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Ratchet and Clank's Trek Towards Pixar Quality Visuals
MTV's Multiplayer Gaming site has up a discussion with Brian Allgeier, creative director on the latest iteration of the Ratchet and Clank series. The Ratchet games are made by Insomniac, who released Resistance at the same time the PS3 launched last year. That makes them unique, one of the first teams to have a second PlayStation 3 title out, and it shows in their amazing graphical presentation. The interview covers the team's trek towards an internal idea of 'Pixar-quality' graphics. "The new game is designed to sell itself at a glance. The hook is the image, the approaching-Pixar graphical quality. It's the product of 125 developers at Insomniac, a surprisingly small increase in team size from the 110 who made the third Ratchet game, Up Your Arsenal, for PS2. Allgeier conveyed some stats to emphasize the boost in graphical quality: 90 joints in Ratchet's face in the PS3 game compared to 112 joints in his whole body in the PS2 games; 'tens of thousands' of particle effects on the screen at any one time on PS3 compared to 3,000 in the PS2 Ratchet games. The game's action glides at 60 frames per second, double the rate of Insomniac's Resistance game. But, again, it's not numbers that count. It's just supposed to take a glance." Meanwhile, for more on the development process, the PlayStation blog has up a video post by Brian Hasting, Chief Creative Officer at Insomniac, on clarifying the vision of the game.
I thought we were supposed to get Pixar quality graphics with the PS2?
http://money.cnn.com/1999/03/01/life/playstation/
Sounds pretty good.
I have to admit it ... the screenshots look gorgeous. They've nailed the look brilliantly. It's innovative, clearly very clever, it's sumptuous and lush and all manner of other adjectives. Those 125 developers have been hard at work, that's obvious.
Thing is though, it's a game. It's not a film. Pixar only have to bother themselves with the look. These developers have to bother with the game too. So as delightful as it is, the real question any gamer asks isn't "how good does it look?" rather "how much fun is it to play?". Some of the most brilliant games I've ever played were written by 1 person working parttime in their bedroom on an 8 bit computer. "Fun" just isn't something that comes from pumping millions of dollars into a team.
One day studios will realise this, and will realise that they could make a lot more money concentrating on games written by 5 people that are enjoyable even if they look a bit pants.
I'm not going to hold my breath though.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
But no screenshots or video. Are we supposed to take their word for it? How is this supposed to be interesting? This is just an ad for their new game.
Anyone write a raytracing engine for PS3 that takes advantage of all those SPEs?
My general take on Sony's strategy for this round of the console wars... which hasn't been producing many results to day... is that they're hoping that in the longer term, their superior hardware will give them a clear technological advantage, attacting both consumers and developers. Right now, both the Wii and the PS3 are still stuck in the release-desert that comes in the year or so after launch, when your shiny new console is mainly used to play old games and gathers a lot of dust. The 360 is the only machine attracting games actually worth playing.
Ratchet and Clank seems to be the first sign that the PS3 is actually moving out of this early stage; the first true "second generation" game for the system. It's basically the first chance we've had to measure a "mature" PS3 game against its Xbox 360 equivalents and seeing whether Sony's strategy is likely to pay off. Once the game comes out in the UK, I'll be looking forward to picking it up and taking a look for myself.
The reviews at least make it clear it won't be money wasted.
http://www.us.playstation.com/ratchetandclank/
There are several screenshots. There're also three trailers out, and have been for a while. If you own a PS3, the R&CF demo came out a few days ago. It'll give you a good flavor of the game.
I've loved the R&C franchise so far. The first two games were fantastic. The later two were more weapons-oriented, which was fine, but missed some of the storyline feel of the first two.
R&CF:TOD is supposed to be a return to the cinematic feel.
All I can say is, both the Groovatron and the morph-ball thingy are cool. Use them together to get a chorus line of penguins!
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Ratchet and Clank looks great. Yet I can't help but think when I hear "Pixar Quality" that the first time I heard that teerm was when Sony was touting the Playstation 2's power :P
Ratchet & Clank are the *best* platformer games out there. By far. They have a great sense of humor, clever cut scenes, fun weapons, and an intuitive control.
R&CF:TOD is the reason I purchased a PS3. Sure, Warhawk is fun, and Haze looks like it'll be a good FPS, but I have been a fan of the R&C series since the first one came out years ago. I highly recommend them.
This is a fun exercise: play the first R&C game. Then play the last one for the PS2. Compare the visuals. That's the result of a competent team learning how to take advantage of some great (though complex) hardware. I suspect you'll see the same sorts of things from them on the PS3.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
This game is great. To me it looks like Pixar meets World of Warcraft. Slightly cartoonish, but detailed. Blizzard should be taking cues from the look...
