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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Use supersampling. Either at the driver level (works with nearly all 3D games - enable the feature there, then select a higher than native resolution in-game) or directly in games that come with the feature (usually a resolution scaling option that goes beyond 100 percent). It’s very heavy on your GPU depending on the title, but the resulting image quality of turning several rendered pixels into one is sublime. Thin objects like power lines, as well as transparent textures like foliage, hair and chain-link fences benefit the most from this.

    Always keep the limits of your hardware in mind though. Running a game at 2.75 or even four times the native resolution will have a serious impact on performance, even with last-gen stuff.

    Emulators often have this feature as well, by the way - and here, it tends to hardly matter, since emulation is usually more CPU-bound (except with very tricky to emulate systems). Render resolution and output resolution are often separate. I’ve played old console games at 5K resolution, for example. Even ancient titles look magnificent like that.
















  • I’ve never played a Commandos game for some reason, so I couldn’t tell, but I would say it’s about on par with Desperados 1 in terms of gameplay, if perhaps a bit less punishing. Cutscenes and voice acting (at least with the German version I played) are considerably worse however and I have no idea why.

    I can confirm that these looked magnificent on a high quality CRT. This was a transitional period, when 3D graphics were not able to deliver the same amount of detail as the best 2D isometric graphics just yet. That said, everyone knew that the clock was ticking, since the advantages of fully 3D graphics were obvious and, unlike today, technological progress happened at breakneck speeds.

    I was particularly fond of isometric RTS games back then. I spent the most amount of time with Age of Empires II (of course), but there were many others, like Cossacks (2001) from GSC Gameworld (who would later develop S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), which didn’t look as good as the inspiration, but boasted far larger maps and enormous numbers of units on screen. With American Conquest (2002), they refined the concept and overtook the original version of AoK in terms of visuals, with huge and detailed sprite work, as well as even more insane unit counts that pushed CPUs of the time to their limits. The gameplay was almost on par as well, with quite a bit more depth. It’s ridiculous just how much more sophisticated it is compared to Cossacks, despite there being only 1.5 years between the two. America (2000) is a more obscure title from this era, essentially a Wild West clone of Age of Empires. It’s quite solid, but unremarkable compared to the other games mentioned here.

    Another Eastern European series I was fond of was Sudden Strike, set in WW2, as well as its sequel and countless spin-offs and expansions. There’s a model train charm to the detailed visuals, despite the not exactly charming setting. Fiendishly hard and realistic, but for all of its realism, it unfortunately decides to ignore the context of many battles, especially the war crimes that happened around them, which is troubling, since you can also play from the German perspective. Blitzkrieg (2005) is quite similar in terms of gameplay, although with a more sophisticated engine that blends 2D and 3D elements. However, when the groundbreaking Codename Panzers with its amazing fully 3D graphics and tight (if unrealistic) gameplay and mission design came out in 2004, all of these more technologically conservative WW2 RTS games instantly felt outdated, even though it came out right in the middle of them. They still had their value though, since Codename Panzers wasn’t trying to replace them in terms of gameplay, focusing on decision making instead of simulation.

    Similarly, Desperados 2 (2006) made the first game feel a century old. From the same camera distance as the first game, it both looked far better than the original and had the advantage of dynamic lighting, more fluidity and a freely rotatable camera. Up close it was a bit blocky, but this was to be expected back then.

    Many of the titles mentioned above can be rather troublesome on modern systems, so I highly recommend checking out their pages on the PCGamingWiki, which is a truly invaluable resource.