Well, yes, it's actually a 3rd person shooter... same gameplay though, which had more to do with my point. Yeah, it's pretty short, but that's not all that uncommon these days. Personally, I thought it was worth the money.
Well, there is a marketing aspect, but it's not all that. It's the technologies that are being used. CRTs are the only TVs that can actually display any sort of interlaced signal. LCDs, plasmas, DLP, LCoS, etc... all have native progressive resolutions. There is not such thing as a 1080i TV for any of those technologies. If they list 1080i that just means they can accept that signal and will then scale it to 720p or 1080p (or 728p or whatever odd resolutions plasmas and LCDs sometimes have).
I own a PS3, 360, and 1080p TV and I'll tell you what I have seen. First off, I can't detect any real difference in picture quality between the 360 running at 1080p via component and my PS3 running 1080p via HDMI. I haven't sat around looking for flaws/differences, but nothing sticks out. IMO, the advantage of a digital signal over analog on PCs/Consoles is vastly overrated. You have to remember we are talking about cable lengths of like 3-6 feet (~1-2 meters) for most people. Just buy any decent shielded cable and you shouldn't have any noticeable signal loss. I see zero interference in my 360's signal.
As for the upscaling... the best example I can use for what you asked is Resistance vs Gears of War. The 360 scales GoW to 1080p whereas my TV has to scale Resistance to 1080p since the PS3 can't. I can't see any issues on either system. GoW looks fantastic and Resistance looks good too. Resistance isn't as pretty as GoW, but that the game itself and not an issue with the TV scaler. Again, I haven't spent any time looking for artifacts/issues, but nothing sticks out and Resistance looks fine. But really, I don't think scaling from 720p to 1080p is that difficult for most new TVs.
The Wii on the other hand is a different story... scaling from 480p to 1080p plus the fact the screen is 55 inches results in a less than ideal picture.
You're in the same boat I am. We just bought a new 1080p HDTV over the holidays and now I'm having a hard time going to the Wii. The Wii looked OK on the my older and smaller TV. It was an HDTV, but it was only 34". Now we've got a 55" TV and the Wii looks pretty crappy at that size. The initial coolness factor of the Wiimote has worn off and now I'm back to the 360. Plus, there just aren't many games worth a damn on the Wii. Sure, some people say Elebits, Wario Ware, and Trauma Center are good games... but those are getting pretty average reviews overall and they simply don't interest me. And, yes, I do already have Twilight Princess.
So right now I'm just waiting on Nintendo, or another dev, to put something truly innovative and fun out. I can deal with the sub-par graphics if the game is fun. For example, I think my favorite Wii game is the Bowling on Wii Sports. My friends and I have had a good time with that game.
Also, I do also have a PS3 and I don't know if I'll need to manually set the aspect ratio or not. We only have Resistance, Blast Factor, and Go! Sudoku (wife's a puzzle game fanatic) for it so far. Resistance is 720p and Blast Factor is 1080p, so they are both widesceen by default. I don't know about Go! Sudoku. It doesn't look stretched, but I doubt it matter either way with that game. Wait... actually... I think you might be right. I played Twisted Metal 2 a couple of days ago and I think it ran stretched, but I can't recall for certain. I just tried it out late one night to see how it looked and ran. I'd have to try it out again to know for certain. Anyway, it likely won't matter with the PS3 games since they should all be HD and widescreen by default anyway.
Yeah, I love how people love the bash the games for only being 4v4 and claiming that 40 man or the like is soo much better. Please... that crap is almost always a big unorganized mess. I've played in a couple of clans in the UT series on PC and while the games supported large numbers of people, the serious clan matches were almost always much smaller (5v5 seemed to be very popular). But you will always have people that think bigger is better. Oh well, ignorance is bliss I suppose.
People make this claim all the time, but the story was as good as any pretty much any other FPS. Seriously, what didn't you get about the story? I was able to follow it just fine. My only complaint about the story was there seemed to be gaps between some of the levels where things weren't explained. Anyway, I expect more of the story to be explain in the next installment.
