Support NeoGAF

[J2 Cool]

Hmm, very cool feature. Could definitely go for a longer version. Some Madden, Condemned, 99 nights, etc. Agreed on this being what G4 should be. Odd thing, I was listening to the radio today and a dude was talking about videogames and the magazines. Mentioned PSM, Gameinformer, etc. So I had an odd moment thinking a videogame radio show may exist. This could be great!

Then as they were talking, the guy mentioned he had the entire Onimusha series, 1-3, but sold them. He said he still lusts for them at times though and the other guy says "Praise be to god". Which was weird, but so quick I didn't give it a second thought. Then the guy starts mentioning ratings on the games and children being corrupted.. This is a censorship! Then more than that, he hangs up and I realize where they continue from that.. It's a religious station! Then they go on about how bad games are and just ridiculous stuff. I had such an urge just to call in and ask them if they ever played Metal Gear Solid 3. Then mention how much I love that, favorite moments, favorite bosses, how it's my game of the year. Then simply follow by saying "I'll hang up and listen to your thoughts". I'd have loved to hear what they followed up with after I just gave a positive game review in an enthusiastic and acclaimed manner.

But anyway, nice feature. I'm really worried about PD0 being the best game on 360 though. It's got some serious AI problems from what I noticed and doesn't look very challenging. I dunno. Americans do love them some FPS though. It'll make an impact at launch. PGR3 is certainly the most well developed and best looking 360 game. Everything about it and the framerate sounds awesome. But I mean, if you take away Kameo and say Oblivion isn't looking ready that really messes with the overall view of the system's launch. Not to mention GR:AW's bad showing. Some of the highest points of 360's launch were missed in that video though. CoD2 and NBA2k6 are looking real smooth and real fun. Those are some games I'd push if I were Mircrosoft. You don't need to keep talking about what will be of 360. Especially at this point. Push what looks ready and fun. CoD2, NBA2k6, PD0, PGR3, RR6.

 

[Akira]

Che, you look Korean.

 

[Brandon F]

That was really cool, wish I coulda heard more from Che about Oblivion, especially given his recent comments in my Morrowind thread. He seemed intent to quietly slip Oblivion in as his fav of X'05 even after all the praise for PD0 and PGR3.

Really happy to hear the enthused support from Mark and Che on PD0 as well, trying to take all the recent hyperbole in stride, but the praise came across as sounding rather genuine.

 

[DreamMachine]

that roundtable was great... thats the kinda stuff that should be on g4tv!

i could watch 42 minutes of that seperated by commercial breaks

true words have never been spoken i was thinking of this recently as well.. i'd totally watch g4 if that's what it was like..

damn AOTS is garbage i am sorry most of that show is not even about video games it pisses me off when i watch it so i just change the channel and never speak of it ...

 

[----]

I thought that was a good roundtable, but I didn't really understand their problems with Kameo at all. They said they didn't understand what the game was about and then said it was a platformer which seems odd since the game is more of an action adventure game like Zelda. They say they don't like the art style and that a plant with boxing gloves is weird, but this seems like an extremely superficial critique compared to the other games they talked about. The fact that they're calling it a platformer and dissing the artstyle makes it seem like they aren't giving the game the attention it deserves. Unlike all of the other games they had nothing at all to say about Kameo's gameplay which was unfortunate because I'd really like to know how the game plays. It seems like they dismissed Kameo as a kiddy game not for them based upon the visuals alone. From what I've seen and heard Kameo seems like a fairly epic action adventure game with a phenomenal soundtrack and some innovative co-op gameplay.

"No one knows what Kameo is. It's a platformer, but you fly around, and you attack things with boxing gloves on. Nobody knows what Kameo is?"

