Graphics

Visuals

After countless years of development one tends to set lofty goals for the end product. While I had heard bits and pieces about the fancy new graphics engine this game was sporting, nothing quite prepared me for what I saw. As was mentioned in our first impressions, we had the developers here giving us a demo of the game. Stuart Roch had loaded up the game and went to the graphics controls section. He then proceeded to set the resolution to 1280x1024. Mind you, most games won't play at this level even with a GeForce DDR. Most of us standing there seriously thought he was on crack or some lesser substance. The game loaded to the first level and we were pretty much a bunch of slack jawed yokels at that point. The moment of truth occurred when the mouse was moved. Instead of the1-2 FPS we were expecting, Roch was running around the level possessing and depossessing people at will, all the while maintaining smoothness and a decent FPS.

Run away!

Looking good for me!

After the shock subsided and work was done I finally got to tinker around with this game a few weeks later. I went to the website and installed the update while perusing the message boards, reading the occasional comment and looking for any bugs that might be encountered. So far I have had a relatively bug free experience considering the GeForce is sitting in the troubleshooting section of the Messiah webpage. Aside from a few texture problems, which are worked around, the game runs with no trouble at all. Other people have had severe problems but we experienced nothing to speak of.

Eep!

I played the game at 1280x1024 myself and was quite pleased. I visited the message boards again recently and read that resolution has little to do with frame rate in this game. This is quite a bold statement. I went into Messiah and cranked the res. to 1600x1200 and found that my performance had not changed by any noticeable amount. Impressive. I ran around and shot, no tears or massive frame drops. The occasional hiccup was all that we experienced. I decided to go for the gusto and upped the ante to 32-bit. I went into the behemoth battle and experienced nothing but awe.

I caught a bass!

Ice away

Eat 3 Spoonfuls of Sugar

There is a hiccup problem but that could be attributed to beta drivers or the game itself. This tends to happen no matter what resolution or detail level I am using. I doubt highly doubt lack of power is the cause of this. There is already another patch in the works, so I don't think these guys will let 2 or 3 years of work slide into the dank pits hell for some of you people out there.

Weapon graphics are spectacular in their own right. The most graphically impressive weapon is the Maser. The blast creates a weird warping of the screen that is similar to using Powergoo, along with a bright green curvy blast. The harpoon gun resembles a monochromatic rail blast from Q3. Bazooka explosions are nothing great but they aren't bad either. The rest of weapons look good and fire just as well.

After wiping the drool off the keyboard, I proceeded to look at the little details that Messiah had to offer. I may not have seen all of them but from what I have observed I am more than impressed. The characters breathe! What I thought was some weird texture movement was actually chest movement. The models mimicked breathing movements as well as regular walking and running. To say more would be pointless. Look at the pictures and try to imagine the motion; this game puts a new chapter in graphics.