(John Woo's) Stranglehold demo on Xbox 360 Marketplace

[Musopticon?]

Like Hurl, I'm way more impressed by Eternal Sonata. I hope to play it sometime soon.

[Morgoth]

It's because they worked with a broken UE3... (read the Silicon Knights case).

Broken except for the fact that the game is fully functional and is coming out long after Gears.

 

The textures look strange because their lighting model and focus are different. Gears has virtually no environmental reactivity. Stranglehold is filled with destructible objects. It's not surprising that the textures and lighting look so different.

So much for "Next-Gen". Years long trumpet noise, and eventually everything has to be dumbed down again. I wonder how Crysis manages to remain constantly high graphics quality even if you can destroy pretty much everything there too?

[Llyranor]

Eternal Sonata has awesome music and has co-op. Can't go wrong.

 

Though, from Japanese impressions, it isn't the best JRPG ever. I'm fine with that, though.

[samm]

[a bit late, but thx mr. sawyer & zoma.]

[J.E. Sawyer]

So much for "Next-Gen". Years long trumpet noise, and eventually everything has to be dumbed down again. I wonder how Crysis manages to remain constantly high graphics quality even if you can destroy pretty much everything there too?

Crysis runs at an absurdly low framerate except when on very high end hardware. If you're running Vista with DX10 on a system with quad SLI, I guess it looks pretty sweet.

[Morgoth]

So much for "Next-Gen". Years long trumpet noise, and eventually everything has to be dumbed down again. I wonder how Crysis manages to remain constantly high graphics quality even if you can destroy pretty much everything there too?

Crysis runs at an absurdly low framerate except when on very high end hardware. If you're running Vista with DX10 on a system with quad SLI, I guess it looks pretty sweet.

Absurdly low? How would you know, have you played it? Crytek wouldn't want to allienate a huge percentage of customers by requiring a DX10 Quad SLI rig to run the game with adequate framerates.

Now of course low texture resolution for flying props won't break the fun for me, it's just kinda sad that there's always a lot fuzz and hype about any new Unreal Engine, and as soon as people get their hands on a game which utilizes newest Unreal Tech, there's usually much groan and complaints afterwards. It was the same with Unreal2 as well, they fed the journalists/fanboys with nice DX8 demos, just to find out that the final product was a DX7 game and not so good looking as promised.

Edited August 12, 2007 by Morgoth

[J.E. Sawyer]

Absurdly low? How would you know, have you played it? Crytek wouldn't want to allienate a huge percentage of customers by requiring a DX10 Quad SLI rig to run the game with adequate framerates.

Why not? Id has been doing it for years. Crytek themselves have released videos comparing DX9 and DX10 versions of the same scene. The DX9 versions look very nice, but the DX10 versions are the ones that look "super good".

 

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/19967.html

 

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/19965.html

 

From the InCrysis wiki:

 

We do not know how much processor power is needed, though in a recent PC Gamer UK magazine preview Cevat Yerli said an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 2GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 card could run the game at "ultra detail" settings.

 

That's $250 for the CPU and $300 for the video card alone just to run it at that level of detail, plus Vista for DX10. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that if you want it to run at a high framerate, you would need an 8800 GTX or equivalent. That's like $500-$600+ for just the card.

 

I fully believe that Crytek is engineering a very scalable engine. The fact that they are supporting Shader Model 2.0 cards proves that. But I just as fully believe that the level of quality and speed we see in their best trailers isn't going to be reproduced on anything less than the most expensive PC rigs available.

 

Now of course low texture resolution for flying props won't break the fun for me, it's just kinda sad that there's always a lot fuzz and hype about any new Unreal Engine, and as soon as people get their hands on a game which utilizes newest Unreal Tech, there's usually much groan and complaints afterwards. It was the same with Unreal2 as well, they fed the journalists/fanboys with nice DX8 demos, just to find out that the final product was a DX7 game and not so good looking as promised.

I'm not an Unreal fanboy, but Gears did come out a full year prior to when Crysis is scheduled to be released. And though some companies are having problems with the engine, there are a few other games out that use it. And until Crysis and CryEngine2-powered games come out, I'll be as skeptical of them as I am of Id Tech 5.

[karka]

Actually, I liked the DX9 version of jungle fight better and couldn't see much difference between two hunter videos.

[Morgoth]

I'm gonna wait to pass judgement on Stranglehold until I've played the demo myself. But I'm expecting graphical inconsistency, as I still believe the UE3 isn't as good as Mark Rain often likes to tell people....

 

Edit: On the bright side though Mass Effect looks kick-ass, at least the digital actors. Now I wonder how many comprehensive changes Bioware had to make there with UE3 to achieve this level of detail...

Edited August 12, 2007 by Morgoth

[Hell Kitty]

There is no graphical inconsistency, this game just doesn't look that crash hot.

 

However, if you've ever dreamt of demolishing watermelons with your ass, and I know you have, then this is the game for you.