad or a PS2-USB converter, they can be superior to playing their original console counterparts. Now I just wish Rockstar would port Bully to PC…
I’ve just noticed the game is another “Vista Exclusive”, which will go some way to explaining the excessive system requirements and why, unfortunately I will have to get the game on 360 :(
Don’t get me wrong, the PC is my primary gaming system, and it’s beefy enough to handle those ridiculous requirements, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I install Vista. Partly due to how lacklustre it is in performance, but mostly due to it’s ridiculous price
Geesh! What a crock! Don’t they read valve’s statistics? Hardly anyone meets those requirements. I’m going to call this phenomenon the “Crysis crisis”. Why the hell can the 360 run it, if it needs something that beefy? The 360 isn’t even close to that. Oh wait… the 360 doesn’t run vista.
It’s pretty funny to hear microsoft talk about how they are going to revive the pc gaming market. Vista is having the opposite effect. It’s such a pity linux can’t compete in gaming, if we could run these games on linux natively, we’d be creating the cleanest, fastest, most minimal linux distro just for it, then run them on half the hardware windows needs (not that “half” really makes any sense, but I know what I mean). Ohhhh one day!
Ideally though, developers would make their games much more scalable for different hardware. I know AC and Crysis look more super awesome and all, but valve does a great job of making the HL2 episodes automatically detect it’s settings and run on just about anything. Ubisoft isn’t even trying here.
I really like the approach EA took with the Sims Episodes series. They’ve made it to run on just about any newish laptop, knowing that the market for that is enormous. AC isn’t the game for that of course, but I’d like to see more developers make games for the pc that minimise their footprint.
Re: all the comments about “How can the 360 run that, if it requires that?” Well, some of that smacks of poor optimization, obviously, but it is as ever necessary to recall that console specs do not stack exactly against PC specs even now, because they are built and optimized specifically for running games. And because developers have a single fixed hardware target that they aren’t ever going to be able to get with a PC.
And I’d consider myself a serious gamer and don’t have a 360. Funds haven’t been sufficient to spring for the obscene prices all the consoles this generation launched at, except for the Wii, and the Wii, quite apart from the shortages, has yet to convince me I want one. I think I may get an Arcade in a bit, but the “360-but-not-for-PC” listing of games I want is still quite small, so it’s not seeming all that pressing. And I speak as someone who owns a PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, Dreamcast, GBA SP, DS, and PSP. I’m not against consoles, I just don’t find any of this gen worth their asking prices so far.
And I’d consider myself a serious gamer and don’t have a 360.
Because, as I’m sure Malkav is already aware, owning an Xbox 360 is not like owning any other console where you can just put the disc/cart in the console and it plays. No, there are strings attached. A huge caveat. Remember, this is a Microsoft console. And unlike their typically excellent mice and keyboards, 360’s aren’t manufactured by Logitech.
It will work like that for a few months until overheating brings on the Red Ring Of Death. So when you’re not hoping the bastard thing will stay alive long enough to finish that next level/mission/whatever, it’s off to MS to be “repaired”. For the 357th time.
It’ll be a cold day in hell before I buy a 360.
Maximum ram a 32 interface can old is 2.5G, 80% of people are fucked!
Hah, the most demanding? You joking right? This game runs smoothly with maxium quality for me when Crysis works well only with medium settings. Anyway, I think this is the best game ever made (and I have played hundreds), only real problem is crashing and minor bugs like with camera.
Could have been a big hit and leap bravely off of the rooftops, but instead it fell short of the mark and dropped into the alley somewhere among the bins and last week’s kebabs.
Game is great, but the ending leaves a whole lot to be desired.