Ikusagami trailer for the PS2 (65,000 enemies @ 1 time)

[MrWibble]

Hacking mobs seems popular all of a sudden. We've this, NNN, Kameo, HS. It's going to be hard to get anything oter than simplistic gameplay in such situations. With such crowds you aren't going to be ableto carefully time blocks and attacks, but only mince through them, which generally involves button mashing. It'll be interesting how gameplay develops with one-vs-army gaming and whether it lives past being a fad.

Once upon a time, probably about 2 years ago, some clueless executive producer type walked up to a senior programmer and said "what could we do in a next-gen game that we couldn't do now?". The programmer probably thought for a second or two and came out with "well we could have big crowds of characters instead of only one or two".

Executive proceeds to commission next-gen game whose only USP is "crowds of characters". Every other game studio looks at the press release and says "hey, their game has crowds of characters in, if we are going to compete we need to do that too".

Cue a generation of games which must all contain big crowds whether they're needed or not. No one much notices that only the first title sold millions whereas all the others are piling up in bargain bins.

Executive is hailed has a genius for predicting industry trends so accurately and drives home in his new Porsch. Programmer continues to work months of unpaid overtime churning out crowd-centric tat and living in a bedsit.

 

[Karamazov]

looks like only a few hundreds ennemies are 3d, around the hero, the others seem to be sprites, anyway, still looks really good.

 

[RavenFox]

See now someone is gonna sell my idea and make millions... DAMMIT!

Damn good idea it is to

 

[Farid]

I saw a video of the game, along with a short interview of one of the developer on Game One (a French videogame channel).
And it looked and sounded, from the developer's description, boring as hell...

The point of the game is just to slash each and every one of the 65K enemies... Just that.

And of course the enemies are as stupid as the main objective of the game.
In other words, it's technically interesting, but that's about it.

 

[Karamazov]

i don't think you can have complex gameplay or complex AI with such a high number of enemies on a PS2.

 

[MrWibble]

i don't think you can have complex gameplay or complex AI with such a high number of enemies on a PS2.

I doubt you could have much AI on that many NPCs on any platform at a sensible frame rate, I don't think it's exactly a fault of the PS2. However I don't see that *gameplay* inherantly requires CPU horsepower.

 

[Guden Oden]

However I don't see that *gameplay* inherantly requires CPU horsepower.

Pong earned gazillions and was instrumental in starting the videogame era, and actually didn't have a CPU at all.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Though why 65000 enemies? What's wrong with 400 enemies and only hitting the 'hit' button 100 times, instead of 10000 times looking at the same screen with pracitcally the same visuals for 15 minutes?

 

[Ty]

Marketing. 65,000 has to be funner(sic) than 400.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Combinations

Though why 65000 enemies? What's wrong with 400 enemies and only hitting the 'hit' button 100 times, instead of 10000 times looking at the same screen with pracitcally the same visuals for 15 minutes?

Rather than one-to-one fighting, emphasis is developing many combinations/spells for maximum hits per combination/spells, no?

 

[mckmas8808]

New pictures

Looks good for the PS2 with 60 fps.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20051019/ikusa.htm

 

[mckmas8808]

New commercial too.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20051109/ikusa_cm.zip

Damn this game looks even better in motion.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Is there anything else to this game? All I ever see are massive hoards of bugs, and AFAIK that's all the game is. Sit in the middle of an army whacking the X button 'til they're all dead. Woohoo, what fun...

What about screenies of NOT large armies, showing what the rest of game is like?

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Amazing video

New commercial too.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20051109/ikusa_cm.zip

Damn this game looks even better in motion.

Thank you for link to video, it is very amazing. Particles, draw-distance, camera speed, all amazing. Not perfect graphics (I do not like 2D explosion effect), but this is not Xbox360 or PS3, it is PS2, so really amazing. I am not sure how it is accomplished at good frame-rate. I hope music will be good.

 

[mckmas8808]

Thank you for link to video, it is very amazing. Particles, draw-distance, camera speed, all amazing. Not perfect graphics (I do not like 2D explosion effect), but this is not Xbox360 or PS3, it is PS2, so really amazing. I am not sure how it is accomplished at good frame-rate. I hope music will be good.

Yeah I think the 60 fps is what will make this game stick out. I looks so fluid and so smooth.

 

[London Geezer]

Makes you wonder what a good artist could do with this engine or approach.

 

[mckmas8808]

Makes you wonder what a good artist could do with this engine or approach.

What do you mean by that?

 

[London Geezer]

I mean that this game might be impressive from a technical point of view, especially seeing how it's running on a little old PS2, but the whole thing is unimaginative at best, both artistically and interactively. I'm sorry but the novelty of having 65k enemies to kill will wear off very quickly if all you have to do is "mow the lawn" as we've mentioned many times already. It just seems all you do is keep button mashing till the stage is clear.

A developer with more imagination and talent, both artistically and gameplay-wise, could take this technology and do something that's actually nice to play, and doesn't look like a sea of mostly-same-coloured-pixels to kill just for the hell of it.


Oh, i finished Shadow of the Colossus last night so i'll be in this "developers are all stupid except for very few exceptions" for a long time. kidding





Does red make my bum look big?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The whole 65k enemies thing sounds more like demo-scene efforts than a real game. "15,000 Sine dots at 60 fps" Nice. Looks good for 10 seconds. Couldn't make a game out of it though.

I guess this game will appeal to those who rate everyhing based on metrics. 10,000x as many enemies must be 10,000x as much gameplay, obviously.

 

[pegisys]

it's just a flat land with lots of charactors on it, we all ready knew the ps2 could push alot of polygons, I would rather they cut the number in half and have some some type of environment

but I never liked these types of games