Slashdot Mirror
First Xbox 360 Reviews Hitting the Web
An anonymous reader writes "The first reviews for Xbox 360 games are starting to hit the web! 1UP has reviewed Kameo, Project Gotham Racing 3, FIFA Soccer 2006, NBA 2K6, and Amped 3, while IGN has reviewed Madden NFL 06, Kameo, and NBA 2K6. Judging from both sets of reviews, it looks like Project Gotham Racing 3 - which scored a 10/10 on 1UP - is the only sure winner of the 360 launch games thus far."
Personally, I'm holding off til later I think. Unless Perfect Dark Zero scores a massive 9 something everywhere (ala Halo at Xbox launch), there just won't be any great games til Christmas at the earliest.
Where are the first person shooters and Adventure/RPG games? Or better yet something completely diffrent. Are there going to be any launch titles like that?
What I find interesting about reviews during this time is that those who have to have the 360 have already bought, and likely already know which of the 20 or 30 games available they will buy. It's not like there will be anyone with a 360 who has not already been planning on buying one. So, just how useful is a review like this when, pretty much by definition, the likely consumers have already made up their minds?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
8.0/10.0
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
How good is it as a multimedia machine? What file formats and codecs does it play? Should I go for a chipped xbox, or wait for the xbox 360?
Slagborr
Does anyone else see what I see? All but one of these is a sequel! Where, O where, have the original fun-to-play games gone? :(
Seriously, if your sole purpose is to play movies, get a computer. The graphics hardware, which is the majority of the power and cost, is almost totally wasted on that kind of thing. What's more, it's not x86 so there will be a much smaller software library for it than an Intel or AMD box.
Get a small form factor Athlon box with a cheap graphics and sound card and call it a day, that's all you need for multi-media. With that, you can easily upgrade components as needed, and software to play new formats.
I mean let's be real: This is a GAME console, if you don't care about it for playing games, there's little reason to get one, espically at the current prices. $500 is plenty to build a media PC better than any X-box.
From the Project Gotham Racing 3 review: "PGR3's use of motion blur is similarly effective. Every object in the environment blurs realistically as speeding vehicles tear through the tracks"
I've driven pretty fast. I once drove a Dodge Viper around a race track and got some pretty wicked speed, hitting about 150mph on the back straight. What didn't I see? Motion blur.
I understand that the designers want to give the player a better sense of speed, but real environments don't blur, they simply move by too quickly to see any detail. It's even worse when the reviewers start to declare unrealistic effects as very realistic. It's like in a movie when a car careens over an embankment and explodes. Sure, the explosion looked realistic *if cars actually exploded when they crashed* (even the Pinto didn't explode like that). Same thing here... I'm sure the bluring is very close to what it would actually look like *if environments actually did blur at high speeds*.
On an unrelated note, I loved the special effects in Star Wars Episode III. Those lightsabers looked very realistic.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Tecmo support is the only reason I am going to buy a 360, and actually the only reason I bought a XBox too. Love or hate Itagaki(sp), he puts out really solid games with good game play and graphics. Gaiden still stands up strong against anything new.
I'm sorry, I actually just took my old one and spun it around really fast.
How long before a ModChip comes out? Will they port XBMC, or is there a reason to? How good is the 360's media player interface?
Giving a game perfect score doesn't sound like something a respectable reviewer should do.
10 out of 10 possible indicates perfection, something that can't be improved. Suppose that a year later,
the game gets a sequel with some improvements. More cars, more levels - the usual sequel stuff. Shouldn't
that also receive a perfect score of 10, since it is the same "perfect" game, but just... better?
I do understand that scores are meant to be read like the bible, that they are just general guidelines and
that you really need to read the review. But scores are what will be quoted on advertisements, and a pretty clearly hype-influenced perfect score is just sad.
I'm on the fence right now. I think I want a console. It'd be my fist console since the SNES, I've been a PC-only gamer for that long. However the 360 is tempting me. There's lots of titles that sound interesting, and I have a nice HDTV and surround setup now that I want to play on.
The deciding factor is going to be how good the games sound. If there's enough 360 games that sound really good, I think I'll take the plunge and get one. If not, I'll stick with my PC as my only game platform.
I'm not a console gamer myself, but I do play games on the PC, and I try to keep up with the games market in case I find a console I do want. What is it about the XBox 360 that your friends don't like?
I think motion blur in games like Burnout helps to create the sense of speed. But, games like that also have things like "boost", etc. It is an unrealistic game to begin with, so you get the feeling like you are going 300mph or whatever. But, in my simulation games (Gran Turismo, PGR) I would hate to have motion blur.
1UP
Kameo: 7.0
Project Gothem Racing 3: 10.0
Fifa Soccer 2006: 7.0
NBA 2K6: 7.0
Amped 3: 7.0
IGN
Madden 2006 : 8.0
Kameo : 8.4
NBA 2K6 : 7.8
I recognize that most of these are sports games, and sports game revies have been dropping lately, but these scores seem pretty 'Average' (that is, not very impressive). Certainly PGR 3 seems to have scored well, but is one racing game really going to move systems?
Seeing these scores for Kameo is a real dissapointment; I really enjoyed Rare's games for the N64 and wanted them to recapture their greatness.
Racing games (and sports games in general) are trying to reproduce television reality, not actual reality. Television images are where the blur comes from.
Well another smashing piece of hardware hits the streets, so what ? The games are still lame. They are much more beautiful than on the previous one sure but what about interest ?
