Saints Row: The Third

[digitalwanderer]

Not sure if this is just a great game or if I've waited so long that it was bound to be great for me no matter what, but it's playing smooth and looking good and I'm insanely enjoying it!

Anyone else give it a go yet?

 

[Davros]

I liked SR2 didnt finish it, cant remember why.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I think I played SR2 through about a dozen times.

 

[tabs]

Got so many games to play at the moment, I think I'll pick this up for cheap, unless you convince me otherwise with cool stories, screenshots and a proper review.

 

[Davros]

Cant comment on 3 but 2 was sorta gta with more comedy

 

[homerdog]

I heard SR2 ran like crap on most PCs. Is the third any better in this regard?

 

[Albuquerque]

I heard SR2 ran like crap on most PCs. Is the third any better in this regard?

SR2 ran pretty good on an E8400 @ 4Ghz and a 5850 It also plays just fine with my current Q9550 at 3.6Ghz and the same 5850.

EDIT: Back on topic. I will probably enjoy SR3 as well, but it's next in line after Skryim. Which means I probably won't touch it (or any other game) for the next six months

 

[tabs]

IIRC it was only dual cores (or less) that really suffered with SR2.

 

[homerdog]

Yes, and I happen to have a rather old dual core CPU (3.2GHz Conroe). But most/all other console ports run extremely well on this rig (and they should considering how much faster this CPU is than Xenon).

 

[digitalwanderer]

This one runs a whole lot better than SR2 did, a much better coding job!

 

[Daozang]

IIRC it was only dual cores (or less) that really suffered with SR2.

SR2 runs like crap on my i7, 6gb, GTX580 ...
But SR3 runs very well on the same pc.

 

[AlNom]

progress!

 

[AcceleratorX]

SR2--->Red Faction: Guerrilla--->Red Faction Armageddon--->SR3

Play the Volition games (PC versions) in this order and you'll see the improvements in porting quality step by step

All 4 games are "basically" the same engine with/without GeoMod. SR2 and RF:G were ported by external studios (note that RF:G is a much better port job than SR2), and RF:A/SR3 are very good ports done by Volition themselves.

As for SR2 - it ran fine on my PC too, at the time when I was rocking an Athlon X2 5600+ with an HD 3870. There were odd frame drops and occasional hitching, but the game ran smooth as butter on an HD 5770 with basically any quad core CPU (This game really needs a triple core or better).

Not the same with RF:G - that game has issues too, but nowhere near as severe.

BTW: SR2 has issues on Windows 7 regardless of your PC config. Some kind of engine bug causes the game to speedup whenever the CPU speed is anything other than 3.2GHz. How much your game speeds up depends on how far the CPU speed is from 3.2GHz. Oddly enough, this bug occurs in Windows 7 only - no patch to fix it.

 

[L. Scofield]

Just chiming in to say this game is AWESOME

 

[Dresden]

Bump'd

I'm thinking about getting this, but there hasn't been a lot of noise around here regarding it. Anyone feel like discussing it, briefly? Is it worth 50 bucks, or should I wait for a sale?

 

[PowerK]

Saints Row The Third is currently on 50% Steam sale ($24.99 just for this weekend).
http://store.steampowered.com/app/55230/
Not sure if should take the plunge.

 

[PowerK]

Saints Row 3 for PC is a good port.

In the display/graphic option everything maxed runs good. (DX11)
However, if you go to "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\saints row the third" directory, there is a display.ini file. This allows you to tweak further.

For example, from in-game display/graphic option, maximum lighting detail you can set is "HIGH". But in the display.ini file, it says...

# Lighting detail can be 1, 2, or 3 for low, high, and ultra-high.
LightingDetail = 3

You can set it to 3 for Ultra-high lighting detail. If you set this to 3 and go to in-game display/graphic option, it says "ULTRA". This halved my frame-rate though although it looked very good. Can anyone chime in and shed some light on this ? (eg. what exactly is the technical difference between high and ultra for lighting detail)

And if you add the following line in the display.ini file,

SkipIntroVideo = true

the game skips the intro vid and goes straight to main menu whenever you launch the game.

 

[Davros]

sr3 also has great eyefinity support

 

[PowerK]

For example, from in-game display/graphic option, maximum lighting detail you can set is "HIGH". But in the display.ini file, it says...

You can set it to 3 for Ultra-high lighting detail. If you set this to 3 and go to in-game display/graphic option, it says "ULTRA". This halved my frame-rate though although it looked very good. Can anyone chime in and shed some light on this ? (eg. what exactly is the technical difference between high and ultra for lighting detail)

Ok. According to the display.ini file:
"DDoF is incompatible with lighting details other than 3.
# If DDoF is enabled, bokeh DoF will come on automatically on DX11 level cards"

It seems it's the bokeh DoF that tanks the frame rate. It essentially halves the frame rate.
Kepler can't come soon enough..
Also, does anyone know if there's a way to get rid of pop-in ?

 

[Sigfried1977]

Besides cutting the framerate in half, ultra high also disabled all the post-processing effects in my game (no depth of field, no motion blur, no nothing)
Not worth it at all as far as I'm concerned.

Awesome game, though. Picked up a Steam code for 16€ last December. Pop-in is pretty obnoxious though.