Silent hill 3 WTF!!!

[Logan Leonhart]

Lazy, give it up. We´ve seen the screens and we´ve all seen the game. No matter how many 2000 word essays you write about how much you love Shenmue in a poetic way, nothing is going to change about it.
You are thinking too highly of a game that doesn´t exist in reality. Shenmue´s outdoor lightning is static. It´s textures are average at best. It features slowdown, shimmering, aliasing. All of the characters on screen except for Ryo are decidedly low polygon, and definitely not too impressive. Poetry doesn´t change any of this.
Ok, it has several scripted life rutines. That´s good, and shows how much attention to detail Shenmue has. We all now that, for better or worse, Shenmue is filled with all of these unnecesary and unimportant elements that make it seem that the world the character is living in is, to an extent, alive. You won´t see anyone arguing over this, afterall, so much wasted money had to reflect upon something.
However, as I said, there´s not a single reason for this poorly lit, jagged game, complete with pop up, shimmering and low polygon counts to be the best game available graphics wise.
Seriously, are you in love with this game? Because writing 2000 word essays about unimportant elements and blowing them out of proportion makes me wonder. Personally, and taking the risk of sounding childish, I don´t give a crap if an NPC dusts his store, goes to a couple of places and then goes home. I also don´t give a crap about elements that do not have any bearing on gameplay. And most importantly, I don´t highly of a game that is not only very slow, but also quite boring to play.

 

[Vince]

2,298 words. 11,119 characters. 185 lines. 13 paragraphs.

All of them complete and utter ecstasy. And they thought Viagra worked well.

 

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

For an engine that came out over 3 years ago, yes it IS impressive

It still hasn't been bested AFAIK not even by a game that hasn't even been out yet

Change AFAIK -> IMHO. Take out the 'H' if you feel more comfortable.

 

[KOF]

Wow, Lazy8s, those were some beautiful writings. (took me about an hour to read the whole thing ^D^)

I can understand your infatuations about Shen Mue. Afterall, who can blame him for being so immersed into a something called 'art'? With Shen Mue, you either "get" it or don't get it "at all".

Such phenomenons can be found in other games series too. Heck, there are some hardcore King of Fighters fans who can pinpoint every details of character sprites and can determine whether a certain character's clothing is created out of silk or cotton...all out of this 13years outdated hardware. (of course, SNK was responsible for such details in the first place. ;P )

I love Shen Mue, not because of technological measures, but because of other nitty gritty details Lazy8s has mentioned. Shen Mue's graphical engine was awesome back in the day, but today, just as you guys say, it's outdated and has been surpassed by many others. Even taking graphical measures into account, it didn't really look that hot...even back in the day. I remember some people in SegaX board going "ugh.." over some screenshots of NPCs. At that time, I wasn't unsure whether this game was graphcally matching Unreal (a pinnacle of graphic evolution at that period, just as Doom3 *will* be) and still am unsure now.

But really, such things did not matter to me and won't matter to me, because I was amazed by something else. Right, Shen Mue was filled with artistic genius that was embodied with great details,...and that's what really matters to me. I have to actually thank Ozymandis here for giving me a proper definition for 'artistic quality', because that was something that was lingering my mind, but couldn't really realize it to be something tangible until he told me. ;D

When I first played Skies of Arcadia, I noticed something 'beautiful' & 'ugly' at the same time. It was ugly because the engine wasn't technically impressive. Character models wise, I *think* I've seen better modelling and texturing from Zelda : OotT. ;p but on the other hand, I found it beautiful because the artistic talent was used to create a very original and fresh mood for this story, that I loved how the scenes were unfold from day1.

