The Grinder

[lilbroK]

I saw no official thread for this game and most people seem to have forgotten it existed.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxyCTENeznc


This has got to be the best looking "not" futuristic shooter that I have seen on the Wii.

The textures on the mountains and the caves look 360 level. The caves kind of look like the ones in Fallout 3.

Then on top of that it get 60 enemies on screen at once. They're should be more praise for games like these.
This look to not only be fun gameplay wise but good graphically. Now if they would just get rid of that ugly sub machine gun from the Conduit(MP5 I think).

If they would use better textures for the hands then the graphics in this game would be perfect.

 

[2real4tv]

Looks pretty impressive for a Wii title

 

[RenegadeRocks]

I saw no official thread for this game and most people seem to have forgotten it existed.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxyCTENeznc

That video makes me want Move support in R3 really badly ! Hope Insomniac implements Move in R3. The fast paced gameplay is ideal match for Move.

BTW< Nice looking game. Why isn't it hyped enough. When is it releasing?

 

[lilbroK]

This is not a PS3 thread. Why in the world are you posting about move? Do the people here hate the Wii or something.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This is not a PS3 thread. Why in the world are you posting about move?

Because he owns a PS3 and Move and doesn't own Wii, and this game makes him want direct-aim controls in this style of shooter. That's a compliment to the gameplay. It's also fairly relevant to this game specifically, because The Grinder was announced as multiplatform. It'd make a perfect port to Move, but the non-Wii platforms are getting an isometric arcade game instead. That there is a valid, on topic discussion point, no?

Do the people here hate the Wii or something.

No, but Wii has a much smaller following here than the HD consoles. If you look at other Wii threads you'll see they don't get much attention. The board is more a tech board than gaming board, and as such the lack of novel tech in Wii means it is unlikely to be the platform of choice for the sorts of technophiles that make up the B3D demographic. But you should really be aware of that having joined November!

 

[Rangers]

Lets not get carried away. I looked up Doom 3 on Xbox youtube and it looks leagues better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvdUmDIIL0A

 

[Svensk Viking]

Lets not get carried away. I looked up Doom 3 on Xbox youtube and it looks leagues better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvdUmDIIL0A

I don't know much about tech, but doesn't the amount of enemies in The Grinder count for something?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Lets not get carried away.

Let's not get sidetracked into a silly console-fight either (not that that's what you're doing, but preempting here).

I don't know much about tech, but doesn't the amount of enemies in The Grinder count for something?

If we a want a tech cmoparison between what The Grinder on Wii is doing as outlined by the OP, and what is being achieved on other platforms, we need more details. There have been games with 65,535 enemies on screen at once, as it were, but the figure alone says nothing about context, so we'd need to see the situation of lots of enemies to see how it's being done, if they are full models. That would then give perspective to considering the quality of models. As for textures, "look as good as" is fairly subjective, but to me they seems fairly flat. But then Wii has 1/6th the RAM and far weaker shading ability for things like normal/parallax maps without some more costly implementations, so people shouldn't be looking for comparable surface qualities. The level of technical achievement in the graphics doesn't look particularly outstanding. Things like the classic round shadow for enemies means zero shadowing-casting dynamic lights.

All in all, the tech discussion is perhaps better suited to a thread like this one, keeping this one for talking about the game, what looks good versus other Wii games and whether it's fun or not. How did the Conduit play in the end? I recall a generally tepid response, like it was all about tech and not gameplay, but I never played it myself.

 

[lilbroK]

[offtopic] <
Mod edit: removed most of this...

I do not want to hear a single thing about another console in this thread. If you don't like the Wii then don't post. This is a Wii game. This thread is for a Wii game. If you want to discuss the HD version of The Grinder, which is a completely different game, then make your own thread for that version. Peddle your console war flame attempts elsewhere.

I do not care how much you like the way something on your preferred console looks more. Keep it to yourself.

[ontopic] <

Let's not get sidetracked into a silly console-fight either (not that that's what you're doing, but preempting here).

If we a want a tech cmoparison between what The Grinder on Wii is doing as outlined by the OP, and what is being achieved on other platforms, we need more details. There have been games with 65,535 enemies on screen at once, as it were, but the figure alone says nothing about context, so we'd need to see the situation of lots of enemies to see how it's being done, if they are full models. That would then give perspective to considering the quality of models. As for textures, "look as good as" is fairly subjective, but to me they seems fairly flat. But then Wii has 1/6th the RAM and far weaker shading ability for things like normal/parallax maps without some more costly implementations, so people shouldn't be looking for comparable surface qualities. The level of technical achievement in the graphics doesn't look particularly outstanding. Things like the classic round shadow for enemies means zero shadowing-casting dynamic lights.