I remember when large flat panel plasmas cost $20K+, and that wasn't that long ago. Now the same sized plasmas can be had for $2K. It won't be long before 1080p TVs are below the 1K mark and well within the range of people looking to upgrade their main TVs. You're right that a lot people who have just bought or are about to buy 720p sets won't want to upgrade right away, but some will. Also, not everyone will have HD sets before the 1080p sets hit even more reasonable prices than they are now. Consoles and the new HD movie formats will help drive the 1080p sales. Also, DLP and LCoS are the kings of affordable big screens (50"+) and they will soon only be available in 1080p. LCoS is pretty much already there and 720p DLPs are being phased out fast. LCDs and plasmas will start moving that direction this year too and I wouldn't be surprised if that's where SEDs (if they finally appear) debut. So while I agree than not everyone will want to upgrade, 1080p will not fall into obscurity. Not even close.
You're a total idiot. Most of what you said is entirely false. First off, many of the PS3's titles are NOT 1080p. This includes their flagship title Resistance Fall of Man. Second, it's true that none of the current 360 games run natively in 1080p, but most of them can currently be scaled to 1080p by the hardware scaler... which is something the PS3 can't do for its games that run lower than 1080p. Third, WTF are you talking about with jaggies and texture filtering? Slamming GoW shows you have no clue what you are saying. STFU and GTFO, fanboy.
BS to them never being on public servers. They just don't use their normal tags on public servers. This is rather common. Everyone starts out on the public servers and everyone goes back. As to the topic... I mostly agree with you, but it's still just a video game. Even a noob can take down the best with a lucky shot... that's much likely to happen in an actual pro sport like American football. So the comparison isn't entirely valid. Though over the course of a game I'd fully expect the better players to win most of the time.
You're wrong about the drives. A 2x BluRay drive is slower than a 12x DVD drive. There is no debating that.... it's just straight specs. The way they got around the issue is two-fold. First, they optimized the data organization on the disc more so than they did with the 360. This includes using the extra space to put the same data on the disc multiple times. This way, when reading the disc, the laser doesn't always have to go back to the same point to get the same bit of data... it can simply go to the closest copy of it. Also, as the article states, they are caching GBs worth of data on the PS3 hard drive. So it's not that the BR drive is faster than the DVD drive, it's that the PS3 hard drive can be read faster than the 360 DVD drive. This is one advantage of Sony including a hard drive with every PS3. Developers on the 360 can't count on a hard drive always being present thanks to that idiotic Core system.
Ummm... when people talk about "approaching" PC graphics they are talking about high end PCs. The PC you linked to uses integrated graphics. PCs are on a massive sliding scale in terms of graphics quality depending on the specs of the machine. A PS3 would likely slap that PC around and give you BluRay movies, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a card reader as bonuses.
But really, all this talk about PC vs Consoles is fvcking lame anyway. Most people use PCs and consoles differently. PCs are generally in people's bedrooms, offices, or on a small desk in a random place in the house. Consoles go in the main entertainment center. Sure, a decently powerful PC will surpass consoles graphically, but that's not really the point. Not everyone wants to game at their PC in their office. Debating graphics alone is simply being ignorant of the whole picture and why consoles are more popular. But everytime this comes up PC-only gamers feel the need to whip out their e-penises and start talking about how their $1500 PC beats the consoles graphically... well, no shit. Seriously, PC-only gamers have to be one of the largest groups of pricks on the planet.
For the record, I own and game on the 360, PS3, Wii, DS, PSP, and PC. It's the only way to fly as a gamer.
I haven't tried that, but I would imagine the difference in polys alone would still be noticeable. DVD vs BR movies pretty much are just a difference in resolution when it comes to video display. Games are different. The difference in polys, textures, lighting, etc.. should all still be apparent to a degree even at lower resolutions. On the flip side is true as well... look at a game like Halo 2 that gets scaled up to 720p on the 360. Sure, it looks a bit nicer scaled up, but it doesn't look any where near as good as games like GoW or R6LV that were designed for the 360.
