Looking Back, This Gen Was Disappointing On The Graphics Side Of Things...

[TEXAN*]

Crysis on high settings should have been the console standard on a technical front. I'm a graphics aficionado first and foremost and I'm really disappointed in the output this gen. Poor textures, aliasing, lack of AF, clipping, pop-in, frame-rate problems, a sense of scale only at a sacrifice to everything else... I mean, I really have been disappointed.

I expected more. God of War 2 released in the 7th year of PS2's lifespan and wowed everybody. We won't have that this gen...we won't have a game that blows us away at the end of the gen because both systems are effectively tapped out and eternally bottle-necked by 512MB of RAM.

The following is what I expect and pretty much demand for a AAA game for the PS4/X720.

* Red Faction Guerrilla's destructibility
* Kameo's parallax mapping and texture-work (still the best of the gen)
* Killzone 2's skybox and post-processing effects
* Uncharted 2 and Assassin's Creed 2's animation
* Crackdown's deferred rendering, explosions, draw distance and scale
* Halo 3's global HDR lighting
* Uncharted 2's shadowing & water
* Every character should have the level of detail of Chris Redfield from RE5

I want all of this in every single AAA game otherwise I'll just skip next-gen. If a game's going for a smaller scale, then it obviously doesn't need "Crackdown's draw distance" but for the most part, I demand everything listed above in Killzone 4, Halo 4, and Gears of War 4.

 

[Acert93]

You will be lucky if the new consoles will play Crysis on High

 

[tha_con]

Is this a serious thread?

Did you just say both systems are "tapped out" and "bottlenecked"?

Are you kidding me?

Post up some PS2 specs and tell me you actually thought 3/4 years into the consoles life it would produce a GT4 or God of War 2. Please.

IMO, stupid thread. No offense..

 

[Dr. Nick]

I disagree with you on scale. Not every AAA game needs to be huge to be enjoyable and if you can get better graphics by making a smaller gamer, as long as it is fun and/or addictive than so be it.


I would say this if a developer is trying to do realistic graphics than a game should have real-time ambient occlusion. I'm not talking this generation of course but next gen.

Edit: I wish there were more cartoonish looking next gen games out there...or should I say better quality ones.

 

[assurdum]

To be honest I found this generation better of the previous generation to achieve concrete results. Probably only the physics and the ambient interaction / destruction is disappointing, just killzone 2 show something with a great graphics 'contest'. The other engine who tried to achieve one aspect shows limited in an another...imho.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Nod, I actually went through and replayed some games on Xbox and PS2. X360 and PS3 really are quite a leap forward. And I'm expecting things to continue improving for at least a few more years.

The tesselator was never really used in X360 for example but it appears there's some titles in the pipe that will take advantage. Add to that there's the potential on both PS3 and X360 for a control revolution with motion controls, image tracking, image recognition and voice control.

Granted, some of that has been done somewhat before but never as a whole package. And I dare say it's not something you'll see on PC for quite a while. At least not unless consoles make it not only popular but also feasible.

Really, I'd hardly say either PS3 or X360 are even close to being tapped out.

Regards,
SB

 

[FirewalkR]

I've been disappointed for quite a while too, especially with the PS3 given all the promises lol. For me it's clear that the increase in power/memory was not enough to cope with the increase in resolution and still provide the kind of graphics people were expecting. This, allied to the difficult new parallel architectures meant that top developers started achieving some great results while others, not wanting to do worse (because screenshots sell) release games with poor framerates, tearing, weak shadowing (things have gotten better on this front, but still...). I can't wait for the next generation.

Regarding next-gen, it's funny that about year and a half ago, or whenever the "next-gen speculation" thread started, I read some posts here at B3D of people whose knowledge I respect saying things like "I want Crysis very-high-like visuals at 1080p with some AA" and I couldn't believe what I thought were incredibly low standards. Nowadays I'm coming to the conclusion that perhaps those weren't low standards, because not only I didn't know just how far Crysis was pushing things (I played the game and was mindblown by it since), I'm starting to believe that, unfortunately for graphics whores like me, they're not going to go for great performance leaps next time. This, unless the new controller schemes coming in 2010 extend the generation's lifetime and we only get new hardware in 2014 or so. However, even with the new controllers, I believe they'll launch new stuff earlier, given the incredible advantage PC's will have in just 2 years.

 

[Grall]

For those whose major focus is graphics, this gen may be a disappointment compared to a much more expensive PC. However it's still the best looking - and therefore least disappointing - console generation ever.

Also, the old proverb "great graphics don't automatically make a great game" is still true.

 

[L. Scofield]

Uncharted 2's shadowing & water

No thanks on that.

 

[Arwin]

I am first, foremost, and probably even just only disappointed with the amount of PC ports this generation - and I would like to stress, this includes some exclusives. Also, way too many shooting games, and not enough original stuff (but its starting to come).