Blasting monsters or whatnot is not my cup of tea (or coffee or mountain dew or whatever), I'm fed up with micromanaging my armada in the 3565654684th copy of the click fest called warcraft and I don't care much to see sprites living their own lives on screen. MMORPG are a bug nightmare and a support pit. So what's left ?
(Answer : another useless shiny box full of top of the line hardware gathering dust somewhere on a shelf)
malheureusement la stupidité n'est ni curable, ni mortelle.
I've never, ever seen a blue whale in person. Never! In fact, I don't know anybody who has! Sure, I've seen pictures... but those could be fake.
My personal experiences and the hearsay of my friends are the only accurate way to measure the world around me. If I personally don't know somebody who has seen a blue whale, they can't possibly exist.
Right?
That's actually always been one of the problems games have had next to movies for realism. I mean films are still shot at 24fps. It's rare to play a game at less than 30fps, and many people insist on 60fps or more. Yet the film, despite it;s low frame rate, still has a smoothness that games don't. Why? Motion blur.
If you look at a game screenshot with lots of motion, everything is crystal clear. It's a snapshot of precisely what was happening at that given instant. It's like having a still photo with an infinetly fast shutter speed. If however you look at a movie frame with teh same kind of action, you'll notice it's heavily blurred. The camera is leaving the shutter open long enough to capture more than just a single instant.
Now the net effect, when played back is that the blurred scene looks more smooth. The faster something is moving, the more true this is. I mean let's say you have a game running at 30fps, and you have a rocket fly across the screen in just 3 frames. The way it will be rendered, without blur, will be with huge gaps inbetween. You'll see it on the left side, then the center, then the right, then gone. It looks jerky, cut up, unrealistic. However if that rocket were blurred as it moved, it would look more smooth and realistic to you.
Like any effect, it can be overused or used wrong, but blur can really enchance teh smoothness of images changing at high speeds.
Actually, this is no surprise at all.
When the original Xbox came out, it was actually better than what you could buy in PC graphics cards at the time. At launch, a console better be whooping ass, because after that's it's downhill! PC hardware gets updated, but the console hardware will stay the same for several years to come, during which it will not be top-notch anymore.
So yes, the xbox 360 will be pretty impressive graphics-wise for now, that's obvious. As a PC gamer you shouldn't despair, in a year or so, the Xbox360 high-tech equivalent hardware will be available at commodity prices (timespan may vary).
Plus, who'd want to give up that keyboard and mouse anyways... (my 2 cent)
Nice NDA's the review sites had to sign.. not a single actual gameplay screenshot! (from a sensible camera angle anyway) I suppose that's because from afar the graphics look exactly the same as they did on the old systems.. blocky and unsharp due to the low resolution.
I had an original Xbox shipped to me on release day but this time, there are simply no games that interest me - _at all_ - available at launch. Elder Scrolls III got me interested and so do some of the shooters.
What I did pre-order and what should arrive on release day is DDR Ultramix 3 - for the Xbox000.
Sure, all the hype is in place, and the X360 looks like a great platform... maybe I am just not paying attention, or have become jaded. But all my gaming friends are totally ambivalent on the X360. Some want to pick it up, most are going to wait and see what the PS3 is like, and in general there seems to be a collective shrug about the thing. Is it lack of Halo 3, or some really huge A-list title? Shouldn't be... the PS2 launched with basically SSX and Ridge Racer...
I dunno. There is some kind of elusive piece missing from the X360 launch to get me excited. I saw the posters for the pre-sale and thought Hey, I guess that IS out soon, huh.... I guess I'm just an old coot now. I play almost nothing but Warcraft these days, maybe that is it. :)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I think there is some serious "astroturfing" going on in this thread. Comments like yours, that are critical of the XBox, are being modded down as flamebait.
I've noticed the same thing as you, none of my friends are very excited about the 360. There doesn't seem to be much buzz surrounding it. Personally I think it is because all the games are just sequels, more of the same but with fancier graphics.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the Playstation3 comes out.
Interesting, all I hear online while in game lobbies between the games on XBC and KAI is how much people would run and buy it on the first day.
.... ...
.... and i think the old headset won't work either ....
....
.....
,,,
I have only 2 consoles (ps/2 & xbox) and only play a few hours a week, however I decided that I had to wait for PS3, see their relase titles first as I'm absolutely unhappy what I see about the xbox, and the games list leaves me uninterested
there is only one title that would interest me: the new Ghost Recon, but I won't buy a console for one game, and I am really pissed about all the crap I have to buy again to have a usable console
AV pack (again), hdd, wireless (if you want), remote control
Games: OK, they look good, but these screenshots are not as nice compared to what I saw on the sony presentation... OK, now 100s jump on me that they weren't playable demos, etc
I was really about getting one on the first week, but I started looking at all that, and just stepped back
I wait at least half a year and see who wins, I really do not want to end-up with 2 consoles like now, because one will be just sitting there untouched, now it is my ps2, next time it might be my 360, and it is 2x as much $$ to waste
Ignoring the fact that you can't pick a winner from "both sets of reviews" when it's only included in one of them...
The "games have to get nine out of ten to be worth playing" mentality bothers me. A lot. Scores are inflated to the point where they're almost meaningless anyway; even though Black and White was a good game, do you really think it would have been consistently rated at the 90% level if it wasn't so anticipated and so hyped? The 10/10 on PGR3 means jack except for it's the obligatory launch title that everyone is expected to buy with the console. What console hasn't launched with at least one game in the 9/10 or above range?
