Wednesday 13 June 2012

Spec Ops: The PC Port

Spec Ops: The PC Port

Spec Ops: The Line is an upcoming third-person shooter published by 2K Games, and just a while ago they released the demo for the PC - a fair while after the console version.

It is unfair to assume that the demo will represent the quality of the final game on release, but here's what I saw running through the demo - in terms of the port to PC only.

Graphics Options

The graphics options offered for Spec Ops: The Line are pretty standard for a PC game. We've got 

  • Resolution - Sets the size that the game is rendered in - for example "1280x720"
  • Shadow Quality - Sets the shadow resolution/turns off dynamic shadows (doesn't turn off baked shadows)
  • Texture Quality - The quality of the objects textures, will help cards with lesser VRAM.
  • Vsync - Limits the framerate to the monitors refresh rate to prevent screen-tearing.
  • Ambient Occlusion - Set's a "shadow" depth effect on objects in the scene.
These aren't especially extensive, but they're a pretty reasonable set of options - and they all appear to work correctly - however changing them doesn't really alter the framerate much at all.

Framerates

I've turned all of the settings to their respective "Low's", "Medium's" and "Very High's" on my relatively mid-range PC, and done a FRAPS benchmark of a cutscene part way into the demo on each of the settings. I then made this graph out of the framerates.


As you can see, the framerate's aren't especially high on this setup, and none of the settings ever resulted in the framerate getting even a minimum of 60. However, none of them ever dropped below what is regarded for most people as 'playable' (25fps).

However, there was some severe stuttering that I noticed in-game, particularly at points where new elements of the game were loaded in (level-streaming). The stuttering was never unplayable - merely distracting.

Controls

The controls in Spec Ops are pretty much average for a PC third-person shooter. Space is cover, Alt is vault over cover, WASD are the movement keys and to scope in you use right click, and of course firing is left click. From what I could tell there was no jump key, but then there need not be one.

All on-screen prompts are keyboard prompts, unless you have a gamepad connected.

All keys appear to be rebindable, and there is of course the option to use an Xbox 360 gamepad if you do so wish.

Overall

The Spec Ops port isn't bad, but the occasional stuttering will be offputting to the vast majority of people and the lack of an FOV slider may leave some people feeling nauseous, but the port isn't so unspeakably horrible that no-one will play it. Overall, I give the PC port a B+, judging by the demo.

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