I see &amp; clearly understand when people slam down 'NPC time routine' as an useless feature. but to me, they aren't useless. Even though interactions between majority of them are hampered to "I'm sorry. I don't want to talk to you", I can familiarize them and feel like I could say "Hi~" whenever I remember a similiar face. In Shen Mue2, it's even better because I can follow them around and learn more about their lives by observing their daily routines. Some may call me "a sick crazy stalker", that I <precisely> am. because that's exactly what I'm doing. >;D

How many people have lifted up *every* objects in Shen Mue and examined them all around? How many people have visited *every* rooms(about 300) in ghost buildings? Very few I'd say, because none of them are relevent to the actual gameplay. And that's the reason why I love Shen Mue. Most people will only care about the completion, while sickos like me go around all 300 rooms in every apartment buildings and say "Wow, each room is somewhat different from the other!" As someone mentioned, it's all about immersion factor. You could find it in other adventure games like Lucas adventure games (I did...to a certain extent in 'The Day of the Tentacle', a great game btw...erm, actually, all Lucasarts adventure games are great^p^) You could find it in any other games too. I'm playing Zelda : LttP on GBA right now. It's really a chore to play because of its repetitive hack &amp; slash routine and same ol' dungeons. If I was a NES owner back in the 80s, my opinion on Zelda might have changed...>_&lt; (I sometimes question my consistency on taste of games...grumble) but whether or not I'm having the fun or not, I could never slam down Zelda : LttP as being uninspired game. This game has lot of thing to do...completely unnecessary from main gameplay path, and that's why some people consider it as the best game ever and that, I could understand.

Oops, did not mean to post another 2k words essay. I did take that into consideration. T_T As one of my most respected member of this board, Mr.Kolgar says, "It's all about the games, really!"

...And last but not least, glad to see another Shen Mue and overall DC lover, Lazy8s. Enjoyed your opinion on Grandia2 too...although I have my own disagreement about Grandia2 being 'great'.

 

[Lazy8s]

I'm not sure where some of you (this only applies to the people who've been irrational in this topic) get off feeling all righteous about tearing into Shenmue against your choice of games in this example. I could lie to myself or play Devil's Advocate just as easily as you have, criticizing the technical elements in your choices of games against more recent Xbox efforts if I wanted to sound as irrational. And no matter how "poetic" you got defending your examples, it wouldn't change the fact that games from more powerful hardware like Xbox would be delivering them the technical smackdown.

How hard would it be for me to complain about the shimmering, alaising, lack of "sufficient" geometry, lack of advanced textuing effects, lack of proper filtering, lack of adequate mip-mapping, lack of "sufficient" lighting, lower than standard screen resolution, lack of texture variety, lack of pro-scan output, and/or lack of true 5.1 sound separation during gameplay in your choices against Xbox's finest like PDO, DOA3, NBA 2K3 720p, and DOA: BV? Maybe I should try to rationalize by calling you bitter PS2 fans or something.

It wouldn't take too deep of a thought process to form arguments like that, you know...

 

[Lazy8s]

KOF:

How many people have lifted up *every* objects in Shen Mue and examined them all around? How many people have visited *every* rooms(about 300) in ghost buildings? Very few I'd say, because none of them are relevent to the actual gameplay. And that's the reason why I love Shen Mue. Most people will only care about the completion, while sickos like me go around all 300 rooms in every apartment buildings and say "Wow, each room is somewhat different from the other!"

I certainly relate, KOF! Some games capture player's imaginations and tune them into the game world much more than they experience with other games. For a lot of people, I know ICO was another one of those games.

 

[Fafalada]

Marc,
I was exagerating of course but the game I meant was the one mentioned before in platformer comparison to J&amp;D. If you ever played it, the repetition of textures goes to the point where the world really looks like it's made out of tiles, like in the old 2d games.
And it's not that games in general don't repeat textures a lot - they do, but most also do at least Some effort to hide that... (in case of J&amp;D, quite a bit of effort).
Besides, typical platformers are all on rails to begin with, so they perceptually cram more "detail" on screen at a given moment.
Crash PS2 does that pretty well, if you can stomach the frightening art to get that far in the game.
And the game is nowhere near J&amp;D in most technical aspects - it doesn't need to be.