Otherwise though, I'm pretty happy (Uncharted, GT5 Prologue, Motorstorm 2, Killzone 2etc.), and the gen is definitely not over yet. Not to mention the revolutions in motion control gaming, something which I am personally a fan of. In fact, I'd argue this gen is just starting to hit its stride, especially on PS3 (with the likes of Uncharted 2, Gran Turismo 5, God of War 3, Final Fantasy XIII /XIV and so on coming up, etc.).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I may be remember last generations wrong, but I have oft thought to myself this generation feels pretty sucky. It's the framerate more than anything. I shunned PC gaming for years because it could never maintain a decent smooth framerate, but now it's the consoles that are struggling. Fat Princess is a good example. The game really isn't doing much too much visually, but it's chugging along. I guess that's UE3 for you, and most importantly why this generation is sucky - it's getting too expensive to extract performance from the machines. Kudos to Nintendo, they design their games to run at a pretty constant and smooth framerate, whereas other developers prefer bling to fluidity.

Then again I didn't play a huge amount last gen. Some games were as bad, like Xmen Legends. Perhaps it all depends on how broad your previous experiences were? The 8 bit consoles were silky smooth, designed around a fixed screen refresh and dropping graphics when things got busy in order to keep the framerate. The Amiga was silky smooth built to the same principles. I think 3D is where things started going pear-shaped for framerate.

If I were building a console, I'd have 60fps mandated.

 

[Arwin]

30fps can be plenty smooth enough for me. Plenty of games that handle that well - but of course you'll want them to maintain that 30fps. Resistance and Motorstorm 2 are pretty good examples, as from what I've seen (and read) is Uncharted 2 (no more tearing or dropped frames where Uncharted 1 had a few shaky areas).

Another challenge that is relatively new this gen is writing proper online code that makes the rendering less affected by network performance. This is hard though, especially in a game like Fat Princess where you can't really predict very well where the player is most likely going to be even if you don't get network updates (this is what racing games can do much better for instance). In comparison for instance I didn't feel Fat Princess was chugging along in single player mode?

Network gaming in general introduces lag on various levels giving the impression of bad framerates not caused by graphics requirements.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In comparison for instance I didn't feel Fat Princess was chugging along in single player mode?

In single player the refresh is still the same. Different people have different definitions of 'chugging' though

 

[Nesh]

What I expected to see and finally didnt resulting to my dissapointment was the amount of physics and interaction.

I am pretty satisfied with the looks of some games. But they feel like old gen games with a more beautiful cover.

When I saw the first 360 games I saw an XBOX with beautiful graphics. When I saw the PS3 target demos I saw next gen. I was expecting that level of physics, AI and interaction.

The PS3 got a bit closer with titles such as Uncharted and Killzone with the animation. But still, not good enough. Motorstorm 2 didnt even improve as much as I hoped for visually.

Gears of War doesnt do anything mindblowing beyond the detail of visuals. Resident Evil 5 either. Resistance has great scale as well as Halo 3, but they play like old FPS. I was expecting MGS4 to be a physics and AI monster just as MGS2 was when it was first released showcasing what next gen was all about. But nothing

Where's the work hidden under the graphics besides static detail?

I didnt see much of this.

 

[PellePlutt]

I very much disagree with the notion that "2009 IQ is unacceptable".

Hundreds of people who are much smarter than you or me are working plenty of overtime trying to improve the state of the art in real-time graphics, and complaining that they aren't working hard enough is, to say the least, quite rude.

 

[Rangers]

I disagree. I think this generation is at least as much of a leap as any previous generation. I kind of think it's a greater one, actually. But I'm probably wrong on that.

Every gen people say something like this.

And 60 FPS will never be standard because better gfx>framerate.

BTW, the OP is a repost ..

I would also say Killzone 2 "wowed" me as much as any previous gen game for it's time, if not more, etc. And I'd strongly bet KZ2 wont even end up the best looking game of this gen.

If you want to play next gen today, I agree though, Crysis on all very high is it

Also next gen had better blow away all those current gen games fx listed..

 

[Rangers]

You will be lucky if the new consoles will play Crysis on High

Oh I think they will, easily..you'll get tremendous benefits from console optimization, regardless of raw power. If the next gen console has the specs of a PC that can run Crysis on high, then the actual games on that console will end up looking 2-4X better because of optimization when all is said and done. It's kind of scary, really.

There were times when I thought KZ2 wasn't that far behind Crysis..on basically a 7800GTX and 512MB RAM..

 

[JPT]

I want all of this in every single AAA game otherwise I'll just skip next-gen. If a game's going for a smaller scale, then it obviously doesn't need "Crackdown's draw distance" but for the most part, I demand everything listed above in Killzone 4, Halo 4, and Gears of War 4.

I probably shouldn't be on B3D, because I just want a fun game to play

 

[PARANOiA]

Edit: I wish there were more cartoonish looking next gen games out there...or should I say better quality ones.

Completely agree here. My biggest gripe with this gen's graphics (aside from low framerates and/or tearing being the norm) is that there seems to be very little with a decent amount of style attached to it. It's also a shame because it's a really good way to make a game still look great after years and years of "better" looking games coming out.

Give me great crisp 2D/2.5D gaming. Hell, I'd even be happy with some more cell-shading at this point. Give me caricatured faces, not uncanny valley.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Hundreds of people who are much smarter than you or me are working plenty of overtime trying to improve the state of the art in real-time graphics, and complaining that they aren't working hard enough is, to say the least, quite rude.

High IQ doesn't mean lack of effort. It just means a difference of priorities. To achieve higher image quality, other features need to be reduced. Developers aren't making these calls, instead preferring a higher degree of per-frame eye-candy at a lower fidelity and frequency.