Every time a AAA game has been released on PC this year, it seems to have been met with plenty of issues. The Redfall PC release might not be as bad as the last few fiascos, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect either, as it has undoubtedly had some performance issues. A fellow writer found the game to be utterly unplayable on PC, with a framerate so low it almost hit the single digits. I also had some significant issues, only to find that a conflict with another program on my PC caused the big one.
In general, my experience with the Redfall PC version is that the performance was a true mixed bag. I’d walk out into a map with the framerate in the 80s or 90s, only for it to ratchet back and forth, oftentimes dipping into the high 30s. This was most noticeable in the denser Redfall Commons map.
Things were a bit better in the Burial Point map, as the framerate would often bottom out in the 50s. Still, I expected a more stable performance with my 3090 FE and RX 5700x at 1440p. The game doesn’t look amazing by any means, so I would have been surprised by the poor performance if it weren’t for the fact that this is a AAA game in 2023.
“…my experience with the Redfall PC version is that the performance was a true mixed bag.”
The game’s usage of VRAM was also quite heavy. While the recommended specs ask for 8GB, I saw it go up to around 14. If you’re thinking of playing the game on PC with any sort of program that changes your internet traffic, you’re going to want to strongly reconsider. If your experience is anything like mine, this will lead to the game connection getting dropped and you getting booted out to the menu, even if you’re playing solo. Currently, the game is online only, so you can’t do jack squat without being connected to the servers. What a joy. Let’s take a look at the game’s menus now.
The Redfall PC version has HDR, and you can easily turn off motion blur. As for resolution, if you accidentally hit F12 and switch to windowed mode, the game will change its rendering resolution without asking you, and you’ll need to change it back manually. You can select from quality presets, but you’ll need to switch the preset to custom even to be able to change anything yourself. It’s worth noting that the low and medium presets have horrible shadows, so I don’t recommend using those.
There are multiple forms of upscaling, including DLSS and FSR 2.1, in addition to a couple of additional choices, which is nice. This is a fantastic thing to see and should allow people to push the resolution, provided you are running a modern GPU that supports either standard. It is also worth noting that the Redfall PC version needs at least an AMD 6800 XT or Nvidia RTX 3080 with 10GB of VRAM, so you will want to keep that in mind before purchasing.
Now let’s look at the control options and see what options are available to customize the experience while on PC.
Both the gamepad and mouse/keyboard controls can be completely rebound. But why you’d want to use a gamepad for a PC FPS is beyond me. All-in-all, the game is functional, but performance is quite inconsistent, and you better hope you don’t get hit by disconnects. The issues with the Redfall PC version’s performance issues are unfortunate, but at least this isn’t another The Last of Us-scale hack job.
