WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?

There just isn't a lot. I don't think it was targeted at PS2, though. The first game that used it was Beyond Good and Evil, which had a custom water effect in Gamecube, a more stable framerate, and better particles than any of the other versions. The other games off the top of my head were the three PoP games (something they did required destination alpha, so the Cube versions have tons of banding, but still run very well and look fantastic) and King Kong.

From what I've seen, it's a pretty flexible engine that allows for beautiful, soft-looking lighting effects and enormous draw distances, and it transitions smoothly between different kinds of gameplay; e.g. indoor, outdoor, vehicles, platforming, etc. That latter may be why they chose it for Rayman.

 

Here is some new Pokemon footage

I came across some new footage of the pokemon game today. The world lighting on the pokemon is quite good, unfortunately the seemingly luminous looking attacks don't seem to affect the lighting of the pokemon in any way.

http://www.pokemon.co.jp/game/ds/pbr_sp/

 

Thanks for the info fsp.

Lots of new RS and Rayman media.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/739/739031p1.html

 

Red Steel looks great in that IGN footage. The "paper cutout" look of characters works really well once in motion. Oh, and the music rocks.

 

after going through all the recent footage i can only agree with that. the game has a sufficient amount of eye-candy. doh, in some palces it's outright beautiful. i loved all that volumetric-light fx and the environmental fx.

as pc999 put it, 'great mastery of old tech' - and i say, 'can i have some more of that, please' ; )

the only thing i somewhat regret about is that the RS team in all likeliness did not have the time to take advantage of the new wiimote AI tools just made available.

dunno about you guys, but for me that constitutes next-genness much more than any upping of resolution, though in my case that may have something to do with professional deformations.

 

Is the lighting still vertex? Noticed some bump mapping, explosions look nice, anti-aliasing seems minimal. Love the level with yellow colored glass and floor reflections. Thinking back to the concept art there's still a lot to be seen when the game launches.

I didn't notice any dynamic lighting coming from the players gun muzzle flash or enemy firearms. I hope it can be implemented before launch.

Retro is probably working hard to remodel its character models and improving textures, it should look better then RS by release.

 

Red Steel and Rayman are both a rock-solid 30fps (on Wii) according to IGN.

 

Ugh, the Red Steel videos made me cringe. I'm totally against the cursor movement style, plus the sword fighting looks really bad. I'm really hoping the person playing was just really horrible, which it appeared so.

 

Judas Priest. This thread is turning into a broken record. Every time a new screenshot, video, or other piece of news comes out, everyone says the exact same things. I propose the following criticisms and responses:

1. "This doesn't control like a PC game." / "That's because the Remote isn't a mouse."
2. "This looks like something a Gamecube could do." / "No, it doesn't." or "That's because it's a PS2 port."
3. "Xbox Live is way better." / "Nintendo is behind the curve, and their service is free."
4. "30fps sucks. Every game should run at 60." / "Some of us don't care."
5. "480p looks like crap on my HDTV." / "Sorry. It doesn't bother me."
6. "Wii is overpriced." / "No, it's not."

I think that covers about 90% of what people say. From now on, the critics should just say "Criticism #4," and we fanpersons can say "Standard Response #4." That would clean up this thread a ton!

 

it is. but there's plenty of enviromnetal mapping throughout used for illumination. i even suspect there's some on the characters, but i'm looking at the low-res videos here.

i doubt it as they've already addressed the player's gunfire with overlaying blending effects.

MP3 already looks damn good overall, but yes, there's always room for improvement, so i'm more than sure we'll be discussing that here : )

 

The remote could control just like a mouse, I hardly ever pick up my mouse compared to many others. There's also the nifty idea of a reset button. I believe such would be better, but of course not all would agree.

I think you'e right htough in saying this thread has become a broken record, and hardly any of the discussion is on topic or based on real facts. Honestly, I'm surprised it wasnt locked long ago.

 

i don't think so - on a mouse you can bump the tracking sensitivity ad infinitum, on a wiimote-like device you'd hit your arm's steadiness threshold pretty quick as it's your hand which is at the basis of the wiimote. eventually coping with such a steadiness threshold would cause excessive amounts of 'lifting the mouse', i.e. recentering the remote.

bottomline being - though largely interchangeable, a wiimote is not a mouse (am i getting a dejavu here?), and the differences become prominent when implementing FPS control schemes.

not to mention that i personally hate the centre-fixed reticle in FPSs - it's the biggest gripe i have with this genre; no matter how realistic everything else in the game may be, this pinned reticle totally ruins the immersion experience for me.

 

Except the center crosshair allows you to be much more accurate, which allows the developers to increase the action. My biggest grip with the RS videos is that it looks ultra boring and ultra easy. Things like being able to take about 20 hits from a sword? Come on, there's no reason for that other than a control scheme that limits your skill.

 

Actually, the freelook/fixed-center-reticle is what makes a PC FPS a real first person shooter, and a Wii game like Red Steel more of a shooting gallery game like Time Crisis.

 

I'd say RS is more of a hybrid between both, sadly I really dislike shooting gallery games and there movement with the reticle.

 

IIRC in the jeuxfrance.com videos you could adjust the controls both in the arms and sword fight (in fact in the first video the controlled the game much better).

If the sword fighting is dept enought it can be very interesting if the AI is good.

It all depend on the scheme they try to implement, in some (like the RS or MP3 ones) it is impossible to implement that kind of scheme (for the reason you said) but if you change the plane of movement (to one paralel to the place of rest of your arm) and add some filters (eg for vertical movments) and you get a centre-fixed reticle control scheme.

Anyway I hope that soon we will see some variety with control schemes, althought in last gen we didnt saw that.

 

Response #1.

We get it. You don't like FPS's that aren't controlled like PC games (although I don't know how many such games you've actually played). I mean, it's not like how RS controls has been some huge secret that's just been revealed. Hence, I suggest we move on.

I have my concerns about the difficulty of Red Steel. I really don't much care for the whole "rechargable health" thing; it seems difficult to execute well. It worked well for Halo because there really wasn't all that much cover, you had to wait a decent amount of time to recharge, and your enemies were very aggressive. Red Steel guys just hide behind boxes waiting for you to regain your health. Although, if RS has a difficulty setting where you die fairly quickly, I suppose it wouldn't be a problem.

 

wow, now we already have 'real' first person shooters and 'fake' such?! according to whom - ISO?

fact is, a fixed reticle view turns everything into a 'scoped' experience - in reality you have weapon pointing and view orienation independence. except in the cases when you look through a scope. in what you call 'gallery shooters' you have that independence - you can aim focusing your FOV at a spot of the display, and your targetting motion follows, and since that's exactly how real aiming goes, you get the real deviations/shaking/inconsistencies between what you see and what you get. so high precision is not a sign of realism here - the fused view/aiming scheme turns the whole shooting experience into a through-the-scope inhuman-precision lab experience. which combined with fast mouse control sometimes results in sea-sickness. now, dunno about you but for me that's a sign of a bad simulation - i don't see people getting sea-sick from aiming with guns, do you?

 

You mean you don't have machine guns mounted on your eyeballs? Weirdo.