• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Was the Dreamcast actually powerful at launch? Or the beneficiary of no competition?

Was the Dreamcast a powerhouse at launch?

  • No

    Votes: 117 11.2%
  • Yes

    Votes: 930 88.8%

  • Total voters
    1,047

01011001

Banned
I mean, i don't see the possibility of dreamcast having something like mgs2 or 3 or final fantasy x

MGS2? that ran on pretty low end PCs at the time if I remember correctly


any 32MB graphics card worked and you needed less than 1ghz on the CPU (apparently the CPU of the DC was comparable to a 1ghz pentium 3)
 
Last edited:
Actually the PC and the Dreamcast were very much tied when it came out, trading strengths and weaknesses. Both also undercut the Model 3 which was something I assume Sega was not very happy about.

If we are only specifically talking about consoles yes, even the N64 with the expansion pack was still quite far behind, and late PS1 games like Crash 3 looked good until you saw Sonic Adventure, which was superior to Crash 3 in every way except animation. At the time it may not have seemed obvious at first, but that was because of very lazy ports that took little if any advantage of the DC's more powerful hardware.

I heard that DVD NUON thing was similar in power to the Dreamcast as well, but I've never actually seen one in real life so I can't comment much on that.
 

muteZX

Banned
There is no question ps2 is vastly superior to dreamcast but the software for first year ps2 is extremely poor. Some of the drwam cast gme look better than most of the ps2 launch title.

if vastly mean 2-3 times .. than it is vastly superior ..

Black .. GP .. 65 535 NPC + alfa .. Transformers .. AmonRA .. Outcast2

Any attempt by DC to run these things (on PS2 many at 60fps) will end in single digit framerate.
 

Ten_Fold

Member
Yeah at the time the Dreamcast had the best looking game bar none. Some ports ran better on DC than PS2 and even Xbox like MVC2.
 

muteZX

Banned
A couple of those aren't even games.

VF3tb on the DC looked better than VF4 on the PS2.


forget this fighiting bullshit, 2 NPC and arena, ps2 is pushing 300K polyrate with massive alpha at 60fps and yes .. tekken 5 is technically better than VF.
 

Romulus

Member
PS2 CPU/System Bandwidth>Xbox CPU/System Bandwidth

Bandwidth was far less of an issue that generation. It was the total RAM pool.

There were tons of examples where the xbox rendered a higher resolution and double the fps in about a dozen cases or more. And that's considering ps2 was lead platform almost always. They literally didnt even push the xbox in many cases.
 
Last edited:
A couple of those aren't even games.

VF3tb on the DC looked better than VF4 on the PS2.



is a joke?

VF3 can't even keep its shadows together 2:25 :messenger_neutral:


the difference in 3D models is immense, I dont know how much triangles they use in VF3 but they look very low poly(just look at the face of the characters or at Sarah body on both versions) the knees and elbows in particular are horrible in all models its as if someone told the artist to stop using the discrete polygons and join them one day before the game releases also textures are lower than VF4 you can compare the ground textures in both games as they are closer and VF4 uses more different textures as its scenes are far more complex and detailed also the light in scenes, there is no comparison, and lets not get into the physics in the clothes, VF3 is technically more similar to MK4(also on DC) while VF4 is more similar to MK: Armageddon, SC2 or bloody roar 3, VF4 is a good looking game vs most of the contemporary fighting games, it had very good effects but it also has its flaws compared to other fighting games in PS2, also I am not saying VF3 is a bad game, quite the contrary, it was very good looking but only for the contemporary games(end of the 90's)

DOA2 and SC are much better looking DC fighting games than VF3
 
Last edited:

ItsGreat

Member
How flexible was the architecture? Would the developers able to have created magic if they'd been given more time? Or was it just a texture API and not much else under the hood?
 

Romulus

Member
How flexible was the architecture? Would the developers able to have created magic if they'd been given more time? Or was it just a texture API and not much else under the hood?

Supposedly developers loved it. Not sure about how flexible that translates.
 

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
Bandwidth was far less of an issue that generation. It was the total RAM pool.

There were tons of examples where the xbox rendered a higher resolution and double the fps in about a dozen cases or more. And that's considering ps2 was lead platform almost always. They literally didnt even push the xbox in many cases.
But in the case of MGS2 the faster bandwidth of the PS2 resulted in double the fps.
 

ds1724

Member
Dreamcast was simply *mind blowing* at the time. To this day I haven't been so impressed with a new console vs the previous iteration. They're such incremental upgrades now. It's sad not to have that excitement anymore and your jaw on the floor! Soul Calibur still looks like it could come out today!
 
