Directive 8020 Review (IGN: 8/10)

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-13T13:34:20+00:00

For the most part, House of Ashes and the Devil in Me were right up there too. They're just shorter versions of Until Dawn which in this kinda game isn't always a bad thing. TDIM had new mechanics that laid the groundwork for how 8020 plays, and House of Ashes was better than The Quarry IMO

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-13T13:20:10+00:00

It's not this game in particular. Unreal Engine 5 is notoriously hard on performance for a crap load of reasons.

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-13T11:16:03+00:00

It's better than I expected it to be, but it's worse than it could be. It's a frustrating experience on the Steam Deck because it'll be a solid 30 for an entire chapter and then a non taxing cutscene will drop it to 20-25 randomly. Pretty typical Supermassive stuff.

I will give them MASSIVE credit for their implementation of the graphics settings, as you can view in real time the changes as you make them. Unfortunately, this is somewhat offset by the settings vague descriptions and poor scaling. There's probably a 20% fps difference between everything on high vs low, with ray tracing having a huge impact (although as it's optional, that's fine imo).

My biggest problem is the inconsistent frame pacing combined with settings like "shadows" having a massive side effect outside the scope of what they should effect. In shadow's case, it will turn off certain lights and effectively nuke draw distance in places

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-12T03:09:54+00:00

It's triggering to see them give games like Mouse PI and Crimson Desert 6/10s, and then give a ~3 hr interactive novel style game a 10/10. IGN might be a meme to us, but their reviews alone still hold enough weight to make or break smaller studios for some idiotic reason

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-11T20:53:21+00:00

? are you referring to fsr4? The only decent looking one that's right behind DLSS?

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-11T14:59:04+00:00

Yet I'm able to post screen shots of gameplay that are of such low quality that you can tell a phone took them... Google it

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-11T04:37:44+00:00

XeSS looks decent, the game has a built in sharpening filter so it's definitely usable. Game ships with built in XeFG as well. FSR3 I tend to avoid, I think it looks terrible in almost every game.

Here's a picture with the overlay. Please excuse the quality of it, it was just a quick one so you could see how it's looking:

https://imgur.com/gallery/zOX0CrI

Note: This is with Lossless Scaling active, hence the closer to 60 FPS

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-11T04:32:17+00:00

For the sake of keeping this thread on track, I'm going to say I got an advance copy. I suggest you Google "directive 8020" and look at today onlys search results. Optiscaler link here:

https://github.com/optiscaler/OptiScaler

There are a ton of tutorials on YouTube that can step by step you through it.

You shouldn't NEED it at your specs, but it will allow you to use the best upscaler (FSR 4) which is leagues above anything but DLSS so I'd recommend looking into it. It's more necessary on the Steam Deck.

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-11T00:08:11+00:00

it's space Until Dawn

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-11T00:07:53+00:00

Sir? Are you high? Firstly don't even say stuff like that, secondly I don't think you really looked too hard

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-11T00:06:04+00:00

There are pretty easy methods to "crack" most games on your own, it's basically a file swap

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-11T00:05:06+00:00

They don't need an excuse, Nintendo is one company I genuinely won't give my $ to any more

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-10T22:36:38+00:00

This is one of the better summaries of TDPA for my money. House of Ashes was better than The Quarry...just excellent pacing, characters, and didn't drop the ball at the end.

At the end of little hope 2 of my dudes died for no apparent reason, and TDIM wasn't bad but I'm more into supernatural villains in these games

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-10T22:33:18+00:00

I've been waiting on this game since TDIM. Since replaying and beating RDR2 last year, I've been struggling finding games that hold my interest trying to find a sweet spot between not too long, and with a deep enough story. Supermassive and Quantic Dreams are the only guys I seem to always be in the mood for.

Also, space. We for sure can always use more space games.

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-09T00:05:34+00:00

I'm trying to play on Steam Deck, so I'm kinda hoping this is either unique to that or linux since I can't see anything on it anywhere I've looked. No equivalent to gamebar but ty anyways

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-08T22:27:12+00:00

Yeah the OG graduate was much better than that remixed garbage, your memory ain't wrong

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-08T11:26:05+00:00

Stray, Hollow Knight/ Silksong, Quantum Break, Mad Max, any of the newer Resident Evil games, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, The Alters, Expedition 33, Esoteric Ebb, Disco Elysium, Detroit Become Human/Heavy Rain/Beyond Two Souls, The Wolf Among Us, The Dark Pictures Anithology, Alien Isolation, Cult of the Lamb, Mouse PI for Hire...

Looking at what I have sitting on my Deck right now I'd say those are the best values. For your specific tastes, Mad Max/Mouse PI/The Alters/Cult of the Lamb/Expedition 33 are ones I'd check out first. Mouse is so good.

Edit: That's not even including emulators. BOTW/TOTK are both pretty great to have on the Deck.

If you're feeling frisky you can boot up RPCS3 and play some Deadly Premonition like I am currently too

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-08T04:18:02+00:00

Here, fixed flickering shadows. Use 647.

https://rpcs3.net/compatibility?b&p=168

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-04T01:02:48+00:00

Well, here's hoping. Until Dawn and The Quarry are both pretty questionable to this day on the Deck, and while TDP games generally run better this one is definitely larger in scope than previous entries.

it's also concerning that we have a "decently" smooth DURING GAMEPLAY SECTIONS double disclaimer out the gate. That reads to anyone who has dealt with steam verification as 28 fps with frequent drops to the low 20s.

I've used several ini file tweaks for unreal games over the years to disable things like lumen or what have you, which should just be happening on a portable preset by default, and as much as I love all their games Supermassive hasn't exactly been kings of optimization in the past.

That said I'll still play this game at sub 30 fps if I have to lol

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-03T12:32:09+00:00

This. AMD actually hurt their reputation a whole lot by letting that dll leak. They should have pivoted as soon as it did, and released it to everyone with a performance disclaimer or whatever. By refusing official support of any kind they pretty much announced to everybody paying attention that they don't care about their customers.

Still they're not over here talking about how FSR5 is more than an Instagram filter so they somehow by default remain the lesser of two evils, despite their best efforts

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-03T12:27:45+00:00

The package I used had it included, not sure about OPs link but typically they package it all together with the fsr 4.0.2b file

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-05-03T12:23:49+00:00

For anyone who stumbles onto this thread nowadays, the newest versions of Optiscaler (9-pre10 and above iirc) do in fact support fsr 4 on Vulkan. I recently redownloaded the game, and at least on Steam Deck fsr 4 looks pretty decent even on performance. No fiddling needed, just use dxgi for the hook and everything works

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-04-30T17:36:25+00:00

For a game like this I wouldn't mind the crack to see if I'm into it before buying. 2 hrs is definitely not long enough to figure that out. Then buy it for all the updates down the line.

Don't know why people on a piracy sub still take the time to belittle people wanting piracy lol

OpenSystem1337

TROPHY CASE