If you don't have an HDTV there really is no benefit to buying BR over DVD. Well, unless you have an audio system capable of 5.1 or 7.1 PCM audio, but those people likely do have HDTVs. Anyway, if anything, I'm a bit surprised that the number is that high... it's definitely not too low.
And, for the record, not every US PS3 came with Talladega Nights. Mine didn't. Unless I just got ripped off.
But the comparison to the Zune isn't exactly sound. Zune is the system, BR movies are the software. I'm sure the surge at the start of January is due largely to the coupons, but there's no reason to believe that many of these people won't pick up BR movies in the future. The fact that the coupons alone were able to propel BR past HD-DVD in total sales is rather telling of the fact that HD-DVD is hardly leaving BR in the dust... not even close. At one point I was pretty certain HD-DVD would win out, but I'm not so sure anymore. In the long run Sony's plan may actually work out.
That "blinking issue" only affected small number of TVs. I own a PS3 and have never seen it. I also haven't bought any BR movies, but I have rented several via NetFlix.
I agree with most of what you said, but I have to say 'nay' to the idea of putting Mortal Kombat on there. I don't see how it's important at all. Street Fighter and Capcom defined the fighting game genre. MK is a cheap copy that threw in fatalities. The fatalities is where all the media and fan attention came from... and that really has nothing to do with how it plays as a fighter. It's just a flashy gimmick. Without that it would have been just another unknown fighter and we likely wouldn't have seen more than one or two installments in the series.
True... Doom really kicked off the whole genre. But I'd say Q2 is where things really started to focus on multiplayer and then UT and Q3 pretty much did away with the single player campaign and focused entirely on mutliplayer. Sure, they have "campaigns", but those campaigns are basically just the multiplayer game with nothing but bots. Q3 did make the list, but I think UT is far, far better and launched at pretty much the same time. So I'd replace Q3 with UT.
Oblivion's overrated crap anyway. Who cares which is better? I know people will disagree, but I can't stand the games. Ever since big MMORPG's hit the scene I find games like Oblivion to utterly boring and empty. Something is just missing when you don't have a bunch of other human controlled players with which to interact (join up for missions, fight, even just simply chat with).
That said, I don't play MMORPGs anymore because they are huge time sinks and amazingly addictive at the same time.
I agree 100%. The game has so much potential, but it's wasted. I HATE getting knocked down by a weapon only to knocked down again right when I stand back up. This happens over and over and over. Your character gets up frustratingly slow. This one problems absolutely kills the enjoyment of most of the combat in the game. I also don't like the auto-aim system. It's too damn "sticky". Many times I'll be trying to aim at one enemy and my character will auto-lock on another nearby character. Or I'll see some enemies standing next to a barrel that I can blow up to kill them all at once, but I can't actually shoot the barrel because my reticle keeps locking on the enemy. Is there some way to turn this off in the options? I don't remember seeing one... but I'd rather just aim manually anyway.
Also, the difficulty is very uneven. I found most of the levels themselves to be enjoyable, but way too easy. So you cruise through the level, but then when you get to the boss the difficulty often takes a huge jump. Sure, once you figure out a pattern/attack that works well some of the bosses are easy, but they still don't fit well with the levels. There also doesn't seem to be any progression of difficulty with the bosses. For example, I thought the boss at the end of level 1 was harder than the next few after it. I like games that have nice smooth difficulty progression... Lost Planet jumps between boringly easy and frustratingly difficult with hardly anything in between. And much of the difficultly is simply due to poor game design like the aforemention problem with your character recovering from getting knocked down.
Why should it stop because you are looking at the map? I assume this is done because it's your character that is supposedly looking at the map and his thermal energy would indeed keep getting used while doing so. The thermal engery system is one of the things I though was well done in the game.
I hope this is supposed to be a joke, because none of that makes any sense. Releasing the book around the same time of the movie can only help the movie, not hurt it. People will be excited about the new book, it'll be in the news, and the buzz will make people want to see the movie too. And how is the title in start contrast with previous titles? It's named exactly the same way (Harry Potter and the [X]). Who the hell cares when the name was announced?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yes, it's actually a 3rd person shooter... same gameplay though, which had more to do with my point. Yeah, it's pretty short, but that's not all that uncommon these days. Personally, I thought it was worth the money.