How flexible was the architecture? Would the developers able to have created magic if they'd been given more time? Or was it just a texture API and not much else under the hood?

AFAIK its very felxible but depends what you can do on the CPU and not special hardware, there are not super bandwidth, texture combiners, shaders or vector units but using clever ways and playing to strengts and avoiding weak spots devs can come with impressive games

for example contrary to popular belief, DC actually can draw lot of triangles but since at the time most people saved vertex operation using discreet parts for making 3d model , lot of apparently bland looking games use lot of triangles, if they put them to good use something impressive can come

jjcPrgZ.jpg



for comparison N64
Xb5N564.jpg


I think that 1500-2000 triangles models for MK4: Gold and better scenes could make a more impressive game without too much degraded character quality specially looking at SC that uses less triangles in their characters yet is usually used as one of the best examples of impressive DC games, but its also good to consider that SC is not using discreet shapes, so a MK4: Gold with the approach of SC character sounds very interesting, could have been the basis for MK deadly alliance port for DC

IQXa0Jh.jpg
 
Last edited:

nbkicker

Member
I loved the dreamcast , had to travel on a train for over a hr to get to hmv where i had preordere it to collect on release day, and then a long wait to get home, got ready to rumble boxing and was amazed and thought graphics in a game couldnt get any better , games like ready to rumble boxing 1+2, crazy taxi, daytona , dead or alive, house of the dead, jet set radio, virtua fighter 3,soul calibur, power stone , metropolis street racing, rez, sega rally all kept me busy, but then a yr later the ps2 released and played ssx and then that was that and sold the dreamcast and all games i had to buy a ps2 and ssx, i use to love getting a new console that massive jump in graphics etc, now bought a ps5 on release and it was meh, controller seems good
 
Last edited:

Romulus

Member
But in the case of MGS2 the faster bandwidth of the PS2 resulted in double the fps.

The thing is you dont know that was bandwidth. They botched the cutscenes too on xbox, was that a bandwidth issue too? PC version was also bad at the time. Also bandwidth issue? Theres a pattern there. And it wasn't double the fps either. Its 60fps with more drops on xbox, especially the tanker level. But it should have been because the xbox version is much higher resolution than ps2, despite it not being the lead platform too. Likely a quick , bad port, unlike ps2 games that got the benefit of lead platform almost always.
 
Last edited:

Catphish

Member
Lots of titles for the DC impressed me, but NFL2K was what hooked me initially. That was without question the best looking football game at the time. 2K1 was even better. Loved it. 👍
 

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
The thing is you dont know that was bandwidth. They botched the cutscenes too on xbox, was that a bandwidth issue too? PC version was also bad at the time. Also bandwidth issue? Theres a pattern there. And it wasn't double the fps either. Its 60fps with more drops on xbox, especially the tanker level. But it should have been because the xbox version is much higher resolution than ps2, despite it not being the lead platform too. Likely a quick , bad port, unlike ps2 games that got the benefit of lead platform almost always.
PS2's bandwidth was faster than consumer PC's at the time as well.
 

dcx4610

Member
It was powerful.

As a kid that had to deal with NES and SNES ports of arcade games, that was a big deal. Despite having games like Street Fighter 2 on the SNES/Genesis, it didn't stop me from wanting to play the arcade versions since they were so much better. With the Dreamcast launching with Soulcalibur, it was literally the same if not better version of the arcade game. No more compromises. You got the true arcade experience at home.

I was a full on PC gamer at the time so I didn't really care about the Dreamcast at the time but I was still impressed that we finally achieved arcade perfect ports.
 

Romulus

Member
PS2's bandwidth was faster than consumer PC's at the time as well.

And there's zero evidence that "bandwidth" had anything to do with either port's issues. Leaving out effects, bizarre artifacts that were just left in the game simply shows they pushed out the port. And it makes sense, 2 new ports and tons more content. Rush job. If bandwidth was really an issue, why did Xbox games run at higher resolutions almost always and with higher framerates? The CPU and GPU shared the bandwidth, so neither should have ever happened if that was true. It happened all the time. It's so bandwidth starved it can brute force 720p resolution with a patch for almost 100 games, no developer optimization or upgrades. Resolution is tied to the GPU,, again which shares bandwidth. And many with more advanced games than MGS2'ss super linear, low poly environments.
 
