Survival gets serious in The Long Dark

Last week I wrote about the problem with survival games. Some of you loved the idea of the hypothetical game I described—which sidelines monsters and overt danger for a more atmospheric battle against the elements—and some of you thought I was mental. After the article was published I was tweeted by Hinterland Games creative director Raphael van Lierop, who said that their game, The Long Dark, is exactly what I’m looking for. So, of course, I had to try it.

You play as Will Mackenzie, a 43 year-old bush pilot whose plane crashes in a remote wilderness after a mysterious ‘geomagnetic disaster’. The finished game will feature an episodic story that reveals more about this event, but the alpha build I’m playing is dedicated entirely to what Hinterland call the survival sandbox. Here the only goal is to stay alive for as long as possible, which is easier said than done in the harsh frozen landscape they’ve created. I spent a good chunk of today playing The Long Dark, and I think it might be the closest anyone’s ever come to making my dream survival game.

I start a new game and find myself gazing across a sea of trees. I’m immediately struck by the art style, which looks like concept art come to life. It’s remarkable how much atmosphere they’ve managed to squeeze out of those stylised, hand-painted textures. Snow swirls in the wind as I make my way down a hill into a forest. It’s a stark, barren landscape, and I feel like I’m being swallowed by it. Mackenzie is played by Mark Meer, voice of Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series, and regularly vocalises how he feels. “My stomach feels like an empty pit.” he’ll grumble if he’s hungry. “That smarts, but I’ll be fine.” he says if you sustain a minor injury. It’s a nice, immersive touch.

As I wander through the forest, I notice words appearing at the bottom-right of the screen: freezing, starving, dehydrated. I haven’t found anything useful yet; just a few skittish deer that I have no hope of hunting. Night is falling and I’m about to give in and start a new game, but then I see something in the distance: a wisp of smoke. I trudge through the snow towards it, revealing the silhouette of a cabin. Relief washes over me as I open the door. There are supplies scattered around: bandages, matches, a lamp, canned food. I light the wood burner and it casts a warm glow over the room, which raises my temperature when I crouch next to it. Against all odds, I’ve survived the first night.

Or so I thought. I didn’t pay attention to my status—accessed with TAB—and went to bed on an empty stomach, dying of starvation in my sleep. Game over. Even for a survival game, The Long Dark is merciless. Mackenzie’s comments give you a general overview of your condition, but you’ll have to keep a close eye on your hunger, thirst, fatigue, and temperature meters to effectively manage them. I love how a lot of the tiresome chores that usually define survival games, like endlessly hitting trees to collect wood, can be automated. I can instruct Mackenzie to spend a set amount of hours foraging for wood, and the game will tell me beforehand how many calories this will burn. If I have an axe I’ll have a better chance of finding something, but without one there’s a good chance I’ll fail and find nothing.

Everything you do burns calories, and the more physically demanding the task, the more you’ll burn. To keep them topped up you’ll have to find food. One of the easiest ways to do this early in the game is to scavenge venison from deer carcasses and cook it on a fire—but there’s always the risk of contracting food poisoning. You can also find candy bars, soda, and other packaged food in buildings by rifling through drawers and cupboards. The wilderness in The Long Dark is not a vast, empty, procedurally generated expanse of countryside: it’s been hand-designed, and there are a lot of interesting locations to discover, including an abandoned logging camp and a hydroelectric dam.

Let’s take a moment to talk about atmosphere, which is something The Long Dark absolutely nails. In my second attempt I find myself crouching by a fire I’ve built in the broken shell of an old cabin. It’s warm enough, even though it’s full of holes, and I’m well fed, but a blizzard has rolled in, trapping me inside. As the fire crackles I hear the wind roar. Nearby is the frozen corpse of some unfortunate soul who succumbed to the wilderness before me. Occasionally I hear the howl of a wolf, which sounds too close for comfort. The light from the fire dances around the shelter—the dynamic lighting effects, incidentally, are really impressive—and an impenetrable wall of snow surrounds me on all sides. It’s a perfect, and totally unscripted, little moment. An evocative marriage of image, sound, and circumstance that immediately sells the game to me. This is what survival should feel like.

