I work on underground utilities, outdoors in all weather conditions. It's often cold, lonely, and nobody thanks me for my work. Listening to you guys while I work really brightens up my day. Thank you.

Alex just had his supervillain origin story.

Alex looks genuinely broken, it’s absolutely astonishing that this is still happening in brand new games literal YEARS after the initial problem.

Alex is neither angry nor disappointed, he's just heartbroken.

In space, no one can hear you stutter.

I feel for Alex, it is always sad when someone who is so passionate about something is let down like that.

16:25 Man, you can tell from Alex's voice and mannerisms how genuinely concerned and affected he is, really speaks to how much passion he and the DF team have for these matters. PC players greatly appreciate your continued emphasis on this issue Alex and thank you for all your hard work.

Damn I have never seen Alex so upset. 100% agree with him.

If “I am Jesus Christ” doesn’t have shader stutter, Alex may declare it his game of the year.

Alex is visibly depressed from shader compilation stutter and so am I

Alex is on point here. If the game stutters, it's unfinished! Full Stop!

Man Alex is broken. But your speech was very touching. If you see shader stutters in the future, just stop playing the game and wait for a patch.

The real horror in The Callisto Protocol is the stutters.

It's tragic to see Alex almost cry on show out of sheer frustration.. and I couldn't agree more. Could NOT agree more.

Sonic really is the kind of game that should be running at 480FPS, not for performance, but out of principle

Feel bad for Alex. I could really hear and feel his emotions. It's heartbreaking. I looks like he was on the brink of tears.

I hope Alex's breakdown is shared everywhere, cause its not just about Tech reviewers having issues to talk about performance at launch, it's EVERY person buying triple As these days having to deal with this shit, on PC or on console. It should be a BIG issue, and NO REVIEWER WILL TALK ABOUT IT unless the game is crashing all the time (like Pokemon). Its like the whole videogame media is scared of talking about how UNFINISHED games are (whether its content or specific ports). Probably cause they aint paying those 60 or 70 bucks to play it. Its a growing perspective issue. The thing is, this isnt a 2022 issue, its a 2020 issue. And every "its covid" wont pay for the 60 dollars or € you're paying, this isnt charity, we're not playing free games there, we're paying for games that have a lower and lower and lower quality bar because publishers SEE PEOPLE WILL BUY.

The passion that Alex shows for his work and the PC community as a whole is nothing short of inspiring.

What a lovely guy John is. Extremely professional with a positive outlook.

I totally recognize how Alex feels. Not about the Callisto Protocol specifically, or even the wider shader comp. stutter issue that is well documented by this point. It's that he's doing a job that he used to enjoy, and now doesn't. I'm there myself. My job was something I used to enjoy, but it slowly changed enough to where I didn't enjoy it anymore, and I could not see myself continuing in that position. I'm leaving my job 2 days from now. Alex in this video is so precisely where I was a month or two ago, it's like looking in a mirror. I was so disappointed in the realization that my job was no longer something I wanted to do, and I was so angry and frustrated that I couldn't change it, that I cried the day after I put it my 30 days notice. It emotionally felt more like my job was taken from me, having changed so much and so quickly, than me resigning. And I realized after I put in my notice that I was grieving for my old position and what I used to do and enjoy, as weird as that may sound. Alex is right there: tears in his eyes, getting choked up, just pure frustration and sadness and disappointment. Alex, if you ever see this - I hope you able to find joy in other parts of your job, or maybe can just cover games that don't frustrate you, because I really enjoy your hard work, and it would be a shame for this to run you out of what you do and are so, so good at. Cheers buddy.

I like the RayTracing reflections and occlusion in Jhon's glasses but Rick's ones has some artifacts.

I really wanted to hug Alex when he was monologuing. He looked like the "stutter struggle" had beaten him. We need Alex. We love Alex. Alex is an amazing analytical PC tech guru. We need you Alex. X

I feel like Alex is holding back so much anger and I feel his pain. PC gaming has been so disappointing lately.

Damn Alex looked like he was holding back tears 😧

Selling broken crap is wrong.

I completely agree with Alex on the stutter issue. It's not acceptable to ship games that are not working properly. As a PC gamer it's sad to see this issue basically being neglected right up until people start complaining about it.

LMAO that Jesus assassination joke 😂😂😂 Rich has been on fire lately

Bro, Alex hurt my soul, I felt for him and with him wholeheartedly.

