Wow thats very interesting. Never knew that! I think if the PS3 had 512 mb of dedicated video ram, things would have been better for it....
[PS3] Metal Gear Solid 4 *spoilers*
- Thread starter warcrow
- Start date
Wow thats very interesting. Never knew that! I think if the PS3 had 512 mb of dedicated video ram, things would have been better for it....
zoekimball
Banned
very relevant in an mgs4 thread.
I don't know how Gamespot give out awards, but MGS4 can be cinematic while in-game (e.g, Act 3 and 4). The story, gameplay twist, presentation format, atmosphere/effects, camera angle, careful choice of scenery/location, detailed character models, blah all contribute to the experience. It's like playing in a movie sometimes.
The technology has to make all the above work nicely together. I wouldn't write it off totally. But at the same time, I think the developers have gained more experiences now that they can take the result further.
Really eager to see what 2009 can bring.
Yes it is!
Play the game vanquish. He's not only talking about cutscenes. Towards the end of the game you are playing in a movie - the switch between cutscene and gameplay is a massive technical achievement that is extremely uncommon in videogames.
Yeah, ive heard about this scene, apparently near the end of the cutscene the hud fades in and you are free to rotate the camera, (to show it is rendered in real time).
While that's all very fine and dandy, (and certainly goes a long way in reinforcing my opinion that MGS4 is more of a interactive movie than a game), the problem is simple.
Its a cutscene, the engine only renders what needs to be rendered and nothing more, its smoke and mirrors (like the God of War games scripted camera).
And knowing Japanese devs and their love of cutscenes, Kojima Productions must have optimised the heck out of these scenes and the other on rail sequences to make sure they look stunning.
But then again, in these sequences we should really be comparing the game to something like GT5 (which is doing more still)
What is much harder is making a game that looks consistently good, anyone can make a game that looks good sometimes, a game that looks fantastic all the time, not easy.
Consistency whether it be in visuals/gameplay/story etc. is of the utmost importance to me. The fact that these interactive cutscenes look so amazing, while the standard gameplay sections have low resolution textures etc. makes it even more disappointing. The game might have the best artistic visuals of the year, but best technical visuals is too much of a stretch.
No we're not talking about that at all. There isn't "fading into gameplay to allow you to move your head around to show it's real-time."
I'm talking about sharp edits in-between real gameplay. I'm talking about a moment of real-time gameplay that makes you question whether it actually is real-time, that you actually do have control. Such true integration of cutscene and gameplay that you'll be gaping at the experience.
Noone is talking about "interactive cutscenes." Please play the game.
Last edited by a moderator:
RenegadeRocks
Legend
Did I say something wrong?
I was just replying to the guy who said that being japanese is a factor in liking or not liking a game.....
Did I say something wrong?
I was just replying to the guy who said that being japanese is a factor in liking or not liking a game.....
My apologize. I thought you where talking to me since I named views on japanese game culture in my post. And I fast read some post and I must have missed that somebody else wrote the line you responded to!
I don't think you meant this exactly as it's written, but any game that renders what doesn't need to be rendered is unoptimized and a poor job! The art of graphics engine programming is creating a system that determines as best as possible what needs to be rendered and renders only that. If we could render only the triangles and pixels as needed for the display, we'd get a lot more juice from out GPUs and everything would look a lot nicer. So if your game is 'on rails' and you can optimize the engine to get a better graphical result, that's a Good Thing. It would be a folly to build an engine around the ability to, say, traverse the scene at 500 MPH and stream in lowres content at a huge whack if the acual gameplay advances the camera at a walking pace.
Since I've been one of the most vocal "MGS fans" I take it you're refering to me, in which case, I'm happy to tell you that I'm not even close to calling MGS4 perfect.
In fact, I even prefered MGS3 better (I actually rate it the better game), though given the effort by Team Kojima, it's hard not to be impressed with what they achieved, considering the pressure and the high expecations of the game. It's not hard to imagine why Kojima is reluctant to participate in sequels but remain thankful that he has been on board so far.