I place my bedroll next to the fire and sleep through the night. The blizzard is gone by morning, and I emerge once again into the wilderness. I explore some more, stumbling upon a derailed train whose payload of logs has spilled over. The environment is always eager to tell stories, and I get a distinct sense that something has gone horribly wrong with the world. Then I encounter my first wolf. I’ve seen a few in the distance before, and managed to avoid them, but this one catches me unaware as I’m busy scavenging meat from a dead animal. It leaps at me and the game instructs me to hammer the left mouse button to build up my strength, then press the right to strike. But my empty belly means I can’t work up the strength, and the beast mauls me to death. Game over, again. From what I’ve played, animal attacks in The Long Dark are, thankfully, incredibly rare. You won’t be constantly attacked by wolves as you explore, which would have ruined that carefully crafted atmosphere.

There are some things I don’t like. Not being able to build fires indoors makes sense in small cabins and the like, but when I had to leave the cover of a large, high-ceilinged generator room in the hydroelectric dam to light one and warm up, the illusion was shattered. Not being able to save is frustrating too, but I suspect the final game will have the option. This is an alpha, after all, but one that feels like it’s on its way to becoming a complete game, rather than the glorified tech demo so many developers are releasing these days. Overall, I’m really impressed with what I’ve played so far. With a focus on atmosphere and environmental survival, it stands out in an increasingly crowded genre, and I can’t wait to explore more of this deadly, snowbound wilderness.

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Assassin’s Creed Unity trailer introduces new character, presents CGI stabbings

To answer the most important question that surrounds any CGI trailer for the Assassin’s Creed series: the song is The Golden Age by Woodkid. As for the video, it—via the medium of acrobatics and violence—introduces a new character: Elise. Described jointly as “an independent young noblewoman” and a “fiery Templar”, she’s rescued by Arno, Assassin’s Creed Unity’s lead character, for purposes unknown.

“Watch Arno in this new cinematic trailer,” suggests the trailer’s description, “while he is in race against the clock to save a Templar! Who is she? How would our new Master Assassin manage his cornelian dilemma?” Another question: is her reveal a response to the controversy and mixed messages surrounding ACU’s lack of women as playable characters? And are you really going with “fiery”?

Other than Elise, there’s not too much to be learned: it’s a pretty unrepresentative—and unrepresentatively pretty—slice of the game’s world. And let’s not forget that this is a world we’ve already seen through actual game footage.

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Stained developer halts Steam key distribution to Indie Royale buyers, wants them to re-buy it instead

Stained developer RealAxis Software has decided not to distribute Steam keys to people who purchased last year’s Indie Royale Debut 3 bundle, despite earlier promises to do so. In a message posted on the Steam forums, RealAxis said the game isn’t selling and the studio is probably doomed, and encouraged fans to buy it again instead of expecting a Steam key from a cheap bundle.

The Indie Royale Debut 3 bundle launched last summer with a selection of five games, including the side-scrolling action-platformer Stained, that were all in the midst of the Steam Greenlight process. The games were all available through Desura and while nothing was carved in stone, the site noted that “developers have almost always provided Steam keys for Indie Royale games that have subsequently been greenlit and then appeared on Steam.”

That appeared to be the case with Stained, as RealAxis said as recently as July 16 that it would distribute Steam keys directly to Indie Royale buyers via email. But those keys were apparently never sent, and in a follow-up message posted on Sunday, RealAxis announced that they aren’t going to be.

“This may come as a shock to you guys, but we have decided not to distribute the keys any more to the IR bundle purchaser. The game is not selling at all and there is no hope. I think we are already doomed so we are abandoning the process of distributing the keys,” the studio wrote in slightly rough-hewn English. “We will continue to do what is required to make the living and provide support to game related questions twice a week. If you really love this game you should consider buying it on steam else I think you already had your share of enjoyment when you purchased the game via IR-Bundle for 50 cent.”

