X-Box, Playstation, and Wii Game News

[king3pj]

I'm surprised RotTR is being released on the 360 as well. I wonder if it will be seriously nerfed in terms of graphics and performance for the last gen system, or the current-gen version will suffer to make them more comparable experiences, or perhaps somewhere in between.

It seems like a bad move to me. I talked about something similar in the Call of Duty discussion a couple pages back in this same thread. It's time for companies to abandon the PS3 and 360. Luckily most of them already have.

Here's the thing. The Xbox One and PS4 have 8GB of RAM. The 360 has 512MB of RAM that can be used by the GPU or the rest of the system. The PS3 only has 256MB dedicated to RAM and 256MB dedicated to the GPU. There aren't too many PC games that can run on 512MB or the PS3's shockingly low 256MB of RAM these days.

If you tell a developer that the same game has to run on an Xbox One and a 10 year old console with 512MB of RAM, a much weaker GPU, and a much weaker CPU I don't believe it can be done without making some major sacrifices.

We aren't just talking about graphics textures either. You can feed an old console low quality textures and it will look worse but it will still run. There are lots of other things modern games use hardware for too though. The physics system, number of enemies on screen, AI, destruction, keeping track of tons of objects around the game world (this is where Skyrim broke the PS3).... All of these things take resources and forcing the game to run on the 360 means less advanced forms of these functions.

The best case scenario is that they build the Xbox One and PC versions first and then try their best approximation of the game on 360. Even if the 360 version is severely gimped in all areas at least the Xbox One version doesn't suffer. If they try from the start to make something capable of running on both systems with the only difference being texture quality they Xbox One version won't be as good of a game as it could be.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Nowadays most companies focus on current gen and then outsource the last gen port to another company so that the quality of the current gen isn't compromised. This was done with games like Titanfall, Shadow of Mordor, MK X (when it was still in development), Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, etc. The result is that current gen isn't held back by last gen's deficiencies. However, it can result in bad downgraded ports since companies often bid for these and often aren't prepared to take on the monumental porting tasks. This was most apparent with the Arkham Knight PC version debacle that was sent as a port to a studio with less than 20 people at it.

 

[king3pj]

Nowadays most companies focus on current gen and then outsource the last gen port to another company so that the quality of the current gen isn't compromised. This was done with games like Titanfall, Shadow of Mordor, MK X (when it was still in development), Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, etc. The result is that current gen isn't held back by last gen's deficiencies. However, it can result in bad downgraded ports since companies often bid for these and often aren't prepared to take on the monumental porting tasks. This was most apparent with the Arkham Knight PC version debacle that was sent as a port to a studio with less than 20 people at it.

I don't think it's just the skill of the teams that get the porting duties that is the problem though. In Arkham Knight's they supposedly only had 8 weeks to do the PC port because the console version was behind schedule. If the 12 people listed in the credits for PC porting were the only people involved and they only had 8 weeks you can see why it would be a nightmare.

Arkham Knight getting ported to PC is a different situation though. The 360s specs are 10 years old. How can a team be expected to make a proper Shadow of Mordor port from the Xbox One version to Xbox 360?

We are talking about the Xbox One with 8GB of RAM and a semi modern APU versus the 360 with 512MB of RAM and 10 year old graphics and processing. I would argue that even the main team who made the Xbox One version wouldn't be able to make a faithful 360 port.

The only way they are going to be able to create a faithful port is by gimping the Xbox One version to make it easier to copy to the 360. AI and physics systems that could be used on Xbox One wouldn't be able to run on 360. The difference between Xbox One and 360 is more than just higher quality textures. There is a lot of processing the Xbox One can handle that the 360 can't.

Luckily Shadow of Mordor didn't worry about making sure the last gen versions could be turned into a faithful port. They left out things like the nemesis system and according to the reviews I read the last gen version was terrible.

