Demanding games are divided into two types. On the one hand, an impressive visual style as well as the well-coordinated work of game designers, artists, and testers. The output is a beautiful game with normal optimization, and the experience there is as great as the experience you get while playing the best slots. But there are hundreds of other examples. Visually mediocre projects that slow down even on RTX 4080. In any case, you will get a kind of gaming benchmark. If you’ve recently upgraded your PC or are confident in your old one, here are 10 games that are sure to push it to the limit.
Alan Wake 2
Alan Wake 2 is one of the most beautiful games of 2023. A small uproar at release over Nvidia’s minimum 20xx series support quickly subsided because, as it turned out, even players with RTX 4090s had a hard time. It was possible to get around 90 frames at max settings at FHD resolution. After a lot of patches, it was fixed, and fps rose to 150. But all this is without RTX. So, to see all the beauty with technological tricks, you need to have a video card of at least RTX 4070 level.
And all for what? For the sake of the atmospheric, appealingly scary, and surprisingly exciting adventure of FBI special agent and writer Alan Wake, who is stuck in another world. Yes, there are two characters in the game. You can go through the stories of Alan and Saga in any order, but each time, the blood will run cold in your veins. This is a horror, frightening by the realism of what is happening. Harsh nature and mysterious, ominous landscapes will be the perfect arena for horrible events.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
Cyberpunk 2077 had bugs and lags on release. But the developers gathered their courage, and three years later we have the most technologically advanced game. All new Nvidia technologies were first of all added to Cyberpunk 2077. And then a miracle happened. Ray Tracing technology is extremely heavy and difficult to implement, or rather, optimize. In the mode without RT, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is able to provide 60 fps in FHD even on RTX 2080. With RT, you’ll need an RTX 4070 for the same performance.
It was in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty that Ray Tracing made its first appearance. The technology creates path tracing, more accurate lighting, shadows, better indirect lighting, and reflections with ray tracing at full resolution. How has it affected performance? Stable 60 fps without DLSS was only possible on the RTX 4090. Now, after dozens of patches with DLSS and Frame Generation, you can count on 100 frames in FHD, even on RTX 4070. And this is in a bright, beautiful, and huge game with an extremely good story.
Dragon’s Dogma 2
Dragon’s Dogma 2 won’t require a quantum computer to play, even in 4K. The recommended ones include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6800 graphics cards. But this is only at 30 fps. In fact, if you want to enable RTX and take a swing at 4K, you’ll have to splurge on RTX 4090 or at least RTX 4080. In FHD, stable 60 frames start with the NVIDIA RTX 3080. Gameplay design isn’t the game’s strongest point, but the technology and texture quality are top-notch. Appreciate what magic looks like, how mountains, trees, and cloth are textured, and how lighting works.
Even RTX 4090 doesn’t guarantee the absence of bugs and brakes. The game is still being patched, which is fine for a project of this scale. Party-role action in such a huge world inevitably confronts the player with a lot of random events. And the developers have done everything to make you remember them. The world is alive. Fire-breathing dragons scurry back and forth. The ruins of ancient castles attract forgotten artifacts. The whisper of centuries-old forests beckons you to the very thicket. Exploring the living world is interesting, and the beautiful one is also pleasant.
The Last of Us Part I
The Last of Us Part I isn’t a very demanding game. Steam lists the NVIDIA GeForce GeForce RTX 3060 as recommended for 60 fps, but that’s for 1080p. If you swing to 4K, the RTX 4080 will provide an average of 80 frames with DLSS.
The thing is that The Last of Us Part I is already in its third iteration. The original came out in 2013 on the PlayStation 3. In 2014, there was a remaster. It was the same The Last of Us, only with improved graphics. The Last of Us Part I is a remake. The game is created from scratch in the engine of the second part. Completely redrawn graphics and animations, improved artificial intelligence, and much more. On the Internet, there are many comparisons with the original, and you can really see the difference there. But even apart from that, The Last of Us Part I is still one of the best story-driven games.
