My bad. it was another year-out title. Seems that's the norm - a year out from launch to get the showcase titles.
It's hazy ground.
What were the first 'next gen games' of previous generations?
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
Genesis/Megadrive: Sonic, Shining Force, Shinobi. A lot of the arcade ports were pretty freaking good.
SNES: Super Mario World is the one game that clobbered me. It was a clear upgrade in terms of visuals and gameplay. All those pretty sprites really were awesome. Square's RPG's also helped in usher the next gen on SNES.
Playstation: This is a tough one because games kept getting better looking through each generation of games on the system but even the early titles like Warhawk were truly next gen because of 3D. Tekken, Crash Bandicoot, and last but not least the game that helped ignite the dominance of PS1...Final Fantasy VII.
Saturn: Same pretty much applies from the Playstation. Virtua Fighter was amazeballs when it came out, then VF remix with texture mapping. But when VF2 was released for Saturn that finally showed what the machine was capable of. NiGHTS was also a showcase game.
N64: Super Mario 64 is the game that clobbered the industry. It was a major upgrade in terms of visuals and gameplay and it differentiated N64's graphical prowess from SS/PS1 with bi-linear filtering and going from a dpad to analog was a huge innovation and truly next gen at the time.
The Model 3 unveil was pretty epic with Dural coming up from a pool of liquid metal forming into herself. That was a pants shitting moment.
Dreamcast: Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur, and VF3tb. These are the games that told the world the Dreamcast was a huge leap above PS1/N64. VF3tb proved (more or LESS) that DC could do ports from Model 3. Soul Calibur was in a league of its own and looked better than VF3tb. Sonic Adventure was just awesome in its scope and size. The textures were so much higher resolution than what we were used to and being able to explore the world in such an open way was truly awesome. And last but not least is Shenmue. That game proved what the Dreamcast was capable of and for its time it was jaw dropping.
PS2: Tekken Tag Tournament was next gen looking and was a joy to play. Jak & Daxter is a game I would consider as a breakout title for PS2 and one I thought truly showed what the PS2 games could do. The thing about the PS2 is that the games kept getting better looking as time moved on. I remember reading discussions on this board with PS2 devs at the time and how they'd work magic with the 4 MB of edram. Final Fantasy X gets an honorable mention for early PS2 games that truly felt next gen.
Gamecube: Metroid Prime is the one game that made me think of Gamecube as a capable machine. Gameplay was awesome and the graphics were stunning. And Factor 5's Star Wars games were technical marvels.
Xbox: Halo is the title. There's not one single other game on the Xbox that defines the experience for me so much as Halo does. The game had huge levels, truly next gen (above PS2) graphics, and simply stepped made the Xbox stand out and reign supreme above PS2/GCN. Awesome game.
The Wii was next gen with motion controls and that's about that.
Xbox 360: Oblivion is totally the title that ushered in the next gen as others have said. That was like a piece of pure heaven. But look how far graphics have advanced with Skyrim. The game looks worlds better. Gears of War as others have said was also a game that was truly next gen.
PS3: Uncharted as others have said. Kill Zone 2 looked pretty nice and clearly a big upgrade.
It would be nice to see a game that looks like a generation leap ahead of the previous hardware. So far there's only a few speckles here and there but not an overall complete package that make me go wow. I'm really wishing for a major upgrade to geometry for the new gen of machines, or at least good use of tessellation so we get objects that look better. I'm really looking forward to GDC and E3 this year hoping there's something of a generational leap.
SNES: Super Mario World is the one game that clobbered me. It was a clear upgrade in terms of visuals and gameplay. All those pretty sprites really were awesome. Square's RPG's also helped in usher the next gen on SNES.
Playstation: This is a tough one because games kept getting better looking through each generation of games on the system but even the early titles like Warhawk were truly next gen because of 3D. Tekken, Crash Bandicoot, and last but not least the game that helped ignite the dominance of PS1...Final Fantasy VII.
Saturn: Same pretty much applies from the Playstation. Virtua Fighter was amazeballs when it came out, then VF remix with texture mapping. But when VF2 was released for Saturn that finally showed what the machine was capable of. NiGHTS was also a showcase game.
N64: Super Mario 64 is the game that clobbered the industry. It was a major upgrade in terms of visuals and gameplay and it differentiated N64's graphical prowess from SS/PS1 with bi-linear filtering and going from a dpad to analog was a huge innovation and truly next gen at the time.
The Model 3 unveil was pretty epic with Dural coming up from a pool of liquid metal forming into herself. That was a pants shitting moment.
