Does Shadow of Mordor's Crazy Ultra HD Content Pack Make a Real Difference?

PC fanboy : "It is SO worth spending $2,500 on a new rig every 3 years so that I can keep up with new game requirements and freeze frame a game to spot a difference and justify my expenditures. It is much better than just spending $400 on a console system that will last for the next 8 years, because God forbid if I can't brag that I have the absolutely biggest and best.". To me it's just like those folks who put giant tires on their truck in order to compensate for other...shortcomings.

If you sharp eyes you can see the differences

I'm glad I waited before buying a new GPU. I'll wait for the 8GB GPUs.

I have a decent gaming PC with a 4gb Nvidia 670 card, 16gb of system ram, a nice primary monitor, good gaming mouse... etc.

But, I decided to buy this game for PS4 (I could've gone with XBox One also, I'll be getting Alien: Isolation for XBox One I've decided - only game I have for it now is Destiny and I want something else to encourage more use of the console) - I considered getting this for PC... lord knows I have enough nice 360 wireless controllers I can use with my PC laying around... and lord knows I can easily get the game on my same TV screen the consoles are hooked to (25 foot HDMI cable across the room) but I guess I just like the simplicity.

I like having a case and a disc, I like having the option to trade the game in if I feel confident I won't play it again... I like getting some use out of my consoles... I like knowing it's going to run and run reliably. Wolfenstein: The New Order wasn't even playing on my PC. Rage had tons of issues. I did the same thing with both. I ended up double-paying for those games like a fool because I got the PC version first of Rage and Wolfenstein: New Order, and then after frustration and inability to play... I ended up buying a console version (XBox 360 for Rage, PS4 for New Order.) So I think I'm starting to just care more about the reliability and simplicity than the maximum graphical fidelity.

Too many tech hickups... I go in cycles like this. I do have an Oculus DK2 and intend to get the final consumer version, so I'll certainly be hitting up plenty of PC gaming going forward... but, yea - you console-primary players have a point sometimes. There's a lot to be said for just putting a disc in, and it working.

if you dont see difference you are blind gamespot:D

This doesn't require 6GB of VRAM. I have GTX 980 4GB and I can run this with these textures and everything maxed at 1080p around 75-100 fps

Yes there is a clear difference in open world details, but nowhere near significant. If you don't stop and look at grass on purpose, it won't matter though.

One thing that needs mention is poor texture work. Aside from the resolution, textures themselves are not really high quality, they don't have as much detail as they can. I know lots of games that have shown a lot more detail with a lot less resolution and this points to lack of quality on Monolith's part while creating textures. By no means this makes the game a bad game, but shows there is still a lot to improve visually.

This gen they really need to start looking at the details rather than the graphics. Forget HD texture packs and all that jazz, I want limb dismemberment and more internal organ spillage not just some blood splatter. When I hit someone with a sword I want a wound to appear exactly where the sword hit its mark on their body.

I remember how awesome it was when I first saw the blood splatter from one of the cloned soldier's leg in F.E.A.R when you hit them with a shotgun shell. Or when they basically explode. I even enjoyed seeing soldiers in Wolfenstein with parts of their rib cages showing after being hit with dual wielded assault rifles or being scorched black from the energy weapons.

It is the details in games that make all the difference, not random textures that you need to have a trained eye to see in the first place.

" It is, however, what's making me so sad about having spent a ton of money on a 3 GB video card not so long ago."

This. I just bought a new gpu 3 weeks ago and I cant play this game on ultra? Are you kidding me? But yeah I tried and it doesnt make much of a difference anyway. =)

cant see a difference.

780GTX 3GB can handle Ultra textures 90 percent of the time. While traversing to different zones you will experience stutter, which means that your memory has run out, but it will end and you'll resume playing at 60-70 fps.

I have played a few hours of the game, so far it has been really fun, it was a bit more challenging at first but now it feels easier, maybe because I just begun.