"Time is nothing; timing is everything."
I just had a look then at at video for it and I must say it does look very impressive... I think they are actually close to Pixar level quality during in game scenes. But I am still going to reserve final judgement till I see it up close and running in HD. Since my scholarship's second half pays soon I might actually be tempted to get a PS3 based on the game.
In a word: ridiculous. This is really short of nothing but a marketing gimick, and if anything it should speak of the possible lack of quality of the game.
This isn't 1995 anymore - you know, when high-end gaming stations were still doing 2.5D and the graphics in games like Carmagedon taxed the machine? Even a relatively small (movie) shop can produce the polygon/render quality of Toy Story without much problem, in terms of computing quality; a single gaming computer of today has probably close to 10 times (or more) the raw computing ability of one from that era - and that's not even including the advances in the graphical technologies which manifest that computing ability.
Sure, your computer (Playstation 3, XB2, whatever) can, in all-likelihood, render a scene of comparable quality to Toy Story. But so what? What made Toy Story (and Pixar in general) as successful as they were (are) is the fact that they're a company with good animators, storytellers, and film makers. Granted, they'd probably not be as large or as successful now as they are if it wasn't for their groundbreaking use of technology, but they could've made the same (basic) film with traditional animation methods, too.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The demo is a free download from the PS network. It's awesome! Any game where you can throw a disco ball that makes enemies stop shooting at you and dance so you can pick them off is fun for me:)
If "cartoony" is the only requirement to be "Pixar-like", I've got some Pixar-like material right here on my notepad.
Play the R&C demo, and you'll better understand what they mean.
Sounds like Lego Starwars where you build a boom box and it makes the guards dance instead of fighting. :)
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I bought the game at Best Buy this afternoon and played it for about 2-3 hours. There were about 5-6 times that I burst out laughing out loud. The game looks great, it is really funny, the controls are intuitive and the camera controls do a good job. I watched my brother play the ps2 ratchet & clanks for a while, but this is the first one I've ever played, and am now tempted to go get the ps2 ones. The demo is a good start, but it doesn't really give you what the game has the offer.
Just an example: On the second level, after you meet who the big bad guy is (Percival Tachyon), the planet has all these announcements over an intercom. My favorites were:
- Attention citizens, today is Tachyon appreciation day. Please find your way to the nearest statue of the emperor and kneel before it. followed by
-Attention citizens, due the to the popularity of Tachyon Appreciation day, it has been extended infinite days plus one.
Give it a shot. It's a good buy.
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
They worry about mass appeal first, look second, story third.
Unless you can tell me that Shrek 2 was a great story.
I was really looking forward to this game. It looks awesome, and it was bound to play very well. Unfortunately, playing the demo was one of my biggest disappointments on the PS3 yet. Yes, it's a great game. Yes, it looks gorgeous. But it basically seems to be a linear shooter that plays pretty much like the PS2 versions.
Maybe I had the wrong expectations, but looking at the videos, I was hoping that the gameplay had evolved at least as much as the graphics. I was picturing huge levels and interesting platforming. Instead, you get to run through predefined narrow paths and shoot hundreds of enemies that all look pretty much the same.
If you want a third-person shooter with some platforming, you can't go wrong with R&C. If you loved the PS2 games and want more of the same, buy the thing. If you expected something fresh and innovative, something worthy of this generation, skip it.
Uhm. Shrek 2 is not a Pixar movie. It's from DreamWorks.
Does it still use O for firing the gun? That's my biggest gripe with R&C2 on the PS2, can't reliably jump and shoot at the same time.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
There's definitely a lot of humor in the series.
If you get "Up Your Arsenal," make sure to listen to the loudspeaker announcements at the Zeldrin Airport.
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
You can use either O or one of the right triggers to fire.
Nice to finally have something worth playing on my PS3 (Aside from PS2 games and BluRay movies)
"You can take our lives, but you can never take our Flerbage!!!!"
Can you invert the camera Y-axis in the retail version? I didn't see the option in the demo.
Yes, they allow you to invert the X and Y axis if you prefer. (I like my Y the same, but I have to invert X) You can change some button schemes a little in the control menu.
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
IIRC, the entire game, cutscenes and all, is rendered real-time.
you can download the demo and see that isn't the case here. This is a gorgeous and fun game. You did know that it is possible for one or two great games to exist on the PS3, right? I know there aren't many, but this is one of them.
I can't. But if Pixar had made Shrek 2, it would have had a great story.
The cake is a pie