 

[KOF]

Marc,
I was exagerating of course but the game I meant was the one mentioned before in platformer comparison to J&D. If you ever played it, the repetition of textures goes to the point where the world really looks like it's made out of tiles, like in the old 2d games.
And it's not that games in general don't repeat textures a lot - they do, but most also do at least Some effort to hide that... (in case of J&D, quite a bit of effort).
Besides, typical platformers are all on rails to begin with, so they perceptually cram more "detail" on screen at a given moment.
Crash PS2 does that pretty well, if you can stomach the frightening art to get that far in the game.
And the game is nowhere near J&D in most technical aspects - it doesn't need to be.

Fafalada, do you mean Sonic Adventure2? Plz don't leave me puzzled. ;P

 

[Vince]

782 words. 3694 characters. 63 lines. 1 paragraph.

What a disappointment - KOF, you disgust the most imminent being that is Shenmue. Truthfully, I never realised the how much of an impact video games have on some people - I'm in a state of shock actually.

 

[Fafalada]

Kof, I think I meant the first one, if I am not mixing things up I don't think I ever played part 2, just saw it on demo kiosks.

 

[KOF]

782 words. 3694 characters. 63 lines. 1 paragraph.

What a disappointment - KOF, you disgust the most imminent being that is Shenmue. Truthfully, I never realised the how much of an impact video games have on some people - I'm in a state of shock actually.

;D Yes, compared to Late8s, I still have a lot to learn. Shen Mue disgusting? Maybe...but not as disgusting as your shitty attitude. ;D

 

[Lazy8s]

Word of advice, Vince:
Never get into modern game design.

If you think picking apart the details and mechanics that make up a game (and I do mean all of it) ends at several hundred words/characters/paragraphs, you'd never want to see a game's design document. You'd never even want to see one chapter of it.

 

[PC-Engine]

For an engine that came out over 3 years ago, yes it IS impressive

It still hasn't been bested AFAIK not even by a game that hasn't even been out yet

Change AFAIK -> IMHO. Take out the 'H' if you feel more comfortable.

Hehe read Lazy8s in depth analysis of the Shenmue engine and come back here and show me a better engine...if you can

 

[Phil]

Lazy8s,

Admittadly, Shenmue is impressive no doubt about that. I was merely argueing the sophistication of the engine from a graphical point of view (since this debate did start rolling because of graphics).

I used Sonic Adventure 2 DC as an example only to point out that Jak and Daxter's cartoony theme and 60 fps refresh was not fully responsible for its minimally textured look. Sonic is cartoony as well (though, not trying to achieve the exact same look, of course), but it's concentration of texturing is strikingly higher than J&D. However, you can just as easily substitute Shenmue back as the example, for it's just as concetrated with texturing variety on virtually every new surface as Sonic Adventure 2 DC is (the textures certainly aren't as pretty though, since there so much more stuff to do.)

Obviously both have different styles. I'd say Sonic Adventure 2 definately goes for the more realistic cartoony look (especially forrest locations) which results in more realistic looking texturing. That however doesn't mean that one is pushing way more textures. When comparing both, also consider that J&D is pushing way more geometry, therefore, there's also more to be textured. That's why you'll see better textures in indoor locations opposed to outdoor ones. For a better insight of comparing the two, I would have to play SA2 again though...

Anyway, the comparasment was never between SA2 and J&D, it was between J&D and Shenmue.

Come on now... Shenmue just throws around so much more texture variety that it really isn't a comparison in that one regard. Whether or not its cartoony, Jak and Daxter's surfaces just look much more pastel and smooth than the busy surface patterns in Shenmue. Looking out across distant views shows that farther geometry may not even be using texture maps at all after a certain visibility distance.

As I said, Jak & Daxter runs at double the framerate, has more geometry and things going on. Texture variety is definately not a problem in J&D, that I am sure many will be able to confirm (did you read the GS review?). For a rather nice comparasment, I think those screens posted of Shenmue rather end this arguement fairly quick.