The message states that there’s “no need to send any emails,” presumably to either inquire or complain about the situation, and posted a brief FAQ addressing some of the more obvious questions. It says the studio has earned about $3000 from the game in total, including 300 copies that sold on Steam during the first week of release, but since then, sales have apparently trickled off to nothing.

Yet while the promised Steam keys won’t be delivered, RealAxis isn’t actually abandoning the game: The intent seems to be to convince people who enjoyed Stained in the Indie Royale bundle to purchase it again at full price.

“We will support stained for as long as it takes. There is this level creation scripts that runs in blender, so I also want that script to be out and into the hands of the game owner,” the FAQ states. “Game will be updated on desura with all latest fixes, in a coming month and all future updates will also come to desura build. So those user can enjoy the game directly from there.”

As for the possible—okay, virtually certain—angry backlash from people expecting Steam keys, the studio said it can’t make things much worse. “I think we already have a reason to regret,” it wrote. “And trust me with just 300 copies sold and sale is complete dry we are already rotting into the hell.”

Stained emerged from Greenlight earlier this month and is now available on Steam for $8—$2 less than the Desura price.

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Firefall review in progress

Firefall, the free-to-play MMO shooter, is now available. As per PC Gamer’s reviews policy, MMOs aren’t scored until our reviewer has spent time with the public release. Here, then, is a review-in-progress, charting Phil’s initial impressions with the game.

Things get off to a bad start when, upon loading into the game, I recoil in horror at what my eyeballs are seeing. I’ll cover Firefall’s graphics later, but the tutorial map is perhaps the worst possible introduction to its aesthetic. The textures are blurry, the environments murky, and the characters flat and cartoonish. Compared to this year’s other MMO releases, there’s none of the vibrancy or charm of Wildstar, and none of the relatively higher-res textures of the otherwise visually bland (and oppressively foggy) TESO.

I head into the video settings. Everything is already set to “Ultra High”. Oh dear.

During an introductory meander, I’m shown the game’s range of battleframes. These are the jetpack-sporting mech suits that function as the player’s class. There’s a standard selection of types: medic, tank, DPS, sniper and engineer, and, at the basic level, each does what you’d expect. Initially, I pick the Assault, a mid-range DPS with a plasma cannon. To its credit, Firefall openly allows for class experimentation. It’s not your character that levels up, but their individual battleframes. Trying out a new class is as easy as finding a Battleframe Station and switching the loadout—starting back at level one for each new frame, but retaining any progression on those previously used.

With my class picked, I walk up some stairs to find a couple of dropships. Nothing happens. At the other end of the launch pad is what looks like a new area, but an invisible wall stops me from reaching it. Eventually, two more players arrive and appear to be equally confused. We shoot ineffectually at some scenery, before I decide to quit out. On reloading, I’m kicked back to the start of the tutorial. This time, upon completion, I’m loaded into a mission instance.

Much of my time in Firefall so far has been about trying to recover from these initial disappointments. And from a more persistent issue: I’m not wild about the game’s combat. It’s a direct attack system that doesn’t use auto-targeting, but it still feels awkwardly placed between MMO and shooter. The biggest problem is the feel of the weapons. They lack punch—something I attribute to the way the enemies react when hit (or rather, don’t). When killed, the bugs I’ve been fighting will gib in a satisfyingly squishy way. But, other than for that final blow, they have no response to being tagged by the mini-explosions of my plasma bursts. Sure, they lose a chunk of health, but in a shooter I want firefights to offer more than a mathematical impact.

The most egregious example of this comes much later in my initial session. I’m fighting a mission boss who has a couple of levels over my assault frame. As such, it’s a long fight—my attacks only taking off a fraction of his health bar. It should be a tense battle for survival, but really, I’m just strafing his slow rocket attacks while spamming plasma fire in his direction. With every hit, his health goes down, and a number indicates how much damage I do. Other than that, though, he’s entirely unconcerned by the incoming damage.

