Which game pushed console to the limits?

[Phil]

Semantics, the true love of every B3D poster

That must be it!

I really wasn't arguing that "every game pushes the limit of the hardware" - I was more arguing that pushing the limit is something that is very hard to rate. Certainly not any benchmark to rate the most visually impressive game, but also not the best way to meassure the most impressive achievement. The entire point started when Gran Turismo 4 was brought into the equation that apparently didn't seem to be pushing the hardware on the Performance Analyzer. How efficient a game can utilize the hardware isn't only dependant on the developers talent, effort and budget - it's also dependant on the art-direction of the game and if it actually suits the nature of the hardware. Try doing bump mapping on the PS2 for one or a game that emphasizes on lots of detail textures and low geometry and see efficiency go down - or do a game that goes crazy on framebuffer effects, lots of geometry etc...

 

[London Geezer]

That must be it!

I really wasn't arguing that "every game pushes the limit of the hardware" - I was more arguing that pushing the limit is something that is very hard to rate. Certainly not any benchmark to rate the most visually impressive game, but also not the best way to meassure the most impressive achievement. The entire point started when Gran Turismo 4 was brought into the equation that apparently didn't seem to be pushing the hardware on the Performance Analyzer. How efficient a game can utilize the hardware isn't only dependant on the developers talent, effort and budget - it's also dependant on the art-direction of the game and if it actually suits the nature of the hardware. Try doing bump mapping on the PS2 for one or a game that emphasizes on lots of detail textures and low geometry and see efficiency go down - or do a game that goes crazy on framebuffer effects, lots of geometry etc...

On PS2, a texture heavy game would "stress" bandwidth and RAM a lot, but not much the processing power. Texturing is all about how fast you can fetch the textures from RAM, not necessarily about how many calculations your processors can do in a second. Your processor could be sitting there waiting for the texture to load up from RAM, doing nothing. such a game would not be "pushing" the hardware.

A polygon/particle heavy game however, like ZOE2, would stress the pure processing power (as in the maths calculations) much more. This can be measured by the PA, which sees how much data is being created and thrown around by all the processors in PS2 - the EE core, the VUs and the GS.

A polygon/particle heavy game with lots of lighting and post processing effects, like SOTC, will stress the math-pushing juice even more.

That's the standard that should be followed.:smile:

 

[Phil]

On PS2, a texture heavy game would "stress" bandwidth and RAM a lot, but not much the processing power. Texturing is all about how fast you can fetch the textures from RAM, not necessarily about how many calculations your processors can do in a second. Your processor could be sitting there waiting for the texture to load up from RAM, doing nothing. such a game would not be "pushing" the hardware.

I agree - but don't forget that the bandwidth is limited and not only used by textures but that geometry and everything else has to travel that way as well. If a game like Gran Turismo 4 is bandwidth limited because of the amount of textures that are sent forward, the processors may not be able to work as efficiently because they have to wait until bandwidth is freed up for them to send over their data - which is kind of my point why PA stats only tell one part of the story and not necessarely show well how impressive an achievement is.

The whole point of the PA is to show where developers can squeeze more out of the system - not to show which game is technically more impressive than the other.

I do think however that a game like ZOE2 (or perhaps the Jak & Daxter games) are the way to use the PS2 hardware more efficiently without getting the hardware bound by tasks early it simply doesn't do well.

 

[Firewarrior]

For PS2 I would say between the Final Fantasy series or Black.

 

[assen]

For PS2 I would say between the Final Fantasy series or Black.

Final Fantasy XII, while having excellent art direction and being one of my all-time favorite games, was actually quite unimpressive technically. Miniscule areas, constant loading, people in the street fading in right before your nose, damned Japanese tradition of foregoing mipmaps...

 

[Firewarrior]

Final Fantasy XII, while having excellent art direction and being one of my all-time favorite games, was actually quite unimpressive technically. Miniscule areas, constant loading, people in the street fading in right before your nose, damned Japanese tradition of foregoing mipmaps...

I actually quite liked the FF series.

The new movie advent children was amazing.

 

[Mendel]

for ps2: Transformers.
for xbox: doom 3
for gamecube: Starfox adventures