Last edited:

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
And there's zero evidence that "bandwidth" had anything to do with either port's issues. Leaving out effects, bizarre artifacts that were just left in the game simply shows they pushed out the port. And it makes sense, 2 new ports and tons more content. Rush job. If bandwidth was really an issue, why did Xbox games run at higher resolutions almost always and with higher framerates? The CPU and GPU shared the bandwidth, so neither should have ever happened if that was true. It happened all the time. It's so bandwidth starved it can brute force 720p resolution with a patch for almost 100 games, no developer optimization or upgrades. Resolution is tied to the GPU,, again which shares bandwidth. And many with more advanced games than MGS2'ss super linear, low poly environments.
Really?
MGS2 was built around PS2's architecture.
It's not hard.
 

marquimvfs

Member
And there's zero evidence that "bandwidth" had anything to do with either port's issues. Leaving out effects, bizarre artifacts that were just left in the game simply shows they pushed out the port. And it makes sense, 2 new ports and tons more content. Rush job. If bandwidth was really an issue, why did Xbox games run at higher resolutions almost always and with higher framerates? The CPU and GPU shared the bandwidth, so neither should have ever happened if that was true. It happened all the time. It's so bandwidth starved it can brute force 720p resolution with a patch for almost 100 games, no developer optimization or upgrades. Resolution is tied to the GPU,, again which shares bandwidth. And many with more advanced games than MGS2'ss super linear, low poly environments.
To my knolwdge, the problem with the Xbox port (and the part where the ps2 is REALLY BETTER than everything else) was the particles.
 
And there's zero evidence that "bandwidth" had anything to do with either port's issues. Leaving out effects, bizarre artifacts that were just left in the game simply shows they pushed out the port. And it makes sense, 2 new ports and tons more content. Rush job. If bandwidth was really an issue, why did Xbox games run at higher resolutions almost always and with higher framerates? The CPU and GPU shared the bandwidth, so neither should have ever happened if that was true. It happened all the time. It's so bandwidth starved it can brute force 720p resolution with a patch for almost 100 games, no developer optimization or upgrades. Resolution is tied to the GPU,, again which shares bandwidth. And many with more advanced games than MGS2'ss super linear, low poly environments.

PS2 was designed to use lot of BW, it uses redrawing for its effects, the OG Xbox was slower but it wasnt a problem because it didnt required as much BW to make its effects because it has shaders it can do complex operations instead of multiple simple operations, Xbox is more powerful overall also is more expensive but that doesnt mean its more powerful everywhere or that a port will simply "run better", despite having more power its not straightforward usable, some games have more emphasis on certain graphical effects and some require lot of BW like particle effects, particles can seriously harm the performance in Xbox and its one of the areas where PS2 particulary shines, also Xbox operated more like a PC so its difficult to know how expensive drawcalls were in the system, lot of developers specially those that commonly develop for consoles probably had problems with xbox trying to use it like a Ps2(there are developers that had problems in ports trying to use xbox as a ps2 ) but also the opposite is true(and usually PS2 was blamed when the port wasnt as good...), I think its wrong to jump to the conclusion that they were "lazy", xbox was presented as a very powerful and easy to use system so you cant blame devs for believing the marketing, assigning a time frame based on that for the project and then get bad results for over estimating the console and having no time to fix them(I am not saying that was necesarily the case with MGS2), later in the generation most devs had its own port teams for xbox to work at the same time as the other systems then it started to shine or at the very least have the same game plus some extra effects or resolution
 

modiz

Member
It was a crazy time because tech was accelerating at a very fast pace. Not only on consoles but on PC, too. Short release cycles and within a year you had a crazy performance jump. A whole year meant a lot back then.
I think the Dreamcast was very powerful when it released and the thing that it established for me who was used to PS1 and Saturn graphics was how clean everything looked. Image quality was great with DC games, proper texture filtering, even anti-aliasing was one of its features.
 

WorldHero

Member
Yes for the simple fact it was the first time I could play Street Fighter III on console.. Not to mention the House of the Dead 2 conversion with light gun support. Honorable mention is Virtual Tennis. It was like having an arcade at home.
 