None of which is to say there aren’t things about Firefall I like. Rather, these issues sour its better moments. From what I’ve played so far, it seems like a problematic game that, in the right circumstances, can offer moments of frantic gunplay. At times, the sheer variety and number of enemies—and the mobility offered by each battleframe’s jetpack—distract from the weaknesses of combat. It’s at its best during hoard mode style defence missions, which, perhaps fortuitously, is what many of its activities involve.

After the tutorial, the first major zone is New Eden. It’s here I become familiar with the structure of Firefall. It’s also here I get to re-evaluate its look. Up close, Firefall is not a pretty game—a problematic fact given that it’s played primarily in first-person view. But there is a strong setting. The opening area of Copacabana is bright, vibrant, and filled with weird and colourful coral reefs. At night, it looks bland and uninspired, but during the day, it’s actually quite fetching.

As I travel through New Eden, I’m introduced to the various activities the game has to offer. Campaign missions unlock at specific levels, and focus on the war against the Chosen—the mysterious humanoids that mysteriously emerge from the mysterious “Melding”, a purple death-cloud that (mysteriously) covers huge swathes of the planet. Back in the open world, you can accept missions from the job board, find dynamic events, or try your hand at “Thumping”.

This latter option is tied to resource collection, and offers some of the game’s most entertaining battles. At any point in the world, you can use a “Scan Hammer” to check nearby resources. Find a good vein, and you call down your Thumper, which crashes to the ground and starts pounding at the earth. You job—along with that of any player in the vicinity—is to defend the Thumper from waves of enemies until it finishes its collection, at which point anyone who takes part is rewarded with the resources it collects. It’s an enjoyable mission type that does a good job at attracting nearby players.

The other activities are less consistently engaging. Job board missions are mostly tasks undertaken for the local populace—usually involving clearing out an area or rescuing a person. They’re fine, and occasionally inventive, but do require you to listen to the constant chatter of flat, disinterested voice actors. There’s padding, too. At one point, I’m asked to make my way out north to meet up with the mission giver. Once I arrive, she asks me to go back to the town I was already in.

Finally, there are dynamic events, which aren’t as grand as they sound. They’re mini-missions that appear on your map, usually involving rescuing data of a crashed vehicle or Thumper. Again, it’s primarily a defence mission, but here the small scale means less reward. They’re fine as a stopgap on the way to the next mission proper, but rarely worth the effort of tracking down.

Press ‘E’ to Distraught Wife.

As I approach level ten in my main battleframe, I’m being reasonably engaged by the world and what it offers. Right now, I’m mostly mainlining job board missions—interspersed with the odd Thump as and when the resources make it worthwhile. At the same time, I’m desperately hoping there’s more variety down the line.

On the next review-in-progress update, I’ll look at crafting, currency and the next chunk of content.

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The Sims 4 is all about feelings. Feelings and rampant gesticulation

As we know, The Sims 4′s Big Thing is the emotions of its virtual people. Emotions such as ‘happiness’, ‘disappointment’, ‘regret’, ‘the nagging feeling that some godlike figure is manipulating everything I do’, and who could forget ‘insouciance’. This latest trailer focuses on a bunch of less exciting feelings such as boredom and confidence, and the sims’ constant over-gesticulation makes me think their latest game might be set on some terrifying Planet of the Mimes. Sure, that hyperactivity has always been a thing, but it seems extra mimey now that everyone’s expressing emotions all the time.

I do hope the whole game isn’t quite so arm-flailingly exaggerated as it is in that trailer—it would be exhausting. If you’re currently feeling the emotion ‘wondering whether The Sims 4 will run on my computer’, wonder no more: it probably will. A reminder: The Sims 2 is now totally free over on Origin, so if hyper-expressive emotions aren’t your bag, you could always dig into that game and its many, many expansions.

