Direct Feed Heavenly Sword Screens (E3 build).

WOW, why do people think this game looks good too?


The king shots look very good, but the gameplay in those arenas look pretty bad...

I'm not looking for a debate, but I'm looking for the real reasons why people find these shots appealing.


To me the artwork seems unrefined (reminds me heavily of the graphics of Titan Quest, the HDR reminds me of FarCry's implementation, where there are too many overbrights and things that should be overbright, aren't), and technically I see many faults (some lowish resolution textures, for example).



[edit : I'm going to add some very clear things that I see 'wrong' with the graphics

1. The main character's hair and face look very bad, her hair is all jaggy, and completely unnatrual, her face looks too flat and 'textured'

2. Lots of low resolution textures, the shields, the objects, the armor of the enemies, and everything overall. If this game were on the scale of Oblivion it'd be acceptable, but all the shots have only shown a single arena, which would allow you to texture pretty much everything beyond the point of seeing texels.

3. Low polygon models, the helmets of the enemies for example, made out of just a couple polygons, looks horrible.

4. Shadows look like a texel shadow, very blotchy, looks bad to me, especially when you have shadow and then flare right next up to one another.

5. The Soul Calibur esque weapon 'beams' look really bad, they're not made of enough polygons and really shouldn't be in the game at all (they look bad in general, and a better effect could be done with higher levels of motion blurring.]

I tried. Believe me I TRIED A LOT to see your points but I cant. Is something wrong with me? My eyes? :(
 
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2. Lots of low resolution textures, the shields, the objects, the armor of the enemies, and everything overall. If this game were on the scale of Oblivion it'd be acceptable, but all the shots have only shown a single arena, which would allow you to texture pretty much everything beyond the point of seeing texels.

What?

675710.jpg



db_HeavenlySword_11.jpg
 
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/2756/hs03ew8.jpg

Gonna point out where I see problems (sorry for extra compression in JPG) :

1. Hair and face, face is flat, doesn't seem to have much detail, hair is a jaggy edgy mess, should be smoothed to keep some realism.

2. Lighting and shadows, edgy lighting looks vertex based, shadows look texel based.

3. Ground texture is fair, but not good enough, PDZ had similar textures, but were higher resolution in general. But to be fair PDZ and this game are the only ones I've seen with this 'type' of texture, looks beyond normal mapping.

4. Low polycounts, look at the horns on the helmets, you can see the polygonal edges...

5. This texture is very flat and boring looking.

6. Additional evidence that texel shadows are being used.
 
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Hey, JigenD can you tell me what game you do like graphically because it seems to me you have extremely high standards? I would imagine 99% of the games out now would look dissappointing to you.
 
Thank you for taking the time to do that.

If you could just post a similar pic from any game on any platform and point out areas where these artefacts have been avoided to your satisfaction it would help me immensely to understand your gripe and level of expectation.

Of course I would expect that the comparison shot would be from a game that has similar or superior artwork and animation.
 
Hey, JigenD can you tell me what game you do like graphically because it seems to me you have extremely high standards? I would imagine 99% of the games out now would look dissappointing to you.


I do have very high standards, I've been gaming for decades and only at a few points was a truely impressed (last was probably GLQuake).


I feel that Rockstar's Table Tennis looks very good on 360, but the special effects are too subtle most of the time (such as the reflection of the environment on the tennis table), also, the shadow map under the table always looks very bad.

Oblivion looks decent, but mostly because of the scope of the game, although the LOD looks really nasty quite often.

Kameo is very, very techically good, but the artwork isn't very good in many places.

GRAW on 360's MP looks very good, I actually find the SP to look worse because it's less clean looking.

Madden07 on 360 has some very nice shaders I've never seen real time before.

I like Saint's Row's dymaic lighting and shadows, the game looks good overall but nothing stunning.

Dead Rising has a very good, clean look. Some of the character models could use more art work, however.

PGR3 has nice HDR effects, but overall has many graphical faults. One of my favorite looking titles right now.

Crysis is an upcoming game that looks very good, but even in Crysis I can see a lot of faults, the water in Crysis looks very bad right now, and the LOD in Crytek engines is always jarring to me.



Unless HS has very large scale battles similar to those two shots above, it won't be up to snuff with most of the titles I listed above.
 
JigenD, for a game of the GodOfWar genre, Heavenly Sword has all the right trade-offs. no, it does not have infinite polycounts, and even less so infinite texure resolution. yes, i can see the corners they've cut, and i'd step out on a limb here and speculate that i can do so even better than you can. but this does not make what ninja theory have shown recently a single bit less impressive.

but, please, be my guest - pick a game on any platform you like, which game you think shows utterly and unquestionably perfect visials, and i'll be more than happy to discuss the actual defficiencies of that game with you.
 
