'Realism' in (War) Games

There are many titles based on popular historic (World War 2) conflicts that claim to be 'realistic', though none really come within a hairs breadth of 'realism'. No sir, I don't think the typical 101st airborne grunt strafed, jumped into mid air then hit the floor prone and nocked out a German soldier with a headshot using a Karabiner 98K he had swiped three minutes ago.

When a developer says 'realistic World War 2' simulation he really means to say is 'the Germans speak German and the Americans speak American' (or something to that effect) 'oh and the Karbiner 98k is pin point accurate and gets one shot one kills everytime and you can't reload the M1 Garand until you've used up a clip', of course if you're really lucky they might add 'if a grenade explodes near you, you'll experience a disorienting effect, we have also implemented a cover system to provide maximum interaction with your environment'.

In Day of Defeat: Source if a grenade explodes near you but doesn't kill you your screen will go still with the last image you saw, the sound may also temporarily turn off. The question is, 'how realistic is this?'. If a greande did go off near you and gives you such a trauma to the point you're virtually blinded and deaf would you still be able to run around? Or would you fall to the floor in some way shape or form? It's an impact trauma, it's meant to push you in some way.

The cover systems used in games thusfar make no sense from a realistic stand point. Why is it than in games such as 'Rainbow Six: Vegas' that use a very developed (and cool) cover system does the camera go from first person to third person? When a person is in cover they don't usually see around corners, wheres the realism in that? I understand that it might have something to do with orientation for the player but even so, developers should find another way to provide said orientation when in cover.

Now to add to that, online Multiplayer games suck when it comes to squads, single player can get away with scripting and AI but online just plain old sucks. It isn't that if in a typical 'realistic' online multiplayer game the team actually works like a squad they end up losing - quite the opposite, it's just that people play online multiplayer games because they want to have fun, and they won't have fun if they do what someone else wants them to do.

I'm not one to just say how bad everything is without giving suggestions as to how things can be improved. I think the best way to solve the issue of the 'every man for himself syndrome' is by giving people their own mini AI-squads in online multiplayer games. Have them play the leader of a three man team, given the other two players will be controlled by the computer it will mean that they will listen to the orders of their commanding player, after all bots play to make the player happy. This will literally force players to use team work, granted it will be with AI bots but it will get people used to the idea of issuing and perhaps even recieving commands which can naturally extend to other human players.

Now finally, my biggest qualm with 'realistic' shooters. Why no gore? If someone dies from an explosion right next to him why does he fly three hundred feet into the air and lands in a ditch on the other side of the map yet is still in one piece with no bruises or signs of trauma? I want 'Saving Private Ryan' type gore, I want to see peoples limbs fly off and see them alive but incapable of doing anything about it, I want to see guts spilling when a person gets stabbed, I want to see tanks squash enemies, not push them away. We have advanced physics engines these days, we can literally simulate water but we can't simulate blood and flying limbs? What kind of world is this?

Before people try to bury me in a tidal of 'you idiot!' or 'it's just a game!' or 'maybe you just suck at online games!' (yeah ok, so I do) I want to make it absoloutely clear I have nothing against games like Gears of War or Brothers in Arms or Day of Defeat: Source. They do what they do really well - entertain. However I want them to entertain me more than they already do, I like to be immersed in a world and am willing to suck badly in a game so long as I find it authentic, to that end I have these gripes with games that claim to be 'realistic' but aren't close enough to 'real' to satisfy my lust for realism.

The Most Under Appreciated Game of This Generation

It is a bald statement, to claim something for an entire generation of consoles and hardware before the generation is even over. Though I feel safe in my claim for never in the history of gaming has such a quality title completely slipped under the radar.

Why Kameo? Not that difficult to understand once you look into the circumstances under which it was released. The main complaint behind the Xbox 360 launch line up was that there were no 'real' next-gen games. I guess since Kameo is supposedly targetted at a younger audience next generetion graphics, unique gameplay, epic story and an incredibly immersive world just isn't enough.

Whats interesting is that RARE obviously loved Kameo, the graphics engine was built for it, the same one looked just plain bad on Perfect Dark Zero but for Kameo? Simply breath taking, the water effects were truly masterful. Bungies Frankie keeps boasting about the water in Halo 3 though everything he is so proud of has already been done in Kameo.


