I thought I'd mention Assassin's Creed Valhalla is free to play until the end of the weekend.

It's supposed to be pretty good, and I got a lot of play in on Origins when
they had the free weekend, and never felt the need to buy it. So get your free play in!

I'll be dl it shortly.

- Justisaur

On 12/15/2022 6:47 PM, Justisaur wrote:
> I thought I'd mention Assassin's Creed Valhalla is free to play until the end of the weekend.
>
> It's supposed to be pretty good, and I got a lot of play in on Origins when
> they had the free weekend, and never felt the need to buy it. So get your free play in!
>
> I'll be dl it shortly.

My GeForce 750 Ti (2 GB of VRAM) can't run it! :(
--
"The angel said to [Mary], 'Do not be afraid, you have found favor with
God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give
him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the
Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.'" --Luke 1:30-33.
Slammier hump day. Will today be quieter?
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On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 10:01:21 PM UTC-8, Ant wrote:
> On 12/15/2022 6:47 PM, Justisaur wrote:
> > I thought I'd mention Assassin's Creed Valhalla is free to play until the end of the weekend.
> >
> > It's supposed to be pretty good, and I got a lot of play in on Origins when
> > they had the free weekend, and never felt the need to buy it. So get your free play in!
> >
> > I'll be dl it shortly.
> My GeForce 750 Ti (2 GB of VRAM) can't run it! :(

I'm somewhat regretting trying it. 9 hours to download.

Every talking scene takes 5+ seconds to load, the game itself takes
a good 5 minutes to get into and loading a save about 2-3.
It's also completely froze on me where I had to kill the task a couple times.

At least I know not to buy it now.

I could try to troubleshoot and maybe fix those issues, but it's not
really worth it for an AC game.

- Justisaur

On 12/17/2022 6:38 AM, Justisaur wrote:
....
> I'm somewhat regretting trying it. 9 hours to download.
>
> Every talking scene takes 5+ seconds to load, the game itself takes
> a good 5 minutes to get into and loading a save about 2-3.
> It's also completely froze on me where I had to kill the task a couple times.
>
> At least I know not to buy it now.
>
> I could try to troubleshoot and maybe fix those issues, but it's not
> really worth it for an AC game.

That's crazy. I assume you have a fast PC and connection.
--
"An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph, son
of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what
is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a
son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his
people from their sins.'" --Matthew 1:20-21. Friday is slammier than
usual. Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required
to see this below signature correctly.
/\___/\ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org
/ /\ /\ \
| |o o| | Axe ANT from its address if shown & e-mailing privately.
\ _ / Please kindly use Ant nickname & URL/link if crediting.
( )

On Sat, 17 Dec 2022 07:34:31 -0800, Ant <ant@zimage.comANT> wrote:

>On 12/17/2022 6:38 AM, Justisaur wrote:
>...
>> I'm somewhat regretting trying it. 9 hours to download.
>>
>> Every talking scene takes 5+ seconds to load, the game itself takes
>> a good 5 minutes to get into and loading a save about 2-3.
>> It's also completely froze on me where I had to kill the task a couple times.
>>
>> At least I know not to buy it now.
>>
>> I could try to troubleshoot and maybe fix those issues, but it's not
>> really worth it for an AC game.
>
>That's crazy. I assume you have a fast PC and connection.

"Valhalla" is one of those games I'm tempted to buy (I generally avoid
'free weekends' not only because I dislike time-limited demos, but
because - by the time I learn about the offer, then download and
install the game, the demo period is 3/4 done, so it's hardly worth
the bother).

But then I remember I still have to finish - or even start - playing:
Assassins Creed Unity, Assassins Creed Syndicate, Assassins Creed
Origins, and Assassins Creed Odyssey first (technically I could skip
all those since the games are largely independent of one another, but
the obssesssive/compulsive part of my brain won't allow that ;-). And
that much open-world Ubisoft puts me right off the purchase.

(Turns out having a huge backlog of games actually /saves/ me money!)

On Saturday, December 17, 2022 at 7:34:37 AM UTC-8, Ant wrote:
> On 12/17/2022 6:38 AM, Justisaur wrote:
> ...
> > I'm somewhat regretting trying it. 9 hours to download.
> >
> > Every talking scene takes 5+ seconds to load, the game itself takes
> > a good 5 minutes to get into and loading a save about 2-3.
> > It's also completely froze on me where I had to kill the task a couple times.
> >
> > At least I know not to buy it now.
> >
> > I could try to troubleshoot and maybe fix those issues, but it's not
> > really worth it for an AC game.
> That's crazy. I assume you have a fast PC and connection.

My CPU is pretty old, so if it's a poorly optimized console port, it might
account for that. I'm not upgrading the CPU for a game I'm marginally
interested in. I don't think the CPU should effect load times, and the
2 freezes were a complete lockup which I don't think would come from
the CPU either.

