We bought off to such a nice begin this 12 months, with a ton of PC video games that appeared nice and nonetheless ran effectively on just about any {hardware}. One of many widespread themes amongst video games like Crimson Desert, Resident Evil Requiem, and Forza Horizon 6 was that none of them had been operating on Unreal Engine 5. And similar to Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced final month, Star Wars: Zero Company is a nice instance of why I might adore it if builders merely deserted Epic’s engine altogether.
I’ve spent about 5 hours in Zero Company thus far, and whereas which means I am nonetheless fairly early within the in any other case incredible recreation, I’ve nonetheless run into greater than my fair proportion of technical points, throughout all kinds of {hardware}. When the sport is not bugging out in a roundabout way, I have been having a blast with it, and it is necessary to notice that our reviewer Dan Stapleton hasn’t had practically the identical depth of points that I’ve had.
What’s humorous is that the technical issues are completely different on every of the programs I’ve tried the sport on.
A Buggy Galaxy
I used to be on trip final week, so the primary laptop computer I attempted the sport on was my Razer Blade 16, with an RTX 5090 and a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. It bought a respectable common body charge at 1600p, nevertheless it was plagued with microstutters, particularly in cutscenes. I began getting driver crashes, the place the sport would simply make my laptop computer restart each time I attempted to load the sport up — one thing that does not occur with another recreation proper now.
I additionally spent a while taking part in the sport on the Lenovo Legion Go 2, which I’ve put in Bazzite on. Anybody that is ever tried to play an Unreal Engine 5 recreation on a handheld most likely will not be shocked, nevertheless it did not run tremendous effectively. In an effort to get a playable body charge, I needed to decrease the decision to 800p with the bottom settings, and I used to be nonetheless solely getting about 25–30fps. However that by itself is not essentially a deal breaker with one of these recreation. It is flip primarily based, so I can completely reside with a 30fps expertise right here.
For some purpose, the sport likes to crash proper on the finish of a mission. The system will lock up, forcing me to do a laborious restart, and lose all my progress. This occurred a good 4 instances earlier than I simply gave up. That one probably comes right down to Linux. I had a related drawback on the Steam Machine, the place the sport would crash on the identical degree, solely the Steam Machine truly gave me an error report that I may ship to the developer.
As soon as I bought residence a couple of days in the past, I needed to see what would occur on a top-end rig with an AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D, 32GB of RAM ,and an RTX 5090. The efficiency, even with that degree of {hardware}, wasn’t nice. I used to be solely getting 70–80fps at 4K with Extremely settings with DLSS set to High quality and body technology disabled. That is nonetheless very playable, thoughts you, however midway via my first mission on that desktop, the sport simply froze in the course of a flip.
Bit Reactor has already come out with a day-zero patch that fixes some issues, however even after putting in it, I proceed to run into crashes, freezes, and body drops continually. I’ve to think about that the sport will get to a extra steady level finally, and I am wanting ahead to it. In any case, Zero Company, together with Galactic Racer have been two of my most anticipated video games this 12 months.
I will maintain trudging together with Zero Company regardless of all my trials and tribulations with it. There’s simply one thing in regards to the prequel period of Star Wars that simply ensnares me, and the story undoubtedly has its hooks in me. I simply want sitting down and taking part in the sport wasn’t such a recipe for complications proper now. Possibly some day.
Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC elements queen. You’ll be able to comply with her @Jackiecobra