General Game Discussion for February 2026

[Colif]

Probably look at this once its out

Sintopia on Steam

Manage Hell. Manipulate the Overworld. Build the resurrection business of your dreams! In Sintopia, you’re tasked with managing the bureaucratic administration of Hell: “re-educate” the sinful, generate profit, play god and expand your hellish empire. All part of a day’s work at Hell Incorporated.

store.steampowered.com

just don't feel like watching video right now.

 

[Johnway]

Probably look at this once its out

Sintopia on Steam

Manage Hell. Manipulate the Overworld. Build the resurrection business of your dreams! In Sintopia, you’re tasked with managing the bureaucratic administration of Hell: “re-educate” the sinful, generate profit, play god and expand your hellish empire. All part of a day’s work at Hell Incorporated.

store.steampowered.com

just don't feel like watching video right now.

Intriguing. Might get it one day, but i'll wait for the reviews to come in. from what i see in the screenshots, it looks liked its set in medieval times. I prefer if it were a more modern setting. More variety and spice up the action. hell, i wouldn't mind a sort of underworld war where rival hells try to compete in getting more and more of the mortal souls into their hells. So there is this good/bad mechanic. Convert as many mortals to a certain religion and tempt them to commit sin and they fall into YOUR hellish camp.

 

[neogunhero]

if its the first time playing, its probably

What is shader compilation and how it became scourge of modern PC gaming, explained in 5 cards | Game World Observer

Stuttering… a word that has become synonymous with a painful experience for PC gamers. Today we are diving into what shader compilation is, why it leads to hitching, what Unreal Engine and DX12 have to do with this issue, and how developers can address it.

gameworldobserver.com

I didn't play it, I was going from a video I watched of someone with a high end PC having slow down and stuttering on the release version.

I've known about that, but it seems with this AMD GPU that it takes it a second or third try of launching a game to fully complete. I had this same issue in Darktide, where I was getting terrible microstutters in the hubworld. A single restart of the game fixed that issue and it's ran smoothly ever since. It could also just be placebo, I could have very well experienced it on my old Nvidia card as well.

 

[neogunhero]

View: https://youtu.be/vRhK2HLrgzE?si=Zcb9WGGtUBizvZPC


I feel this sense of confidence from the devs that they are absolutely going to deliver. Of course we will only know once its out in players hands, but they have not shied away from showing off their game at all. There is multiple hours worth of raw gameplay footage online over the years, and not many games ever do that. It is probably for the best since this game seems to have thousands of different features but who knows.

Some people may be put off by the overload of gameplay features and mechanics but I personally think it's fantastic. A lot of people like to use food analogies when describing games so I'll throw in this one: This game looks to be a buffet where you can pick and choose your favorite things and avoid the rest. The individual parts of the buffet may not be absolutely gourmet, but the sum of the whole is a very positive experience. That is how I am looking at this game.

There is no way a game this huge and ambitious will have the greatest combat mechanics, greatest loot mechanics, greatest weapon and armor systems, greatest farming and base building features, etc., though I feel the actual experience of playing this game will be very fun. A game this ambitious is absolutely plausible if they keep all mechanics in check and not try to perfect every little thing. As long as everything works and flows together well, it should be a good game overall.

I'm just extremely excited for this game. Haven't felt this level of hype since, well... Starfield... and we all know how that turned out. Just need to be cautious and wait for reviews and player-recorded gameplay.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Longshot Public Service Announcement

If you have an Nvidia GPU with 8GB of VRAM, and you only have 8 GB of system RAM, you can probably (no promises) get better performance, if you go to the 3D settings in the Nvidia Control Panel and set CUDA to "prefer no system fallback", at least that was the case with someone I was helping on Steam.

What happens is that as your VRAM starts to get full, your system starts dumping stuff that should be in VRAM into regular RAM. The problem is, you actually need that 8 GB of RAM. It's probably fine if you have 16 GB of system RAM, but 8 GB may not be enough to do that with depending on what game you are playing. Your system can somewhat deal with too little VRAM, but you're going to slow to an unstable crawl if you don't have enough system RAM.

If nothing else, this gives you something to experiment with the next time your game is running slow.

 

[Colif]

GPU should only share half the ram you have so yes, it could be a problem for 8gb, but it could also be for 16 - it depends how much it dumps into ram, and what you are doing at the time.

System ram would dump anything extra into page file when it fills. And yes, it will be slow but its better than an out of memory error

Windows can shrink itself down to point its not a problem, but only by running mostly off page file. It is more likely to compress currently unused files in ram before writing to page file though. Page file last choice.

Page file normally = a file on C drive. So having an nvme can help a little but ram is still faster than nvme.

The normal fix is buy more ram but that is a little expensive right now.
Making page file bigger won't help as windows only uses what it needs, not what is given to it. Mine seems to be way bigger than I need, but storage space is also not a concern so I will just ignore it.

@Kaamos_Llama maybe make the post above and mine into a new thread in hardware, maybe even a sticky - just a thought - more likely to be seen there

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Havent had time to look at it properly but seems like a good tip.