GPU is 3050 ti and running off an SSD, 16 gb of ram, so otherwise yes.
Nvidia streaming complains about my network so much it won't let me
play, but if I run tests everything is pretty high, and everything else works.
Also AC Origins played flawlessly on my old 950. Ubisoft's single player games
in the past always played flawlessly for me and is one of the plusses they
had in my book. It might be they increased the online portion of the game
and it's killing the game, the crew always ran rather poorly.

I think I will try to troubleshoot just to see if I can figure out what it is. The
old badly running game game.

- Justisaur

> --
> "An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph, son
> of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what
> is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a
> son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his
> people from their sins.'" --Matthew 1:20-21. Friday is slammier than
> usual. Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required
> to see this below signature correctly.
> /\___/\ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org
> / /\ /\ \
> | |o o| | Axe ANT from its address if shown & e-mailing privately.
> \ _ / Please kindly use Ant nickname & URL/link if crediting.
> ( )

On Saturday, December 17, 2022 at 10:03:53 AM UTC-8, Justisaur wrote:
> On Saturday, December 17, 2022 at 7:34:37 AM UTC-8, Ant wrote:
> > On 12/17/2022 6:38 AM, Justisaur wrote:
> > ...
> > > I'm somewhat regretting trying it. 9 hours to download.
> > >
> > > Every talking scene takes 5+ seconds to load, the game itself takes
> > > a good 5 minutes to get into and loading a save about 2-3.
> > > It's also completely froze on me where I had to kill the task a couple times.
> > >
> > > At least I know not to buy it now.
> > >
> > > I could try to troubleshoot and maybe fix those issues, but it's not
> > > really worth it for an AC game.
> > That's crazy. I assume you have a fast PC and connection.
> My CPU is pretty old, so if it's a poorly optimized console port, it might
> account for that. I'm not upgrading the CPU for a game I'm marginally
> interested in. I don't think the CPU should effect load times, and the
> 2 freezes were a complete lockup which I don't think would come from
> the CPU either.

Well, guess what. CPU is pegged at 100% It's odd because others are
reporting it does a better job on their CPU than origins did, yet that one
ran fine for me. I did some optimizations for CPU I found for settings,
it's still pegged at 100%, but it seems slightly better and hasn't frozen on
me, except for a few 1-2 second ones when I was on a horse or boat
where the scenery was changing quickly.

- Justisaur

On Saturday, December 17, 2022 at 3:21:10 PM UTC-8, Justisaur wrote:
> On Saturday, December 17, 2022 at 10:03:53 AM UTC-8, Justisaur wrote:
> > On Saturday, December 17, 2022 at 7:34:37 AM UTC-8, Ant wrote:
> > > On 12/17/2022 6:38 AM, Justisaur wrote:
> > > ...
> > > > I'm somewhat regretting trying it. 9 hours to download.
> > > >
> > > > Every talking scene takes 5+ seconds to load, the game itself takes
> > > > a good 5 minutes to get into and loading a save about 2-3.
> > > > It's also completely froze on me where I had to kill the task a couple times.
> > > >
> > > > At least I know not to buy it now.
> > > >
> > > > I could try to troubleshoot and maybe fix those issues, but it's not
> > > > really worth it for an AC game.
> > > That's crazy. I assume you have a fast PC and connection.
> > My CPU is pretty old, so if it's a poorly optimized console port, it might
> > account for that. I'm not upgrading the CPU for a game I'm marginally
> > interested in. I don't think the CPU should effect load times, and the
> > 2 freezes were a complete lockup which I don't think would come from
> > the CPU either.
> Well, guess what. CPU is pegged at 100% It's odd because others are
> reporting it does a better job on their CPU than origins did, yet that one
> ran fine for me. I did some optimizations for CPU I found for settings,
> it's still pegged at 100%, but it seems slightly better and hasn't frozen on
> me, except for a few 1-2 second ones when I was on a horse or boat
> where the scenery was changing quickly.

Now I don't know what to think. I quit Vallhala figuring I'd come back
to it some day if the mood strikes after I eventually upgrade my CPU
for some other game I care more about. I remembered that I'd got
AC Origins free, and figured I go back to that. The loading times
are almost as bad, about 30 seconds just switching to/from my
bird. I'm not seeing the 1-2 second freezes, but the game did freeze
the whole computer, had to do a hard reboot. Easily within the first
hour of playing it again.

I didn't have any problems with it back when I played it on the free
weekend with my old video card with the same CPU. Somehow the
video card is causing my CPU to crash?! and only with AC games?!
Either that or they made updates that make it harder on the CPU.
Either way not playing it now, and not upgrading just for AC.

- Justisaur