Halo 3 clan.

Although I’ll disagree with FriendlyFire about the “novel feature” (it revolutionized FPS control schemes with a good off-hand grenading and melee system that is now featured in almost every FPS), I’ll definitely agree that it isn’t the OMGWTFBBQ best game ever. In a way, it’s almost a little unfair - when you see all the fanboy hype, it’s almost hard not to hate it. I feel Gears of War got hit with similar treatment, with fanboys kinda ruining the game.

Also, on a side note, what’s with the sudden market shift towards graphics? I’m seeing games come out left and right that run at unplayable framerates due to the rediculously over-stretched engines (see Grand Theft Auto IV), and yet everyone just drools over the pretty scenes. What happened to gameplay > graphics? It seems like any crap game can sell well now as long as it has the flashy graphics, and I can’t help but feel that the game industry will kill itself over it. =\

@foxUnit01:

I feel Gears of War got hit with similar treatment, with fanboys kinda ruining the game.

Now, while I enjoy me some of that good ol’ Halo, I have to admit that I sold my copy of Gears of War to a coworker for $10 after playing the game for about an hour. I don’t know what it was exactly, but I couldn’t stand the game at all. The complete lack of color didn’t help either.

As far as graphics go, as long as you cover everything with ample amounts of bloom and ZOMG HDR nobody will ever notice the horrible textures, barely playable framerates, or any the other amazing graphical shortcomings that developers these days try to cover up through the use of annoying filter and shaders.

Nah, that’s not over-stretching engines, it’s called console port surgery. Usually, console games ported to PC come with incredibly unoptimized engines which end up requiring behemoths to even simply START.

Of course, monsters such as Crysis exist too, but I guess we could always say what Crytek said: “We were developing for the future”… They wanted to make a game which would scale upwards with the latest hardware for years to come, but that really didn’t serve them right in the end as everyone wanted to run the game at max right away.

As for Halo, dare I say I never ever noticed the difference? I don’t remember what was used before Halo, but I know I didn’t feel it was that much of a revolution; more an evolution. Was I to compare, I’d take the Gears of War grenade interface a million times over. And speaking of Gears, I think when it first came out people were a bit surprised by it. It wasn’t expected at all and made a huge hit, but at first it wasn’t drowned by fanbois. Now that the 2nd iteration is up, though, there’s a buffer overflow

I think on the graphics things, it comes down to a few points:
-Games need to be done quick to make a quick buck
-Now that even consoles are online, publishers can push more and use the subversive “day 1 patch” hack as an excuse
-Consoles and PCs are so different to work with that developers often end up blowing one of those, with PC being the most prevalent victim because of “pirating”, which became the #1 poor excuse for invasive DRM and cheap-ass ports
-Being cutting-edge helps in reviews
-Shiny stuff catches the eye in retail stores
-Having two shiny sequences makes for a perfect trailer, even if the game is shit

Wow, FriendlyFire just hit the nail on the head.

With regard to Gears of War, I treat it as more of a tactical shooter than a run-and-gun FPS - it brings a much slower pacing that requires you to think more than just blindly aim and shoot. While I realize this pacing turns a lot of people off (including some to just call it “whack-a-mole” lol), I think it’s a bit of a refreshing formula.

Sion, on your graphics blurb in general, I will completely agree with you - though remember, it’s not just graphical shortcomings that are being covered up, it’s gameplay shortcomings too. Again, I revisit Grand Theft Auto IV, which thanks to the new physics systems had awful control in addition to awful framerates. The game was a huge step backwards - I’ll probably be trading that in when I go to pick up Left 4 Dead near the end of the month.
I’d be temped to bring Soul Calibur into the graphics over gameplay fray as well (any fighting game where mashing wins over calculated attacks is kinda lame), but at least that game runs well. =P

I had hoped, with regards to engines, that Call of Duty 4’s success would set a standard, as that game manages to look damn fine enough while running at a silky-smooth 60 FPS, but apparently this isn’t the case.

On a completely random note, I think Unreal Tournament 2004 still has some of the best graphics on the market, and yet that engine is able to scale down to the point where it can be run in software rendering mode, which is just completely badass (seriously, what’s the last game you’d played to support software rendering?)

Flash games? ;D

In all seriousness, I agree, Gears is far more of a tactical shooter, yet its style is bold and very action-packed, something a bit paradoxal considering the tactical genre is generally slow-paced Rainbow Six-alike style. It might’ve turned some people off, but I have to applaud Epic for making such a game, since it really feels different, but not wrong.