Almost cried during Alex's statement about Callisto Protocol. Someone setup a GoFundMe to help treat his Acute Intermittent Hyperstutterosis

Poor Alex. He sounds so defeated. Unreal shader stutter is causing him to waste away before our eyes.

One thing you can be sure of is that unhinged Rich will always give you 5 iconic quotes per episode

I’m glad DF with this honest review.

I totally agree with Alex take with PC port games and issues that they suffer from. I think people need to start holding game developers accountable for the lack of hardwork and effort. Companies want the money but they don't want to give you a finished product and that's not fair to the consumer because we work hard for a money.

At 11:40 Alex does an impeccable impression of my Dad when he learned I want to be an artist for a living. 😅

Alex's journalism here is phenomenal. This is a passionate journalist who knows the tech, the industry & the consumer, & can see the trends He is widely recognised, but perhaps on this issue not recognised & heeded enough, because the risk to thr pc gamers experience has now become an issue.

I thought Alex was about to put in his 2 weeks notice! Get this man some playable, fun games to review asap. I'd be of no help but felt motivated to volunteer to fix the shuttering issues! Hang in there buddy

Oh Rich has faught back against the forces of Eurogamer and recovered the control of the podcast I see.

It took them 1 day to almost fully fix the insane crazy stutter it had, why wasn't someone put to work on this one day before launch, it's mind boggling when they know this is an issue that will cost them bad reviews

is Alex holding back the tear? Come on man just let it all out!

Seriously, someone give Alex a hug - dude looks broken, and it’s sad to see!

No debate really... the game is one long very good looking corridor. Pretty shocked how uninspiring it is considering its been made by the old Dead Space crew.

Shader compilation has actually broken Alex. Unreal engine has actually managed to break one of the prime PC focused journalists. And unless UE 5.1 allows users to manually override shader compilation, god help us all in the future considering everything moves to unreal.

I see the passion alex has for his job . I hope shader compilations get fixed

DF is pretty much the game reviewer I trust and love, to see Alex broken kills me abit inside.

Unreal shouldn’t even give developers the option of caching shaders in the game. It should be forced in the menu for every game. Hell, even Fortnite has had awful shader comp for 5+ years now. I totally share Alex’s frustration and I feel for him.

Alex... internet-hug 🤗 Thank you for being such an important voice in the space... you're the only one who seems to care

3:09 Oh man, I love how the game footage perfectly matches John's assessment xD

The way John and Alex started laughing at at Rich's joke 43:01 was absolutely amazing

Can I just say, as upsetting as this is for Alex, it’s really important for me, as a PC gamer who also has a PS5, to know if a game is broken on PC (because I would buy it on PS5 instead). You’re doing a wonderful service for us…

It seems Callisto is just super polarizing. You either love it, or you have good taste in games and realize it's below mid.

I like that Alex is sitting there wearing ‘Guantanamo Bay Orange’ like he’s in gaming purgatory. Which he is!

Even a decent quad core or lower end hexa could dedicate a couple of threads to running Shader Indexing and Compilation that starts during studio logos on a game's first run. And if the game has a pre-rendered intro, could begin to run shader comp behind that. Since it's PC, you could also run the whole compilation during a first run splash screen. Or a developer could be very transparent/straightforward and offer the option at the title screen and/or include it as a very visible option in the main menu game settings. "Pre-Compile Graphics Shaders: Enable/Disable [Selecting this option may provide a smoother first game experience. Player clicks yes, pop up warning: This could take several minutes depending on configuration - proceed? Yes / No]" Edit: Players wouldn't mind trading a couple of minutes of their time in exchange for a significantly smoother first-run gameplay experience.

Sir Richard is getting younger and younger day by day I suppose. So Good to see you guys. My favourite trio.

I've never seen Alex with so little joy in life. LOL

I totally agree with the gentleman in the orange shirt...I forgot his name but he is very passionate about the video games that are being released in an unfinished state. We as consumers need to start voicing our opinions with our wallets. There is no reason why a game with a $70-$80 price tag be released in an unfinished state especially when the two companies, Sony and Microsoft bragging about how powerful their next-gen consoles are. I'm not sure that it is hardware issue or a developer software issue.

