KILLZONE Shadow Fall [PS4]

[Billy Idol]

@billy i think you can use reviews articles. althouugh unfortunately, not a lot of review touched the technical aspect (resolution, bug, etc). btw MS and Sony have certification. so there's already a certain standart at play. isnt there a government body that watch deceptive marketing? My country have it but they never do anything (except when the case was blown out of proportion by mass mdia).

No, you can't. Reviews are all broken. Gaming journalism is dead imo. No integrity.

There is no control. How can a completely broken game like BF4 PC get reviews better than 5/10?? Why did no review mention that the game in its state is not playable?

We need independent(!) certification for gaming software. Only chance to stop the pile of garbage.

 

[Cjail]

As I've repeated on this board in recent years, there's no such thing as 'the resolution' any more. Frames are made of several buffers each of different resolutions. If you combine a native 1080p albedo buffer with an undersized GI illumination buffer, what's the final resolution? If your transparency and shadow buffers result in parts of the screen rendering at quarter res or lower, what do you call the final resolution? If lightness is native and chromo is subsampled, what's the final resolution?

Either you express all the pieces, or you accept there's no such thing as a final resolution. Or, I guess, a third option to contrive a standard definition which in the case of pixel counting would be the resolution of the rendered geometry buffer.

Ok, I understand what you say, believe me or not, but if the definition "final/actual resolution" is incorrect, simplistic, or purely wrong then you or those that know/understand this matter deeply, could at lest suggest/find another definition, a more appropriate.
If you can't find a synthetic definition then maybe write an equation that we all can use.

 

[orangpelupa]

yeah.. when i published BF4 review. our reader also did not comment at all about the bugs that i discussed inside the review article. They talk more about the graphics and gameplay. So if the market ignore the technical aspect in review... ugh..

but the review of KZ SF from Angry Joe seems good enough. He did not really go to technical details but he clearly mention how broken the AI is, etc.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

isnt there a government body that watch deceptive marketing? My country have it but they never do anything (except when the case was blown out of proportion by mass mdia).

Depends on the country and the remit. In the UK there's the Advertising Standards Authority who will prevent adverts and sometimes dish out justice against misleading advertisements. If you Google the US equivalents, you get some results, although I felt the Federal Trade Commission or whatever organisation it was would operate via the courts (set the laws, let the courts fight it out).

If you can't find a definition then maybe equation that we all can use.

An equation would be pretty arbitrary. If I was put in charge of coming up with a measurement, I'd base it on luminance resolution of the geometry buffer where triangles are rasterised to. These are where the polygon edges appear and that's what pixel counters count and where jaggies upset folk. That'd allow chroma subsampling like TV/movies as the human eye is more sensitive to luminance resolution and cover the majority of image in most cases. It's also what people are typically talking about when they talk about a game's res.

 

[HTupolev]

An equation would be pretty arbitrary.

In particular, I'm not seeing where "write an equation" is different from "come up with a definition."

 

[Cjail]

So can you find a better "definition" or not?

 

[HTupolev]

So can you find a better "definition" or not?

Better than what (and in what sense)?

My point is simply that shifting from "definition" to "equation" doesn't change the problem at all. Any equation that you write down for native resolution is a definition of native resolution.

 

[Cjail]

My entire point is that they could add more details/info about the game on the cover but YOU guys argued that the expression "final/actual resolution" is not appropriate and correct, which is why I said that we could find a better, more appropriate definition.

Why can DF say the game runs at 1080p but not the cover?

 

[babcat]

I finally played this game the other day on a 1080p display. Except for the unrealistic human characters, it looked very good. I'm actually surprised how good it looks compared to a couple other PS4 games I played. So far, I think it is the best looking game on the PS4.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The way I dealt with BF4 being broken was to not buy it. The game journalism industry is dead to me, so I went with what friends said.

The way I dealt with KZ:SFs multiplayer using some kind of interpolation was to not notice, and the game wasn't fun enough to play more than about four times.