This game feels like a mix of Assassin's Creed (stealth), Batman (combat and counters and movement) and Tomb Raider (bow). Thing is while the game has some unique features, I can't help but feel a bit strange with the fact its somewhat derivative - mimicking Batman for instance: when you hit X8 to make a B+Y "execution" just how you hit X8 hit streak in Batman AC to be able to perform B+Y takedown. The combat system is not only extremely similar, it feels identical to the point that I can imagine Batman fighting orcs in the exact same manner.

Now another issue with that, is the easy "press Y" for counter, and the beat'em up fighting system:

When you punch someone many times like batman does, and they don't really block (sometimes partially block and absorb hits) it looks more reasonable and realistic (to a degree). However when you slice an Orc 7 times with a sword to build up a Hit Streak X8 - those 7 hits are never blocked. Which means the Orc just took 7 sword blows to his bare flesh, without dodging or blocking any, and unlike fists, that hurts, breaks, kills and dismember the body.

It looks and feels off. This is a direct result of mimicking Batman AC without giving orcs swordplay maneuvers like blocking, parrying, swatting and strafing.

Unlike The Witcher, Dark Souls, Prince of Persia and even DmC (at harder difficulties): where enemies would block some of your hits, dodge, parry or swat them aside, so even if you pull off a combo, it would make sense that it take several sword strike to hit and finish you opponent. Here in SoM, its just ridiculous that you can hit someone 8 times, but then press Y+B to execute another uninjured Orc just because you unlocked "execution".

the game isnt really that great graphically which is why it looks the same on both systems.

the game looks good on ps4 and pc. and honestly when you go from low to high the biggest changes u see is in the characters hair and for on his clothes.

really happy that the game looks incredible on a console. i guess the biggest pc advantage is playing it at 60fps.

pointless for a game that visually and artistically doesn't look THAT good.

Glad they do this with PC games now. In 50 years I'll be able to play the game on hyper tessellation, uber sampling temporal AA, and ultra parallax mapping, ultra tight closer approximate soft shadows, and hyper realistic reflective surfaces that blind; and, all of this at 120 fps. :P

Jokes aside, I have the game on PS4 and out of the games I have played on the system, I think it's the first time I noticed superb tessellation going on in almost all the objects and characters. What really gabbed me was the wooden objects have special attention to detail, and if you look at the mountains, they are tessellated as well. If you fight an uruk with the "diseased" moniker, you will see what tessellation can do for a video game character, and you will be instantly repulsed and awed at the same time -- I nearly threw up my lunch. I caught myself searching out the many objects in the game just to see if everything had tessellation, and it's safe to say that nearly all the objects from the trees, right down to the frills on Talion's cloak have it as far as I know. All in all, not bad for a little box that costs roughly as much as a single high end graphics card; moreover, it manages to pull it all off at 30 fps with almost no frame rate issues -- unless you consider 30 fps an issue in and of itself. For the rest of us who don't have the rig to pwn this game, at least as far as PS4 goes, it's pretty killer in the graphics department.

Well I own a PS4 and this game and while it does look good, this HD pack smokes my PS4. But not enough to entice me to buy a gaming pc. In the beginning of this video, the first shot looks identical but once they started playing it you can see it. It looks great on pc but again I'll stick with my consoles. Graphics arent everything.,.

who cares, crap game anyway.

if you have a 4k monitor it would for sure

The quality we see in the video isn't the quality we would see having the game be rendered live. A lot of the fine details that make it look so much better are lost due to the lower quality of the video compression. Post screenshots that don't have the big drop in quality or give us a video file that doesn't need to be streamed and compressed.

It's a slight enhancement in the video, but hey, if you've got the equipment for it, why not?

I can't wait until they release the Extended Edition in six months with 30 extra minutes of never-before-seen footage (18 minutes of which are additional credits).

My eyesight just isn't good enough to tell the difference.