How hard would it be for me to complain about the shimmering, alaising, lack of "sufficient" geometry, lack of advanced textuing effects, lack of proper filtering, lack of adequate mip-mapping, lack of "sufficient" lighting, lower than standard screen resolution, lack of texture variety, lack of pro-scan output, and/or lack of true 5.1 sound separation during gameplay in your choices against Xbox's finest like PDO, DOA3, NBA 2K3 720p, and DOA: BV? Maybe I should try to rationalize by calling you bitter PS2 fans or something.

You can call us bitter or anything you like, but I would prefer to have a game that makes use of my prefered console in a most efficiant way. That means at best, no slowdown, minor graphical glitches, smooth framerate etc. Do you think I enjoyed the slowdown in the GTA3? I actually hate it as much as I would dislike the graphical problems Shenmue has to cope with. I rarely use games with above mentioned problems in my comparasments anyway.

PC-Engine

Hehe read Lazy8s in depth analysis of the Shenmue engine and come back here and show me a better engine...if you can

There are many, but it's pretty obvious that every development team puts their effort into different things: Team Soho for intance used their effort to capture city London in all its glory and aimed their engine to cope with a city of this scape with massive traffic, reasonably good AI, staggering realism and insane textures throughout the city all at 60 fps. While they came a bit short, especially with framerate, it sure is a fine peace of work. Then you have Konami that used their efforts to create a movie-like experience with also staggering realism where swat-teams hunt you down with never before seen AI in action. Pack that with brilliant directing and life-like weather effects and you have something very impressive also. Not to mention the engine that can cope with physics, being able to shoot practically anythinga and watch it burst in a correct realistic way. Then you have Naughty Dog who aimed to bring an entiry world all into one game without a single loading screen inluding realtime based day/night cycle, brilliant characters and animation and a breathtaking draw distance, making it possible to view the entire world from anywhere. I'm sure there are many others that have managed to create impressive engines - they just used their efforts in different ways to produce different experiences. Not saying that any of these are better than AM2s efforts of course, but that they are at least as impressive.

 

[Lazy8s]

Phil:

You can call us bitter or anything you like, but I would prefer to have a game that makes use of my prefered console in a most efficiant way.

I'm in agreement with you about games that exhibit good polish. The "bitter" comment wasn't directed at you, as my paranthesis stated it was meant for the people who were only looking at this discussion from one point of view. You expressed your views most thoughtfully, so I understood and appreciated your viewpoint.

 

[Guest]

Let it go Lazy8....let it go....

 

[zidane1strife]

in your choices against Xbox's finest like PDO, DOA3, NBA 2K3 720p, and DOA: BV? Maybe I should try to rationalize by calling you bitter PS2 fans or something.

Hmmm, so it's okay in areas like doa3's water, but not ps2? So many of those probs. are ok when present on xbox titles, but not on ps2 titles? Slowdown, aliasing, shimmering ok in one console, but not in another?
Well ok 8) [/quote]

 

[Vince]

Word of advice, Vince:
Never get into modern game design.

If you think picking apart the details and mechanics that make up a game (and I do mean all of it) ends at several hundred words/characters/paragraphs, you'd never want to see a game's design document. You'd never even want to see one chapter of it.

Please, don't lecture me. I've gotten into my fair share of arguments here over the inability of linguistics to portrey an event (ie. the necessity of graphics in the portreyal of gameplay). You're really not telling us anything new or exciting.

What I'm sick of if this utter obsession with Shenmue as it is some pinnacle in game design that nobody can topple. It's a shitty engine by todays standards, what does it do technically that Lithtech or Unreal Warfare can't? You haven't stated anything technical, everything is this "It's so big and everything has a back story..." That doesn't mean shit.


You know what, I had a long reply that talked about the technical aspects - but it would have fallen on ears deafened by bias, so instead I pose this question:

What can the Shenmue Engine do that LithTech, Unreal Warfare, or Renderware can't?