True, but that has nothing to do with analog vs digital. That's DRM BS.
Well, there is a marketing aspect, but it's not all that. It's the technologies that are being used. CRTs are the only TVs that can actually display any sort of interlaced signal. LCDs, plasmas, DLP, LCoS, etc... all have native progressive resolutions. There is not such thing as a 1080i TV for any of those technologies. If they list 1080i that just means they can accept that signal and will then scale it to 720p or 1080p (or 728p or whatever odd resolutions plasmas and LCDs sometimes have).
I own a PS3, 360, and 1080p TV and I'll tell you what I have seen. First off, I can't detect any real difference in picture quality between the 360 running at 1080p via component and my PS3 running 1080p via HDMI. I haven't sat around looking for flaws/differences, but nothing sticks out. IMO, the advantage of a digital signal over analog on PCs/Consoles is vastly overrated. You have to remember we are talking about cable lengths of like 3-6 feet (~1-2 meters) for most people. Just buy any decent shielded cable and you shouldn't have any noticeable signal loss. I see zero interference in my 360's signal.
As for the upscaling... the best example I can use for what you asked is Resistance vs Gears of War. The 360 scales GoW to 1080p whereas my TV has to scale Resistance to 1080p since the PS3 can't. I can't see any issues on either system. GoW looks fantastic and Resistance looks good too. Resistance isn't as pretty as GoW, but that the game itself and not an issue with the TV scaler. Again, I haven't spent any time looking for artifacts/issues, but nothing sticks out and Resistance looks fine. But really, I don't think scaling from 720p to 1080p is that difficult for most new TVs.
The Wii on the other hand is a different story... scaling from 480p to 1080p plus the fact the screen is 55 inches results in a less than ideal picture.
You're in the same boat I am. We just bought a new 1080p HDTV over the holidays and now I'm having a hard time going to the Wii. The Wii looked OK on the my older and smaller TV. It was an HDTV, but it was only 34". Now we've got a 55" TV and the Wii looks pretty crappy at that size. The initial coolness factor of the Wiimote has worn off and now I'm back to the 360. Plus, there just aren't many games worth a damn on the Wii. Sure, some people say Elebits, Wario Ware, and Trauma Center are good games... but those are getting pretty average reviews overall and they simply don't interest me. And, yes, I do already have Twilight Princess.
So right now I'm just waiting on Nintendo, or another dev, to put something truly innovative and fun out. I can deal with the sub-par graphics if the game is fun. For example, I think my favorite Wii game is the Bowling on Wii Sports. My friends and I have had a good time with that game.
Also, I do also have a PS3 and I don't know if I'll need to manually set the aspect ratio or not. We only have Resistance, Blast Factor, and Go! Sudoku (wife's a puzzle game fanatic) for it so far. Resistance is 720p and Blast Factor is 1080p, so they are both widesceen by default. I don't know about Go! Sudoku. It doesn't look stretched, but I doubt it matter either way with that game. Wait... actually... I think you might be right. I played Twisted Metal 2 a couple of days ago and I think it ran stretched, but I can't recall for certain. I just tried it out late one night to see how it looked and ran. I'd have to try it out again to know for certain. Anyway, it likely won't matter with the PS3 games since they should all be HD and widescreen by default anyway.
Yeah, I love how people love the bash the games for only being 4v4 and claiming that 40 man or the like is soo much better. Please... that crap is almost always a big unorganized mess. I've played in a couple of clans in the UT series on PC and while the games supported large numbers of people, the serious clan matches were almost always much smaller (5v5 seemed to be very popular). But you will always have people that think bigger is better. Oh well, ignorance is bliss I suppose.
People make this claim all the time, but the story was as good as any pretty much any other FPS. Seriously, what didn't you get about the story? I was able to follow it just fine. My only complaint about the story was there seemed to be gaps between some of the levels where things weren't explained. Anyway, I expect more of the story to be explain in the next installment.