Each elementel warrior in Kameo is lovingly detailed and definitely unique, so are the different worlds and the many variations of enemies you take on. There are real time day/night cycles that take place as you play and fantastic lighting to boot. Kameos world oozes detail, the ooze probably made from the love and sweat RARE has poured into it.


Yet, after all that, everyone was interested in seeing if Perfect Dark Zero would be the new Halo of Microsoft. A thousand curses upon the damned Xbox, it has been type cast to FPS titles!

Whats funny is that most will say the most under appreciated game for the Xbox 360 thusfar is Viva Pinata, yet given the number of people who say it is under appreciated it surely couldn't be THAT unloved. Kameo was the best game in the Xbox 360 launch line up but it was over looked, the Xbox 360 isn't targetted at a general audience, it's sad but true, both RAREs major games for the Xbox 360 haven't sold well, and all for the wrong reasons.

Battle of the Upscalers - Playstation 3 VS Xbox 360

It seems like even upscaling is subject to qualitative differences, the Xbox 360 is clearly cleaning up images wherein the Playstation 3 seems to be bluring out the jagged edges.









Halo 2:





Final Fantasy 12:

Here they are 'stitched together',



Big thanks to Kamalot for this one (see comments).

Bad Habits in Halo 3 - The Top Ten List

Frankie, the dude who wouldn't shuttup about the water, has spoken of his dislike of various acts and activities people have been partaking in while playing the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, he particularly dislikes the fact people 'tea bag' other peoples kills. What sort of pathetic lowness does it take that one should start 'tea bagging' kills one didn't commit?

10. Scavenging other people’s kills – if you didn’t kill him, you have no business crouching on him.

9. Vetoing casually – Think twice before vetoing a game you only half dislike. Murphy’s Law states that the next choice will be worse.

8. Taking off in the Hog alone – You may as well drive around in a huge magnetic target.

7. Talking trash to teammates – Yelling at strangers is bad enough, but do you think yelling at your compatriots will make them play better? Drink some chocolate milk and shut your cretinous noisehole.

6. Blasting your music at us – Yes, you’re hardcore. You love mad rhymes and phat beats. We don’t care. Turn it off. We already muted you, you spaz.

5. Insulting the room before the teams are chosen – Now I don’t want to cooperate with you.

4. Shooting me specifically, with the Needler – Stop it. I hate you.

3. Racism, abuse, foul language – We muted you already. So now you’re just a sad idiot yelling into a vacuum. Actually, go right ahead. Maybe a relative will smack you or get you the help you need.

2. Insulting Gamertags – Obviously Live can’t automatically detect every idiotic Gamertag you come up with, especially with your L337 combos, so how about this: Just quit being a moron.

1. Going to the bathroom while playing – this gem was found on a Halo 3 post in another forum. Names have been hidden to protect the guilty:

I never quit, but sometimes I have to poop, so I take the controller into the toilet with me. I move the sticks and press buttons, but I can't be held responsible for my actions during these brownouts.

Luke's been playing this game a lot, but he swears it's for a purpose.


VIA Bungie Frankie

In Game DirectX 10 vs. DirectX 9

Screenshots of Crysis running in DirectX 10 and DirectX 9.0.








To find which screenshot is running in DirectX 10 and which are running in DirectX 9.0f (if you haven't figured it out already) click here.

Microsoft and 'Live 3.0'

Sony is promising to deliver better than Xbox Live for free, though if it can just get as good as Xbox Live free it would be more than enough. Sony on top of free online is pushing the concept of 'Game 3.0', so far the reaction to it has been extremely possitive giving an 'empire strikes back' vibe to the console wars.

Microsoft is still back at its Xbox 1 days, charging for what is essentially the same service, making free the ability to purchase things or download what is usually free. It's time for Microsoft to get back into focusing on community interaction. Just how?

At the 2006 E3 Petere Moore made that damning quote "Some people do rubber ducks, some people do tattoos", could we extend this and expect this E3 Petere Moore to get up on stage and proclaim "Some people do rag dolls, some people do Spartans"? No, I'm not looking for a platformer in which you play a customizable Master Chief and go around creating levels to jump around in, I'm talking about a full featured map editor.

Give developers the ability to integrate map editors and other such goodies into their games as part of the XNA, make it so someone can create a map for Halo 3 on his/her PC and release it via Xbox Live as a free download.