Personally, I know I'd have more fun with Kameo than I would PGR3. I've got racing games, and plenty of them. I'd much rather have an experience that's new instead of something that we see modified and released anew every six months in some form.
It's also a letdown to see how the scores are determined. Kameo was scored lower because it's only going to last "weeks, not months?" Give me a fucking break - weeks of entertainment for $50 is still pretty darn good, all things considered, and Kameo also seems to be one of the few 360 launch titles that has a plot of some kind. Apparently, that's become a bad thing.
Goo goo g'joob.
Agreed. EA is forcing you to rebuy their repolished stuff for the 360. No Burnout backward compatibility. What a shame. Hopefully they make me a fool but fixing that little omission by releasing a emulator for the 360.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
Weeks, not months?
They said it's a 15-20 hour game. That's a week, maybe two, at most. And that's not two weeks of constant entertainment- that's two weeks of being entertained for about an hour and a half. That's not worth $50; not to me, anyway.
I actually modded the XBox (the current one, not the 360) once, and let me tell you one thing... It felt TOO easy. Making the DVD region free, connect to the web, replace the built in HDD with a bigger one and copy the games to the HDD so they load much faster.. Absolutely amazing how easy it was. ;) Simply install one chip on the board, where it seems to have a perfect place reserved for it, and one extra wire going from one leg of the chip to one point on the board.
It was as if the XBox was designed with modding in mind
What I wonder is: will it be that easy with the 360? or will MS make it harder this time? Is it in their interest to make it harder? or is modding basically an encouraged sub-culture that benefits XBox?
(for example, I think the XMC [XBox Media Center], a software developed for the modded XBox to make the Xbox a home entertainment center so to speak, is bascially what I think MS had in mind when they changed the XBox 360 into a home entertainment center.. so... maybe it also benefits MS?)
"From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen" - Cat Stevens
Walmart has had a demo machine for over a week and I just saw one in Target. The graphics are damn sweet and I'm sure it will be a fantastic platform. That, alone, won'tmake the games better, but I can see myself buying one when the library is built up and the prices drop a little.
. . . Holy shit, you've managed to describe every single prerelease bit of hype that has ever been associated with any console EVAR!
With regards to gaming, the problem tends to be associated with the means of control. Innovation is hard due to the relative maturity of the market, most game types that work or can work with the standard controls have largely been explored (especially wrt the mass market).
This is why I feel Nintendo have done something very interesting. Games have needed a new means of control (that can be called a standard) in order to produce new types of experiences, it will allow designers to rethink how games should work, and so produce differing games than the norm now. Of course in time the market will consolodate back to the few game types that both work and have large appeal.
read my post: "hearing while in game lobbies" ..., people who own xbox games, and talk about all kind of crap during games, such as the new xbox ....
...
i am not reading any biased xbox forums,
In fact I even cancelled my xbox magazine subscription after reading the 360 vs PS3 vs nintendo article
The 360 doesn't play most of the games I already own. Why should I throw good money after bad?
Yes, they're creating patches to allow some of the older games to run, but you can bet that once the 360 is actually released, that development effort will be tapered off.
Chip H.
No, no love here either. But I'll go further and say I'm not feeling it from *any* of the consoles. The interest I have for the Revolution, based on its controller, is tempered by the fact that it seems the only other selling point is that it can play all the older games. Note to Nintendo: Retro gaming is cool, but not for very long. Yes it's fun to fire up Super Mario Brothers once in awhile, but I'm not going to slog through those games *again*.
But as far as the 360...PGR3 looks okay, I guess, but so does PGR2 and I'm not 1/3 of the way through that. To be fair, the same goes for GTA:SA...it's fun, but so was Vice City, and frankly I've moved on.
I'm beginning to think this new generation is the harbringer of some kind of gaming apocalypse...everybody, including nintendo, is pushing "more of the same" but with minor twists (better graphics, innovative controller). It's depressing when you look forward to the next systems for more of the same, but better!
Frankly, I see the only hope coming from giving away or making dev kits unbelievably cheap so that anyone and their dog can create a game and distribute it online (a la xbox live). Will a lot suck? Oh boy will they ever! But it's the only way any kind of innovation will happen, I think. But I guess as long as the big three get their royalties per disc, no one is going to care.
was the wheels. It appeared in every screenshot showing wheels that the wheels were smooth, semi-reflective surfaces. Most racing wheels are not giant mirrors but have some amount of openness for airflow and weight savings. At different speeds, the eye tricks you into seeing the wheels spinning at rates different than those at which they actually spin. An enhancement to realism that would improve this game vastly would be realistic aliasing effects on the wheels. Kajillion polygon real wheels would not be necessary if one instead used an alpha channel for transparency and a texture on the surface to give the illusion of spinning.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
I played Call Of Duty 2 at the neighborhood Best Buy, which has a kiosk set up with a widescreen Samsung LCD HDTV. I was thoroughly impressed. Having been a fan of the PC version of Call of Duty 1, call of duty 2 played with a great framerate, intuitive controls, and great lighting effects, all at widescreen 720p. There were also lots of little 'effects', such as the smooth blurring upon taking damage, the directional lighting from explosions, and the detailed character models that really made me stop and pay attention.
Granted, its a niche genre that probably won't sell a lot of systems, but if I can expect PC-calibre games on the system, then I'll probably get one.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
8.0 for Madden360 is seriously an abomination for a game with ZERO competition. As an avid 2k gamer since 1999 on Dreamcast, I am appalled at a second game in just a few months times that has disappointed the gaming public.