I thought this was a really embarassing comment. You could say that type of stuff for a lot of games. Like Zelda Twilight Princess: "Nobody knows what Twilight Princess is. It's a platformer, you're an elf riding on horseback then you transform into a wolf with a weird creature riding on your back. Nobody knows what Twilight Princess is about. There's so many different parts of it that it's very hard to see them all come together." I don't see what's so hard to understand about Kameo, you're an elf who can turn into 5 different elemental types of creatures (Fire, Water, Rock, Plant, Ice) and you use and combine those elemental types to complete puzzles and beat bosses. Same freakin mechanics have been used in video games going back to the early 80s in games like Megaman, Zelda, and Metroid.

What they said about Tony Hawk, Gun, etc. was valid. The GRAW comparison was jarring. I wish game companies would please stop showing concept videos to the public. The Oblivion impressions were much needed. The King Kong comments were insightful.

Here's a perfect example of the difference between an intelligent source like 1UP and a not so useful source like G4. On AotS Kevin Periera says that the PC version of King Kong will show you what the Xbox 360 version looks like, but on 1UP.com they're smart enough to know that the Xbox 360 version is different and features considerable improvements. Then they go through all the improvements over the PC version one by one.

 

[chespace]

Thanks for the comments and criticisms -- it makes all that work worthwhile when you're super jetlagged and hungover at the same time.

We have some cool shit in the works if you like these sort of video features we do. Look for some stuff coming later this year. We can all obviously be much more smooth in front of a camera, I know. I'm not totally comfortable yet, but I figure if the video is as casual and normal as possible, we're on the right track.

Just got back from the 360 party. Played some more Oblivion. Framerate on that game is now my biggest concern. I saw some horrific slowdown tonight, but thankfully, optimization is probably the easiest improvement to make. Still, the game is so gorgeous and massive, choppiness won't be a deal-killer.

Two other huge surprises:

I'm pretty cynical about Need For Speed these days but Most Wanted kinda blew me away. Having played the Xbox version of the game, I purposefully stayed away from this game at X05, thinking it was just a high-def version of the same thing. And yeah, it pretty much is, but goddamn what a difference that makes. First of all, it's easy to hate on the yellows and earthtones, but it really gives the game a lot of photorealism and much-needed ambience. Taking your near-invincible Porsche and tearing through a side alley full of trash is exhilarating. At times, the slippery reflections painted all over your car, combined with the number of little details in the background makes NFS:MW feel like the most detailed 2D racer ever... like millions of little sprites going off all at once. It felt nice too -- the drifting still feels somewhat like it's on rails, but it's NFS and if you subscribe to the weight of its gameplay, then you'll feel right at home here. The high speed pursuit shit is the best part of the game. It feels like Pac-Man on wheels in a completely open GTA-like environment.

The other game I spent quite a bit of time with was Call of Duty 2. I've recently been singing the praises of Brothers in Arms on the PC and Xbox so it was almost an obligation to hate on the kind of rollercoaster, rail-confined shooter that CoD2 is. Instead, I discovered a gripping and fantastic shooter with sort of a classic Model 2 or 3 arcade sort of gameplay precision. In fact, the entire game reminded me of a super clean Model 3 shooter, right down to the animations and all. I made my associate Jane Pinckard pick up and try the game with the headphones on and she fucking loved it, shooting and blowing shit up while screaming at the top of her lungs.

Anyway, no more 360 hands-on time until we get debugs in the office, which I hear is fairly soon. The print guys get 'em THIS WEEK. zomg.

 

[Kimi]

Che: next time you see allard or any rare guy tell him the lack of bloodstains is dissapointing.


Anyways i liked the video but i wish it covered some of the games that no one covers, like condemned, 99 knights and fifa.

I wonder if he did that earlier tonight....J Allard was there.

