Video & PC Game Discussion

stonebeard wrote: Funny you mention that, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Deus Ex: Human Revolution are my two most highly anticipated games of this year (Silent Hill: Downpour at #3) . And come on now, simple processing power and graphic capability does not make a game good. The 360 can make graphics that pass muster for most gamers except PC die-hards, but the quality of the gameplay (and also the story) make a game good, not graphics. And those two games I mentioned earlier have the opportunity to fix their predecessor's mistakes and be solid 10/10 games IMO. It would be tough to do, but they can do it. I think Skyrim's new engine is overhyped, though. It'll be better than Oblivion's and there's no way Skyrim can't be anything but better, IMO, but I don't trust Bethesda to do a completely successful overhaul.

I'm not ready to make any assumptions about DX:HR. I mean, I don't see how they could make it worse than IW, so it's not really a big deal. Either way, the example stands that DX:IW was gawdawful and included many of the same sorts of changes advertised for Skyrim.

I talk a lot about graphics in Skyrim because it is the sort of game that demands that it be a technological marvel. Elder Scrolls games, original excluded, are more about presenting a large and beautiful world for you to explore and toy with. The story is generally utterly forgettable -- Oblivion's was particularly forgettable and Morrowind's could be completed in 7 minutes -- and the rest of the game systems aren't remarkably involved. While I liked TES3, I respect that many years later, it has lost a lot of what made it great. Systems feel antiquated and the game is no longer attractive. In restrospect, the game was never that great in the first place. It was just awesome to have free reign over the whole world and a whole slew of options to work with (incidentally, both were toned down in Oblivion). Anyway, Bethesda needs to stop being such a cocktease and make a massive online MMO with deformable terrain and building construction. That's pretty much all that is promised by TES anyway.

Look, I'm over 360 graphics. They were pretty good back in 2005, sure, but it's 2011 now. I'm tired of being pushed into tiny little corridors all the time because the 360 can't handle a wide-open area (ME2, I'm looking at you). Graphical limitations stifle innovation. Games all look and play the same because everything is built to the same standard on the same engine, and when the game engine can't handle big draw distances, every game shoves you into the same little rock-cliff valleys and bare landscapes. The 360 hasn't really shown the ability to do better than the original Gears of War, so here we are, stuck in 2006. Gaming hasn't moved past it; instead, we just get clones of existing games. Until hardware moves on, we'll be stuck in this rut. The only innovation to be had is in 2 dimensions.

SaltyJon wrote: Plus, I never said that the company themselves would be the ones to update the graphics for the PC version.  The Elder Scrolls games have exceptionally large modding communities - both of the games have been the subject of heavy graphics updates by fans of the games, not to mention other mods which do anything from add hundreds of new items to new areas/quest lines.

I hate this argument. Your sole suggestion is that when someone releases a bad game, it can still be a good game if enough people are around to completely change the game to make it less terrible.


Edited by Gamemako - January 25 2011 at 18:50

SaltyJon wrote: Gamemako wrote: SaltyJon wrote: Plus, I never said that the company themselves would be the ones to update the graphics for the PC version.  The Elder Scrolls games have exceptionally large modding communities - both of the games have been the subject of heavy graphics updates by fans of the games, not to mention other mods which do anything from add hundreds of new items to new areas/quest lines. I hate this argument. Your sole suggestion is that when someone releases a bad game, it can still be a good game if enough people are around to completely change the game to make it less terrible. Wait...when did I say the original was a bad game?  I never did.  I loved vanilla Oblivion, and did at least two playthroughs on my 360 before I got a PC capable of handling the PC version.  Even with the PC version, I played through it regularly without mods and loved it, the mods just add more to the game - basically the expansion packs that game companies never have the time or manpower to make.

You misunderstand: I just mean to say that having modders spend millions of man-hours to transform the game does not justify how the game is gimped in the first place.

Anyway, you remember what I said about handhelds? Read the new IGN story. Sure, claims of "rivaling" the PS3's graphical capability are almost certainly exaggerated, but we're that close. The 360 is already less powerful than the PS3, so the PSP2/NGP is likely very close to being able to run Gears of War.

Mostly Demon's Souls on PS3 lately after a long hiatus, so punishingly difficult and so addictive. If you own a PS3 you need to check this out.

More excitingly, the spritual successor has just been properly announced as Dark Souls.
http://kotaku.com/5748513/get-ready-for-the-hardest-game-youll-play-this-year

Henry Plainview wrote: Rottenhat wrote: Hmm, I am playing Half-life 2 AGAIN, all episodes, waiting for Episode 3 that never seems to arrive. Nothing is more fun than playing as Gordon Freeman, a mute, morphine addicted mass murderer killing everything that moves and isn't human. Half-Life 1 was the first shooter I ever extensively played, and I'm not even sure how many times I replayed it. I got 2/3 of the way through HL2 before I got bored and quit permanently. I really don't see what people see in that game. The whole thing is so sterile and lifeless. And headcrabs and zombies were by far the worst part of Half-Life, I have no idea why Valve decided HL2 needed more of them. To be fair, my sh*tty integrated video card had horrible draw distance so I really missed a lot of the ambiance (which I guess is probably what's needed to propel you through the complete lack of story), but I can't see myself enjoyed the gameplay much more. And I'm pretty much done with videogames so it doesn't really matter.

 

 

Gamemako wrote: Anyway, if you try to make wide-open landscapes, you have to make them bare or the game's framerate flatlines. Games built with draw distance in mind (such as TES4) have items at a distance go poof and textures reduced to 8x8. Model detail has to suffer or you'll utterly crush the framerate. If you have high-detail models and higher-res textures, you have to severely limit the distance you show. Going from ME1 to ME2, you'll notice that while ME2 has everything look sharper and prettier, there is no Feros bridge to be had. Everything is small corridors and narrow pathways. I'm sure BioWare would have liked the opportunity to make more use of ranged combat, but the 360 hardware can't handle that.

I honestly have not played anything on the 360 in around 3 years, but Halo 3 had plenty of open spaces and it is my understanding that ODST did too, so I have trouble believing that Bioware cut segments for technical reasons inherent to the 360. Maybe they just couldn't optimize it well, I'm sure you're aware of the issues in ME1...
 

manofmystery wrote:   Henry, you need to sign up for a free Steam account and give it another shot.  Having the game run through Valve's Steam platform should help quite a bit with how well the game runs, I mean, unless you have an absolutely terrible computer.

I did buy the Orange Box on Steam during one of the Christmas sales a couple years ago. The problem is my laptop's sh*tty integrated video card because Intel doesn't care about the Express Mobile Chipset being able to run anything, it's ok on the other hardware aspects. It's my fault, I just got the official school computer (well, technically my grandparents bought it for me) without paying attention. It didn't even want to render some of the larger rooms without fog, and it's playable with the fog turned off, but the draw distance is crap. I managed to play Portal after scouring the internet and discovering it will work if you turn the rendering engine down to an earlier version of DirectX, but getting TF2 to even boot seems pretty much impossible. It's ok, though, I don't want to sound pretentious when I say this, but I really feel like I've outgrown videogames and I don't have much interest in getting back in. 

The Sleepwalker wrote: So much better than the first two series.

A dozen different games.

No big thing, anyway. Portal is a better IP now.