EA is resting on their laurels and doing exactly what a MONOPOLY would do to improve their product...next to nothing. If you are a football gamer who feels like I do (the mainstream gaming press like IGN and Gamespot have no intention of serving the interest of gamers) please make your voice heard about what should be done about having only one choice for a football game. My blog is pretty much dedicated to letting fellow gamer's voices be heard about EA and their football monopoly. http://monopolion.blogspot.com/
-Santoro
"Judging from both sets of reviews, it looks like Project Gotham Racing 3 - which scored a 10/10 on 1UP - is the only sure winner of the 360 launch games thus far"
No.
Madden is the only football game that is NFL licensed, and football in Amercia is like, well futbol in all those other insignificant countries.
Madden will sell a ton. The rest of them, I dunno.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
No one and I mean NO ONE has even the slightest interest in the 360.
Does anyone in the group you speak of own an HDTV? Very few comments on this article mention it, but for non HDTV owners, an Xbox 360 will be fairly unattractive. They have said they will release a VGA cable, so that may please you.
I don't know why they don't have native HDMI support, but they don't.
I did play a little of the 360 at Best Buy, King Kong looked *very* impressive. Jack Black was eerily realistic. A few weeks ago my interest in it was "I'll wait for a modchip" but now I'm on a "ooh eye candy for my HDTV!" kick.
I don't know how many of you have HD sets, but this may be the main source of sales for this thing in the first year.
--falz
I didn't realize that soccer players were so shiny.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Here at GarageGames we have had XB360s since Alpha hardware. Currently, we have about eight dev-stations in place while we are finishing up Marble Blast Ultra for distribution through the Live Arcade feature of the system. I can tell you that with everything that I know about the system, I will be the first in line at Best Buy to get my own system for home. Here's why.
I could care less about processors or GPU's, but even if I did the XB360 is great in this area. But, it is everywhere else that the system shines even brighter. The wireless controller feels JUST RIGHT, and I can finally sit on my couch and play games on my HD television (which has precious few other HD signals where I live). No other wireless controller in history, other than Wavebird for Gamecube, has felt right. This time MS nailed it.
If I'm not feeling like I want to play game, I can easily plug my iPod into the front of the system and listen to my music. Currently, I'm not much of a techie, so I listen to my music by plugging my iPod into one of those cheesy little self powered speaker systems. This might not impress the Slashdot crowd, but I don't care enough about this kind of thing to take even five minutes to figure out which input, which cable, etc. it takes to hook up to my myriad amps, etc. to make it work.
Live Arcade downloadable games are the biggest thing that will make this system a hit. Being able to sit on my couch, and choose from hundreds of games without going to the store is a HUGE WIN. Many other things such as transferrable memory cards that allow "roaming" so you can take your downloaded games to a friend's house, micropayments so you can easily buy add-ons to your game (or allowing parents to give their kids purchasing power) all add up to a system that is light years ahead of current systems.
Microsoft has done so many things right with this system that we continue to be amazed.
Jeff Tunnell
www.garagegames.com Independent Games
There was a reason to buy the first xbox since it was somewhat more advanced than highend pcs. I can't see any reason why someone would waste 400 dollars on a 360.
The first Xbox was sub-par compared to top-end PCs at the time. I always buy in the midrange, yet my PC could stomp the original xbox when it was released. Of course the xbox advocates would say that the xbox is tuned, and doesn't have all the inefficient generalized software that a PC needs, and so on, and perhaps they are right.
However a triple-core, "hyperthreaded" (e.g. 6 virtual processors) 3.2GhzX3 PowerPC with an incredible memory bus is decidedly superior to most PCs. Add that with a top-end video processor, and you have an incredibly capable system. I'm not a console gamer, but I am drawn to the technical capabilities of that machine, and I have no doubt that there'll be hacks to stick it into cluster configurations very quickly.
The xbox360 is a killer, killer, killer machine. The only reason there isn't a lot of hype is because Microsoft has suppressed virtually all info about it, and has done close to nothing to promote it (at least up until now). Perhaps they're planning on a shock and awe campaign to sell it, but the lack of enthusiasm is entirely in their court.
Ok, I don't know if you owe me 3 cents now, but I'll bet another one that most Xbox games don't support keyboard and mouse well. I haven't tried it, nor read up much about it, except that I have read about an special adapter that was for sale to allow keyboard and mouse on the xbox for games without support. Unfortunately the reviews were somewhat mixed.
For those geeks that need a reason to purchase this thing (outside the games), here's some stuff to note:
1.) Practically any hardware works with it. People have plugged USB keyboards, iPods, digital cameras, etc into the thing and everything has been recognized so far. Even some PC controllers and steering wheels work. It's a very Mac-like hardware experience.
2.) Like Windows Media Center, the Xbox 360 will play saved, unencrypted DVDs off a file server somewhere. The only catch is that Windows Media Center needs to be on that box (or connected to that box) to share out the movies. I have a "DVD jukebox" server with Windows Media Center that currently dishes out 50 movies on my TV. I can move that to the basement and just have my Xbox 360 now.
3.) MS has pulled off a seemingly impossible feat of emulation in getting Xbox games to run. Not only have they emulated Intel to Power PC, but nVidia assembly to ATI. Better yet, the software for that emulation is updated constantly and will be released on their website to burn to CD. Can anyone say "reverse engineering"?
4.) The 360 has some fairly cool gamer features that'll make people say "why hasn't this been done before"? For example: universal settings. You like your games set to Difficult mode and controller's Y-axis updown for shooters? Set it into the dashboard and it gets applied universally.