 

[Blimblim]

I'm pretty cynical about Need For Speed these days but Most Wanted kinda blew me away. Having played the Xbox version of the game, I purposefully stayed away from this game at X05, thinking it was just a high-def version of the same thing. And yeah, it pretty much is, but goddamn what a difference that makes. First of all, it's easy to hate on the yellows and earthtones, but it really gives the game a lot of photorealism and much-needed ambience. Taking your near-invincible Porsche and tearing through a side alley full of trash is exhilarating. At times, the slippery reflections painted all over your car, combined with the number of little details in the background makes NFS:MW feel like the most detailed 2D racer ever... like millions of little sprites going off all at once. It felt nice too -- the drifting still feels somewhat like it's on rails, but it's NFS and if you subscribe to the weight of its gameplay, then you'll feel right at home here. The high speed pursuit shit is the best part of the game. It feels like Pac-Man on wheels in a completely open GTA-like environment.

Thanks for the impressions. Did anybody tell you if the NFS:MW build was different from the one at X05? Because that game did not impress me in the least last week in Amsterdam...

Anyway, no more 360 hands-on time until we get debugs in the office, which I hear is fairly soon. The print guys get 'em THIS WEEK. zomg.

Lucky guys, I'll feel lucky if I get one before launch. I can't wait to go back to Kameo and of course PGR3

 

[----]

This is the 2nd time today that I've heard a journalist say that NFS:MW looked so amazing it was almost photorealistic. Peter Rojas from Engadget went to the Xbox 360 press event and he felt the exact same way about NFS:MW being photorealistic and he also said Condemned looked and played great. Back at E3 the most impressive games I saw on the show floor were Condemned, NFS: MW, and Kameo.

You guys are way too harsh on Kameo. The guy on the right is kind of vague too. What is wrong with PDZ...x100.

Uh, okay.

Yeah more like Kameo looks and sounds 100x better than PDZ.

PDZ audio sounds like they're freakin using midi porn music. PDZ has an extremely uneven style. On one hand you've got extremely photorealsitic and highly detailed environment textures, but then you've got extremely comic book/cartoony looking characters who look totally out of place in that world. Kameo at least has a cohesive style. The Kameo characters are as highly detailed as the enironments are. The characters in Kameo fit perfectly with the music and the fantasy settings. PDZ is a completely different story, it's all over the place in my opinion.

And really who cares if Mark doesn't have a 12-year old daughter to play co-op with. Do some research and find out that there's an online co-op mode coming a few weeks after launch so you can play the game with Che all you want.

As far as whether you need to be 12 to enjoy the game, well you guys had plenty of opportunities to play the game, that's what you should have been telling us with this roundtable.

 

[dorio]

Yeah more like Kameo looks and sounds 100x better than PDZ.

PDZ audio sounds like they're freakin using midi porn music. PDZ has an extremely uneven style. On one hand you've got extremely photorealsitic and highly detailed environment textures, but then you've got extremely comic book/cartoony looking characters who look totally out of place in that world. Kameo at least has a cohesive style. The Kameo characters are as highly detailed as the enironments are. The characters in Kameo fit perfectly with the music and the fantasy settings. PDZ is a completely different story, it's all over the place in my opinion.

And really who cares if Mark doesn't have a 12-year old daughter to play co-op with. Do some research and find out that there's an online co-op mode coming a few weeks after launch so you can play the game with Che all you want.

As far as whether you need to be 12 to enjoy the game, well you guys had plenty of opportunities to play the game, that's what you should have been telling us with this roundtable.

Those are my feelings exactly, ----, but hey, once we play these games how they look will become secondary.

 

[Ryudo]

The dude who keeps complaining about the rare artsyle and king king being an xbox game is a twat.

 

[satterfield]

Yeah when I heard it stuttered and was choppy all those nagging doubts I've been trying to suppress took over. I will not purchase this game if its released in this state. I dealt with Morrowind because my system was just ok for the time. Now they have the ability to optimize their for a single platform and they better not release it until it runs a consistant frame rate and no stuttering. To their defense though, I wonder how much effect having to make the game run with or without a hard drive is coming into play with Oblivion.