The whole 'Game 3.0' concept Sony has come up with is entirely coincedential, Playstation Home was originally as part of the lobby for a Playstation 2 game and perhaps the only reason LittleBigPlanet is an exclusive for the Playstation 3 is because Sony has bought the Ageia PhysX license for all developers on the Playstation 3. If Sony's Game 3.0 concept goes unmatched then the PSN will definitely surpass Xbox Live in every way.

Firearms 2 Mod is a No a-Go-Go

I can in part imagine what the Firearms team think and feel, after years of developing a mod it was snatched away from them by a bunch of over zealous 'fans' and now using the Firearms name are making a sequel to a mod they never created but stole.

The same can't be said for the Firearms 2 Team, who kicked off their mod in August 2005 by hijacking the Firearms Forums, FTP, and servers using back-door access supplied by our server provider, ReconGamer. Every single team member and most of the forum admin/mod staff were banned, and we lost all of our art source and personal files stored on the server. As a result, this website was rebuilt from archived sites. The server takeover didn't affect the domain names, so the FA Team still controls those. For a while, they redirected to the site of our follow-up mod, World at War.

Full Story

The developers of the original Firearms mod don't want to remember this gross past, (understandably so) they are moving on and making World at War, a Half-Life 2 mod.

What I don't understand is how the gaming community can allow this sort of behavior and even support it (yes people do support Firearms 2). While Firearms 2 may turn out to be a good mod it was stolen no less, if we took all legalities out of the equation and said that Sony stole Bungie and plans to release a second rate knock off on the Playstation 3 would anyone agree much less support Sony in that move?

Is it different that this is the mod community? Shouldn't it be even more aggravating to the community that such a mod is in fact profiting off the name of another teams entire efforts, even the original creator didn't like the idea of giving Firearms 2 to another team:

During this period, Zerk [creator of Firearms] consulted with the DICE legal team and learned that, despite having signed a contract, no legal action could be taken against the theft of intellectual property online.

I don't see how people can be shallow enough to say 'yes we support this mod because it looks cool' despite it being a complete ripoff of someone else's work, better or not it's stolen and if we continue this line of thought we could see more of this happening - more startup mods having their thunder snatched from them due to such and such glory hogs who think they know better.

Games Killed the PC

Any real hardcore PC gamer will tell you PC games are almost dead, with the number of dumbed down franchises that are multiplatform being released it no longer at all makes sense to own a PC, unless you are still into RTS gaming.

For me it all started with the release of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. Now I'm not denying the game was really fun to play but damn well the game was not Ghost Recon, not the Ghost Recon I know, and I would too, I played the original Ghost Recon.

What happened to the intense moments of hiding in foliage wondering if you should move two steps foward or two steps back? What happened to commanding four or five squad mates to run across an open field as you covered them with a sniper? GRAW completely took all that away, it no longer was 'Ghost Recon' it was 'Rhino Recon', charge in, charge out. Gee, Ubisoft, so long as you're wrecking these great franchises (for us die-hard gamers) you could at least do it right - GRAW on the 360 was definitely more fun with the third person mode and cover system.

Other franchises have also fallen into the trap and games are also being less and less optimized for the PC, why are game specs for PC's increasing disproportionately to graphics in games? They are all console ports, thats why.

It's no secret developers are getting lazy, Ubisoft claimed it was too difficult to make 'Double Agent' run in PS 2.0 because of special features behind PS3.0 that wasn't backwareds compatible, the truth is in the Directx documentation under 'Shader Model 3',

Vertex shaders and pixel shaders are simplified considerably from earlier shader versions. If you are implementing shaders in hardware, you may not use vs_3_0 or ps_3_0 with any other shader versions, and you may not use either shader type with the fixed function pipeline. These changes make it possible to simplify drivers and the runtime. The only exception is that software-only vs_3_0 shaders may be used with any pixel shader version. In addition, if you are using a software-only vs_3_0 shader with a previous pixel shader version, the vertex shader can only use output semantics that are compatible with flexible vertex format (FVF) codes.

Yeah it's just what we all expected, Ubisoft got lazy.

With every new generation of consoles you get the people who say it's over for PC's because of the power of the consoles, this isn't the case, whats killing the PC now is poorly ported games based on bastardized and streamlined franchises purpose built to hit a market mainstream, a mainstream mostly centered around consoles.