5.) Numerous other bits of geek happiness: VGA, an impressive fab of the boards to fit that "squeezed" shape, that power brick (well, maybe not the power brick -- that thing sucks).
All in all, I was waiting on buying this thing based on the Perfect Dark reviews. Now I'm considering getting one just based on the hardware. If nothing else, it'll be fun to rip apart a 3-core Power PC board.
That's actually always been one of the problems games have had next to movies for realism. I mean films are still shot at 24fps. It's rare to play a game at less than 30fps, and many people insist on 60fps or more. Yet the film, despite it;s low frame rate, still has a smoothness that games don't. Why? Motion blur.
Playing a game a 24fps is a terrible experience but movies seem mostly ok at that. As far as I know the reason for this is not motion blur, but evenly distributed frames. In a movie you get 24 solid evenly spaced frames a second, whereas in a game the rate is constantly changing. Even if nothing much was happening and the counter stayed at 24fps it would probably be unevenly distributed....hmmm how to say this....the eye percieves changes in frame rate as well as the frame rate itself. Also some of the (time) gaps between two frames could be quite large (and quite small other times relative to the average) in the game so this will be noticeable.
This guy are sick.
I expected the XBox 260 to be a really smooth console.
Nah - you're thinking of the Xbox 360. The 260 was a piece of shit.
XBox 360? What is that?
It could be bad timing (who has time to play other stuff with Soul Calibur 3 and a stack of other games?) or a lack of really interesting release titles (ie. the killer app like Ridge Racer was) but something is amiss. I feel that MS, in their zeal to get the thing out before "anyone" else could get theirs out they are missing some magic in their games. Maybe if they had held off for 6 more months and really got some special stuff that shows the features of the XBox 360 over just the XBox there might be something interesting going on.
An interesting thing to note is that the XBox came in just as MMOGs are starting hit their stride. The XBox 360 will be the first system introduced with this effect stronly in play. This should be a good litmus on how MMOGs effect "buy once, play once" games and their systems. I'm not suggesting doom or gloom for either but it will be something to note.
ps. I have a sneaking suspicion that XBox 360 is heading for the same road of ruin in East Asia. Has anyone out there heard anything about how they are handling release events?? Or is MS going to again ignore the second largest market and arguably source of stellar console talent?
I really want a return to light-gun games, and a way to make them work with monitors/progressive scan TVs. Honestly, a revival of light-guns is the only reason I can ever imagine to get a TV larger than 30" or, better yet, a projector. I'm not too enthusiastic about Nintendo's speculated motion-sensitive control, mainly because I've seen similar things before and they all sucked bad (Dactyl Nightmare, MS's motion sensitive sidewinder pad). I haven't been too impressed with the past few traditional Nintendo controllers either, though the wireless gamecube ones were impressive for their responsive wireless.
If someone could make a rail shooter or FPS game with a DDR type 8 way pad on the floor for movement control and a lightgun for looking/aiming, that would absolutely rock. Perhaps remake Gunvalkyrie as it was meant to be.
Of course, the other thing that would absolutely rock would be integrating a game system with a tv recorder, allowing me to add a slight time delay and post processing to normal tv signals so I could shoot the random jerks on TV. That would actually make me get cable again, at least for a bit.
I'm interested but:
:)+
-This generation I'm married with kids, so dumping $700 ish into a system aint going to happen!
-I realize I can buy this for much cheaper in a few years with more games
-My PC is at least somewhat up to date reducing the need for the 360
-Oblivion is delayed anyways
Hi guys, I've just posted my vlog of the glasgow visit of the UK xbox360 tour: http://www.davesapien.com/vlog/xbox360hour.html Its abit tenghty but its my first vlog. If your in the UK the tour is still running; here are the dates; 18th-20th November The Light Leeds 25th-28th November Mercer Street Studios WC2 London Thanks. Dave.
You can fix the speed of a game's framerate, just lock it to the refresh of the monitor. On consoles, this is done by necessity, all NTSC TVs work at 30fps. Also, given the low resolution and since the refresh rate is known, it's pretty easy to maintain that all the time.
Seriously, grab a movie DVD (one that has 24fps progressive data on it) and freeze frame it on a good monitor during fast action scenes. Witness the blur.
"Kameo is a game that will last players weeks but not months," as mentioned in the Closing Comments section.
And if you've got the time to play games for more than two hours a day, more power to you. I know that my lifestyle is different - I'm a college student with very little free time - but even then, I'd be perfectly content with a shorter game if the experience is a good one. Beyond Good and Evil and Max Payne come to mind...
Goo goo g'joob.
My personal experiences and the hearsay of my friends are the only accurate way to measure the world around me. If I personally don't know somebody who has seen a blue whale, they can't possibly exist.
Actually if you look at Quantum Physics in the right light, whales don't exist until you observe them.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
the good old days when you would be playing a racing/space/flight game and u would shift your whole body and weave in and out as u were really in the game... they dont make those types of good games nemore... :( makes me sad.... oh well... i still will stick to my computer games and skip the Xbox release yet again... i dont like M$... and killzone looks WAY better then perfect dark
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
"An anonymous reader writes "The first reviews for Xbox 360 games are starting to hit the web! 1UP has reviewed Kameo, Project Gotham Racing 3, FIFA Soccer 2006, NBA 2K6, and Amped 3, while IGN has reviewed Madden NFL 06, Kameo, and NBA 2K6. Judging from both sets of reviews, it looks like Project Gotham Racing 3 - which scored a 10/10 on 1UP - is the only sure winner of the 360 launch games thus far."
