As good as Big Surf looks, I won't be getting it till my xbox stops fannying about overheating with two red lights and gives me three so I can get it replaced.
@Gossy... strictly 4 my ninjas: HA! I know nobody cares and chances are nobody will even ever read this, but I have resurrected my 'box from the dead! I opened that sucker up and howvere a metric fuckton of dust off of the heat sink- now it is all good!
On the sqame note, I also moved it into the front room and hooked it up via HDMI, can't believe I didn't do that sooner... sah-weet!!!
Big Surf Island is okay, but they should have had more than 10 online challenges - and the actual map size isn't that big. For $12.99, I was hoping for a lot more, considering the original game is $19.99 now!
@Ecks: You know, when the game came out it was $60, right? BSI is about the size of 1/4 of paradise city, so it definitely seems appropriate. along with these legendary cars, 8 new buggies and more trophies, and being a large extension to an already excellent game, it wouldnt be wrong to say that $12 is too little of a price. it's overly worth $12. stop being a cheap idiot.
@Ackers rhymes with Crackers: you can't buy it with the packs, but you can buy the game on the PS Store. also, if you did buy it with all the packs, it would cost about $80.
@Phydeaux: uhh what are you talking about? EA made this game and they tend to put DRM in their games (Burnout Paradise, Spore, Dead Space, Mass Effect, etc.) I honestly don't see why everyone bashes it and says stupid shit about it. I haven't had any problems with DRM filled games.
At last, someone with sense. You see games progress all the way through a consoles life (even after with Dreamcast) and they keep finding new ways to push the hardware. Anyone saying they have maxed a console is either lying to make their game sound better than it is or as said in the article, they are out of ideas on how to move forward.
I think he never played God of War Chains of Olympus on the PSP.
As much as I hate to admit it, that game pretty much maxed out the PSP. I would shit my pants uncontrollably (not literally of course) if some game came out and out-do GoW:CoO. I will buy Resistance Retribution soon and check out even if that game comes closer to maxing it.
Speaking of God of War, is God of War 3 have an exclusive bonus edition which has God of Wars 1 and 2 on a single bluray disk? If so, then I need to buy a PS3 soon.
You come up with new techniques - so you thought simulating 'real' water was prohibitive? Well someone's come up with a clever way to do it in 1/5th the CPU time and now suddenly you can make water on that 'maxed out' console look a lot better. Or the tools get a lot better and now your baked in textures and polygon reduced models look much better than they used to on the same hardware. Or perhaps you can make smarter stylistic choices, like Madworld did.
This only works up to a certain point, of course. Obviously you can make better 'realistic' looking games on the X360/PS3 than the Wii with a given amount of effort, and that water-simulation algorithm probably won't help much on an NES, but you can always bump the ceiling just a little higher.
Directly to the point, it's asinine for EA to say they've 'maxed out' a console that's only 3 and a half years old, unless they think their employees suck.
@oldtaku: As a related observation, the guys at Insomniac were so happy with the water implementation that they did for Resistance 2 that they've apparently put the source code on their web site for any other PS3 developer to use (you don't even have to credit them, let alone pay them). I think that this sort of openness from the more expert 1st and 2nd party developers really benefits the platform, resulting in better games across the board which then improve console sales which then improve game sales.
@aeolus702: Blizzard doesn't even make console games, and they can't "max out" something which doesn't really have specific specs, as every PC is different...
Just one fact alone show's he's completely right: if you used modern tools to make a Gamecube game, you could make even better looking game than if you were making a Gamecube game at launch. The quality of the art team is always paramount, of course, but better tools and processes can allow for better art. The software and techniques used to make games keep improving regardless of game hardware limitations, and that in turn opens doors to new kinds of game content as well as improves upon existing ways of making game content.
In other words, game hardware may remain static, but the way you go about making games doesn't. Which is exactly what Alex Fry was saying.
@nekocomet the dejected: Sort of. If your toolset for making textures was MS Paint then that would really limit the kinds of visuals you can pull off, as an extreme example. Although even in that case a particularly crafty developer could still make a fantastic game with super stylized visuals. I guess the consideration here would be that if Rogue Squadron 2 was made today with modern software and techniques, it could end up looking significantly better even on the same hardware.
@delRock: It's also not simply about optimization but how one approaches design. Sure a developer could attempt to work in real-time radiosity into their lighting model and make detail textures generated from real-time perlin noise and claim they maxed it all out. They can find an optimized version of an algorithm and come no closer to acceptable frame rates but if you're goal is Super Mario Sunshine and you're doing all this and it all goes into a 30 second cut scene in an otherwise 30 hour game then you have to ask yourself if you're approaching this challenge correctly.
@delRock: People who talk about maxing out a console usually mean in terms of "this is the best it can do" in terms of graphics or what have you. Maxing out a console so that it starts to chug is easy, but nobody's really talking about that. The point is that you can never really say "this is the best graphics/physics/AI etc that console Z can do" because techniques will always continue improving.
06/15/09
06/15/09
Fall, damn you, fall!!!
06/15/09
On the sqame note, I also moved it into the front room and hooked it up via HDMI, can't believe I didn't do that sooner... sah-weet!!!
06/15/09
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*runs to shops
DAM THEY ARE CLOSED!
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
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Anyone saying they have maxed a console is either lying to make their game sound better than it is or as said in the article, they are out of ideas on how to move forward.
06/17/09
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As much as I hate to admit it, that game pretty much maxed out the PSP. I would shit my pants uncontrollably (not literally of course) if some game came out and out-do GoW:CoO. I will buy Resistance Retribution soon and check out even if that game comes closer to maxing it.
Speaking of God of War, is God of War 3 have an exclusive bonus edition which has God of Wars 1 and 2 on a single bluray disk? If so, then I need to buy a PS3 soon.
06/13/09
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This only works up to a certain point, of course. Obviously you can make better 'realistic' looking games on the X360/PS3 than the Wii with a given amount of effort, and that water-simulation algorithm probably won't help much on an NES, but you can always bump the ceiling just a little higher.
Directly to the point, it's asinine for EA to say they've 'maxed out' a console that's only 3 and a half years old, unless they think their employees suck.
06/14/09
06/13/09
lol
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06/13/09
Blizzard cant even max out a cell phone.
WoW runs on a calculator!
06/13/09
In other words, game hardware may remain static, but the way you go about making games doesn't. Which is exactly what Alex Fry was saying.
06/13/09
06/13/09
@nekocomet the dejected: Sort of. If your toolset for making textures was MS Paint then that would really limit the kinds of visuals you can pull off, as an extreme example. Although even in that case a particularly crafty developer could still make a fantastic game with super stylized visuals. I guess the consideration here would be that if Rogue Squadron 2 was made today with modern software and techniques, it could end up looking significantly better even on the same hardware.
06/13/09
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