Dark Souls 2: PC vs Xbox 360 - Gameplay & Differences (Review)
Dark Souls 2: PC vs Xbox 360 - Gameplay & Differences (Review)
2014-04-28
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here on teka tomorrow now many of you
will remember that about a month and a
half ago we brought you guys a review of
the console version of Dark Souls 2 just
to get an idea of how the actual game
itself was but we also promised that
once the PC version came out we got our
hands on it we'd bring you guys an
update letting you know how it performs
and just how the port was handled now
anyone that's played the first Dark
Souls on PC continue that that port just
was not handled very well at all there
are a lot of problems with it including
the fact that it was locked at 1024 by 7
regardless of your native resolution and
it was locked at 30 frames per second
and thankfully this is one respect the
Dark Souls 2 has not continued from that
so let's check it out
okay so in this video we're gonna be
showing you gameplay from both the Xbox
360 and PC versions of the game now
obviously since this has been uploaded
YouTube it is gonna be compressed you're
not going to notice all the differences
as well as you would have otherwise but
it will give you some idea now depending
which scenes you're seeing we will let
you know in the corner of the screen
whether it's the 360 or PC version and
which character I use is different for
them I'm gonna have a heavily armored
Knight character for the Xbox and a
major looking character for PC so the
first big thing to note right away
between these two versions is of course
the resolution the Xbox 360 and ps3
versions of Dark Souls 2 were both only
at 720p
whereas on PC it supports whatever your
native resolution is meaning you can of
course watch it in 1080p or even as high
as 4k if you've got the setup for it
this results in much crisper cleaner
looking gameplay with the various little
odd effects and details becoming much
more noticeable like Tabriz floating in
the air well it makes an even bigger
difference though is its frame rate on
console people were only getting 30
frames per second and even less at times
with a lot of screen tearing issues as
well whereas the PC version runs
smoothly at 60 frames per second
now this is an FPS limit once again but
it's 60 euros and 30 fps in our system
which includes a GTX 780 and an i7 4770k
processor with all the settings at max
and the resolution at 2560 by 1440 we
didn't see it dip once from the
consistent reading of 60 frames per
second no matter how much action was
going on on screen now this brings up
another couple issues that are really
important in regards to how the port was
handled there were a lot of things that
just weren't really taken care of in the
first Dark Souls game as far as how you
should treat a PC port and that's been
addressed this time with Dark Souls 2
first off video settings are actually a
thing the first game only featured two
checkmark boxes for anti-aliasing and
motion blur whereas two gives users
options to tweak model details draw
distance shadows water effects and more
so you can really push the game to look
its best or make it easier in your
system if you're running something with
less power one other small detail that
just brighten my day right away when I
noticed it is the fact that you can
actually skip the opening logos this
time rather than having to sit through
them every time you start up the game or
quits the main menu like you had to deal
with in the first Dark Souls now control
wise the game is still very much all
about gamepad keyboard and mouse
controls are a bit more refined than
they were the first time around but the
opening tutorial still assumes gamepad
commands for doing things
still get prompts in the form of press a
to activate or press select button for
help you can take your time reading the
key bindings or customizing them to your
preference and practice with it awhile
if you really want to play on keyboard
rather than a gamepad but the experience
definitely lends itself more to the
latter as the preferred and more
comfortable form of control so what this
means is that this time around from
software really paid attention to what
it means to make a PC port and give
people what they want and made it look
even better than its console
counterparts to boot it still doesn't
look quite as good as the previews that
we saw back before the game was released
a disturbing trend we've seen across a
lot of games these days but it's still a
huge step forward not to mention of
course the fact that this is a PC
version meaning community mods are
already in the works to make this even
better in fact the original modder who
fixed Dark Souls 1 already has some beta
patches out for further graphical
updates - - so those of you that waited
patiently for the PC version since the
console released two months ago can be
happy knowing that while you waited
longer you are getting the visually
better experience now for those of you
that haven't heard of Dark Souls or have
heard about it but haven't played yet
and aren't sure about it you can check
out a flow review we posted two months
ago at this link right here or we'll
have it linked in the description as
well they per - lazy to click on that
here's the cliffnotes version in many
ways Dark Souls 2 is a mechanical
improvement of the first with a much
heavier emphasis on giving players early
on freedom and a lack of direction this
hurts the game sense of storytelling a
bit but in return gives players a
greater sense of agency and exploration
and an overall easier experience since
you can spend more time levelling up and
going at the pace you want multiplayer
aspects in general have been improved
with an easier method of co-op with
friends and new covenants offers similar
yet interesting spins on different forms
of PvE and PvP it's the easiest of the
souls games but still a hard game
overall and a great introduction for
those of you that were scared off by the
initial learning cliff of Demon Souls or
dark souls so there's the short short
version if you want a more in-depth
floor of you with more gameplay just go
ahead and check out those links I
mentioned earlier now before I get out
of here I do want to take a moment to
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and help show us some support well that
was our little update video for the PC
release of Dark Souls 2 if you want to
grab a copy of it for yourself check out
the link in the description and while
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next time guys I'm Kevin for Tekken
tomorrow and we'll see you later
you
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