But the award is for performance, not writing.
e-penis +1
I remember when large flat panel plasmas cost $20K+, and that wasn't that long ago. Now the same sized plasmas can be had for $2K. It won't be long before 1080p TVs are below the 1K mark and well within the range of people looking to upgrade their main TVs. You're right that a lot people who have just bought or are about to buy 720p sets won't want to upgrade right away, but some will. Also, not everyone will have HD sets before the 1080p sets hit even more reasonable prices than they are now. Consoles and the new HD movie formats will help drive the 1080p sales. Also, DLP and LCoS are the kings of affordable big screens (50"+) and they will soon only be available in 1080p. LCoS is pretty much already there and 720p DLPs are being phased out fast. LCDs and plasmas will start moving that direction this year too and I wouldn't be surprised if that's where SEDs (if they finally appear) debut. So while I agree than not everyone will want to upgrade, 1080p will not fall into obscurity. Not even close.
You're a total idiot. Most of what you said is entirely false. First off, many of the PS3's titles are NOT 1080p. This includes their flagship title Resistance Fall of Man. Second, it's true that none of the current 360 games run natively in 1080p, but most of them can currently be scaled to 1080p by the hardware scaler... which is something the PS3 can't do for its games that run lower than 1080p. Third, WTF are you talking about with jaggies and texture filtering? Slamming GoW shows you have no clue what you are saying. STFU and GTFO, fanboy.
BS to them never being on public servers. They just don't use their normal tags on public servers. This is rather common. Everyone starts out on the public servers and everyone goes back. As to the topic... I mostly agree with you, but it's still just a video game. Even a noob can take down the best with a lucky shot... that's much likely to happen in an actual pro sport like American football. So the comparison isn't entirely valid. Though over the course of a game I'd fully expect the better players to win most of the time.
You're wrong about the drives. A 2x BluRay drive is slower than a 12x DVD drive. There is no debating that.... it's just straight specs. The way they got around the issue is two-fold. First, they optimized the data organization on the disc more so than they did with the 360. This includes using the extra space to put the same data on the disc multiple times. This way, when reading the disc, the laser doesn't always have to go back to the same point to get the same bit of data... it can simply go to the closest copy of it. Also, as the article states, they are caching GBs worth of data on the PS3 hard drive. So it's not that the BR drive is faster than the DVD drive, it's that the PS3 hard drive can be read faster than the 360 DVD drive. This is one advantage of Sony including a hard drive with every PS3. Developers on the 360 can't count on a hard drive always being present thanks to that idiotic Core system.
Ummm... when people talk about "approaching" PC graphics they are talking about high end PCs. The PC you linked to uses integrated graphics. PCs are on a massive sliding scale in terms of graphics quality depending on the specs of the machine. A PS3 would likely slap that PC around and give you BluRay movies, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a card reader as bonuses.
But really, all this talk about PC vs Consoles is fvcking lame anyway. Most people use PCs and consoles differently. PCs are generally in people's bedrooms, offices, or on a small desk in a random place in the house. Consoles go in the main entertainment center. Sure, a decently powerful PC will surpass consoles graphically, but that's not really the point. Not everyone wants to game at their PC in their office. Debating graphics alone is simply being ignorant of the whole picture and why consoles are more popular. But everytime this comes up PC-only gamers feel the need to whip out their e-penises and start talking about how their $1500 PC beats the consoles graphically... well, no shit. Seriously, PC-only gamers have to be one of the largest groups of pricks on the planet.
For the record, I own and game on the 360, PS3, Wii, DS, PSP, and PC. It's the only way to fly as a gamer.
I haven't tried that, but I would imagine the difference in polys alone would still be noticeable. DVD vs BR movies pretty much are just a difference in resolution when it comes to video display. Games are different. The difference in polys, textures, lighting, etc.. should all still be apparent to a degree even at lower resolutions. On the flip side is true as well... look at a game like Halo 2 that gets scaled up to 720p on the 360. Sure, it looks a bit nicer scaled up, but it doesn't look any where near as good as games like GoW or R6LV that were designed for the 360.
Actually, my 360 running at 1080p via component has picture quality that is just as good as my PS3 running at 1080p via HDMI. Imagine that.
