Alice: Madness Returns

Just got a ways into Chapter 2, really enjoying it so far. I've beat the original several times, and this is definitely a worthy sequel.

I understand some of the complaints in the reviews, but a few said the graphics were bad, which I don't understand at all. This is one of the best looking games I've played in a while! I've seen a few low-res textures but overall it looks amazing. Maybe the console versions look much worse or something.
 
Parmenides said:
are the non PhysX users gimped?
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A lot of the PhysX shit is done simply to get people to buy Nvidia. IT could EASILY be done to run with ATI cards as well or cpu's. It's just a marketing thing to get people to buy Nvidia.

You used to be able to even have dedicated nvidia card for it (so if you used a high end ATI card, you could put in a cheaper nvidia card to handle th ephysx part) but nvidia specifically took out the ability to do this to force people to have to do solely with Nvidia instead.
 
This game is broken for me. Specs in sig.. problem seems to be physX. I get unplayable framerate with PhysX turned to high. Given my specs, obviously something is wrong. I'm very disappointed.
 
ballpoint said:
This game is broken for me. Specs in sig.. problem seems to be physX. I get unplayable framerate with PhysX turned to high. Given my specs, obviously something is wrong. I'm very disappointed.
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Turn Physx to low or medium. The game is designed to use a card dedicated to physx. People with SLI rigs are reporting that disabling SLI and running the 2nd card as a physx allows the game to run smooth with physx on high. Thank nvidia for that one..
 
Actually I just figured out there seems to be a problem with the beginning of the game. Last night I had the performance issues for the first few minutes and was updating drivers etc. as I played through the first section. It was choppy as hell, like 5-10 fps until I got outside. Then it went to 60fps solid. Then this morning I wanted to play through the beginning smoothly so I deleted the profile and started a new game. It was choppy as hell again. I did some more troubleshooting and on a hunch kept playing until I got outside again. It went up to 60fps again and damn, it's really cool looking too. So it must be something my sysstem doesn't like about that opening section.
 
ballpoint said:
Actually I just figured out there seems to be a problem with the beginning of the game. Last night I had the performance issues for the first few minutes and was updating drivers etc. as I played through the first section. It was choppy as hell, like 5-10 fps until I got outside. Then it went to 60fps solid. Then this morning I wanted to play through the beginning smoothly so I deleted the profile and started a new game. It was choppy as hell again. I did some more troubleshooting and on a hunch kept playing until I got outside again. It went up to 60fps again and damn, it's really cool looking too. So it must be something my sysstem doesn't like about that opening section.
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Ah yea that would be different. Most people have massive slowdowns with physx on high when theres a lot of action and things flying around on screen.
 
I've got my E8400 w/ GTX470 and it runs just fine with PhysX on 'High'. Make sure your drivers are updated is about all I can say. I do get occasional slowdowns during the larger battles, but it doesn't slowdown to the point of being unplayable.. And my system is hardly high-end anymore.
 
Hadn't been paying much attention until I came across some info today. I was very interested as it looked like quite a nice dark adventure/puzzle game like The Path. Then I saw some footage that looked a lot like that shitty Dante's Inferno/Bayonetta style hack-and-slash shit that keeps getting churned out on the consoles.

Looking at a few more videos it looks like my fears were confirmed. I don't know why, but any game that involves the player character weilding huge weapons that leave trails in the air while you jump around looking cool bothers me.
 
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Jellylesg said:
Hadn't been paying much attention until I came across some info today. I was very interested as it looked like quite a nice dark adventure/puzzle game like The Path. Then I saw some footage that looked a lot like that shitty Dante's Inferno/Bayonetta style hack-and-slash shit that keeps getting churned out on the consoles.

Looking at a few more videos it looks like my fears were confirmed. I don't know why, but any game that involves the player character weilding huge weapons that leave trails in the air while you jump around looking cool bothers me.
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I think you better fire up Tiger Woods Golf 2012 and be on your way, I heard i got a 9/10.
 