I have a great idea. Since IGN and 1Up will put out their reviews of sports titles first, let's wait until those are up (but not wait until the reviews of COD2 and PDZ for 360 out), and proclaim that *all* launch titles are weak, even though the biggest launch titles, COD2 and PDZ, haven't been reviewed yet.
That way people will think the 360 launch does not include COD2 and PDZ, and we fool people into thinking the 360 launch is much worse than it actually is.
BRILLIANT!
God damn, am I the only one getting sick of all forms of M$ bashing on slashdot????
I'm asking because I simply do not know.
Is the "motion blur" of 24fps movies added in post processing, inherent to the camera in original filming, or a combination of the two.
I'm also not a gamer, but being a geek I like the technology that goes into the newer games. I may very well buy a PS3 if I get unpissed at Sony. 2 HDTV outs, digital sound, absolutely sick looking screenshots, cell processors, looks neat. I'm curious about the blur in games. Why does that not exist? Would it take more processing to produce the blur than to just throw out more frames?
Somehow I suspect that the Elder Scrolls title won't play on Transgaming's Winex, either, so I'm probably going to have to buy some new gear for that anyway. Though if they do a Mac port, I'd be happy buying Apple hardware. They're only slightly evil, much less than either Microsoft or Sony...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I must say, even I'm impressed.
I barely have time to game anymore, games that take months would take me years. A few weeks of gameplay will work out to a few months for me in the long run, which suits me fine. I'd rather take my time, play when I can, and enjoy the experience.
rm -rf
The motion blur in film is for the same reason that you would get a blur on any still picture of something that is moving fast - the amount of time the film is exposed is large enough to capture multiple locations of the object. This would lead to a blurred picture of the original object, as nothing moves in exact jumps to be captured by film without blurring.
The problem with blur in games is the fact that computers know the exact positions of the objects and do the calculations based on that. The general thinking for gaming used to be to get the most clarity, the most details that you can for an object from the hardware and do that at highest frame rate. However that results in very crisp, but as GP said unrealistic, pictures. Adding more frames doesn't really help because they are still too sharp. On the other hand, to create a blur in games requires calculations involving more than just positions of objects and their polygons in one frame, but the locations of them in previous frames. That means that your memory requirements have grown for something that used to be considered the anticedent of perfection - non-crispness.
Xbox360 looks cool and all, but if Sony will allow us to develop with 1-2 Cells in Linux on the PS3 unmodded, they just got one buyer.
I'm a pretty heavy gamer (8-12 hours a week), but would never buy a dedicated machine for it. But the specs on the PS3 are way to good to pass up. Seeing most of my programming work these days revolves around video editing, the PS3 sounds to good to pass up. Get a Cell machine and a killer gaming console, all in one for
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
It's very subtle, and very realistic such that I didn't actually notice it first time I saw it. Definitely the best simulated motion blur that I've seen. Of course, it's quite obviously there if you are specifically looking for it.
It's inherent to the film and camera itself.
At 24 fps, the camera shutter will be open for (don't know the exact number) 1/30 of a second each frame, and any motion that occurs during the time the shutter is open will appear on the film as a blur. It's the same blur effect as when you use a slow shutter speed to take a picture of fast action. When viewed as part of a sequence of moving pictures, your mind interprets the blur as a moving object.
Games try to emulate this effect with motion blur, since the alternative of using instantaneous pictures can be visually jarring. I suspect (don't know) that motion blur does take more processing power than just throwing out more frames, but the end result looks much better to a human observer.
And just how do we know that the 360 won't be plagued with the "dirty disk" issues of the Xbox Beta(tm)? I've sent mine back to the factory for refurbishing, and just recently had it "cleaned" by a game store down the street, but even so it has always complained about perfectly clean game disks and DVDs...
(And I haven't been able to find out.. will the 360 support VCD?)
I'll get one if I can play play my old Xbox games and DVDs without the continuous "dirty disk" problems though.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
Actually, motion bluring in games is nothing new. I can think of one game that was very convincing because of it, Need for Speed Underground 2 (for X-box). I don't remember if the first one had it, but basically as your driving along, everything is pretty darn clear, until you start going fast. lines, lights, buildings, everything started to blur a bit and it really started to feel like you were moving fast! While I don't think the effect was quite perfect, it was definately a good start and one of the first racing games I saw exploit this effect. There's a big difference between knowing your going at 150mph because that's what the speedo says when you enter a turn, and feeling like you're going too fast for the turn without having to even look at the speedo.
-=JML=-
Just as an aside, since this is something you probably already realize: you're dubious about buying a console because you're married - but once you start an Elder Scrolls game, that won't be a problem for too long ;-) .
"Honey, you haven't left the den in two days. The kids and I miss you."
"One sec, I've almost got a full set of Daedric armor, which will put my ebony set to shame. I've got to cure this blight, but once I do, I'm going to try and head back to Ghostgate. Then, I can...wait, hello? Hun?"
*SLAM*
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I won one of the every10minutes.com xbox360s. Mine won't be here til saturday (before the official release yet), but it wouldn't surprise me if others got theirs sooner.
Could be legit.
To me, the PS3 is the console of choice. I admit I'm no fan of Microsoft, but if they had the better product I would buy it. They simply don't. I have a PS2, a PC, a Mac, and a PSP. The PSP has better games on it then many people give it credit for, the Mac has all the essential A-list games (albeit late), the PC is the pinnacle of computer gaming, and the PS2 has one hell of a long list of A-list games. Where are the Ratchet & Clank, Jack and Daxter, Sly Cooper, and God of War games on an XBOX? NOWHERE.