Even most of the indie games I play on Steam ask for more than the 512MB of RAM in the 360 and that RAM is actually shared with the GPU since it doesn't have its own VRAM like PC GPUs do. That's not even bringing the 10 year old GPU and CPU into the equation.

 

[yourbeliefs]

So apparently the soundtrack for Tony Hawk 5 was released some time ago. The past games have had ICONIC soundtracks, with THPS 3 probably being the best one, and honestly one of the best game soundtracks ever (although the fact that the tracks were all edited for content was a little annoying.) I mean seriously, look at this thing. I just went through it a second ago and I wan to leave work and fire up a new campaign. As far as this game goes, while I can't flat out say it sucks, I CAN say that I have never heard of ANY of the songs or ANY of the artists...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/08/17/tony-hawks-pro-skater-5-soundtrack-revealed

Update. Well Jeff Gerstmann just posted this... not very promising..

 

[yourbeliefs]

New Hitman coming March 11

http://www.polygon.com/2015/9/29/9414265/hitman-2016-release-date-intro-pack-content

 

[yourbeliefs]

Today's Xbox One Bundle is $399 for Gears of War: UE, Rare Replay, Ori and 1TB.

http://news.xbox.com/2015/09/xbox-one-1tb-holiday-bundle

 

[king3pj]

Today's Xbox One Bundle is $399 for Gears of War: UE, Rare Replay, Ori and 1TB.

http://news.xbox.com/2015/09/xbox-one-1tb-holiday-bundle

Nice bundle. I played a bit of Ori on PC and it really is an awesome platformer and the art style gives Rayman Legends a run for it's money. It's also a better deal for 360 owners looking to upgrade because they can grab Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition free with their existing Live Gold account.

If they buy the Gears bundle they can get all the games included in both bundles for a total of $460. If they tried to do that the other way around it would cost them $490. Of course, that's only good for people who are already Gold subscribers on 360 and people might not be interested in owning every game in both of these bundles.

 

[king3pj]

So apparently the soundtrack for Tony Hawk 5 was released some time ago. The past games have had ICONIC soundtracks, with THPS 3 probably being the best one, and honestly one of the best game soundtracks ever (although the fact that the tracks were all edited for content was a little annoying.) I mean seriously, look at this thing. I just went through it a second ago and I wan to leave work and fire up a new campaign. As far as this game goes, while I can't flat out say it sucks, I CAN say that I have never heard of ANY of the songs or ANY of the artists...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/08/17/tony-hawks-pro-skater-5-soundtrack-revealed

Update. Well Jeff Gerstmann just posted this... not very promising..

This release kind of came out of nowhere for me. I mentioned previously that I loved the THPS series growing up, especially THPS 3. It doesn't surprise me that this game might not be very high quality though. They didn't give the press early review copies and I haven't seen a single advertisement on TV or the internet for this game. Like I said, I didn't even realize it was coming out this week.

They clearly aren't very proud of the product they put out. They might have actually tried to let people know it was coming out if they were.

 

[Poke]

Sony's big PlayStation 4 update arrives tomorrow

http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/29/ps4-firmware-update-30-arrives-sept-30/

 

[yourbeliefs]

What's annoying is that this was presented as the real "reboot" of the series to bring it back to the glory days. The fact that the graphics are so blah and no press copies and insane patch sizes just points to something that started off as promising but then something screwed up and then Activision decided that it was better to just kick it out the door and completely forget about it.

As I mentioned elsewhere, if the game sucks then it just means I get to send back my One to Microsoft earlier than expected, which hopefully will mean I'll get it back in time for WWE 2K16.

 

[yourbeliefs]

To coincide with the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future, TellTale is re-releasing their BTTF adventure game for consoles. It basically has newer features, new voicework from Tom Wilson (Biff) and some behind the scenes stuff.



Personally I would have preferred to see an announcement of a follow up to THIS game. While not wishing to spoil, and while I definitely recommend the BTTF game series, the games don't really "end." The end on a cliffhanger and even say "To Be Continued" at the end. Maybe interest in this will spark the sequel finally.