I guess all that is too drastic to expect of people. Clearly we need lawsuits all around.

 

[Globalisateur]

I am wondering...the guy mainly complained the MP game was too blurry, probably compared to the SP game and he was blaming the temporal reprojection trick, however...

Did he play the game before or after the motion blur was heavily reduced (with a patch) in the MP after many people complained the strong blur (from the motion blur) maked them sick?

 

[Cjail]

Did he play the game before or after the motion blur was heavily reduced (with a patch) in the MP after many people complained the strong blur (from the motion blur) maked them sick?

After that patch.

 

[Phil]

Why can DF say the game runs at 1080p but not the cover?

Because DF takes their time to produce a well written technical article, not only on the resolution of the output, but also various framerate analysis and other things, in order to give a better understanding to those interested. A bit like a review magazine does when they review one of the products they specialize in (cars, speakers, hifis etc). You don't get all these details on the product page.

I agree some product details should be given by default; like supported resolution, SP no. players / MP no. players, Language tracks (spoken) and decoding (ac3, dts etc), and perhaps subtitle languages.

All else, I don't really see the point, as it's just too complex. You don't sue the production company of your favorite movie because they've engaged in tricks to produce a nice movie on grounds that it's not real. The resolution-tricks Guerrilla used in KZ:SF are of the same sort; tricks used to get the best out of what they were trying to achieve (wether we like it or not). If they hadn't done that, we might have needed to concede worse visuals or lower framerate or a combination of both.

 

[HTupolev]

Hmm.

I decided to take a look at post-patch KZSF MP. It's definitely less blurry in motion now, to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of "this is blurry relative to the SP" was a result of that horrible "motion blur"-ish filter that used to be there.

The main noticeable impact of the reduced spatial sampling is aliasing, really. When you have thin geometric objects running vertically on-screen, the game can't track their horizontal translation very well; the shimmering and crawling does give the appearance of halfres at times.

It's overall pretty impressive, and if I didn't dislike this game's art style and many of its graphical design choices, I might even say it looks good.

 

[Cjail]

Maybe it's not imortant anymore but ther's an update on the lawsuit: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-12-18-judge-allows-lawsuit-over-killzone-shadow-falls-1080p-graphics-to-proceed

 

[Grall]

Lol... Regardless of what one might call KZ's multiplayer screen resolution, this is the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit.

What sort of loss has this guy sustained from Sony's "deception"? Effing ziplock, that's what.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Lol... Regardless of what one might call KZ's multiplayer screen resolution, this is the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit.

I totally agree but hopefully this will make developers think more carefully about published specifications.

 

[Phil]

I totally agree but hopefully this will make developers think more carefully about published specifications.

While I agree with this - this game isn't one of them that should be called out because of it. What's next? Hitting on games where explosion effects are rendered at a lower resolution? What about racing games that sometimes short-cut when they render the cockpit view and render the mirrors at a slightly lower resolution to save a bit of resources? Resources that are then, mind you, used in different areas for an overal better experience? There are few games where everything in the pipeline is actually 'native 1080p'.

The only thing that isn't native about KillZone MP is that multiple sub 1080p frames (960x1080) are being used to create a native fullres 1080p frame. Sony should be well clear IMO because they refered to the output image as native, which is precisely what KZ:SF MP is producing.

 

[Cjail]

My take:

1)Sony said that the game was running 1080p in MP then later said/admitted overtly that it wasn't.
2) Sony could have been transparent from the beginning but it wasn't.

Sony's defendant will so have to prove that Sony/GG did not mean to deceive customers nor lied but simply misexpressed.

 

[Phil]

It is running at 1080p, by the very definition. Every frame outputted is a native unique full 1920x1080 frame. The question that is being argued is that the unique frame is being constructed from individual sub 960x1080 frames. If that is an issue, then as mentioned, other effects that are produced at less than a full HD buffer can not be considered native in the sense the law suit is arguing either.