Trimesh

Banned
To my knolwdge, the problem with the Xbox port (and the part where the ps2 is REALLY BETTER than everything else) was the particles.

Because it was a game designed with the PS2 in mind. The thing to remember is that that although the connection between the eDRAM and the GS was very wide and had massive bandwidth (48GB/s, IIRC) the eDRAM was also relatively small (4MB) - so if you were going to be rendering complex scenes with lots of textures you would have to pull stuff from the main RDRAM - which was slower (3.2GB/s, I think), narrower and a lot more contended since it had to handle instruction fetches, sound data, VU DMA, etc. Given that, using particles made a lot of sense because it gave you interesting stuff on screen without incurring excessive load of the (comparatively) slow RDRAM interconnect.
 
Because it was a game designed with the PS2 in mind. The thing to remember is that that although the connection between the eDRAM and the GS was very wide and had massive bandwidth (48GB/s, IIRC) the eDRAM was also relatively small (4MB) - so if you were going to be rendering complex scenes with lots of textures you would have to pull stuff from the main RDRAM - which was slower (3.2GB/s, I think), narrower and a lot more contended since it had to handle instruction fetches, sound data, VU DMA, etc. Given that, using particles made a lot of sense because it gave you interesting stuff on screen without incurring excessive load of the (comparatively) slow RDRAM interconnect.

that is why you use a texture cache in eDRAM, the idea is to change this cache many times during frame time, also there was a sound memory and a cache for VUs
 

Romulus

Member
To my knolwdge, the problem with the Xbox port (and the part where the ps2 is REALLY BETTER than everything else) was the particles.

It just looks like such a simple game by comparison to other Xbox and GC titles. It's showing almost nothing onscreen and what's there is very low polygon.
 

Trimesh

Banned
that is why you use a texture cache in eDRAM, the idea is to change this cache many times during frame time, also there was a sound memory and a cache for VUs

But in practice you can't just change the textures in the eDRAM any time you want to because there lots of other stuff going on and hitting the RDRAM (which has a pretty heavy penalty for page changes) - they made the eDRAM fast enough so that you could be pretty sure it wasn't going to be a bottleneck - but since the overall performance of the system is finite all that means is that something else will be the bottleneck - and it's generally the RDRAM. So you end up with a choice between just leaving that performance on the table because you are running out of external bandwidth or finding other things to do with it that impose relatively lower load on the external memory - like particles.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
I think it was powerful for late 1998, though it couldn't exactly run all games from that era well. Half Life wasn't finished, but was much worse on DC. Unreal and Quake were also worse on DC than on my relatively cheap Pentium 2 350mhz with a Voodoo 2 and later 3. I also played games like Soldier of Fortune on it, Shogo, HL.. they crushed the DC versions in terms of framerate, image clarity, load times.

DC was more powerful than N64 and PSX, but its difference with the PS2 let alone GC and Xbox was immense actually. They kind of released it at an unfortunate time, it was the wild west of 3D accel. Sega themselves felt this with their 3DFX deal, and then PowerVR. In 1999-2000 I upgraded my PC like 3 times, and it wasn't even expensive to do so. I know about the dirty DC ports looking worse on PS2, truth is not many PS2 owners cared about Ecco, Headhunter and all that. Fact is, PS2 actually ran Naomi. And VF4 Evo, which is a Naomi 2 title, looked good on PS2. Question yourself if the DC would've been able to run MGS2, FFX, Silent Hill 2, Zone of the Enders etc. Or for kicks a Namco System 2xx game like Tekken 4 or 5. The answer would be no.
 
Last edited:

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
First the Voodoo 3 guy, now the Voodoo 2 guy, lol. No way you got great Quake III performance on that thing man. Maybe if you had two of them in SLI or turned settings down to ass (ie vertex lightmaps).


Yes it's tested with a Celeron 333 Mendocino overclocked to 375MHz (75 MHz FSB) but the tester also noted in the comments that a Pentium II 333 actually performed marginally worse despite higher cache. The same goes for Unreal Tournament (yes the non SLI appears to give 46 fps, but that suggests a very unstable 20-60 or worse as above, although it also depends on the maps, the bigger ones had real playability problems on DC). They didn't even test Quake III here and went with Quake II (an old game next gen consoles like DC didn't even care for).