Here's a good video showing the difference between PhysX on low and high,

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1sI8ovRIFY&t=40s"]YouTube - ‪GPU PhysX in Alice: Madness Returns‬‏[/ame]
 
I just finished Chapter 1 and really like this game. The crazy level design and art in this game are top notch IMHO. I guess if the game was called Call of Alice:Madness Ops it would have gotten better review scores by the mindless drones out there.
 
Bought this game, but don't think it was worth.. just played half of a chapter, but I was really expecting more of this game.
 
Mchart said:
I've got my E8400 w/ GTX470 and it runs just fine with PhysX on 'High'. Make sure your drivers are updated is about all I can say. I do get occasional slowdowns during the larger battles, but it doesn't slowdown to the point of being unplayable.. And my system is hardly high-end anymore.
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The game apparently also had vsync on by default, which could explain the massive slowdowns people are having when there is a lot of action.
 
Pulsar said:
The game apparently also had vsync on by default, which could explain the massive slowdowns people are having when there is a lot of action.
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Oh yeah, one of the first things anyone should do is change the .ini values to turn Vsync off and kill the 30FPS cap.
 
ballpoint said:
This game is broken for me. Specs in sig.. problem seems to be physX. I get unplayable framerate with PhysX turned to high. Given my specs, obviously something is wrong. I'm very disappointed.
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I have a single 560 Ti don't have this problem. Thats weird.

Vsync has to be turned off in the ini files. Other then that. The game is great on PC.
 
Does the pc retail version use EA's Origin service? So you can like take the cd key and put it through it and d/l, etc?
 
I've played another 90 minutes or so now. I'm getting slow-downs with big physX scenes, and steady max FPS most of the rest of the time. And I guess it's not 60fps considering I set the max smooth framerate to 45fps. I might turn it up to 60 and turn off Vsync, see what that does. I'm tempted to play with PhysX "heapsize" and the surrounding settings which seem to relate to physX performance. Anybody know about that?
 
wow physx is a fucking sham and a joke. nothing an ati card can't do, just a marketing gimmick. can't believe american mcgee allowed this to happen with this game, as i will definitely not be buying it. i guess if i play it at all i'll be playing on the 360. waited years for this game as well as held my breath for his version of Oz (for me the art direction is what makes his games).
 
Banyan said:
wow physx is a fucking sham and a joke. nothing an ati card can't do, just a marketing gimmick. can't believe american mcgee allowed this to happen with this game, as i will definitely not be buying it. i guess if i play it at all i'll be playing on the 360. waited years for this game as well as held my breath for his version of Oz (for me the art direction is what makes his games).
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The physics do look like a reject from 2004 on the low setting in that video. However, it is an Unreal 3 engine game. PhysX comes standard.
 
Ron1jed said:
that is a huge difference!
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a huge difference but nothing a 6950 or 6970 (etc) couldn't do. just nvidia's ploy to corner and trap a section of the market is all... which they wouldn't be able to do without the stupid decisions to go along with it by these devs.
 
Game runs great on my rig in my sig. I turned Max SmoothFPS to 85 to match my monitor. Now its Silky Smooth. I hate when they cap PC games at 30fps by default....
 
Banyan said:
a huge difference but nothing a 6950 or 6970 (etc) couldn't do. just nvidia's ploy to corner and trap a section of the market is all... which they wouldn't be able to do without the stupid decisions to go along with it by these devs.
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stupid for us = cost effective for them. what's an easier way to implement a selling point for this tiny high end pc market in your game? dev their own platform agnostic features, or use a license free sdk that nvidia is willing to support, for nothing in return besides a twimtbp splash screen every time the game starts up.

makes you wonder if we would still be in this situation, if amd/ati was willing to put half the work nvidia does into the dev community. really what have we seen come out of ati, besides a few splash screens and some shady non standard dx11 implementations. I'm sure publishers really couldn't give a shit about which card you use, as long as you buy their games and they save some money on dev time.
 
