Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice sneakily launches in the dead of night
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is out now, almost a full day earlier than expected - fitting that FromSoftware's ninja soulsborne would stage a daring night-time infiltration. Earlier this evening, I checked Steam and it stated there was another twenty hours until the game unlocked; a cunning ninja ruse. I've just had my first ninja-run around Sengoku-era Japan, and can confirm that it looks great and runs silky smooth, at least on my semi-beefy laptop. Considering what I've seen of the console versions, us PC folk have the best version here. Below, an hour of RPS's video crew getting stabbed a lot.
Our review crew are hard at work on the game (and have some podcast-type thoughts here), but here's my immediate technical impressions of the game, further informed by Digital Foundry's analysis of the console versions: We've got it good. This is a faster, more action-oriented game than either Dark Souls or Bloodborne, and that means that smooth performance and higher frame rates help. While it appears the PC version is capped at 60fps by default, I couldn't get it to budge below that, even by (deliberately) alerting every guard in the starting area and having them chase me around.
I'm admittedly running a decently powerful laptop here (GTX 1070 plus an i7-7700hq CPU) but at 1920 x 1080 resolution and at the absolute maximum detail settings on offer, it feels slick and responsive. Load times are only a couple seconds long off an SSD, too, plus the game is only a 13gb install, so quick to grab. Mouse controls also felt responsive for the few moments I tried them out, but this is one I'll be playing with a gamepad. Also, it's worth noting that Sekiro is a purely single-player game. No online stuff, so that means you can pause.
And with that, I'm off to go stab some samurai and die ten thousand times. Sekiro is out now on Steam and Humble for £50/€60/$60. It's published by Activision, but only in the west.