All in all, the tech discussion is perhaps better suited to a thread like this one, keeping this one for talking about the game, what looks good versus other Wii games and whether it's fun or not. How did the Conduit play in the end? I recall a generally tepid response, like it was all about tech and not gameplay, but I never played it myself.

Its all about demonstrating features pretty much. To my knowledge it was HVS's first full independent game. Everything else was shovelware, so they had no design since and no story writing skills.

It was mostly just to show people who said that the Wii couldn't do things like normal mapping and other texture effects that they could be done with ease in a full fledged game if developers actually took the time to implement it properly. That was probably best demonstrated in Tournament of Legends though game sucked horribly aside from it.

This game has textures effects on pretty much everything except the characters hands. Also, lets us not forget that the video was pre-alpha and its a Wiiware title (limited to 40 MB max).

Giving all of the variables that are available I'd say it is quite impressive. I find it more interesting to watch someone build a ship in a bottle than to watch them build it in a canyon.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I do not want to hear a single thing about another console in this thread.

Well then you shouldn't have started by saying this game looks as good as a 360 game! Seriously, you started the comparison. Should have just stuck at, "this is one of the best looking titles on Wii," and the topic would have proceeded just fine.

It was mostly just to show people who said that the Wii couldn't do things like normal mapping and other texture effects that they could be done with ease...

"With ease" is probably stretching it. "With ease" is referencing a normal map in a texture and applying a dot product. If you have to work around the hardware limits, that's not easy, and I believe there's quite a processing overhead as a result.

Giving all of the variables that are available I'd say it is quite impressive. I find it more interesting to watch someone build a ship in a bottle than to watch them build it in a canyon.

Yes, it's always nice to see how far a platform can be pushed. But if you come across as suggesting the ship in the bottle is as good as a real ship (in this case, you suggesting a 40MB download Wii title can hold its own visually against a 360 title) then you should probably expect some flak.

Regards gameplay, how is moving and aiming handled? It looked very natural, but I didn't pay close attention. Normally FPSes on Wii and Move use a cursor boundary for camera rotation and nunchuck for movement. Have they found an alternative control scheme for this?

 

[lilbroK]

Well then you shouldn't have started by saying this game looks as good as a 360 game! Seriously, you started the comparison. Should have just stuck at, "this is one of the best looking titles on Wii," and the topic would have proceeded just fine.

"With ease" is probably stretching it. "With ease" is referencing a normal map in a texture and applying a dot product. If you have to work around the hardware limits, that's not easy, and I believe there's quite a processing overhead as a result.

Yes, it's always nice to see how far a platform can be pushed. But if you come across as suggesting the ship in the bottle is as good as a real ship (in this case, you suggesting a 40MB download Wii title can hold its own visually against a 360 title) then you should probably expect some flak.

Regards gameplay, how is moving and aiming handled? It looked very natural, but I didn't pay close attention. Normally FPSes on Wii and Move use a cursor boundary for camera rotation and nunchuck for movement. Have they found an alternative control scheme for this?

I was only comparing those two aspects as means to show that a lot of effort was put into this game compared to other Wii games, nothing more.

I in no way inferred that the game itself looks or even compared to a 360 or PS3 games. I was just pointing out that wall textures and I named the game and places specifically for comparison.

If people know how to do it properly or use a game engine that has the feature already implemented like what HVS did then it is with ease. Normal mapping was used well in Dewey's adventure and that was a large scale game.


Gameplay wise, it seems that they just copied and pasted the conduits controls which means that everything will be completely customizable.


The current build looks even better assuming this isn't CG. I'm doubting this is CG as Wiiware doesn't allow room for it.

http://www.ign.com/videos/2010/02/0...-wii-trailer-teaser-trailer?objectid=14352829

It all looks good other than that skeleton.


I found an interveiew as well. http://www.ign.com/videos/2009/06/25/the-grinder-video-e3-2009-the-grinder-demo-part-2


They say that there will be split screen local and online as well as melee with Wii-motion plus.

 

[swaaye]

I had a really really hard time controlling CoD WaW with the Wiimote. That looks like how this game works too. Visually it appears about par for the course. The dark, high contrast appearance helps hide the usual low resolution textures and simplistic scene. This seems to be about the peak of the Wii. It feels to me like a bit under Far Cry 1 / HL2 graphics, especially when it comes to lighting (Wii games tend to be very static and sometimes washed out).