mas said:
stupid for us = cost effective for them. what's an easier way to implement a selling point for this tiny high end pc market in your game? dev their own platform agnostic features, or use a license free sdk that nvidia is willing to support, for nothing in return besides a twimtbp splash screen every time the game starts up.

makes you wonder if we would still be in this situation, if amd/ati was willing to put half the work nvidia does into the dev community. really what have we seen come out of ati, besides a few splash screens and some shady non standard dx11 implementations. I'm sure publishers really couldn't give a shit about which card you use, as long as you buy their games and they save some money on dev time.
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Nothing in return? Nvidia PAYS developers to implement PhysX, wait, they don't "bribe" them as you'd say they just pay devs for business "relations."

yea....
 
Loving this game. Seriously debating getting an NVIDIA card for physx hack with my aging 4870x2 :(
 
those of you that say an ati card can do some of the particles.... how would i get my 6950 to do this?

im asking to know for when i do play this. im playing mcgee's alice first and will buy this later in case it drops a lil bit over summer sale.
 
snoozininsomniac said:
those of you that say an ati card can do some of the particles.... how would i get my 6950 to do this?

im asking to know for when i do play this. im playing mcgee's alice first and will buy this later in case it drops a lil bit over summer sale.
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Your 6950 could theoretically do it. However, in reality it can not. GPU accelerated PhysX is proprietary, Nv hardware only. PhysX when run on the CPU seems to lag behind pretty much everything else. I am not going to call it gimped, just that it is primarily aimed at being run on Nv GPUs, and it does not look all that good when compared to other solutions on the CPU.

You could get very similar looking effects on CPU by using a different physics implementation. However, Alice is an Unreal 3 engine game. The default physics implementation for Unreal 3 is PhysX.
 
GORANKAR said:
You could get very similar looking effects on CPU by using a different physics implementation. However, Alice is an Unreal 3 engine game. The default physics implementation for Unreal 3 is PhysX.
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Not really. CPU physics is possible but the CPU is infinitely worse at calculating physics than a graphics card.

As it stands nVidia owns PhysX, why would they give AMD an advantage. They directly compete in the market. If you want PhysX at reasonable performance, buy an nVidia card and quit complaining, nVidia bought PhysX for a reason - to make money. Not to give it away to AMD

This whole debate completely derailed this thread. The last 3 pages are all PhysX related. If you really want to discuss the merits of PhysX or complain about it, there's a section specifically for that right here at [H]. This thread is about the game.
 
This game is awesome! I'm having a total blast with it and I feel that it's $50 well spent for once. I played it for several hours yesterday, which is a record for me lately. I had to force myself off the computer to do stuff that I needed to do.

I tried to get NV Surround going on the game, but did not have any luck getting it working. Supposedly you can edit the config file for the game to force the resolution, but this did not work for me. I edited my config file and set the resolution to 6080 X 1200 (my monitors bezel corrected resolutions) and the game reverted back to my standard 1920 X 1200 single monitor res when I went back into it. I may not have saved the config file before closing it or something. I did make a few other changes to the config file before closing it and those changes stayed. I wasn't in the mood to try again. I just wanted to play.

This is what I saw when trying to go into NV Surround mode: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Raezod/screenshot/540645435744351827?tab=public

The menus were completely unviewable in the surround mode as well, so I had to end task on the game so I could unfuck the resolution and set it back to 1920X1200 and set my video cards back to SLI mode instead of surround. I'm sure that if I had a bit more patience I could get it working correctly in surround mode, but I am short on that lately.
 
I too am loving this game. I have not encountered any problems these reviewers are claiming. Invisible mobs, texture flickers, etc.. Maybe PC is the best copy. Anyways if you like platformers you will fall in love with this game. The combat is simple. Yet satisfying. I seriously have found nothing wrong with the game 9+ in my book.
 