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Path of Exile Forsaken Masters expansion announced, adds trainers and hideouts

Hot…well, lukewarm on the heels of Path of Exile’s Sacrifice of the Vaal “mini-expansion” back in March, Grinding Gear Games has announced another one. It’s named Forsaken Masters, and it’s not about your MA in Media Studies but rather a bunch of legendary trainers/quest-givers who, too, have been exiled to PoE’s monster-filled rock. The details are here, but basically: seven new skill trainers, the inclusion of hideouts, upgradeable crafting benches, more.

Whenever you’re tempted to think that all free-to-play games are wretched abominations, remember the extraordinarily generous Path of Exile. In addition to a fulsome main game, devs Grinding Gear are releasing regular free updates. First there was Sacrifice of the Vaal; now there’s Forsaken Maasters, although sadly I had to add that extra ‘a’ myself. What’s in it? Seven masters, who will do things like train you and give you missions, and—if they trust you enough—take you back to their secret hideout (essentially your own little personalised town). New modding options, items and challenge leagues await in the expansion too. I particularly like this sexy image of some modded gloves:

Phwoar. Two of Forkaken Masters’ forsaken masters have been revealed so far: Haku the armour dude and Vorici the “master assasin”. The others will be revealed in dribs and drabs up until the expansion’s release date of August 20th.

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Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare story trailer reminds you that power corrupts

In the world of the future—the world of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare—one private military corporation maintains the largest standing army in the world. It is beholden to no government; it suffers no check to its power. A power it wields judiciously in an endless, altruistic quest to uplift humanity and lead it into a better, more prosperous future for all. Right?

Well, no. This may come as a shock but it turns out that when you give Kevin Spacey access to walking tanks, flying suits of armor and malleable international leadership, he tends to use them in rather self-serving ways. The corrupting influence of power? Shocking! And he always seems like such a nice, level-headed guy in the movies, too.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare comes out on November 4.

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New Watch Dogs patch addresses stuttering problems and other issues

Ubisoft has released another update for the PC version of Watch Dogs that should “reduce” stuttering during gameplay, particularly at higher texture settings, and promised that more such fixes are still in the works.

Watch Dogs has suffered from visual stutters of varying intensity since the day it launched, even on high-end video cards. Today’s update should address the problem, at least in part, although Ubisoft warned that “some players might still experience some stuttering while playing with ‘Ultra Textures’ settings on.”

“We optimized some of the performance issues that were causing some users to experience high amounts of stuttering while playing Watch_Dogs. Instances of stuttering during gameplay should now be reduced, especially when using ‘High Textures’,” Ubisoft Community Manager Nik_CtOS wrote. “We’ll keep updating you as more fixes for stuttering are currently being worked on.”

The update also improves NAT-type error messages, improves support for PCs with multiple network interfaces and fixes a few specific gameplay bugs and crashes.

Based on the response to the post, not everyone is having success with the patch, but some users are reporting significant improvements. The one consistency seems to be, as Ubisoft indicated, that the improvement is most pronounced when using “high” texture settings, while “Ultra” textures seem to be only marginally influenced. Disappointing for gamers with bleeding-edge video cards, perhaps, but it’s a start.

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Paper Mario Stage, Takamaru Assist Trophy Come To Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai has announced a few new inclusions for Super Smash Bros. The reveals include a new stage from a beloved RPG and an assist trophy from an older title only recently made available outside of Japan.

For the first time, there will be a stage based on Paper Mario. The fan in the background blows things around, and when the paper folds and unfolds, a new scene is revealed. The second area of the stage is based on the S.S. Flavion from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

Sakurai also confirmed a new assist trophy. Takamaru from The Mysterious Murasame Castle will make an appearance (seen above). The title first appeared on the Famicom Disk System and arrived on the 3DS Virtual Console this year.

Sakurai also shared a new picture of the 3DS-exclusive Tomodachi Life stage. The environment was previously confirmed, but this gives us a new look at how we'll wreck our friends' apartments.

