Airon said:
Believe me I am even sorry for how I feel about KZ, because, I have always considered KZ games as graphic master pieces.
But KZ:SF in its glorious 1080 failed miserably to impress me.
Airon, have you ever played a KZ game before? I think the problem here is all about expectations. Different people will have different expectations depending on what they have seen or played. Different games (developers) make different compromises. To the non-technical-minded, some of these trade-offs result in a more or less impressive experience.
IMO - the biggest wow-effect I've ever had (in the most non-technical-minded sense) has been probably a Metal Gear Solid game. Kojima knows how to create great art-direction and his team puts a lot of effort into fine details that many other developers simply don't care to invest in. One of the most amazing scenes IMO is still that oil-tankership scene at the beginning of MGS2 - rain, wind and watching enemy soldiers through your scope. No matter how much is pre-baked, tricked, repetitive-animation, standing there, looking through that scope, I could really *feel* the wind and the rain. Not many games can pull of such a feat.
Even in todays games, a full generation ahead, we might have a thousand fold of higher resolution textures, more complex game mechanics - but even if todays games are that much more advanced, some of them still fail to capture that "realness", authentic feel that some games miraculously are able to pull off. Why? Because a game could have unlimited amount of textures, but if the scene is bland, it's still as artificial as a lifeless vessel. Yet, add realistic movement, authentic light, the element of wind or rain and even if you have simplistic textures or low-polygon characters moving about, that whole scene might still come across as being way more "impressive".
I think part of what I just described is what you may feel let down in KZ:SF in regards to other games. I have to admit, I haven't seen Ryse, so I can't really compare, but even if it comes across as more authentic, more "next-gen" in your eyes, I think there is a lot in this next KZ:SF to appreciate it as a true next gen game. As I said previously, different devs make different trade-offs. Guerrilla obviously dedicated their resources in stunning IQ, big battlegrounds, complex A.I.
Most of us in this thread I assume have played previous KZ games, so we perhaps a bit more so than others, know what we can expect or we already notice some of the fine details that are now even more impressive than in previous games (because we already drooled over it in previous games), where as others who have not played a KZ game might not fully appreciate these things until you actually play it. This might lead to us who have played previous KZ games to being more impressed, where others are simply judging the game from a different angle.
Anyway, moving on - I'm really excited about this next KZ. I especially have a great feeling about the multiplayer and think this could be as good as KZ2 was (yeah, I'm the one who isn't a fan of KZ3 multiplayer
)
EDIT: oops, looks like mods are cleaning up this topic. If deemed inappropriate or too derailing, please delete.