I think GTA IV isn’t all that bad; the largest gripe I have with it is that it always feels a bit choppy while the visuals aren’t THAT good (the lens flares, for example, suck tremendously). When I swapped from GTA IV to, say, Burnout Paradise, I was like “Wow what the hell!?”…

I won’t be picking up L4D though. The gameplay looks really cool (proving that Valve and its studios really work on gameplay first, graphics later), but I’m not in the survival horror genre at all, I don’t play online (FL being the only notable exception) and I suck at FPS games

However, if you want original stuff, pick up Mirror’s Edge. I played the demo and I have to say I am amazed. I won’t be getting it on the PC because of EA’s bloody fucking idiotic DRM (which I could rant about for hours on), but I’ll look for it on the PS3 or 360. Its art style is incredible, something I like since while it does make use of a powerful engine, the striking part is the art itself, not the tech behind it. Its first-person perspective is also rather bewildering for a semi-platformer parkour game, since it’s quite easy to feel disorientated while playing, but at the same time it becomes incredibly immersive. The gameplay rolls out good and the character feels responsive, and the levels look really diverse and interesting to play in. Reminds me of Prince of Persia with a Splinter Cell vibe.

CoD4… I loved the game, loved the atmosphere, the art style, the voiceovers, but I think the engine was slightly lacking. Yes, it might scale better, but I think other games had better graphics at that time. Still a mighty fine game well deserving the praise it got, though!

As for your UT04 comment, I believe it looks good, but it definitely has been outmatched by most recent AAA titles out there. Of course, for scalability you can’t beat software rendering, but I’ll then refer back to the points I made earlier…

And sorry for hijacking your poor thread ;D

@foxUnit01:

I’d be temped to bring Soul Calibur into the graphics over gameplay fray as well (any fighting game where mashing wins over calculated attacks is kinda lame), but at least that game runs well. =P

Eh, I haven’t really had any issues as far as having trouble dealing with button mashers in SC4 goes - though I can see it being a pain in online matches if there’s a decent amount of lag. I typically switch over to Siegfried from Seung Mina if I’m concerned about someone playing like a schmuck, since his long range and wide sweeping attacks are very good for cleaning the clocks of people that don’t know how to play properly.

I’d also suggest getting used to guard impacting a little, since button mashers tend to be a bit repetitive - I’m not terribly great at impacting during a ‘real’ fight, but against a masher I can knock them back roughly four out of five times… which is sometimes enough to make them get angry and leave on its own.

…and yes, I am a huge Soul Calibur fan.

Yeah, Impact was the only thing that saved the game for me - due to the precise timing required (and I’m glad they made it precise), it helps allow tight reaction times to gain you an upper hand - it becomes fairly easy to simply break X,X,X combos and start dishing out the pain. Still though, I can’t help but go back and play Guilty Gear when I’m in the mood for playing a fighting game. I guess that’s mainly because GG is more of a tradtional stick-movement oriented fighter, whereas Soul Calibur is button combos (which is fine, that’s way more accessable, but having to do correct movements gives a sort of satisfying finesse)

Edit: Figured I’d comment:
@FriendlyFire:

but I think the engine was slightly lacking. Yes, it might scale better, but I think other games had better graphics at that time.

Yes, but it more than made up for this with the fact that it almost NEVER dips below 60fps, which is crucial considering the demanding pace. I applaud them for recognizing the gameplay benefit of this over making the game look pretty.

I think the best engine is one which can scale to fit your needs and wishes. If you want ubar graphics at the cost of framerates, do it. if you want good graphics with silky-smooth gameplay, do it. The issue right now is that either you play them at max or you get ugly, dirty graphics. Most engines out there don’t scale well; they completely disable features while not giving an actually proportional performance gain. When I take Sup Com at Very Low, it’s twice as bad-looking as CnC Generals on High and it still won’t run on a computer which makes Generals sing. The same can be said about Crysis VS UT04 and such…

Devs need to start thinking about the broader spectrum, but that should not come at the cost of a lower peak quality for those who can or want to run it. Relic producer Tim Holman echoes what you said, Fox.

@foxUnit01:

Still though, I can’t help but go back and play Guilty Gear when I’m in the mood for playing a fighting game.

Guilty Gear is fun, I never really got too far into it though. Now, Melty Blood on the other hand - that’s a 2D fighter I’m nuts about.

Indeed. Part of the problem I’ve come to realize is the raw code - when you’re adding more to the engine, regardless of rather it’s processed or not, the code itself is getting more and more sophisticated. I have a feeling poorly-optimized engines that run on a low-end configuration are still processing a lot of that high-end code - probably something like adding an “if” statement to a basic C++ program - regardless of rather the “if” is true or false, the computer is still processing that code.