For more on Super Smash Bros., check out our coverage from E3 as the Wii Fit Trainer and Greninja. The 3DS version is slated to release on October 3. The Wii U version is yet undated, though Nintendo is targeting the “Holiday 2014” window. 

Drakerz Brings The Digital Card Game To Your Webcam

With games like Hearthstone bringing more players to the digital card game space every day, Drakerz seeks to take things to the next level.

Using webcams to bring cards to life in an augmented reality battleground, Drakerz is looking to provide an immersive DCG experience by bringing cards to life before battle. While the full experience requires a webcam, players can also opt to play without one if they are at a PC that doesn’t facilitate integrated play.

While the concept isn’t completely new (Eye of Judgment for PlayStation 3 comes to mind), it’s something that may indicate where things could be going, especially with virtual reality on the rise. Drakerz is currently available on Steam.

 

Our Take
I'm always excited to see established genres trying new things. We'll see if systems like this one are unique, user friendly, and add something special to gameplay – or just gimmicks to differentiate products in an increasingly crowded DCG market.

Halfway review

2014 has brought us a tiny surplus of indie, turn-based strategy games. And happily, they’ve all been thematically and mechanically different: The Banner Saga (an elegant Viking epic), Xenonauts (a spiritual sequel to old X-COM), Dead State (a Fallout-like zombie sandbox in Early Access). Halfway is less complex and sprawling than these games, which ends up as both a shortcoming and an asset.

Halfway leans on sci-fi tropes to start its story. Passengers of a massive spaceship awake from cryosleep to find their vessel, the Goliath, overrun with evil cyborgs and out of control, hyper-jumping to a random spot every few hours. You control the surviving crewmembers, fighting your way deck to deck in a couple dozen combat missions.

Structurally, Halfway reminds me of a 16-bit JRPG: missions are represented as connected dots on a map of the ship, and you complete them one by one, with a handful of optional missions along the way. Between combat, you retreat to a hub to equip new gear, talk with your party, and select who you’d like to send on the next mission. This is the unbroken rhythm of Halfway: combat, plot progression, gear management, repeat. By the time I collected all eight characters, the game’s simplicity was wearing thin.

That simplicity extends to Halfway’s combat, for better and worse. Your party characters don’t have classes, so they’re mostly defined by what weapon and armor you give them, but it feels symmetrical with the scale of the game that characters have just a couple stats and just one active ability each. I liked the natural advantages that presented themselves through this system, and that I could choose which characters to invest in along the way. Linda can heal herself without a medkit every few turns, which makes her a natural tank, so I spent every health stimpack that I found on her to increase her maximum HP. The active ability of Morten guarantees a hit from any range, so I equipped him with my best shotgun, giving him the flexibility of sniping with it every few rounds.

Halfway doesn’t have difficulty settings or permadeath, but it does achieve that XCOM experience of narrow victory: plenty of my rounds hung on a 62-percent sniper shot connecting with its target. At the same time, I was frustrated by the a few moments when difficulty arose purely as a result of the equipment decisions I’d made or my party composition: two missions surrounded my team with six or seven snipers that couldn’t be reached through movement, and I only had two long-range weapons to fend them off with. In situations like these, strategy mattered less than how many health kits I was willing to spend.

What wore on me most throughout Halfway was how unvaried and uncreative the game’s enemies are. They’re essentially the same from beginning to end, silent robot-zombies that move, shoot, and melee. Worst are the turrets, boring punching bags that soak up damage and grenades and are very overused throughout the campaign. I didn’t enjoy using bottlenecks to exploit the AI of these enemies, either, which occasionally let me kill them one at a time on my own terms. Mechanically, there just isn’t a lot happening here: something like a fragile, fast-moving suicide-bomber enemy, or an enemy that destroys cover, would’ve shaken me out of my tactical comfort zone.