To count some flaws with the game, just to make you happy:
- I much prefered the setting of MGS3
- I think MGS4 is too short
- Various technical issues, though none of which I'd considered as being a big issue
- Some acts are too short though epic (Act 3, Act 5).
Yes, the graphics could be better in some parts, the textures could be higher res, the framerate could be a bit more smooth... but honestly, which game doesn't have these flaws in some part or the other? Sure, MGS4 probably isn't the visually most impressive game outthere, but given how complex the game is, I can't seem to understand the heavy criticism it's getting.
In fact, gameplay complexity (regardless if you enjoyed the game or not, or find it challenging or not) is quite high so naturally, it might introduce some flaws with it. Now, which is better: A game striving for less, but is overall more consistant or a game trying more, but fails to achieve a flawless execution here and there? While I agree, a good mix in between is usually a good bet, I actually find MGS4 to be on target on the whole and very consistant with the last few games, which IMO is great for its fans.
As a game, it delievers and feels epic the whole way through. The boss fights are as epic as ever and really give the impression of achieving something great after defeating them. The story might not be to your liking, but given the entire series, it's a very worthy final chapter.
Personally, I think Act 2 was the best, as it reminded me most of MGS3.
vanquish said:
Sorry, but this comparison with COD is just plain stupid.
1.) COD is a first-person-shooter that goes for a very realistic experience and graphics while MGS4 is an action-stealth-whatever that offers probably a few more challenging aspects considering the type of game it is
2.) There's probably a lot more detail and dynamic lights going on in MGS4 than there is in COD.
3.) AI is practically non-existant in COD with enemies being scripted. The higher the difficulty, the better they aim - that's it.
4.) COD forces the player to stick to a predefined part most of the time by making it practically impossible by heavy fire. What seems realistic actually makes the game a whole lot less [technically] impressive.
You really want to compare THIS with a game like MGS that actually gives you diversity and the freedom to play the game whichever way you like (and chosing the paths)?
I would probably rate a game like Uncharted as being technically more impressive, but once you factor in the huge amount of work that went into the story of MGS, the production values, the music/sound, the AI, the levels and boss fight, I have no doubt that MGS4 is one of the few games that deserved to win on this front. It has its flaws, but on the whole, it's a very impressive package.
Quoting just to emphasize this point that vanquish missed. We are talking about some of the gameplay stages in MGS4, not the interactive cutscenes at all. While it may sound funny/ridiculous, you'll have to play the full game to appreciate it.
I just wish you hadn't spoiled the game for yourself by watching too many MGS4 gameplay videos. It'd be a waste. Even if you are indifferent to the story like I am, it's still a very unique journey.
It's more than pure tech. All the elements come together to produce that movie/cinematics experience. Few wil care about or notice subpar textures (because it's not important anymore). At times, it feels like playing in a movie.
The demo is only one of the several formats and gameplay in the game.
Do what guys do: Don't kill beautiful women.
Use the tranquilizer after you have disarmed her.
Interesting, it never even occurred to me to try that. At some point I had so many weapons that I was basically killing anything that moved, hotties included. It did net me an Eagle rank though
I never really questioned what was cutscene and what was gameplay. In my experience that was rather obvious, atleast from what i can remember.
I was impressed by some of the realtime cutscenes, amazed that they where realtime rendered.
I think that a lot of the hype around realtime cutscenes are ridiculously overexagerated.
It could have been implemented much better in order to gain immersion, in 99% of the semi interesting cutscenes the only thing you can do is zoom the screen, or change Snakes Camo pattern (once). The cutscenes on the airplane you can drive around a robot, that is exiting for about 1 minute.
Aside from those three things there is no gain from realtime rendering. IMO there would be very little lost in making all of them prerendered (thus probably saving quite a lot of $$$). Dont get me wrong, there are a lot of gains that are possible due to realtime rendering, but its certainly not being used in this game.
