Literally today, the long-awaited game The Callisto Protocol was released, which is considered the spiritual successor of Dead Space since its announcement, since the creator of this series, Glen Schofield, stands behind it. At the same time, we received the first reviews, but the verdicts are somewhat mixed and the numerical spread is really large. This is due not only to the shortcomings of the game in terms of design, but also to a very poor technical condition.
On next generation consoles, The Callisto Protocol is quite playable, even there the frame rate is unstable. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are noticeably worse, where the game regularly drops to around 25 FPS, as you can see in the comparison video below. However, the situation on PC is much worse. And the reason? The so-called Shader Compilation slows down.
In fact, this is nothing new, a number of games are struggling with this problem, at the beginning of this year the problem was solved, for example, with Elden Ring. However, this type of stutter is by far the most common in Unreal Engine 4 games such as Sackboy: A Big Adventure (Digital Foundry analysis).
Here’s how The Callisto Protocol works on PC. 🤦🏽♂️
Another Unreal Engine 4 game with terrible stutters. Can’t wait for the full transition to UE5. pic.twitter.com/0AnBzRDd5b
— Okami Games (@Okami13_) December 2, 2022
Simply put – every time you see a new effect, the game will compile the shader and twitch for a while. The worse your processor, the more such jams will be, in any case, no computer has enough power to completely avoid this problem. In fact, the only way that really works is to go through the whole game and then start again, because once the shaders are compiled, you should not encounter any crashes. But this is not exactly an elegant solution.
Some players are advised to run the game in DirectX 11 instead of DX12. But even this does not help in many cases. It is also worth trying to use DXVK (with the Async patch), which brings the game from DX11 to Vulkan. This tool is originally designed for Linux, but works on Windows as well. Several players on Steam have reported that this fixed the twitching.
Either way, these are very annoying issues and players show it. On Steam, the game has over 70% negative reviews, with a “rather negative” verbal rating. Almost all of them contain references to unsatisfactory technical condition.
Stocks have already suffered, according to VGC magazine. Krafton, which owns the studio Striking Distance, has dropped more than 8% in a matter of hours.
Source : Zing