Stiler said:
Nothing in return? Nvidia PAYS developers to implement PhysX, wait, they don't "bribe" them as you'd say they just pay devs for business "relations."

yea....
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I guess you could consider license free code and support to be a "bribe" or "relations", if you were completely ignorant of the dev process. you do understand the monetary value of this right? except it's not money, it's free features that would have cost money to make, or license from someone else. what alternative would you propose? besides sitting on your ass and playing catchup every quarter, while all your customers bitch and moan about eyecandy that they don't get to play with.

no matter what it's going to cost money, and someone will profit. if not gpu makers through hardware support, then some other devs through advanced apis. either way these features have to come from somewhere, and your average game/engine devs are not going to make them from scratch.

thecrafter said:
Not really. CPU physics is possible but the CPU is infinitely worse at calculating physics than a graphics card.

As it stands nVidia owns PhysX, why would they give AMD an advantage. They directly compete in the market. If you want PhysX at reasonable performance, buy an nVidia card and quit complaining, nVidia bought PhysX for a reason - to make money. Not to give it away to AMD

This whole debate completely derailed this thread. The last 3 pages are all PhysX related. If you really want to discuss the merits of PhysX or complain about it, there's a section specifically for that right here at [H]. This thread is about the game.
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it's relevant imo. when these features make such a difference in gameplay and immersion, it affects your decision on whether or not to buy the game. all people understand is "it doesn't work with my hardware, someone must have done something bad to make that happen". look at all the ignorant myths floating around the internets, like "nvidia somehow gimped cpu processing", or "nvidia pays developers to use their features".

but people are making too big a deal out of this tbh, they're just token features. so you don't get a bunch of stupid nuts and bolts exploding from every breakable, or some goop sticking to your feet whenever you walk through it, or this pointless cloud of smoke blocking your view whenever you fire a gun, this is not important to the mechanics of the game.
 
mas said:
I guess you could consider license free code and support to be a "bribe" or "relations", if you were completely ignorant of the dev process. you do understand the monetary value of this right? except it's not money, it's free features that would have cost money to make, or license from someone else. what alternative would you propose? besides sitting on your ass and playing catchup every quarter, while all your customers bitch and moan about eyecandy that they don't get to play with.

no matter what it's going to cost money, and someone will profit. if not gpu makers through hardware support, then some other devs through advanced apis. either way these features have to come from somewhere, and your average game/engine devs are not going to make them from scratch.



it's relevant imo. when these features make such a difference in gameplay and immersion, it affects your decision on whether or not to buy the game. all people understand is "it doesn't work with my hardware, someone must have done something bad to make that happen". look at all the ignorant myths floating around the internets, like "nvidia somehow gimped cpu processing", or "nvidia pays developers to use their features".

but people are making too big a deal out of this tbh, they're just token features. so you don't get a bunch of stupid nuts and bolts exploding from every breakable, or some goop sticking to your feet whenever you walk through it, or this pointless cloud of smoke blocking your view whenever you fire a gun, this is not important to the mechanics of the game.
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They PAY developers to use physX in their games. Of course they say they don't pay them to use it, rather Nvidia' pays for "business relations."

Nvidia DOES gimp it on the CPU:
http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT070510142143

The bare point is that It's a way for Nvidia to try and get more cards sold, they don't want people with ATI using it even WITH an nvidia card (Whcih you could do, til Nvidia blocked it and cuts it out if it detects an ATI card in your system), then they gimp the CPU version so it runs like ass, basically either forcing you to turn it off to play the game or to switch to an nvidia card to get actual decent frames.
 
Would you guys stop derailing this thread.

The game has PhysX. They are awesome.. That is all.
 
Sorry for derailing it a bit about the PhysX.

CAn anyone confirm if the retail version (IE at a brick/mortar store) uses Origin to install or what?
 
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