Halfway’s narrow design makes it easy to pick up for the dozen hours it takes to complete, and it feels appropriately priced at $13. But compared to XCOM or Xenonauts, it’s more akin to sci-fi checkers than an intricate strategy game. For anyone daunted by the massive campaigns of XCOM or Xenonauts, Halfway presents a straightforward alternative.

Details
Price: $13 / £ 10
Release date: July 22, 2014
Publisher: Chucklefish
Developer: Robotality
Multiplayer: None
Link: http://robotality.com/blog/

For a breakdown of our review brackets and methodology, check out the PC Gamer reviews policy.

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Gaming in 4K: the future is now, if you give up 60 frames per second

The future—aka 4K gaming—is made up of very, very small pixels. After spending the past two weeks checking out games on Samsung’s U28D590D 4K monitor, I’m still going to call 4K gaming the near future rather than the present. Yes, you can play games at 3840×2160 pixels right now. Yes, 4K monitors are becoming more affordable. But are they worth it? After spending a couple weeks using one, I can comfortably say: no, not yet. Even for a high-end graphics card (or two), 4K is too demanding for max settings and high framerates. If you’re willing to play at 30 frames per second, though, 4K is a different story.

If you want to skip straight to the 4K gameplay section, click here to jump to page 2.

The Samsung U28D590D and the basics of 4K

The Samsung U28D590D is a 28-inch, 3840×2160 monitor that has an MSRP of $700, though it’s only $570 on Amazon as of this writing. The monitor has a 60Hz refresh rate, unlike some earlier 4K monitors, though you’ll have to use DisplayPort for 60Hz. The current HDMI spec only supports 4K at 30Hz.

I gave a general overview of the U28D590D and the demands of 4K gaming in a segment of The PC Gamer Show, which you can watch here:

The monitor looks great and I never noticed any issues with refresh rate or response time, but I didn’t perform in-depth testing to determine the actual response time (never trust the too-good-to-be-true listed response time. TFT Central offers a good primer on what those specs mean). Because it uses a faster, cheaper TN panel, response time comes at a cost: inferior viewing angles and color accuracy compared to IPS displays. The monitor stand is also disappointingly limited–it has no height adjustment, rotation, or VESA mount support.

Unfortunately, if you’re still running Windows 7, 4K is a terrible experience, no matter what 4K monitor you’re using. The OS isn’t designed to scale to such a high resolution, and everything will be impossibly tiny unless you crank up DPI scaling to 125% or 150%. But that scaling is for text—it doesn’t properly resize other UI elements or affect some applications like Steam. Chrome doesn’t scale its text properly, either. Windows 8 is much better about properly scaling, and requires no setup to scale text, UI elements like Windows Explorer, and applications to 4K resolution. Text in Steam and Chrome is noticeably fuzzier than system text, but everything is usable and legible without constantly squishing your face up against the monitor.

The Samsung’s $570 may be cheap for a 4K monitor, but it’s still expensive for a monitor, in general. What that money buys is an extremely pixel-dense display, and games really do look amazing on it. My standard monitor is a 27-inch, 2560×1440 display, which comes out to a pixel pitch rating of 108.79 PPI. That’s way higher than, say, a 24-inch 1080p monitor (95.78 PPI) or a 50-inch 1080p TV (44.06 PPI).

At 3840×2160, the 28-inch Samsung U28D590D has a 157.35 PPI. As a result, games running at native resolution look sharp, even without anti-aliasing enabled. The pixel density really does make a difference. Remember, a 1920×1080 monitor creates an image out of 2,073,600 pixels. A 4K monitor displays 8,294,400 pixels. As a result, a graphics card has to push out four times as many pixels. Not even two Nvidia Titans, or a newer Titan Black, can handle refreshing eight million pixels 60 times per second.

On the next page: my gaming experiences with Metro: Last Light, Tomb Raider, and other games, with some gameplay footage captured with Nvidia Shadowplay (at the max capture resolution of 1440p).

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