... but I do know it will be all wireless. It will also have HD. It will also have the most horsepower of all 3 consoles and a better SDK than the PS2. I also bet that the SINGLE VERSION (instead of XBOX's crippled one and regular one) will be around $400 at launch. Maybe $300.
The XBOX only has Halo. That's it, folks! You know what? I have Halo on my Mac. It's great. But for the life of me I can't get into it on XBOX. The only game the XBOX does well is an FPS which is always superior with a mouse and keyboard.
XBOX 360? It uses an old DVD format and no games. The games it does have are copy-cat "me, too" games for the PS2 and PS3. The only real advantage XBOX has is XBOX live. I give it credit where it's due for that.
I will be buying a PS3 based on the games that will be coming out for it. I also have a 50" HDTV that I plan on using with it, which is 3/4 of the attraction of these new consoles. Blu-Ray HD Movies are going to be sweet. Plus, I don't believe the PS3 will ship with the bannana
The Revolution has a possibility of a good controller and some nice franchise games. It'll probably be cheap.... launch will prob. be $100 less than the other consoles. Might pick one up.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Reviewing the review...
The first Project Gotham 3 review begins with a diatribe all about the reviewer and not at all about the game. Why must writers make all their work about themselves? It's like the writer thinks we want to hear about him, and he must segue into a discussion of the game itself only by explaining how the game is directly relative to the main topic: himself.
Does this help us? Can we relate to the author in a way that tells us we'll have a similar game experience? Or are these boring "making the game personal" descriptions just an indication of how much the review, when he gets to it, will be biased?
I lost interest after reading too much about the author. I preferred to complain about it rather than continue bothering to read. I suppose this is because I have some sort of attention deficit. Ever since I was in fourth grade, when... (me me me, etc)
funny i did a review weeks ago, about several games & the system itself.... http://www.clubvibes.com/magazine/article.asp?id=2 516
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
I dont know what kind of PC parts you were buying, but I paid more for my GeForce3 than I did for my Xbox. Xbox was purchased at launch, and the GF3 around the same timeframe.
I wasn't price comparing a PC with an xbox - the original message indicated that the xbox was better than high-end PCs at release. It wasn't. Of course it kicked the ass of comparable PCs (the very few that were that cheap), but I wasn't comparing dollar for dollar.
Actually, that would be looking at quantum physics in an extremely wrong light.
Unless the whales existing in a completely isolated environment, even isolated from all forms of energy from the outside environment, they very much do exist regardless of whether or not somebody is "looking" at them.
Last time I checked, most whales live in the ocean where there are plenty of things "looking" at them all the time. (Engery from a wide variety of sources, water, etc.)
The cat-in-a-box experiement, which you are undoubtedly referencing, is a *thought* experiement. It cannot be taken literally.
I was excited to read the review. I couldn't wait to hear what EA added. What extra features did they give to add value to the inevitible $60 price tag?
WTF! They left out instant replay?!?! They cut out the mini-camp?!?! They trimmed down the defensive audibles?!?!
I have to say I'm quite disappointed. Realistically, though, EA had to fit all those fancy shmancy graphics on a regular "old" sized DVD, and I think the game suffered because of it. Hopefully MS can switch to a "next gen" DVD format soon, or we might be seeing scaled back games in the future. In my opinion this game should have a lower price tag at launch. For one, it's less "game" than the other versions, and two it's halfway through the NFL season.
Reviewers who give 10/10 are idiots, fanboys or bribed. Anyhow, they lose all respect what i've had to them (I know that no one cares about my respect;). But how come some game could be perfect? IIRC Best scores i've seen was for Tie Fighter (99) and some Final Fantasy. Yes, those were good games, but had some problems. Even a diehard fanboy should know that nothing is perfect. It's just embarrassing if PGR3 reviewer thinks that it's the perfect game *even* if he's big motor sports fan.
http://archonon.sytes.net/
Hey I am not talking about the Halo 2 channels where 12 year old kids are shouting into your ears...
....
....
Many people, from all over, and many mentioned that such as myself they have ps2s and dunno what else.
And with some games, there is time to kill when you are "in the dead box", and people talk about consoles, boobs, or food....
I am not getting one either, not now for sure, and I am not an xbox fan at all, right now the xbox suits the kind of gaming I like (mostly FPS) because it is just a more powerful machine (for gaming) than my PS2 or the linux with it's 5 yearold MGA card with it's 16 megs
I did not see the mod-down tendency, but would not be surprised if there was one "from fan boys"
In fact, at the video store where I check in (as it was 15 meters from my office) everyone said "NO WAY", and is waiting for the PS2....
But some people I talked to said, that no matter what, they re getting one as soon as it is out...
Even if the monitor refreshes evenly, exactly 30 frames per second, if the console can't keep up, you're going to get the same exact frame refreshed several times while the console chugs away trying to catch up.
As others noted, motion blur on film is a part of the way the camera works. The longer you expose the film, the more it happens.
Now as to blur in games: Yes it requires more processing power. One way to do it, that 3dfx tried and that some pro companies do is called an accumulation buffer. Basically, you render multiple frames and them composite them into a final frame. So you'd render, say, 4 intermediary frames and composite those in to one display frame. These days that's not so popular, mostly because of the way graphics cards are designed. Instead, motion blur is usually done using the shaders on the card.