 

[Zookster]

To coincide with the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future, TellTale is re-releasing their BTTF adventure game for consoles. It basically has newer features, new voicework from Tom Wilson (Biff) and some behind the scenes stuff.



Personally I would have preferred to see an announcement of a follow up to THIS game. While not wishing to spoil, and while I definitely recommend the BTTF game series, the games don't really "end." The end on a cliffhanger and even say "To Be Continued" at the end. Maybe interest in this will spark the sequel finally.

As much as I enjoyed this series, I would have trouble motivating myself to replay them, even five years later, since it's a completely linear story and there are no decisions that change aspects of the story, just extra dialogue options that you can hear in a single playthrough anyway. But if you haven't played them, I wholeheartedly second yourbeliefs's recommendation.

 

[king3pj]

To coincide with the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future, TellTale is re-releasing their BTTF adventure game for consoles. It basically has newer features, new voicework from Tom Wilson (Biff) and some behind the scenes stuff.



Personally I would have preferred to see an announcement of a follow up to THIS game. While not wishing to spoil, and while I definitely recommend the BTTF game series, the games don't really "end." The end on a cliffhanger and even say "To Be Continued" at the end. Maybe interest in this will spark the sequel finally.

As much as I enjoyed this series, I would have trouble motivating myself to replay them, even five years later, since it's a completely linear story and there are no decisions that change aspects of the story, just extra dialogue options that you can hear in a single playthrough anyway. But if you haven't played them, I wholeheartedly second yourbeliefs's recommendation.

I know I bought this game but I don't see it in my Steam library. I must have grabbed it on PS3 which means I'll never play it.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Maybe you got it on Humble Bundle. That's where I got mine.

 

[Zookster]

I know I bought this game but I don't see it in my Steam library. I must have grabbed it on PS3 which means I'll never play it.

BTFF was free for Plus members in January 2012. I believe I had already bought it by then on sale for five bucks.

 

[king3pj]

Maybe you got it on Humble Bundle. That's where I got mine.

BTFF was free for Plus members in January 2012. I believe I had already bought it by then on sale for five bucks.

I can't find it in my Humble library either. I'm thinking I must have just gotten it on PS3. I suppose I could hook my PS3 back up for a couple days just to play this but I doubt I will ever actually go to the trouble of doing that. I'm guessing Sony put out lots of updates waiting for me to download in the 2 years my PS3 has been disconnected.

 

[Zookster]

I'm guessing Sony put out lots of updates waiting for me to download in the 2 years my PS3 has been disconnected.

I believe you only need to download and install the latest one. In fact, it's probably impossible to directly download and install any others. I say this based on my experience of upgrading the PS3 HDD and installing the latest firmware. In other words, the latest firmware includes all previous updates, and once the new firmware is released, the others are no longer available.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well it looks like all signs are pointing to Tony Hawk 5 being sh*t. Eurogamer shared this video of glitches..




And NeoGAF has this ongoing thread of awful gifs from the game.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1118282

And finally (unfortunately I don't have a link but read it on Twitter) it appears that Tony Hawk's License agreement with Activision ends after this year, so it looks like this may be a disgusting attempt by the company to essentially bury the franchise before it comes up on the market, which if that's the case, Kotick can walk in front of a train.

Then again, this is the same company that thought this marketing campaign would be a good idea for Black Ops 3, because apparently after ELEVEN games, Call of Duty needs crazy marketing to sell itself..

 

[king3pj]

Looks like their physics system and wall detection are completely broken. My guess is they will never fully fix that because it will be too much work to write in a whole new physics system. That said, I may still rent it for a week from my local video store just out of morbid curiosity.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I think I'm just going to fire up THPS 3 again and do another full campaign on that. Listening to that soundtrack really brought the memories back.