Powerful and solid hardware cannot make a game good

Jul 28, 2012 17:51 GMT  ·  By

The Secret World was set to be one of the most interesting MMOs of 2012 based on the pre-launch information offered by the development team at Funcom, and one of its claims to fame was that it would create one of the most beautiful and impressive game worlds ever seen in the genre.

I’m here to tell you that after about one week of playing the game I sometimes openly gawk at the sights that it offers, almost forgetting that I am in the middle of killing yet another group of enemies as part of a fetch quest, and simply look around at the devastation and the beauty of the world.

The Nvidia made GTX 670 graphics card, alongside a set of optimized drivers from the company, certainly makes a difference here.

But as often as I am impressed I am also disappointed by The Secret World because the game often has graphics bugs and issues, ranging from textures that arrive in the scene a few minutes after the player character does to gashes that tear through the world with white light.

There are also slowdowns that tend to affect the player when a location gets too crowded and when an impressive skybox is introduced.

That this happens even on a solid gaming PC with a Nvidia GTX 670 graphics card means that it’s not yet time for MMO titles like The Secret World to make their looks one of the main selling points for the game.

Their ultimate aim is to reach as high an audience as possible in order to get the revenue to survive in the long term and delivering a lesser experience to those who lack the latest and greatest in PC components is not a good way to accomplish that goal.

So, until Virtual Reality becomes mainstream, I plan to stay away from MMOs that trade on their beauty rather than their content.