JigenD, for a game of the GodOfWar genre, Heavenly Sword has all the right trade-offs. no, it does not have infinite polycounts, and even less so infinite texure resolution. yes, i can see the corners they've cut, and i'd step out on a limb here and speculate that i can do so even better than you can. but this does not make what ninja theory have shown recently a single bit less impressive.

but, please, be my guest - pick a game on any platform you like, which game you think shows utterly and unquestionably perfect visials, and i'll be more than happy to discuss the actual defficiencies of that game with you.


There are no perfect visuals, I made that clear a few posts ago above ^

Still, this game looks more flawed to me than many current titles.

People here were saying how stunned they were with the visuals, which I cannot understand, and still noone has picked out the virtues of this title for me to see.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but you are saying the Table Tennis and Saint's Row looks better to you than Heavenly Sword? I have played the demos for both games on my 60" HDTV and while I haven't had the chance to see HS in HDTV just the videos that I have seen of it from e3 I can't come to the same conclusion as you. Mind you I am not trying to look for faults when I look at the graphics of a game. I am just going by the overall feeling I get when I see it as a whole. As whole HS really impressed me expecially in motion.
 
Imperfections aside, when compared to other titles, Heavenly Sword is one of the best looking Next Gen games due to good use of tech and good implementation of art.

I'm sure you could spot imperfections in Crysis if you looked closely, doesn't make the game any less awe inspiring.
 
Crysis in awe inpiring today, when it's released it will probably be somewhat. Probably the best looking game when it comes out, but of course there are faults.


Table Tennis looks very good for what it does, a very small arena, 2 high detail models, not much else. It can be closer to perfect because of the scope. Still those shadow maps bother me (in TT).

Saint's Row seems to be larger in scope than HS, unless those 2 shots with armies (more on the level of N3, but higher detail) are realtime/gameplay. Saint's Row looks very good, again, not perfect.
 
Just want to add,

Still, not one person in this thread has pointed out the good features of HS.

They've said it's good, great, awesome, whatever, but they haven't pointed out WHAT LOOKS GOOD.

That's what I've been asking for post after post.

I can see the bad things, but I can't see the good in HS. There is nothing good to me in these graphics. It's just dull.

I admit I may be missing something.

I know the hair and clothing move around with some sort of physics implenetation, but from the E3 videos, it didn't look as good as even some of the more recent basketball games (in terms of clothing physics).
 
Just want to add,

Still, not one person in this thread has pointed out the good features of HS.

They've said it's good, great, awesome, whatever, but they haven't pointed out WHAT LOOKS GOOD.

Animation, Visuals, Score (Music)

If your expecting a retort to your bullet point of faults then maybe Acert will tackle it :LOL: but its clearly an opinion matter. The game just doesn't look appealing to you, why do you need people to prove its worth?
 
I'd like to submit that Gun on 360 has some seriously underrated visuals. Given what they set out to do- cowboys, engines, seams, etc - it does a very good job of it. Not perfect by any means. The texturizing for example is pretty shoddy in some areas and the polygonation hints at maybe some corners cut in the pixel buffer. Overall tho I'd say it gives Heavenly sword a run for it money and I think that's obvious to any mature grownup.
 
Animation, Visuals, Score (Music)

If your expecting a retort to your bullet point of faults then maybe Acert will tackle it :LOL: but its clearly an opinion matter. The game just doesn't look appealing to you, why do you need people to prove its worth?


Why people need to prove its worth :

1. I took the time to point out what I didn't like.
2. I took the time to explain what I do like in certain titles, and explain my position.
3. While I find good music a very good addition to a game, we're just talking visuals here. Just saying 'visuals' and 'animation' says nothing to me. I also like the visuals of Kung Fu on NES, but for a current gen title, it wouldn't be acceptable (unless sold as a classic at very reduced price).


Even as it stands now, I would probably buy HS if it were out today, I buy a LOT of games.

What I can't stand is what seems to me to be fan.boyism where people praise a game for reasons I cannot understand, then attack and slander anyone who dares critisize the game at all.
 
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I point out 360 games because they're the most graphically intense games out today.

I'm with you, bro. I'm all about intensity. I'm intense about intensity. That's what PS3 games are missing and I double dog dare any of these hacks to prove otherwise or GET OFF OUR BOARD!
 
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