Lords of the Fallen First Impressions And G751JY, G771JM and G551JM Best Performance Settings

Your name is Harkyn and you're not the nicest guy the world has ever seen. In fact, you are pretty much the worst.  When the Rhogar Lords - army commanders of the long-ago defeated god, wages war on the human realm, you are the fire to fight fire; to save humanity, banish evil, and in an unforgiving world where no sin is ever forgotten - find redemption.

Lords of the Fallen was released on October 28th, and this hardcore action RPG from German Developer Deck13 Interactive and Polish developer CI Games, strives to build on previous successes Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.  If you got into those, then this is definitely worthy of your attention.  The philosophy to making diverse and memorable battles, and finding victory from failures.

Gameplay

Generally I don't play RPG as much as FPS (First-Person Shooters) and racing sims, it isn't because I have a lack of patience, but rather due to the fact that games of this genre usually requires you to invest a tremendous amount of time into developing your character and completing missions (and side-missions).   Lords of the Fallen does require you to learn the intricate details regarding your character's attributes and magic spells, but here you are thrown right into the action from the very beginning.  Sure it's fun to spend the time creating an orc duplicate of yourself, but I've done it enough times already, so it was nice to simply pick the magic type and their equipment, then dive right in.

Here are the magic types brawling, deception and solace:

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You choose the equipment to provide better defense, mobility or balanced between the two.

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My preference is be mobility mixed with magic to overwhelm opponents with pure force and mighty spells.  Who you choose doesn't matter too much in the long run since you can choose how to develop your character.

This game does hold your hand briefly for the first battle, however from there on you are left to fend off diverse adversaries on your own, learning how to be victorious by dying repeatedly.  Some of those repetitions can be avoided if you take your time and studying your opponent (as well as your own character).  My best advice would be to enjoy each battle and savor every death, that is how the game was meant to be played; to fight epic battles.  As the body-count mounts (including your own),  you will soon realize you can't rush through missions as you are not spraying bullets and raining grenades on hoards of aliens or zombies.  

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When you die you can go back to where you died to acquire lost experience, but you can't take too long.

It doesn't appear to be a fun game if you were only watching me, but in actual fact I had a great time; it was challenging but not too hard.  Each victory make me feel like the time spent was justified, and I'm on my way to being an indestructible badass.

Need to pose for the camera after each kill.

To prolong your life you can block (which doesn't help that much) or drink a health potion (that looks like blood). It is entirely possible Harkyn is a vampire, although it was never mentioned.

The philosophy to make battles memorable begins with grotesque creatures, then a truly intimidating boss making a dramatic entrance. More often than not, your enemies are absurdly massive, to the point where you worry about being stepped on!

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You can manage your equipment, build up your character and look at your acquired knowledge here:

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The characters won't be getting any Oscars anytime soon, but they memorized their lines and look their part well enough.  Maybe not well enough to make me want to see each and every one of their responses. 

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AI (artificial intelligence) is a frequent complaint in games, and it would be easy to nitpick about the AI in Lords of the Fallen also; since you can sometimes surprise attack not so inconspicuously,  attack then flee and repeat, or lure them away to fight them singularly, etc.   But if you were to fight against truly realistic AI; do you really think a sane (or even insane) person will let you get away with those tactics more than once?  If they are not looking, there is a surprise attack move which may kill them instantly (while I say "Fatality" in the Mortal Kombat voice).

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There are diverse enemies to fight with different vulnerabilities to exploit, so I don't think AI is anything to complain about.  However, panning of the camera is done in a way that you are prone to surprise attacks (probably intended) or the camera gets stuck in the wall and you can't see what you are doing (probably unintended), that will need to be fixed.  

 There are secret passages and runes to find, each rune could be something different each time whether magic, health, shield or even 'unknown'.

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Controls 

A great thing about a game like this is that you can get into it from the comfort of your couch using a game controller, compared to up at a desk with keyboard and mouse with an FPS and with wheel or joystick for simulators.

A controller gives you get great control over the character, and there isn't a need for the keyboard or mouse (albeit you will need the mouse if you want to customize the graphics settings). You could look around better with a mouse, but realistically the character can only move so fast and doesn't make a difference.

If you are wielding a weapon on each hand you can attack using either hand, if you are holding a larger weapon you use both hands to strike.  You could choose to use one hand to hold the shield, that way you can parry and attack in one swift motion (with a lot of practice).  Meanwhile, watch your energy level as that affects your speed and power.  I choose the agile character to get in more hits, and more importantly, avoid getting hit!

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You can roll away from danger.

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Graphics and Display Settings

Deck13 and CI Games decided to build their own game engine, but Lords of the Fallen was still created using NVIDIA GameWorks technology to bring in next-generation graphics techniques. Many technologies went into the game, even if some of which are very subtle, but they all add onto the overall experience. The game uses PhysX particles and NVIDIA Turbulence to produce brilliant particle effects that makes them respond to solid objects in a fluid motion, starting from the very opening scene, PhysX Clothing - like the gargantuan flags in the wind, and NVIDIA PhysX Destruction allows you to smash those bookshelves into smithereens.

G771JM & G551JM Benchmarked Spec:

• Intel Core i7 4710HQ processor
• 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 (2x8GB)
• Nvidia GTX 860M graphics card (Maxwell: 640 cores)
• 256GB PCIe SSD option
• Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS display
• (XBOX 360 wired controller)
• Nvidia GeForce driver: 344.65 WHQL
• Intel HD Graphics driver: 10.18.10.3910 WHQL
• Windows 8.1 Pro

Using FRAPS we got an average framerate of 31FPS, a maximum of 38FPS and a minimum of 25FPS at the settings shown below, at Full HD. Disabling Nvidia Turbulence improved the average framerate by around five frames per second.

G751JY Benchmarked Spec:

• Intel Core i7 4860HQ processor
• 32GB 1600MHz DDR3 (4x8GB)
• Nvidia GTX 980M graphics card (Maxwell: 1536 cores)
• 256GB PCIe SSD option + 1TB HDD
• Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS display
• (XBOX 360 wired controller)
• Nvidia GeForce driver: 344.75 WHQL
• Windows 8.1 Pro

When on the ROG flagship G751JY, of course I wanted to test how well it ran with everything maxed out.  I was hit with this warning, which I dismissed quickly knowing this beast was ready with a GTX 980 with 4GB of RAM.

If you set the General Detail Level on Very High; Texture Quality will still be on High and  Anisotropic Filtering on 8X, I changed them to Very High and 16X  (as below).  Now this is maxed out!  I went out into an open space with lots of scenery to render, and fought 3 foes simultaneously to give the machine a real thrashing and the result was not surprising: an average of 54 FPS with a maximum of 66FPS and a minimum of 30FPS!

Final Thoughts

This is a challenging game that makes you want to come back again and again.  All the cutting-edge visual effects and PhysX effects really helped create immersing environments.  Add to that great music and sound effects and this game can eat up my free time with ease. So far, it is entertaining and there's rarely a dull moment. Be sure you don't rush through it!