For me the PC died, it died with Ghost Recon, that was the final straw, Half-Life 2 played life support for a while but that doesn't justify owning a PC, the only reason I keep it is because of the great RTS games that are released on it and the few remaining games that are truly complex.

In my mind two things killed the PC as a serious gaming system, piracy and lost franchises I owned a gaming PC for.

Wii Games Look Terrible?

I find it amazing how people can make that claim pointing out such and such crappy Playstation 2 port as their 'proof'. If were going to be judging Wii's graphics capabilities we should judge them by their best, who judges the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 by 'Need for Speed Most Wanted', likewise why do people judge the Wii with the lowliest Playstation 2 port? Wii has great looking games, especially when they are developed exclusively for it with the hardware in mind.

Lets take some examples,

Sonic and the Secret Rings is developed exclusively for the Wii, doesn't look half-bad,


Compare it to the Xbox 360 version of Sonic,

Wii is on the left, Xbox 360 on the right

Metroid Prime Corruption also looks great, retro is targeting 60 FPS in the final release,




Super Smash Brothers Brawl doesn't look half bad either,





Finally, Super Mario Galaxy, running at 60fps really shows off what the Wii can do,




Of course there are more games, SSX Blur, Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles, Resident Evil amongst many others. Theres still a few years for the Wii and if developers can focus on art direction they can still make beautiful looking Wii games and at the end of the day thats all anyone can really ever ask.

Splinter Cell Double Agent - Xbox 360/Playstation 3 Comparison Shots

Scroll down to find out which side is on which platform













The right hand side is Xbox 360, left hand side is Playstation 3, but you probably already knew that, didn't ya?

The key difference between the two platforms seems to be in the lighting, amazing how much of a difference a little bit of dynamic lighting will affect the visual quality of a game.

Why Do They Look Like Ghosts?

Seems like every generation we are supposed to be 'wowed' by how 'good' Final Fantasy looks, and I have to admit up until now it sure has wowed everyone. But the first trailer of Final Fantasy XIII released, the one that apparently no one was sure was real time or not until the menu screens popped up, what a disappointment.

Just like with 'Spirits Within' Final Fantasy XIII has this ghost-like look to the characters, theres an insane amount of polygons in them no doubt, but they lack detail, like the modelers just got Playstation 2 Final Fantasy models and clicked on 'mesh smooth' and slapped some higher resolution textures onto them.

There is nothing astounding about the character models, they look like extremely smooth clay models... of ghosts. The faces are too perfect, sure this kind of perfection is what takes hours and hours to achieve on Leonardo Di Caprio's face hence should be inherently a good thing here, it is just too perfect.

Flawless in every way, smooth skin texture and what really irks me, basically a mirrored face. No ones face is the exact same on both sides, seems like thats something that didn't click with the modelers here. Two halves of the face should look at least slightly different and the fact they don't here just adds to the eery ghost-like effect the characters visage seems to portray.

Perhaps the reason why the mirror technique is showing off so spectacularly here is because the graphics are just so damn good, almost all other games have mirrored characters, it saves time. But when the character models have this many polygons, special FX wizwaz and whatever else, the mirroring and lack of finer details really shows.

Still have doubts? Compare Half-Life 2 to Final Fantasy XIII,


As you can see with the model taken out of Half-Life 2 Alyx definitely has far fewer polygons, lower resolution textures amongst other things. But she looks more life like, her skin has an actual human like texture, it isn't perfectly mirrored in on itself, it just looks more human.

With the FF XIII model it is quite obvious the image is sharper, no jagged edges anywhere, but still, she doesn't look nearly as real, her skin texture is too perfect, her face is mirrored and no amount of graphical horsepower could change that, thats the way the character has been modeled.

First Four Months, Why Games Sell Hardware

Kotaku had recently published a bar graph of the first four months in console sales, with some surprising results.

While the graph is intriguing it could also be seen as misleading, if we follow it cold it means the console with the lowest opening quarter sales will go on to be overwhelmingly dominant in the market in the years to come.

Take the Xbox for example, came third, obviously because of Halo, a killer app that practically saved the console from an early demise, of course it was backed by a (relatively) strong launch line up.

The Nintendo 64 done better in its first four months than the Wii, I think 'Super Mario 64' really did ram home 3D gaming, of course it had the controller for 3D gaming, but it merely complimented Mario 64.