If you don't have an HDTV there really is no benefit to buying BR over DVD. Well, unless you have an audio system capable of 5.1 or 7.1 PCM audio, but those people likely do have HDTVs. Anyway, if anything, I'm a bit surprised that the number is that high... it's definitely not too low.
And, for the record, not every US PS3 came with Talladega Nights. Mine didn't. Unless I just got ripped off.
But the comparison to the Zune isn't exactly sound. Zune is the system, BR movies are the software. I'm sure the surge at the start of January is due largely to the coupons, but there's no reason to believe that many of these people won't pick up BR movies in the future. The fact that the coupons alone were able to propel BR past HD-DVD in total sales is rather telling of the fact that HD-DVD is hardly leaving BR in the dust... not even close. At one point I was pretty certain HD-DVD would win out, but I'm not so sure anymore. In the long run Sony's plan may actually work out.
That "blinking issue" only affected small number of TVs. I own a PS3 and have never seen it. I also haven't bought any BR movies, but I have rented several via NetFlix.
I agree with most of what you said, but I have to say 'nay' to the idea of putting Mortal Kombat on there. I don't see how it's important at all. Street Fighter and Capcom defined the fighting game genre. MK is a cheap copy that threw in fatalities. The fatalities is where all the media and fan attention came from... and that really has nothing to do with how it plays as a fighter. It's just a flashy gimmick. Without that it would have been just another unknown fighter and we likely wouldn't have seen more than one or two installments in the series.
True... Doom really kicked off the whole genre. But I'd say Q2 is where things really started to focus on multiplayer and then UT and Q3 pretty much did away with the single player campaign and focused entirely on mutliplayer. Sure, they have "campaigns", but those campaigns are basically just the multiplayer game with nothing but bots. Q3 did make the list, but I think UT is far, far better and launched at pretty much the same time. So I'd replace Q3 with UT.
Oblivion's overrated crap anyway. Who cares which is better? I know people will disagree, but I can't stand the games. Ever since big MMORPG's hit the scene I find games like Oblivion to utterly boring and empty. Something is just missing when you don't have a bunch of other human controlled players with which to interact (join up for missions, fight, even just simply chat with).
That said, I don't play MMORPGs anymore because they are huge time sinks and amazingly addictive at the same time.
I agree 100%. The game has so much potential, but it's wasted. I HATE getting knocked down by a weapon only to knocked down again right when I stand back up. This happens over and over and over. Your character gets up frustratingly slow. This one problems absolutely kills the enjoyment of most of the combat in the game. I also don't like the auto-aim system. It's too damn "sticky". Many times I'll be trying to aim at one enemy and my character will auto-lock on another nearby character. Or I'll see some enemies standing next to a barrel that I can blow up to kill them all at once, but I can't actually shoot the barrel because my reticle keeps locking on the enemy. Is there some way to turn this off in the options? I don't remember seeing one... but I'd rather just aim manually anyway.
Also, the difficulty is very uneven. I found most of the levels themselves to be enjoyable, but way too easy. So you cruise through the level, but then when you get to the boss the difficulty often takes a huge jump. Sure, once you figure out a pattern/attack that works well some of the bosses are easy, but they still don't fit well with the levels. There also doesn't seem to be any progression of difficulty with the bosses. For example, I thought the boss at the end of level 1 was harder than the next few after it. I like games that have nice smooth difficulty progression... Lost Planet jumps between boringly easy and frustratingly difficult with hardly anything in between. And much of the difficultly is simply due to poor game design like the aforemention problem with your character recovering from getting knocked down.
Why should it stop because you are looking at the map? I assume this is done because it's your character that is supposedly looking at the map and his thermal energy would indeed keep getting used while doing so. The thermal engery system is one of the things I though was well done in the game.
I hope this is supposed to be a joke, because none of that makes any sense. Releasing the book around the same time of the movie can only help the movie, not hurt it. People will be excited about the new book, it'll be in the news, and the buzz will make people want to see the movie too. And how is the title in start contrast with previous titles? It's named exactly the same way (Harry Potter and the [X]). Who the hell cares when the name was announced?