So far from watching all the media I'm not to sure what to think of Kameo. I was hoping to get a little more on it from people who played the game. How well is the slo-motion combo implemented? Can you get creative and make up all kinds of different ways to use the characters together or are you limited to preset action when you switch? Does the fighting feel "right"? This is one game I hope lives up to MS's hype. I think the 360 needs a light, fun game like this.

I was told that they knew the entire time that they should not develop Oblivion with the hard drive in mind. Was also told it wasn't a factor. The 512K RAM was their big score, apparently.

The slow-mo mixed with the punching works great in Kameo. You can swap out to any character you want so you can punch them into the air with Pummel Weed and then switch to any character while they're juggled to perform further attacks.

 

[shpankey]

I was told that they knew the entire time that they should not develop Oblivion with the hard drive in mind. Was also told it wasn't a factor. The 512K RAM was their big score, apparently.

Anal correction here: You meant 512 megs of ram, not K.

 

[satterfield]

Anal correction here: You meant 512 megs of ram, not K.

Yep. My sincere apologies.

 

[shpankey]

No need for apologies.

On topic: I thought you especially did a great job che, the other two guys not so much. Some of their comments just didn't make sense, especially about 'not knowing what Kameo is, with a plant with boxing gloves we just don't know".

I'm also getting conflicting reports about PDZ's control. The guy on this show started off the show with it having "great control" but some of the other GAF users who tried it out mentioned how crappy it was, basically overcomepensating their aim everytime (aiming past the target accidentally everytime due to twitchy/jumpy control). Also, if you look at one of the more recent released videos of a guy playing it, he had the same problem. The GAF user here compared it to the smooth control of Halo and was pointing out how it was nothing like that, but was instead a jumpy, twitchy mess of control that constantly had you missing your aim (think Unreal Championship 1 on Xbox 1).

 

[chespace]

No need for apologies.

On topic: I thought you especially did a great job che, the other two guys not so much. Some of their comments just didn't make sense, especially about 'not knowing what Kameo is, with a plant with boxing gloves we just don't know".

I'm also getting conflicting reports about PDZ's control. The guy on this show started off the show with it having "great control" but some of the other GAF users who tried it out mentioned how crappy it was, basically overcomepensating their aim everytime (aiming past the target accidentally everytime due to twitchy/jumpy control). Also, if you look at one of the more recent released videos of a guy playing it, he had the same problem. The GAF user here compared it to the smooth control of Halo and was pointing out how it was nothing like that, but was instead a jumpy, twitchy mess of control that constantly had you missing your aim (think Unreal Championship 1 on Xbox 1).

Thanks Shpank.

Re: PDZ's controls... while in the zoomed in scope view on some of the weapons, it did take me a while to adjust to the sensitivity, but it wasn't anything you couldn't get used to. In the normal shooting over the shoulder mode, the game controlled like a dream.

 

[eso76]

I can't watch the video right now, what happened to Oblivion ?

 

[Oni Jazar]

PDZ audio sounds like they're freakin using midi porn music. PDZ has an extremely uneven style. On one hand you've got extremely photorealsitic and highly detailed environment textures, but then you've got extremely comic book/cartoony looking characters who look totally out of place in that world. Kameo at least has a cohesive style. The Kameo characters are as highly detailed as the enironments are. The characters in Kameo fit perfectly with the music and the fantasy settings. PDZ is a completely different story, it's all over the place in my opinion.

I'd say both Kameo and PD0 are all over the place. Kameo is all cute with the fairy girl, the rainbows and stuff but then it jumps to slaughtering 1000s of trolls in the nastiest way possible. It's not really a game for children due to the somewhat graphic (yet cartoony) violence yet it's too cutesy for adults to really get into. I'm NOT trying to open a can of worms here about kiddy but it's just that the style seems jumps around quite a bit.

I'm not sold on Kameo. Rare has proven that they can make great looking games but after SFA I'm going to wait for level headed reviews before even considering a purchase.