Tbh i lol everytime somebody mentions realtime cutscenes, mgs4 and immersion, the lenght of the cutscenes and the amount of boring\poorly written dialoge in the cutscenes certainly brings immersion levels down. Atleast thats my experience.
Everytime you take down the controller WHILE the game still plays (cutscene or not) is a bad sign imo. and the lenght of some of the cutscenes made me put the controller down on many occasions.
Interesting, it never even occurred to me to try that. At some point I had so many weapons that I was basically killing anything that moved, hotties included. It did net me an Eagle rank though
I think you can still get Eagle for dealing enough headshots (using regular guns or tranq). Can't remember anymore. I have the medal. ^_^
Ostepop, I doubt deepbrown is talking about long, real-time cutscenes... coz during those moments, I usually swivelled my chair and went back to work. 8^P
He is talking about the last boss fight and the microwave scene.
I like the last Vamp encounter too. It's a little distracting during replay coz I wanted to see what the other guys were doing. ^_^
The chase scene in Act 3 is also very movie-like (I the jump ! Immediately thought of Nicolas Cage in some John Woo movie at that moment).
The mecha fight is nice too. The camera is closer to the mecha (compared to say... Armored Core), so the movements are exaggerated. Reminded me of those Ultraman videos/TV shows I saw when I was young.
The chase scene in Act 3 is also very movie-like (I
the jump ! Immediately thought of Nicolas Cage in some John Woo movie at that moment).The mecha fight is nice too. The camera is closer to the mecha (compared to say... Armored Core), so the movements are exaggerated. Reminded me of those Ultraman videos/TV shows I saw when I was young.
Sigfried1977
Legend
The mecha fights were truly incredible. After the game finally put me in control of one of the things I couldn't stop grinning for the entire rest of the evening. The Crying Wolf battle was incredible as well. That was one hell of a remarkebly well animated quadroped. Every boss battle was highly cinematic actually (even though the Raging Raven fight was a bit on the simplistic side)
I care about subpar textures, look at a game like Crysis, its not like "Oh the last mission is amazing, everything looks photorealistic, so I can forget about the first mission where it looked like an Xbox game" now is it? Being consistent is hard.
And I assume some of these gameplay stages are fight scenes, either the battle with Snake and Liquid at the end, or the mech battle.
Then in these sequences the game should be treated as a fighting game, and not be compared to other shooters/action games etc. Compare it to SC4 or T6 or something.
Any dev, can make a scenario with a limited environment, and few onscreen characters look amazing. Just look at Ninja Gaiden DS, all the boss battles are rendered in full 3D, while the rest of the game is 3D characters over 2D prerendered backgrounds.
In response to whoever criticised my attempts to compare the graphics of COD4 and the MGS4 demo level:
I understand that the games are not identical in gameplay.
Yes the AI in COD4 is stupid, but that is compensated by the fact that there are som many of them (including friendlies) on screen at a time. And the AI in MGS4 is hardly impressive, Ars Technica's review of the game said the AI was barely improved from MGS2.
And in COD4 yet despite the storm of bullets flying through the air (which interact realistically with the environment remember) and the ridiculous amounts of grenades been thrown (which explode with impressive particle effects, unlike the woeful effects of the petro bomb in MGS4) the framerate rarely drops, In the MGS4 demo level at the end with the artillery fire the framerate was in the 20s or less. And COD4 runs normally at a much higher framerate around the 50 fps mark.
The argument that COD4 forces the player to stick to a narrow path due to enemy fire is also baseless, play on Recruit difficulty if you find it too hard to run between cover. In Charlie Don't Surf there are quite a few different paths available to take to get to the TV station, certainly as many (if not more) paths available in the demo section of MGS4.
And some missions like Safehouse, let you explore the entire area and choose where to attack, at your whim.
Last edited by a moderator:
