Shadow of War has a solid graphics menu full of both normal and advanced options. On the right panel, a system infographic shows how far your chosen setup takes both your mainframe and video memory, and add up the score below to reveal how your GPU is guiding through various rendering technologies. The latter will only make sense if you're aware of the complexities of graphics card technology, but the graph provides an easy-to-understand indication of how far you've pushed your rig.
Our performance reviews are written to present the broadest possible picture, focusing on the hardware the majority of gamers have installed on their machines. Using an i5-powered rig with 8GB of RAM, we test the game at all graphics settings and try to hit the 60 FPS mark with the four most popular graphics cards. Even if your PC doesn't match our test settings, you should be able to predict the performance levels you can expect from your own machine .
The options are broad enough to cover graphical quality in general and discrete elements such as lighting, weave, shadows and textures. Most options are available in low, medium, high and ultra standard options, but the overall quality selector also offers much lower and very high options and provides a more granular approach. Anti-aliasing is available in TAA and FXAA, and there are also toggles for depth, ambient occlusion, and vegetation.
Shadow of War supports dynamic resolution, which will scale the image to balance performance. This is the system used by console developers to maintain good frame rates. To run the game in native resolution, make sure to turn it off.
In our graphical analysis, we will compare screenshots for you on four standard presets: ultra, high, medium and low. Unlike many modern games, Shadow of War does not require a reboot to apply new texture settings. There's a loading bar you'll have to wait for but other than that, in-game settings changes are effortless.
Shadow of War has a solid graphics menu full of both normal and advanced options. On the right panel, a system infographic shows how far your chosen setup takes both your mainframe and video memory, and add up the score below to reveal how your GPU is guiding through various rendering technologies. The latter will only make sense if you're aware of the complexities of graphics card technology, but the graph provides an easy-to-understand indication of how far you've pushed your rig.
The options are broad enough to cover graphical quality in general and discrete elements such as lighting, weave, shadows and textures. Most options are available in low, medium, high and ultra standard options, but the overall quality selector also offers much lower and very high options and provides a more granular approach. Anti-aliasing is available in TAA and FXAA, and there are also toggles for depth, ambient occlusion, and vegetation.
Shadow of War supports dynamic resolution, which will scale the image to balance performance. This is the system used by console developers to maintain good frame rates. To run the game in native resolution, make sure to turn it off.
In our graphical analysis , we will compare screenshots for you on four standard presets : ultra, high, medium and low . Unlike many modern games, Shadow of War does not require a reboot to apply new texture settings. There's a loading bar you'll have to wait for but other than that, in-game settings changes are effortless.
Using the game's humble HD texture pack, the ultra shot above shows a more sprawling, intermittent landscape with good vegetation and scattered leaves as a finishing touch. Ground textures are nice with pitted, rough stones. The depth of the field creates a magnificent sight; distant castles appear out of focus for an authentic image.
There is very little difference between ultra and high. Look close enough and you see the difference in textures and lighting - the ground looks less scratched and the shading is missing from the grass and bushes around the tree trunk - but the overall effect is not distorted. The shadows also suffer a bit, with the leaves blurring a bit compared to the ultra view.
The reduction in quality leads to a rapid jump in performance: Our results show an average of 73fps.
There's a noticeable drop when you lower it to medium. Mid-range rocks suffered a noticeable texture reduction that looked like spots with blurry edges. Ground textures, fragmentation effect became less detailed. The foliage density appears to have decreased, with the trees to the left and right of the image taking on a slightly more intense color than before. Overall, the lighting is less, the shadows are more subdued, and the castle now has less detail.
The performance drop at this quality is solid as we hit an average frame rate of 97. Decreased image quality isn't ideal, but medium settings are rough but certainly not bad if your hardware isn't a hassle.
Shadow of War Low Graphics Option
You will immediately notice that the entire image is brighter at low settings. This is due to the reduction in shadow quality. This doesn't help mask large drops in texture quality. Medium distance objects are reduced to messy, pixelated shapes, as you can see on the left. Distant elements appear very low resolution and the entire scene is literally jagged around the edges due to the lack of anti-aliasing. Shadow of War is at its worst, but I hope you never need to play on such settings.
At this quality, it performs low settings at an average of 101FPS.
If you haven't read our previous article about Dominating the Mordors, click here.