Great roundtable guys. Might be better as a podcast but still very much worth the time.

 

[Zer0]

Thanks for the comments and criticisms -- it makes all that work worthwhile when you're super jetlagged and hungover at the same time.

We have some cool shit in the works if you like these sort of video features we do. Look for some stuff coming later this year. We can all obviously be much more smooth in front of a camera, I know. I'm not totally comfortable yet, but I figure if the video is as casual and normal as possible, we're on the right track.

Just got back from the 360 party. Played some more Oblivion. Framerate on that game is now my biggest concern. I saw some horrific slowdown tonight, but thankfully, optimization is probably the easiest improvement to make. Still, the game is so gorgeous and massive, choppiness won't be a deal-killer.

Two other huge surprises:

I'm pretty cynical about Need For Speed these days but Most Wanted kinda blew me away. Having played the Xbox version of the game, I purposefully stayed away from this game at X05, thinking it was just a high-def version of the same thing. And yeah, it pretty much is, but goddamn what a difference that makes. First of all, it's easy to hate on the yellows and earthtones, but it really gives the game a lot of photorealism and much-needed ambience. Taking your near-invincible Porsche and tearing through a side alley full of trash is exhilarating. At times, the slippery reflections painted all over your car, combined with the number of little details in the background makes NFS:MW feel like the most detailed 2D racer ever... like millions of little sprites going off all at once. It felt nice too -- the drifting still feels somewhat like it's on rails, but it's NFS and if you subscribe to the weight of its gameplay, then you'll feel right at home here. The high speed pursuit shit is the best part of the game. It feels like Pac-Man on wheels in a completely open GTA-like environment.

The other game I spent quite a bit of time with was Call of Duty 2. I've recently been singing the praises of Brothers in Arms on the PC and Xbox so it was almost an obligation to hate on the kind of rollercoaster, rail-confined shooter that CoD2 is. Instead, I discovered a gripping and fantastic shooter with sort of a classic Model 2 or 3 arcade sort of gameplay precision. In fact, the entire game reminded me of a super clean Model 3 shooter, right down to the animations and all. I made my associate Jane Pinckard pick up and try the game with the headphones on and she fucking loved it, shooting and blowing shit up while screaming at the top of her lungs.

Anyway, no more 360 hands-on time until we get debugs in the office, which I hear is fairly soon. The print guys get 'em THIS WEEK. zomg.

che is the framerate of oblivion so terrible? its the game i wanted most on the launch lineup and the round table negative impressions have shocked me cause i got a excellent impresion with the latest videos

 

[Minotauro]

Thanks Shpank.

Re: PDZ's controls... while in the zoomed in scope view on some of the weapons, it did take me a while to adjust to the sensitivity, but it wasn't anything you couldn't get used to. In the normal shooting over the shoulder mode, the game controlled like a dream.

Really? I had almost the exact opposite experience. I found it much easier to aim when I was zoomed in. When I wasn't, I found myself constantly aiming past my enemies. This was especially true in multiplayer where my targets actually used lateral movement. I tried fooling with the sensitivity in order to correct this to no success. Strange.

How about melee attacks? Were you able to successfully connect with any sort of regularity?

 

[Minotauro]

che is the framerate of oblivion so terrible? its the game i wanted most on the launch lineup and the round table negative impressions have shocked me cause i got a excellent impresion with the latest videos

The framerate is pretty terrible indeed...especially when there are multiple enemies on screen. I'm holding out hope that everything will be corrected by launch. Or, two weeks later I guess.

 

[FortNinety]

chee... totally off topic question: where did you get that shirt?

 

[Apharmd Battler]

Phatsaqs...thanks for the link.....

 

[Bdub]

Che,

Thanks for the roundtable. I would be nice to have a monthy wrap-up or something when you have enough material to put one together.

 

[jetjevons]

Che - YTMND! Great feature!