If DC isn't powerful for not beating the top of the line of the following year (Voodoo 3 + great CPU) then no console was (for their own following year specs), all ports were cut down, from its Quake III, to Xbox's Doom 3 & HL2. You used Quake III and UT to show DC wasn't powerful yet nobody at the time thought traditional PC developers and engines were the best of consoles and UT was pretty bad on PS2, but you skipped that part even though it's the only game you mention that was on both. Yes it was somewhat better than DC (though the worst performing map on DC wasn't present even though they fit more on its DVD), but the DC port was outsourced. Only with the advent of the Xbox 4 years later did we get decent PC engine ports/multiplats (although lower profile games like MDK 2, Bang! Gunship Elite and Starlancer performed perfectly fine on the Dreamcast, but nope, you choose some unreleased unfinished ports to trash instead, I suppose the Dreamcast should be grateful you didn't dig up the recent System Shock 2 alpha which has like one basic unlit corridor running at 2fps, lol).

As for VF4 on PS2, DOA2L DC has significantly higher polycounts and better IQ. Yes it was a Naomi 2 game but it was literally cut to half in every way to fit, from 14000 polys per character down to 7000 and some of the worst aliasing on the system. You probably know already given it's been said a millon times but still claim bullshit. It also wasn't just SEGA ports to PS2 that looked worse than DC as you implied (as if SEGA would sabotage their own third party efforts). Early comparisons were obviously done before SEGA went third party and pretty much all early releases were that way with awful image quality on the PS2. Like Grandia II, a game I was hyped for myself after loving the original but almost didn't buy because I saw the PS2 version first and didn't imagine the DC version would be that much better given all the marketing hype surrounding Sony's system.

As the Voodoo 3 guy complained about the CPU here's an even better PC. Grand Prix 3 beats the best of DC in ways (I would say it took 2002's Grand Prix 4, whenever that could perform well with high settings, to beat DC games in every way - the crowd seats etc. are pretty bad in 3 but improved in 4 for example) with effects like puddle reflections, too bad it's a slideshow even with reduced settings when the best on DC are 60 fps and still look slick, with the same res. Quake III commonly drops to ~20fps with reduced settings.


Who would play Ferrari 355 Challenge in 480p 60fps instead of that, huh?! And ya, as said earlier the Voodoo 3 launched cheap, like up to $50 less than a Dreamcast if you were lucky, or roughly the same as! Huh, you need a CPU too?! Here's Intel's Pentium III launch announcement!​

The Pentium III processor core, with 9.5 million transistors, is based on Intel's advanced P6 microarchitecture and is manufactured on 0.25 micron process technology. The 450 and 500 MHz speeds, with 512 KB L2 cache, are available now. Pricing in 1,000 unit quantities is $696 and $496 respectively.​
The 450MHz variant is in the last video, it only cost $496, in bulk! A nice cheap ~$715 CPU adjusted for inflation! Stupid DC, why couldn't you smoke a ~$1000 PC (before adjustment, not counting monitor etc.) for your ridiculously expensive $199?! Here are two GPUs you should compare PS2 to if you're gonna compare a Voodoo 3 to Dreamcast (not the GeForce 4, that's an even later but lower end release). I'd say DC compares more favorably to Voodoo 3 than PS2 does to these that also released the following year from its launch.


The same goes for the previous line of cards actually with almost the same results:
 
Last edited:

lachesis

Member
If PS2, GC and Xbox were launched almost exact time frame, I would call it underpowered... but DC launched full 1 year and 4 months ahead of PS2 in Japan.
That's quite some gap, considering how fast the tech was moving back then.

Unfortunately we'd never know what DC could have offered, if it were to enjoy in its later life cycle. Closest we can imagine may be Shenmue 1&2.
Many of the generation's true technical gems are often concentrated on latter half of the system's lifespan.

If I measure PS1 to PS2's leap as 1 - I would call DC's leap as 0.8 at least. Closer to full 1 step, but not quite in retrospect... but I do believe it lived on longer and had more support, it would have reached to 0.9 or more.
 