My guess is that the reason so many UE games have shader compilation stutter is because UE makes it so easy to make a game without programming experience. Before we had shader graphs for materials all the shaders were written by hand, something an artist could not do. That meant that you had to had more programmers in the team and more people who had experience in optimizing. Another side effect was that you had less shader permutations. Now every artist can make materials and if they don't use any instance materials you will end up with thousands of shaders. I think the best thing Epic can do now is make automatic tools to cache all shader permutations in the game, this is what they already do now. Another thing they need to do is hold a free online course on how to make sure you pre-cache you shaders when you are ready to ship the game.

I have never seen Alex so affected. Wow.

I'm glad The Callisto Protocol got mostly fixed, but the issues with it run far deeper than just stuttering.

Always ALWAYS love your videos, Alex (and all DF) and they bring so much joy and knowledge. I appreciate you!

Alex is so right. I refunded Elden Ring because the shader compilation stutters were so egregious but I keep seeing the game held up as a decent port anyway. It's like people want every fromsoft game going forward to be a stuttering mess and have a 60 fps framerate cap. It's 2022 people come on.

Alex seems legit so sad

Callisto Protocol was a massive disappointment. I had more fun replaying Dead Space 1+2 than this over priced vent crawling simulator that is more like the spiritual successor to Mike Tyson's Punchout.

I played Callisto on PS5, and got about half-way through the game before I looked at reviews. I was genuinely shocked it was getting dunked on. I was preemptively happy for SDS because I didn't even consider it was getting bad reviews.

Hexen 3 has been on my wishlist for decades, I’d also love to see a modern entry in that series.

I watched a streamer play Calisto Protocol and the pain he suffered getting through the game was palpable. Stutters, recycled minibosses, a terrible combat system and a laughable final boss

The rant about the PC performance thing felt like vindication. So fucking sick of modern PC games often running like this.

YES LUIGI'S MANSION 3! I just finished that and it has some incredible sand physics, extremely detailed interactive environmental objects, and I would been impressed by it on any system.

"You leave the assassination, the murder, to the end" HOT DAMN, RICH.

Is it possible that RT reflections are supposed to be on the xbox version but are bugged so don't show up? Like, it's still actually doing all the calculations to render the raytraced effects, but it just isn't being applied. Hence the poor performance?

I miss totalbiscuit, he'd be in his element covering some of the recent games over the past few years

Johns mini-review on CP is so on point. He really should do more game reviews.

Alex Vs. Striking Distance Studios was a match foretold by the old gods.

I feel the same as Alex. I had enough of this bs with PC ports in past two years. It is time to go back to platform-specific reviews I think. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Callisto Protocol review on Rock Paper Shotgun simply because it took PC-centric approach. Alice did a great job of evaluating what PC gamers get for their money - and they get broken product in exchange for their 60 Euros/50GBP. She has also highlighted core gameplay and design issues I haven’t really seen mentioned frequently by other reviewers. It is a solid read which I recommend to everyone. The game “scored” (RPS is not doing scores anymore) low because of technical issues, just as it should. I don’t get why we are now at the point where technical side of things tend to get separated from underlying game design and core gameplay. Yeah, new Pokemon game(s) are most likely fun, just like other Pokemon games - you cannot go wrong with that lite-jRPG formula. But this doesn’t mean that they are good games. They are available on a single platform and in a state which makes them not enjoyable. Gaming isn’t only about technical side or design, vision. It is about all of these things, because it is about an experience as a whole. And in the end, it is experience that should be evaluated and scored. Think of it this way. Is Doom a good game? Absolutely. But it is a good game on 3DO or Sega Saturn? Not even close. It is still Doom, but so compromised that it is not possible to enjoy it. I do not care that nowadays things may get patched down the line. Why should we, customers, give companies a benefit of doubt that they will eventually fix things? You made it, you shipped it, it is on you to make it worth our time and money - from day one, not after several months and dozen of patches. Gaming journalists should review the game as it arrives, not look past developers’ (and publishers) failures and give the game a score detached from reality. Polished experience should be given, not a somewhat elusive target. If given game is super polished across the board, go ahead, give it a better score. God Of War Ragnarok is a fantastic looking title running at solid 1080p30 on base PS4, even better on Pro and technical showcase on PS5. This level of craftsmanship deserves to be rewarded and praised. But when studio ships the game which runs bad or with cut down features on some platforms for no apparent reasons? This should impact scores, too. If developers cannot deliver a good experience, they can kiss their money goodbye. It is not like there is a shortage of great games to play at any given moment. Oh, you patched it somewhere down the line? Good, I may pick it up on Steam sale after a couple of years, when it will be cheap as chips. You had one shot at making me pay full price and you blew it. I may even get the game for a console because why not? Pre-owned copies appear on eBay pretty quickly and it only takes several months for them to cost less than a half of original price. And you won’t see a dime if I make such purchase.