Dreamcast: Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur, and VF3tb. These are the games that told the world the Dreamcast was a huge leap above PS1/N64. VF3tb proved (more or LESS) that DC could do ports from Model 3. Soul Calibur was in a league of its own and looked better than VF3tb. Sonic Adventure was just awesome in its scope and size. The textures were so much higher resolution than what we were used to and being able to explore the world in such an open way was truly awesome. And last but not least is Shenmue. That game proved what the Dreamcast was capable of and for its time it was jaw dropping.
PS2: Tekken Tag Tournament was next gen looking and was a joy to play. Jak & Daxter is a game I would consider as a breakout title for PS2 and one I thought truly showed what the PS2 games could do. The thing about the PS2 is that the games kept getting better looking as time moved on. I remember reading discussions on this board with PS2 devs at the time and how they'd work magic with the 4 MB of edram. Final Fantasy X gets an honorable mention for early PS2 games that truly felt next gen.
Gamecube: Metroid Prime is the one game that made me think of Gamecube as a capable machine. Gameplay was awesome and the graphics were stunning. And Factor 5's Star Wars games were technical marvels.
Xbox: Halo is the title. There's not one single other game on the Xbox that defines the experience for me so much as Halo does. The game had huge levels, truly next gen (above PS2) graphics, and simply stepped made the Xbox stand out and reign supreme above PS2/GCN. Awesome game.
The Wii was next gen with motion controls and that's about that.
Xbox 360: Oblivion is totally the title that ushered in the next gen as others have said. That was like a piece of pure heaven. But look how far graphics have advanced with Skyrim. The game looks worlds better. Gears of War as others have said was also a game that was truly next gen.
PS3: Uncharted as others have said. Kill Zone 2 looked pretty nice and clearly a big upgrade.
It would be nice to see a game that looks like a generation leap ahead of the previous hardware. So far there's only a few speckles here and there but not an overall complete package that make me go wow. I'm really wishing for a major upgrade to geometry for the new gen of machines, or at least good use of tessellation so we get objects that look better. I'm really looking forward to GDC and E3 this year hoping there's something of a generational leap.
Billy Idol
Legend
The first game I played, COD 2, wowed me to no end!
But then it was not until the first Gears...which made me scream like a little girl getting a new Barbie doll...
But then it was not until the first Gears...which made me scream like a little girl getting a new Barbie doll...
(((interference)))
Veteran
Yeah it would be Oblivion (speedtree FTW) to some degree on 360, but definitely Gears was the watershed moment of last gen.
Likewise on PS3, first Uncharted and then Killzone 2 was a certain show stopper.
Likewise on PS3, first Uncharted and then Killzone 2 was a certain show stopper.
Bearing in mind I only actually purchased a PS3 when Uncharted 2 came out, I'd vote this by amount of WOWs that actually came out of my mouth while playing. Uncharted 2 was the one for me at the time. I was throwing a lot of WOWs at the TV with that one, from the very beginning.
I actually quietly spoke a few wows with Asura's Wrath, MW2, Infamous2.
On PS2, Tekken Tag and FFX for me. J&D was pretty Wow-y too.
I actually quietly spoke a few wows with Asura's Wrath, MW2, Infamous2.
On PS2, Tekken Tag and FFX for me. J&D was pretty Wow-y too.
NES - Batman
SNES - Another world & Donkey Kong Country
N64 - Mario 64
Dreamcast - Soul Calibur
Xbox 360 - Gears of War
SNES - Another world & Donkey Kong Country
N64 - Mario 64
Dreamcast - Soul Calibur
Xbox 360 - Gears of War
I think you've focused on the superficial elements only...
Halo had huge open outdoor levels, without too many invisible walls (if any - people managed to get into almost everywhere in that game), and you could take any vehicle or go on foot and explore it all. Actually Epic's aim with UE2 was to outdo Halo's terrain stuff - so it immediately became the new standard to compete against.
It supported a large number of quite intelligent(ly acting) enemies that could be surprised, scared, tricked, used against each other and so on. Allies too, although the Marines never really seemed to be clever enough and too many got hit by various vehicles. Still, at least it wasn't glitchy and they always got out of the driver's seat when necessary.
It also had very cool ragdolls and other physics. Remember the Warthog grenade jump videos? The system was pretty robust (very hard to get stuff stuck in walls and so) and produced some truly spectacular results. Nowadays we're used to all this dynamic stuff but there wasn't much of it before Halo.
Also, multiplayer. Even in Halo 1 it was huge, the first time you could really play across multiple consoles. Halo 2 moved the whole stuff online but the community started with the first game.
Then there's the 5.1 sound which was also something quite new and very well done.
There were also a few smaller tricks like the light shafts through the trees or the plasma weapon stuff. Or using IK to plant the characters' feet on slopes. And of course all the shading/rendering related stuff you've mentioned.
But the above mentioned stuff were the truly groundbreaking new features. There was nothing like that on any console before and Sony couldn't really catch up to it with the first Killzone or any other PS2 game. Halo also managed to sell very well for many years and it's probably a very important element of the X360's dominance in North America.