But in practice you can't just change the textures in the eDRAM any time you want to because there lots of other stuff going on and hitting the RDRAM (which has a pretty heavy penalty for page changes) - they made the eDRAM fast enough so that you could be pretty sure it wasn't going to be a bottleneck - but since the overall performance of the system is finite all that means is that something else will be the bottleneck - and it's generally the RDRAM. So you end up with a choice between just leaving that performance on the table because you are running out of external bandwidth or finding other things to do with it that impose relatively lower load on the external memory - like particles.

sure you have to adjust the order in wich things happen to use it more effectively but that is true for virtually any console, we arent talking about new consoles here, the generation already happened, the PS2 changed its texture cache per frame many times(it can as much as 16 times per frame), how else you think its games particularly texture heavy were textured if not? textures in particular dont require much speed as they are static data anyway, I forgot how many times it could change the texture cache per frame but it was a lot and it wasnt the only console to work this way, GC also had a texture cache(1 MB) and also had to update it many times per frame and its memory was slower and smaller yet it worked that way with no problem, those consoles were designed that way, also consider that PS2 memory works at 3.2 GB/s but dreamcast's memory worked at 800 MB/s and DC didnt had problems managing game process, so filling a usually 2 MB texture cache many times during 16-33 ms doesnt seem as asking too much

also PS2 particles werent fast because there was "wasted time", they were fast because eDRAM memory can read and write the same space very fast and that impacts alpha effects in general not just particles
 
Last edited:

JackMcGunns

Member
Quite hysterical watching people coming in to point out how the PS2 is more powerful, when it launched a full year later, but then forget that Xbox shitted all over it a year later, therefore the PS2 wasn't really a powerhouse, it just benefited that Xbox and GameCube weren't around to shame it. lol
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Hidden & Dangerous is hardly the best looking DC game but considering the massive maps spanning indoors and outdoors areas and overall continuous mission complexity with stealth, disguises, RTS-esque tactical mode, all sorts of things complete with the potential for vehicle use and such I think it shows it could have had some prettier smaller scale FPS too, if anyone bothered to develop any. It's almost like a more realistic and tactical and squad based sequel to DICE's Codename Eagle though they released almost simultaneously. Pretty ambitious if flawed. Better on PC obviously.
 
Last edited:

SkylineRKR

Member
I mean it was plenty powerful, what made it suck was that horrible controller.

Yep. Worst controller ever. The d-pad, face buttons, stick, triggers. There were like 6 buttons as opposed to DS1 and Saturn 8 buttons. Cord placement was curious. Awful piece of shit. VMU was great though, I give it that. But drained far too quickly. It seems you had to manually shut it off every time. Though not sure if it helped. I don't get it, because the Nights pad was good. I understand 6 face buttons is perhaps too difficult for some, but then they could at least mimic the quality of its buttons and overall feel of the controller.
 

UnNamed

Banned
Quite hysterical watching people coming in to point out how the PS2 is more powerful, when it launched a full year later, but then forget that Xbox shitted all over it a year later, therefore the PS2 wasn't really a powerhouse, it just benefited that Xbox and GameCube weren't around to shame it. lol
Literally nobody has ever suggested this.
 

muteZX

Banned
Quite hysterical watching people coming in to point out how the PS2 is more powerful, when it launched a full year later, but then forget that Xbox shitted all over it a year later, therefore the PS2 wasn't really a powerhouse, it just benefited that Xbox and GameCube weren't around to shame it. lol




"SOE on the Xbox actually ran slower than on the PS2. While the PS2 maintained 30 frames-per-second (fps) in nearly every scene, and about 50% of the time could theoretically render at 60fps, on the Xbox SOE maintained 30fps less than half the time, and often dropped down to 15fps, or even 10fps on many occasions."

In the end, the Xbox managed the conversion, but at the cost of considerable simplification of many things / independent animation of all NPCs, etc. /.

It's not hard to find a graphics situation on the PS2 that the Xbox won't be able to keep up with.
 

muteZX

Banned
Hidden & Dangerous is hardly the best looking DC game but considering the massive maps spanning indoors and outdoors areas and overall continuous mission complexity with stealth, disguises, RTS-esque tactical mode, all sorts of things complete with the potential for vehicle use and such I think it shows it could have had some prettier smaller scale FPS too, if anyone bothered to develop any. It's almost like a more realistic and tactical and squad based sequel to DICE's Codename Eagle though they released almost simultaneously. Pretty ambitious if flawed. Better on PC obviously.



I played H@D on and old Voodoo 1 and it just was running so-so. I don't want to compare apples and pears but it's interesting to watch the terrain engine in H @ D /super low poly count and short draw distance/ and a random exterior in this regular PS2 game. The difference is completely dramatic, at least 10 times the difference.
 
Top Bottom