With how generally hardware is getting so expensive and people are trying to make do with what they have, how about we start a thread where we can collect tips for laptop and low spec gaming and collate the information there into a guide to make a sticky?

 

[Colif]

Sounds like a good idea. Not something I have 1st hand experience in.

Looks like other websites already on the ball

How to Play Games on a Low-End Laptop

Are you a gamer but have a low-spec PC on your hands? There are ways to tweak settings so you can actually play modern games on your old, crappy machine.

au.pcmag.com

its a popular guide as looking around I see it referred to in other places.

Zed's fav website seems to have taken this from elsewhere

8 Tips For Gaming On Low-End PCs

Even without a beastly PC, it's possible to enjoy games with decent quality. Here's how to get the most out of gaming on low-end PCs.

gamerant.com

first answer here is too obvious

how to play high end games on low end pc

i wanna play high end games on crappy laptop with an average of 20-25 FPS.is there any way for it?

forums.tomsguide.com

the "good" days when anything would get liked to death...

How to Run a game on very low end pc

My pc can't run some games My specs are processor Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU T4300 @ 2.10GHz Video Card Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM 1.1) RAM 8.0 GB

forums.pcgamer.com

 

[Zed Clampet]

GPU should only share half the ram you have so yes, it could be a problem for 8gb, but it could also be for 16 - it depends how much it dumps into ram, and what you are doing at the time.

System ram would dump anything extra into page file when it fills. And yes, it will be slow but its better than an out of memory error

Windows can shrink itself down to point its not a problem, but only by running mostly off page file. It is more likely to compress currently unused files in ram before writing to page file though. Page file last choice.

Page file normally = a file on C drive. So having an nvme can help a little but ram is still faster than nvme.

The normal fix is buy more ram but that is a little expensive right now.
Making page file bigger won't help as windows only uses what it needs, not what is given to it. Mine seems to be way bigger than I need, but storage space is also not a concern so I will just ignore it.

@Kaamos_Llama maybe make the post above and mine into a new thread in hardware, maybe even a sticky - just a thought - more likely to be seen there

Probably rammap (free tool from Microsoft) deserves a mention. It lets you see what it actually going on with memory

 

[Colif]

I have used that before, it eats ram in the process of looking at it all.
knowing what all the headers mean also helps

Total column shows the amount used since bootup, whereas Current is more accurate to sort by
from memory, non paged pool is normally drivers, whereas paged is mostly data

RAMMap - Sysinternals

An advanced physical memory analysis utility that presents usage information in several ways on its different tabs.

learn.microsoft.com

their link just points you to a book, and this is probably too much info

Process explorer can be useful too but it can also be too much info.
Most of the sys internals programs are useful, probably why Microsoft bought them.

I would not suggest the utilities that clear ram. There is a mistaken belief that ram should just sit there free doing nothing until you need it. And people download programs that flush ram... which is actually counter productive as it forces windows to load everything from storage when its time to load it and that is slow.

Free ram is wasted ram. Windows is actually pretty good at managing it now

Its sort of related but can also use windirstat to see whats using space on drive.

WinDirStat

Windows Directory Statistics

windirstat.net

 

[Zed Clampet]

Probably rammap (free tool from Microsoft) deserves a mention. It lets you see what it actually going on with memory

I have used that before, it eats ram in the process of looking at it all.
knowing what all the headers mean also helps

Total column shows the amount used since bootup, whereas Current is more accurate to sort by
from memory, non paged pool is normally drivers, whereas paged is mostly data

RAMMap - Sysinternals

An advanced physical memory analysis utility that presents usage information in several ways on its different tabs.

learn.microsoft.com

their link just points you to a book, and this is probably too much info

Process explorer can be useful too but it can also be too much info.
Most of the sys internals programs are useful, probably why Microsoft bought them.

I would not suggest the utilities that clear ram. There is a mistaken belief that ram should just sit there free doing nothing until you need it. And people download programs that flush ram... which is actually counter productive as it forces windows to load everything from storage when its time to load it and that is slow.

Free ram is wasted ram. Windows is actually pretty good at managing it now

If the next gen of consoles increases their unified memory from the current 16 GB, low end PCs are going to be in big trouble.

 

[Colif]

If the next gen of consoles increases their unified memory from the current 16 GB, low end PCs are going to be in big trouble.

not the only ones

This past weekend, the experienced tech soothsayer outlined key points of interest via the NeoGAF discussion board. In a thread mostly focused on a "next-gen Xbox," a slight deviation into PlayStation territories produced a notable prediction of "up to 30 GB of GDDR7 memory" for the PS5's rumored successor

Leak Suggests Generous Memory Specs for PlayStation 6 Console & Handheld Sibling

Following a mid-January PlayStation 6 chipset leak, Kepler L2 has predicted memory configurations for Sony's next-gen home console (sometimes codenamed "Orion"), as well as a futuristic handheld system. This past weekend, the experienced tech soothsayer outlined key points of interest via the...

www.techpowerup.com

Sony don't seem to have a ram problem so they must have their own stash.

It makes me wonder what next gen AMD cards will come with. 7900 XTX already had 24gb, and my last one had 20. So its not that hard to imagine 30. Ram situation at time of release may change it.