Give me Prototype 3

God damn Rich absolutely tore Jesus a new one

It’s so nice to have watched you guys long enough to finally understand the Shader Butler joke.

"Captured on PC using 4090 graphics card we set everything to the maximum settings as Jesus would have wanted" I have to play this at some point! Haha!

Sad something so stupid like that ruined the games launch entirely

I'm going to give Turtle Rock props for pre-compiling shaders on launch with Back4Blood.

I feel for Alex. Hang in there though man through every dark night there's a brighter day

Sucks so many good games are based on the Unreal engine, because that shader compilation issue ruins otherwise great titles. I thought the PC space was growing (according to the Steam concurrent users numbers) so it's frustrating that developers don't want to put the time/money into producing great versions of these games for it. I can see why Alex is so demoralized by it.

Will you be doing an analysis of the unreal 5 version of Fortnite on consoles?

They even show shader stuttering in trailers now, feels like a "deal with it" from publishers

I'm not sure what's more broken, the current landscape of shipped PC games or Alex's soul. Bless that man.

The scariest scenes of CP are the stutters.

1:05 "The quality of the game, which is... exceptional" - Yeah, sure, in Richardo world

It is strange to see Alex like that, he's usually so cheerful and ironic. I'am grateful to all his work figuring out the problem, bringing it to light, communicating with some of the devs, making videos about it, testing it out etc., he did an amazing job, i remember i was so glad when he decided to go on this crusade so to speak. Stuttering is the issue i hate the most in any game and i do understand how it can spoil and even ruin everything about a game for someone. I think there are issue in QA pipeline in gamedev. Because way too often games release with bizarre issues that leave you wondering how something like even got through...

Alex sounds broken and I hate it. Dude is usually a beacon of optimism and it breaks my heart to watch

The elephant in the room is that Calisto Protocol is the definition of mid. Sure it might be technically impressive (on PS5 anyway), but as a game/spiritual successor it's a complete failure.

Alex, don’t let these people get you down, we appreciate your work and need you!!!

Is it me or does Alex Battaglia look like he's on the verge of actual tears when describing shader compilation stutter in the Callisto Protocol? Gotta feel for the guy, it can't be a fun experience when reviewing a game, never mind just playing it period as anyone playing on PC has to.

Alex just looks flat out disgusted. Wow.

Alex! Alex!!! Dark tides pre-compiles shaders before you get into the game!! There is hope!

I came back to this video after seeing one of the clips in a more recent video. Breaks my heart to see Alex so emotional about this stuff. He cares so much and I love it

It's so weird seeing so many people on the steam message boards coping and trying to run cover for the callisto protocol. They either say that it's not that stuttery or that it will be fixed eventually so stop talking about it as if the game deserves good reviews just for existing. It's so strange how people stick up for these products as if they are tied to their identity somehow

It's interesting that PS5 seems to "outperform" Xbox Series X in several games. I have both systems because I like games but it seems like there is something going on. It's like PS5 is prioritized by these third party developers and I can't help but wonder if Sony has something to do with that. Sony has done all it can to hold Microsoft back. It's upsetting because the Series X is certainly capable of more than what we have seen. I don't care if PS5 can out perform Series X, I just want to see Series X games fully optimized and polished by these third party developers. It only hurts them when the games run poorly so I don't get it. Delay the game if need be and stop releasing an unfinished product. This obviously applies to many games.

Love you guys! Keep up the excellent work! Greetings from Brazil.

1:00:28 I'm the one who tagged Alex, I got a video showing this issue with The Witcher 3 physics at 30fps vs framerates higher than that, and I also contacted CDPR about it. I'm cautiously optimistic. Fingers crossed. There's an actual chance they might decouple physics from 30fps target. How they will go about it, if at all, remains to be seen though.

I do not understand why devs let the stutter get released into the wild. Don't they play test on machines and realize that the game is virtually unplayable? How does anyone think that is acceptable, especially when the problems are well known and the solution is also well known?

Is Alex this emotional just because of this shader/stutter issue, or is there something else going on?