I went from a ps2 with a crt sd tv to a xbox360 with a 720p lcd tv with pgr3 so to me even at launch i felt it was a truly next gen game. Right after that the first mission in GRAW when you are in a helicopter flying above mexico was really impressive, all those building and that huge draw distance compared to gta san andreas
For a console shooter of that era, sure, but I'm not sure to what extent they're actually a huge technical accomplishment. Polygon density is pretty low in the big exteriors, they tend to use simpler materials, and (aside from the usual "throw a bajillion alpha layers at the screen" spikes) the big exteriors are where the game's performance issues tend to come from.
Oh, there are a couple (I think it might literally be 2) death barriers, generally intended to prevent people from checkpointing at the bottom of an inescapable area. But there's a good chance you wouldn't even realize that it's a death barrier that killed you, hehe (they're at the bottom of falls that are just deep enough that you might think the fall killed you).
The AI is a tremendous technical achievement, but I'm again not sure that it's a strong case of "pushing the hardware." Bungie got it to work so well and convincingly by making it extremely simple under the hood.
Heheh, more like "at least they didn't get into the driver's seat to begin with (except for ghosts)." In the later games, a marine trying to drive your warthog is often a marine who needs to be killed.
Halo is weird in that the allied driving AI feels like it consistently went downhill over time. Halo 1 thankfully didn't have much of it, Halo 2's is okay at best, Halo 3's is worse, Reach's ensures that if the enemies don't get you, the cliff will...
I absolutely love Halo 1's body "physics," but there's no ragdolling system. Animations are entirely playback of a small set of hand-animated sequences, with exception to corpses drooping to align with the scenery after they come completely to rest (which is absolutely hilarious on account of being the sloppiest "IK" sort of thing ever implemented in a game).
Yep, I was a small part of that community over much of its life. I made a couple tricking videos myself.
Did you see Tower to Tower? I'm the guy who recommended the use of Don't Stop Believing, because of this 2005 video.
Heh, I'm not sure "robust" is the word I'd use for it. Vehicles are the only objects that have "complete" bidirectional physics relationships with things around them, and their physics are basically assembled from a couple of locked-together inflated balls.
The physics are some of the most fun ever, but it's some extraordinarily bare-bones tacky stuff (and that's a big part of why it's so fun).
That sort of networking model wasn't anything new for Bungie or the industry.
This is true, and I like how you specifically said "through the trees" because literally the first thing that everyone did after landing on the Halo is look at the trees and the sun through them.
They've got some nice use of the particle system, but I'm not sure what specifically you're referring to.
Halo 1 doesn't do that at all.
I distinctly remember the feet planting tech being demonstrated in Halo 1, but it might have been in the PC version, before the Microsoft deal.
As for the rest, the actual implementations are secondary in my opinion - the resulting game as a whole package was a real breakthrough IMHO compared to any previous console FPS.
Edit: also, the opening question wasn't really about pushing the hardware, but about being a "next gen" game, right?
As for the rest, the actual implementations are secondary in my opinion - the resulting game as a whole package was a real breakthrough IMHO compared to any previous console FPS.
Edit: also, the opening question wasn't really about pushing the hardware, but about being a "next gen" game, right?
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Smugglers Run on the PS2. It was one of the first games I had for the console and I remember the first time I drove to the top of a massive hill and could see for what looked like miles. I just couldn't fathom how the console could render so landscape.
The game was developed by Angel Studios which later became Rockstar San Diego.
The game was developed by Angel Studios which later became Rockstar San Diego.
Totally forgot Smugglers Run!!! Absolutely. At the time it was crazy how far the draw distance was. Shame it got so boring I could have gouged my eyes out.
It probably wasn't worded well enough, especially considering that no-one's provided a timeframe for their recommendations.
The raison d'être for the thread was about trying to get a time period from which games on a platform stop being awkward ports of last-gen tech and start to utilise the hardware effectively, to address the arguments surrounding platform comparisons using current cross-platform games. On the assumption that launch games aren't effectively using the machine, how long must we wait until cross-platform games will be reasonably optimised for any console? Precedent from previous generations may shed some light on that.I assume that PS4 is being used at a far higher proportion of efficiency than XB1 due to the ease of the hardware, so something like Infamous may well be showing what a real PS4 games can do, whereas devs needing to learn the intricacies of XB1 may need a year after launch to start showing games that utilise the hardware to good effect. So I'd look to 'time to truly next gen' games from PS2 more for XB1 (only not as bad!), and 'time to truly next gen' games from Xbox, say, as when we can expect PS4 optimised games to appear.
Sigfried1977
Legend
I thought Kameo was really impressive. Ugly as sin, but really impressive nonetheless.