RTX and 4k needs more ram. Its inevitable

Much of the advice for low end PC is to play older games. You can't expect to play the newest on an older PC. I am generally the opposite, I play old games on a new PC. But then I am weird.

 

[Pifanjr]

Its sort of related but can also use windirstat to see whats using space on drive.

WinDirStat

Windows Directory Statistics

windirstat.net

Note that Windirstat was abandoned for 19 years. There are alternatives that (supposedly) work much better and faster.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJTBoQhWaC0


Looking good, PS5 trailer but its on Steam for this year.

 

[Frindis]

*looks at Chrimson Des(s)ert* No, have to be strong! No preorder, think before you swipe. Must.....be....strong!

 

[Zed Clampet]

not the only ones

Leak Suggests Generous Memory Specs for PlayStation 6 Console & Handheld Sibling

Following a mid-January PlayStation 6 chipset leak, Kepler L2 has predicted memory configurations for Sony's next-gen home console (sometimes codenamed "Orion"), as well as a futuristic handheld system. This past weekend, the experienced tech soothsayer outlined key points of interest via the...

www.techpowerup.com

Sony don't seem to have a ram problem so they must have their own stash.

It makes me wonder what next gen AMD cards will come with. 7900 XTX already had 24gb, and my last one had 20. So its not that hard to imagine 30. Ram situation at time of release may change it.

RTX and 4k needs more ram. Its inevitable

Much of the advice for low end PC is to play older games. You can't expect to play the newest on an older PC. I am generally the opposite, I play old games on a new PC. But then I am weird.

30 GB of total available RAM (consoles will just use it for whatever purpose, some for video RAM, the rest for system RAM) seems a reasonable bump, but it does mean potential problems for the low end PC market.

It will be interesting to see how developers handle this. Most games, outside of Japan, sell much better on PC these days than on console. And, yet, everything is still designed with console in mind. Console has the advantage in architecture due to how AMD sets these things up to be flexible, but an NVIDIA PC system with 8GB of VRAM plus 32 GB of system RAM would be fine but a little slow (thanks to the CUDA settings), but the problem is that low end systems don't have 32 GB of regular RAM, and it's outrageously expensive, as we are all aware. Not sure how well a 16 GB/ 8GB system would work, but I suspect not well.

I'm not familiar with AMDs low end lineup, but if they are putting in decent amounts of VRAM, as they usually do, they could theoretically dominate the low end PC market if Nvidia doesn't do a 16 GB min VRAM refresh.

Of course, your advice for low end PCs is valid, but people haven't been used to sticking to that. They may not have a choice soon.

 

[neogunhero]

*looks at Chrimson Des(s)ert* No, have to be strong! No preorder, think before you swipe. Must.....be....strong!

It's so hard... it comes out on a Thursday night... I can take that Friday off and have a long weekend to play it... This game is really testing my strength. I want it so badly, but don't want to get burnt out by a preorder. I hope we see some early reviews of it, the marketing guy said a while ago they will give out review copies a month in advance, presumably with a review embargo to be lifted closer to launch, but apparently that interview has been scrubbed off official channels and only a re-upload exists. Not sure if that will still be the case or not, but that just adds to the sense of confidence I get from the developers. So excited to see this game do good.

 

[Zed Clampet]

@Frindis @neogunhero

You guys are really going to regret not grabbing that preorder bonus:

"We need a pre-order bonus! Quick, someone paint a circle."

 

[Zed Clampet]

Still kind of in a rut. All the games I've been playing lately are just open world sandbox games where I do nothing but fart around...

RDR2: Run around and try to be as evil as I can. Eventually get the law on me, ends up in a massive gun fight, I die and respawn, rinse and repeat.
GTA V Enhanced: Look at the pretty ray-tracing, race around, mess about with cheat engine, get into fist fights with NPCs.
Watch Dogs 2: Use drone to call gang hits on police officers, police arrests of gang members, watch all-out battle ensue.
Far Cry 5 + 6: Drive around, look at pretty landscape, follow a river from top to bottom in jetski.
Forza Horizon 5: Drive around, do a few races, explore.

While all fun and relaxing, I can't help but feel this sense of boredom and lack of motivation to play something actually worthwhile. Well, not that those games aren't worthwhile, I still value and enjoy the time I spend in them, but there is no real progression going on. I'm not getting better, beating a boss or hard level, working towards the ending of the game, I'm just messing about. This isn't bad, but I feel the want to play something more rewarding. Plus I don't feel the motivation to progress in those games, mainly because I've beaten most of them already.

Whenever I do try to play something a bit "better" than a sandbox game, I don't stick with it. Vital Shell is awesome, but after 1 hour of gameplay I don't feel a desire to continue. Robocop was really neat, but I can't bring myself to launch it again. Disco Elysium sits there staring at me in the face, but my pea-brain couldn't comprehend it. Sandbox games are just easier to pick up, get some instant gratification, then turn off whenever. Maybe my brain is just rotting away.

The Capcom sale is going on now. Resident Evil and Monster Hunter games are pretty cheap. If you're like me, you'll never completely figure out how to play Monster Hunter, which makes things more interesting