Gaming Sites Demonstrate Lack of Knowledge for PC Gaming Graphics

Oh Gamespot, how you tickle me so. I must admit, I’ve nothing against the people at Gamespot, I visit their site every now and then for a bit of casual gaming news from time to time, as I do many parts of the web. However, this week they and a few others out there may have gone a little too casual by demonstrating something I find a little frustrating. They seem to think the graphics settings between the PC and console versions of The Division have more in common than they actually do.

Now, I’m all for additional graphics settings, even on console games. However, for a console focused site, brainwashing the console fans with this garbage does nothing to help the whole “peasant” and “PC master race” debate. As we’ll have people saying it has “PC graphics” all over again, when it simply does not.

So here’s what we’ve got in the graphics settings. Chromatic aberration, something I personally always turn off on a PC game anyway as it provides no pleasant visual benefit as far as I am concerned, it just blurs colours to simulate a camera lens. Then we’ve got Sharpen Image, which as many of you will know either makes things look blurry or jagged. Sharpen has little benefit to most, but it can help on some poor quality displays, more often than not, older TVs, so it’s not the worst thing to have, but it’s hardly “PC-like visual settings.” I’ve seen some sites claiming this is allowing to adjust the AA setting, but it is not, it’s a much simpler upscale/downscale visual effect and even causes a halo artefacts issue on nearby objects when maximised; don’t remember my graphics getting worse when I maxed AA.

So what should some PC-like graphics settings look like? Full antialiasing, particle detail, wind-affected snow, volumetric fog, reflection quality, sub-surface scattering, anisotropic filtering, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Just look at the graphics tweaking guide released today for Rise of the Tomb Raider for another example.

I’m not ripping on consoles, I honestly am not, but I would like to see a gaming community that is better educated on what options they’re actually being sold. Do you think we’ll ever see real PC like graphics tweaks on consoles, or do you think that’s a realm that will forever stay with PC gaming?

The Division is looking great on consoles and PC already and it’s certainly a lot of fun, have you been playing it this week? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

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