Sega's last foray into console gaming did have one of the best 3D Sonic games ever in 'Sonic Adventures'. I don't care what 'purists' say, 'Sonic Adventures' was one of the, if not the best 3D outing for Sonic ever. Backed up by what I (and many others) consider the greatest fighting game of all time 'Soul Calbur' it really is a wonder how the DreamCast did not sell the most by far in the first four months.

Lets face it, both the Playstation 2 and 3 launched with really lack lustre titles, granted while the Playstation 3 did have the above average 'Resistance: Fall of man' the other underwhelming titles coupled with terrible PR, high price and shortages leading up to the launch simply could not do Resistance justice.

What the figures show is that the console wars is over the period of something like five years - not four months, when developers are strained and console manufacturers have to really fight for the exclusive titles, thats when the real figures start popping up.

Of course having a strong launch is a good thing, something that Nintendo should learn to take advantage of and continue, it's good to have a big boom and sell over 1.86 million units in four months, but you have to keep the goods rolling for the consoles entire life.

Rare Should Compete with Insomniac, Not Nintendo

Nintendo has carved out an extremely solid market that is now impossible to penetrate, least of all by an ex-second party developer. There is no way Microsoft can steal part of that market from Nintendo with Rare's efforts, the dismal sales of the above average 'Viva Piñata' is more than enough evidence that just like Sony's demographic there is no room for 'E for Everyone'.

Rather than full blown games, titles such as Singstar are the only way to go, that is how Sony is penetrating the generel market. Sony sure isn't throwing key developers at an almost non-existent demographic but rather experimenting with it and making progress (as can be seen).

Rare is a great developer, if allowed, it could make mature games such as 'Conkers Bad Fur Day'. Conker should be for Microsoft what Ratchet and Clank is for Sony, a really solid franchise, not game, franchise. Instead what were getting is high quality titles that aren't selling because there aren't enough people who want to play the game, would a twenty five year old want to sit down and watch 'Sleeping Beauty'? Of course not, does that make 'Sleeping Beauty' a bad movie? Not necessarily, it could be a good movie but not one a twenty five year old wants to watch.

So cut the crap Microsoft, bring Rare into competition with the big one, you know who the big one is, don't you?

Blu-Ray - Genuine Advantages to Gaming?

Sony has been pushing Blu-Ray's storage capacity as the big thing that will make the Playstation 3 'future proof' however has left out performance from the equation. It almost seems like some of Sony's most loyal third party developers are rushing to justify the mandatory Blu-Ray format for all games as if it were not only a good thing but the only way to go.

Insomniac's Brian Hastings recently causing quite a stir defending the Playstation 3, he would too, Insomniac is one of Sony's biggest third party developers. While Hastings claims he isn't biased because Insomniac is a third party developer he neglects to mention that Sony has invested $20 million in Insomniac to develop Resistence: Fall of Man and the technology that would push later games Insomniac will be releasing on the Playstation 3.

Hastings reasons that since storage is vital that in the coming months DVD's will not be able to hold all the data necessary for next generation games. He also mentions that 'Gears of War' looks better than 'Resistance: Fall of Man' because Gears uses texture streaming wherein Fall of Man doesn't. He continues further elaborating that texture streaming will increase the size of games severel folds and is speculating at seeing games where each individual level will be approximately one gigabyte. He implies that given DVD's small storage space textures will be coming at a premium hence texture streaming won't ever be utilized to its fullest.

Of course he neglects to mention one key flaw in his texture streaming theory, that is, the DVD drive in the Xbox 360 has a higher transfer rate than the Blu-Ray drive in the Playstation 3. While the Xbox 360 sports 16x DVD which has a transfer rate of 16mb per second the Playstation 3's Blu-Ray is at 2x which translates to 9mb per second transfer rates.

If textures are to be streamed from the optical media the higher the transfer rate the more efficient the streaming will be, it's as simple as that. The matter of storage is almost null and void, one game can have several DVD's but the Playstation 3's Blu-Ray drive will never be beyond 2x, at least it won't be such that a developer can comfortably develop for anything above that.

While all these are legitimate concerns I think within two years it will be a moot point. Things are moving away from optical media to hard drive storage. I think that eventually Xbox 360 'core' owners are going to be pressured into buying a hard drive to play games. It may sound bad now but in that two years the 20gigabyte Xbox 360 hard drive will probably cost less than a game and run just as well.