So why not just do more frames? Well for consoles, the big reason is the limits of TVs. NTSC TVs are 30fps, PAL TVs are 25fps. There is no increasing that rate. So blur becomes more important. Also you discover that when you are doing blur using shaders, you often get away with less processing power than you would to increase the frame rate. So you have a scene that you can render at X framse per second. To look real smooth, you need it rendered at 3*X FPS, but your hardware can't handle that, you'd need it 3 times as fast. However when you do a pretty good looking blur with the shaders the scene renders at 0.9*X, it's slower than the orignal, but looks so much better that it's worth it.
Now those are made up ratios, but that's the idea. For the forseeable future, motio blur will be more and more popular to smooth out fast motion in games.
I agree, I quite enjoy the odd 10-20 hour game, however, I rent them, never purchase.
... hundreds of hours later.
... bought it.
I rented Resident Evil 4 (PS2) last weekend and put about 5-10 hours into it and made it to the end of chapter 2. That cost me $5. I'll probably drop another $5 renting it for a weekend a couple more times and have spent $15/20 playing a $60 game.
Morrowind? I bought it. I bought every expansion. I'm still playing it
FFX? Not a perfect game, but lots of hours of entertainment and replayability
Short games are fine, but they're not going to sell as well when the rental market is as good as it is.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
What I did was I went next door to the grocery store and found what I wanted there.
I realize everyone has different expectations, but put it in prospective. Going to a movie costs anywhere from $8-$10 last I checked, for somewhere between 1.5-2.5 hours of entertainment.
That's close to the cost of a game that entertains you for 10 hours, and costs $50. Plus, the game has the benefit of being interactive, rather than something you just watch.
Or, you could buy the movie on DVD, for around $20. It's even more dollar per hour now. You do have the benefit of owning it, so you can rewatch it when you want, but that same arguement applies to games as well. You can replay it. And even the most linear games have the benefit of being somewhat different the second play through (IE, in Galaga, you'll probably not get blown up by the exact same insectoid ship at the exact point in time you did last time).
PGR is no sim. The would be Forza. PGR is a balls-out racer that if it comes down to a decision between being realistic and being fun, fun wins.
:)
I own PGR, and GT3/4 and Forza ( what can I say... I like racing games ), and the handling in PGR is nothing like reality. Still fun though
Take from that what you will. But if you get anything meaningful out of it, fill me in.
Come to think of it, they also kinda zoom in on your character so that he/she is bigger on your screen while the surroundings are blurring by... I like it, but perhaps it only works for snowboarding games...
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Wait until your kids get an eyeful of the commercials.
If I see a rocket move past me in three frames, I'm calling LAG!
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
I've got an even better, faster, and cheaper way to get XBox games to run - buy an XBox, which you can now purchase for less than half the price of the core system of the 360! This miraculous solution will even let you play *hundreds* of games that you won't get to on the 360!
Yeah, yeah, emulate an XBox on the PC you've already got, right...
I really don't care about the next gen systems. I won't be purchasing any of them until they hit $200 USD. I simply can't justify spending that amount of money on what is essentially a toy.
Actually, it's a myth that films appear smooth. I can assure you that when you have even a moderately fast panning of the camera, the things appear rather jerky. If you compare a film shown in a regular theatre with the same film (digitally remastered or rendered again, if it's 3D animation) shown in IMAX (60Hz framerate), there is a large difference.
Next time you go to see a movie, pay attention to the pans.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
What was high end when the XBOX came out? Geforce 4 Ti? Can a Geforce 4 Ti run games the same quality as Halo 2 or Conker Reloaded? How does Burnout revenge run? Or the new Need for Speed?
Wow, someone is a little defensive of their xbox.
The remarkable thing is that games on the xbox look like sheeeit. I constantly marvel at the low resolution, and terrible framerate that it pushes out (try pushing an HDTV screen with it and it starts blowing chunks...at least chunky-style framerates). It blows me away that there are people who would defend it.
and now we are finding out the PS3's NVidia subsystem is in the 6800 Class of PC Cards, not even the current 7800s.
I loathe Sony, don't take this a fanboy comment, but where exactly is your source for this information? It sounds like one of those lovely unsubstantiated rumours, such as the former one about it being the 7800-range.
all i really care about until the ps3 comes out or some other good game is ridge racer
http://www.npcgaming.com Dedicated Gaming Servers
"The motion blur in film is for the same reason that you would get a blur on any still picture of something that is moving fast - the amount of time the film is exposed is large enough to capture multiple locations of the object. This would lead to a blurred picture of the original object, as nothing moves in exact jumps to be captured by film without blurring."
Now I am not an expert at photography but it is quite easy to either intentionally set a camera to capture a fast moving object as a frozen frame with no blur, or make the picture have said object be nothing but a blur of movement.
Something sounds wrong about your last sentence, but maybe I am just misunderstanding it. Are you saying that there is no way to photograph a moving object with out it blurring?
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
It is in general very hard to impossible to take a picture of an arbitrary moving object because the speed of the object may be faster than your fastest setting. For a normal scene where you want just a single shot, it would be possible to set it up, but sometimes the object may move faster than fastest settings. For example, the beating of the wings for insects or very small birds (hummingbirds) requires very fast cameras.
I was talking specifically about the movies, where the exposure is preset based upon the required framerate. 1/24second is not fast enough for lots of motion, which means that film has to have blur.
Sorry, I was thinking of the "film" as in taking a photograph.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.