I have been taking part in lots of The Blood of Dawnwalker during the last week or so, and whereas the sport does efficiently stress out my gaming PC, I have been shocked at simply how steady it’s.
Similar to with Star Wars Zero Firm and Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced, The Blood of Dawnwalker runs on Unreal Engine 5, and has been shockingly free of technical issues. The sport would not have the identical points with crashing and stuttering that Zero Firm has, and scales down lots higher than Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced does, though I’d nonetheless keep away from working it on one thing like a handheld gaming PC.
I have been primarily taking part in The Blood of Dawnwalker on an admittedly highly effective system with an AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D, 32GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 – effectively above its really useful specs. And the sport pushes even this technique, solely delivering round 70–80 fps most of the time at 4K with the Extremely preset and DLSS set to High quality.
Whereas I might love the body fee to be even greater, the issue I’ve had with lots of Unreal 5 video games is the fixed stuttering. I nonetheless have not completed the Silent Hill 2 or Steel Gear Strong 3 remakes that got here out final yr, although I really like these video games, primarily as a result of they will change into a stuttery mess at instances, particularly when loading into a brand new scene. The Blood of Dawnwalker, nonetheless, has remained steady always.
It is not restricted to my primary PC, both. I’ve the Steam Machine arrange on my TV, and whereas I do should decrease the PC settings dramatically, I can get 55–60 fps at 1440p with principally medium settings and the sport appears simply tremendous. And even on the Steam Machine, which has a a lot weaker CPU and fewer reminiscence, I nonetheless do not get the type of stuttering and crashes that Unreal 5 has change into recognized for on weaker {hardware}.
I’ve even had an opportunity to play the sport a bit on the PS5 and Xbox Sequence X, and The Blood of Dawnwalker runs like a dream on these consoles too. The visuals do scale down fairly a bit on these consoles, however it feels good to play. I have not had the prospect to seize seize to run by way of a body fee evaluation software, however the sport seems like its working at round 60 fps on the PS5 Professional, and not less than 40-50 on the Xbox Sequence X, with the Efficiency profile and the Balanced profile, respectively.
However whereas the sport does run easily on the consoles, Dawnwalker is one of the few Unreal video games the place I might suggest anybody with an honest rig to play it on PC as an alternative. It is a good looking sport, particularly when you get out into the wilderness, and the console variations lose fairly a bit of element and foliage density.
That is the sort of sport the place I might count on a bit of jankiness, too. I’ve performed a ton of area of interest RPGs that run like rubbish, just like the Gothic Remake, however I follow regardless as a result of of their depth. Fortunately, the Blood of Dawnwalker avoids that fully, regardless of working on most likely essentially the most annoying sport engine available on the market proper now, and that is unimaginable.
Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC parts queen. You possibly can observe her @Jackiecobra