Topic: Crimson Desert

@GirlVersusGame 30 mins: global release, yes.

@Ravix Thank you kindly, and try not to die too much. It's a bit odd having a disc for quite some time and waiting for an online update to unlock it. I'm hoping it doesn't become the normal way of doing things. I'm aiming to put three hours in tonight, that should be enough time to find/buy/borrow a bow and some arrows, and to put those arrows in something big and grumpy. I just redeemed the DLC so at least I know I'll have some armor in there and apparently a shield. Enjoy your night/adventure.

Mate, it has 5 different camera perspectives, including first person. Whaaaat 😅

@Ravix I'm still waiting for the update to download, I have super fast non civilian internet and it's slowed down to 35mins for 20GBS. It looks like they capped it on their end, it's fine I didn't eat today so I'm making up for it now. I should have downloaded it sooner. It said 20, then 25, then 30 now 35mins, what a genuinely bad idea, the unlock/update I mean. I've never seen any update slow to a crawl like this. It might be because you are in the UK and I'm in Europe at the moment with far more people on that cluster of the PSN. No idea but now it says 39mins. I kind of have to laugh honestly, but shouldn't. It's 7GBS of 20, now it says 40mins, it's climbing as I type. I'm glad I have patience and can see the humor in it.

Edit: 10 minutes now, it feels like there's a queue system. I'm taking it all as a good sign, it means a lot of people are trying the game tonight. Good for the Devs.

First impressions: It's very bloody and it took a while to find the right settings with blur/particles etc. It honestly looked ugly at first but after some tweaks it's quite nice. I also like the combat buttons, but I'm not sure how I feel about tapping X to run. I do like the L1 to focus where you jump. I also like that I healed in the first combat sequence, or it feels like I did. If that is the case then I can see why so much of the footage was focused on large groups of enemies, it seemed like defeating one was healing the character?

Watching a stream on the game and straight away I heard Alec Newman's voice, really happy that he landed more work, his acting in Still wakes the deep was phenomenal.

I spent like 10 minutes setting up controller sensitivity and stuff and just looking at it. It looks gorgeous on the pro, to me, espeically at night where it plops you into the world with all the sparkly lighting. My first impression was that it looks so much nicer than it did on YouTube, too, like, I genuinely wasn't expecting that much difference even knowing there would be bad compression and artifacts on YT.

I might have to download it on the base PS5 to see what others see, and to see the differences between the two for myself, there definitely seems to be a difference based on early impressions here, it feels a bit awkward me saying it looked so good 😬

It's also downloading a 21gb patch now, it seemed to be working fine without it, so I kind of wonder what is included as that is pretty meaty. As always with patches, fingers crossed, all 🤞

(You can tap X once, or tap twice, but then it will run without holding it or anything. At first I was doing that run and jump bit so badly until I worked out it keeps running after one tap of x)

@GirlVersusGame if dont mind me asking, what settings did you use for it to look better. Im using a base ps5, not sure on your setup

@Elodin It's a Pro so it won't be the same settings but I asked someone on Discord if they wouldn't mind looking into performance on different sites and reports aren't good. They said people on both the Pro and base model are reporting hard crashes when they open the map and base owners are saying it looks horrendous. They sent me a picture and the first area looks like the original Ark on PS4, that's not good at all. I'm asking for the picture so I can share it.

It looks like a Picasso and that's not me being funny, that's what my eyes see. Is yours similar to this? Snowrunner looked like that after an update broke the visuals then three weeks later they patched it.

I can't tell what's going on in that image. I asked for more context and they posted some things from reddit.

Edit: I read lots of what was shared and there are a lot of people calling it a blurry mess. I think I'm done with the game until they fix it, as Ravix said it looks fine on Pro but I'm not sure I want to wait for it to hard crash my system and now people saying it's crashing at the menu. I'm 50/50 about continuing tonight.

@GirlVersusGame do you have HDR on? I don't think it was on as default. Mine looked stunning so i'm quite confused at what is different 😅

@Ravix It's not my image, someone else set-up this TV so I think it's on by default but honestly I'm not feeling the game all that much and it could be because I'm tired and it's later here. I only have a Pro here, when I get back to England I'll try it on the base model too, or at least I was going to until my friend shared these early reports/examples. That map thing has me concerned.

@GirlVersusGame I mean in the game settings there is an HDR toggle that starts set to off, but it is probably best to have it on for a game like this (I had heard someone mention HDR earlier so made sure it was definitely enabled before I started the game)

I've also opened the map a lot and been fine. You're making me fear the 21gb patch I just let download, though 😅

The overall image quality I was met with literally made me want to pour out a cold one for the old PS5.

(I actually forgot to take any screenshots other than a random town as a sheep ran past me. But I had clipped a bit of video just to check if I really saw the liquid pouring better than in most games - because i'm being an utter neerrrrrrd - but it genuinely threw me seeing a prop in a game looking and functioning how it should for a change so had to double check. And now it suits my little joke so I turned it into a gif)

I'm really hoping the patch doesn't bork it, now 😅

Here is the town, daytime:

I must rememeber to take some actual screenshots with a purpose

@Ravix That's just the thing I downloaded two 20GB patches back to back. I think tomorrow there will be a lot of backlash over the base model performance if it's as muddy as the pictures I've seen. It looks like broken optimization and I only recognize it because Snowrunner did break theirs in a patch, everything lost definition even up close. I wish I was in London so I could compare them for myself. Also it looks like yours and mine has the right saturation/tones and the base models hues are off but with no adjustment to fix them. I'm trying to study two screens at once.

Edit: There's my first crash, my save seems okay. Second crash, it's the map. I picked up a turnip and got stuck in the ground.

Edit: Third crash. I'm deleting the game. It looked fine but I regularly switch between console generations so I'm not all about looks when it comes to any game. A map is a basic part of any open-world game and mine is crashing me back to the dashboard. The being stuck in the ground while borrowing vegetables thing is funny, I don't want to risk my save data in a game where I know I'll put those hours in. Top that off with everything I've seen tonight of the base model and I have no problem whatsoever dropping the game and returning in a few weeks or even months. It sounds bad but I wasn't hyped to begin with so I don't feel personally letdown. It might be a memory leak with that map, I seem to remember Death Stranding 2? over heating consoles day one because of the map. I have zero sense of direction, if I can't use a map in a game like this then I might as well be trying to fly a plane without wings.

• If it helps anyone on the base model this is what I'm seeing being mentioned: Turn 120HZ off, turn Deep Colour Range on (both in the settings of your console) Switch your game to Performance Mode, turn V-Sync on (both in your game settings) The muddiness will still be there but it should fix your hues and balance your lighting.

@GirlVersusGame i'll take the same screenshots after I load it up with the patch installed and see if anything changed. Hope not, as mine is looking dandy

So far so good. There's a bit of a learning curve to the controls. I'm surprised that Pearl Abyss seems to have taken their inspiration from Rockstar, seeing as it controls very similarly to Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2. There's also a lot of buttons to remember.

The world looks like it's going to be a joy to explore. I can't help but go off the beaten path when I see a question mark or an interesting looking structure.