As for his takes on most PC games, they have gotten terrible. He doesn't care about what it's like to actually play the game, evidenced by the "terrible port!!!" of Final Fantasy VII remake having "Very Positive" on Steam from 13k review, pretty much the same for the "super problematic" Resident Evil 4, Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam from 50k reviews.
FFVII, especially at launch,
was a "disappointing" port, as it was actually described by DF. For one, atrocious shader stuttering that was only partially remedied by forcing it into DX11 mode (which breaks HDR & Vsync). It also had forced dynamic res that was only fixed via a mod, an utterly incomprehensible decision.
Secondly...
Alex didn't even do the review.
As for bringing in Steam reviews to this (?):
For a
technical review, I want to see opinions backed up with
actual data, not the "I don't know what people are complaining about, I used Rivatuner and downloaded this replacement oodle.dll and it fixed everything" idiots. I don't go to Steam reviews/forums for accurate assessments of most things, let alone on a technical basis.
DF actually gives context as to what it's like to actually play the game, through visual comparisons and real frametime measurements, on properly maintained and configured systems. If you want a review of the actual game in terms of its gameplay/story, then read Eurogamer's review. DF is reviewing the game on its technical merits.
As for your offence that he dare take some issue with RE4 - it's a
good port overall, but that's especially in the context of how awful most other ports have been lately. It shipped with a lot of real, concrete issues that anyone who's doing an accurate technical review at launch
should mention, such as:
- Forcing a very subpar reconstruction method in FSR and not giving a choice for DLSS, especially when a mod reveals just how much of a visual downgrade that is. In 2023 that is ridiculous.
- Still not fixing the broken TAA.
- The game actually crashing to desktop when running out of vram.
- Ray tracing still at a very low resolution.
- Bizarre vram texture behavior when higher settings can actually lead to worse textures.
- And yes, the same awkward menu design as past RE's.
There are all perfectly valid critiques. The console ports received plenty of critique too for their broken hair strands lighting, awful xbox deadzone problems, and PS5 flickering at launch too - at least 2 of those were eventually fixed, glad they were brought up then.
I want to know this stuff, considering the nature of this forum I would think most of here would too. Steam's review scores of the game as a whole are completely irrelevant to these being mentioned or not. If you purport to be giving a technical review of this game and
don't mention these issues, you're doing a poor job.
The final conclusion to Alex's RE4 review btw, even with these issues, was
"The PC version of RE4 is good enough, and fluid to play at the right settings, but Capcom still really needs to work on their PC porting efforts".
His reviews don't match up at all with people's experiences, and so aren't informative to anyone.
And yet your go-to example of 'information' is an aggregate of
Steam review scores, please. You can go to Steam reviews to get a vague gauge if a game is worth your time, sure (or want to see a game being review bombed because it 'went woke' I guess). You sure as fuck don't go there if you want to actually
learn about any
technical shortcomings/advantages a game may have. We go to outlets like DF because unlike people pulling theories and fixes out of their ass or just think stuttering is 'fine', we don't - if you're not that sensitive to this kind of stuff, then sure, DF isn't for you I guess.
All he does is gush over marketing material
He's gushing over the tech that's implemented in an actual, shipping game. When we have examples of Lumen that give similar/better results in actual, shipping games, and they also run well, he'll probably gush over those too. You'll have to make due with his and John's nearly 35 minute review of Fortnite's UE5 upgrade in the meantime I guess.
Maybe every new Cyberpunk RT upgrade coverage doesn't need to be 20 minutes long, perhaps - but it's largely about covering a new rendering tech, the kind of thing you're complaining that Alex doesn't do enough. That raises the question as to the amount of time for a video dedicated to any potential improvements in TSR, as exhibited by
graphic demos, should be then, surely?