Especially when you consider that the time saved by using a 3rd part engine can allow for them to impliment game specific features and added time for content creation.

 

[Lazy8s]

Vince:

What can the Shenmue Engine do that LithTech, Unreal Warfare, or Renderware can't?

I don't really know a lot about any of these engines beyond what I can experience from play, but I'm sure AM2 and SEGA would've jumped at the opportunity to use a pre-made engine like LithTech, Unreal Warfare, or Renderware had it been flexible (or available) enough to pull off their design requirements. It's not like SEGA's above licensing tools... some of their recent multiplatform titles are using Renderware and other such platforms.

Considering I don't see a lot of other titles which simulate worlds on quite the same scale Shenmue does (The Getaway simulates one on a larger scale, Silent Hill 2 on a smaller scale) with a bunch of dynamic systems at work like weather, time, unscripted facial expression changing, lip synching, high-level animation interpolating, etc., I'd guess the Shenmue engine better suits what AM2 needed. That's why they spent years of R&D on it and upgraded their studios and tools for it.

You have to remember that, at the time, this was the culmination of all the pioneering work they had done in the past years on defining how 3D models could interact with one another. When they introduced Virtua Racing and Vitua Fighter, they had all sorts of challenges to overcome that few had tackled before. Things like making a fighter responsive even though, by nature, the models are acting out pre-recorded motion-capture sequences. Interrupts, blending, and interpolating within animation sets, while simultaenously calculating high-level collision detection and physics for separate body limbs had to be addressed. You had to feel like you were in control. They had to refine the concept of a camera and a viewpoint within 3D space with these early flat-shaded, smoothly animating games.

What Shenmue allowed them to do was to take everything they had learned and make it work within the framework of a single engine, within a massive world system. Indeed, you can see modified racing and Virtua Fighter engines integrated together within different parts of the game. The engine is one part of the design that allows Shenmue to present such a unique mix of gameplay.

Can multiplatform engines like LithTech, Unreal Warfare, or Renderware push more geometry, lighting, textures, etc etc on new machines than we saw in Shenmue? I'm sure they can. If only defining engine usefulness was quite that easy, though...

 

[BoddoZerg]

WTF happened to this thread? 10 page essays about the artistic talent of a game that >90% of gamers will agree is ugly? Ugh.

I'm actually quite sick of the whole "Video Games = Art" bullsh!t that people spew. Its every bit as much crap as proclaiming Britney Spears great art on the same level as Mozart. You want art? Go to a museum or a concert or watch a play. The "video games as art" movement is marketing bullsh!t that is digested and regurgitated as scripture by those who lack the artistic taste to realise what isn't.

The level of interactivity and artwork in even the most tastefully done games (Shenmue, Panzer Dragoon Orta, etc) are only great for what they are - games. For all the hype about interactivity, the amount of interactivity in a video game is utterly minimal. (compared to reality or imagination) Yet, the artistic sacrifices in order to maintain interactivity are great. A movie can script every camera angle, every lighting angle, etc. A game can't, except for non-interactive cutscenes. Games are games; they're something you play, not some work of art to be admired. Artwork can make a game much more appealing - but to claim that an outdated and slow-paced game is superior to everything since then because of some bohemian sense of poetry... that is bullsh!t.

Moreover, the art of a painter from 500 years ago is every bit as beautiful now as it was centuries ago. In contrast, the pixelated art of a videogame certainly degrades from "awe inspiring" to "total yuck" within 10 years. Running the AI for 100 NPCs on screen may seem incredible for the '90s, but will it mean anything to people in 2030? Of course not. The most sophisticated AI programming for today will surely seem absurdly stiff and artificual in 20 years. If there is a definitive proof that video games are not art, it is this very fact. True art has longevity. Video game "art" does not. We have many orders of magnitude of hardware to go indeed, before machines will be powerful enough to run games that truly are "art".

Give it up, please. 3000 words of undeserved praise is enough.