PS4 / Xbox One console war

[null1024]

why am I so aroused

Actually, christ -- that was just fucking freaky. Like some kind of fruit and meat and egg fetish video.

[Friendly]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PNQcdThO4ZA

He's wrong, though. I do have one PS4.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I thought 240p was only on Euro Wii's.

Could be that certain HDTVs won't accept 240p via component, but will take it via SCART. Someone out there had this issue with Ico (240p) on LCD (must have looked poor, but that was none of my business).

[Phellan Wolf]

I don't care what the media says about sales, for me is about the games and right now, although most of their games are current gen ports, I've bought an Xbox One.
Man Forza 5 is astounding and I really enjoy Ryse, slashing those barbarians and finishing them, really gorgeous and intense game.
Cant wait for the new Remedy game, Alan Wake was really good and if theie new game is just the half of AW greatness then I am sold.

[Skykid]

^ I felt Alan Wake got really repetitive and dull after about two hours, you didn't get that? The atmosphere was good and the idea worked, but the game structure gets really trying. I mean, as soon as night falls you know you'll be running aimlessly through the pitch black fending off ghouls with a flashlight, just trying to find the end point. Pitch black isn't much to look at once you've seen it, oh, twice.

[BulletMagnet]

Alan Wake was a bit one-note, certainly (and had the nasty habit of allowing unseen assailants to sneak up on you from behind too frequently), but I think labeling the action aesthetic "pitch black" doesn't give it quite enough credit: you do stumble through a lot of smoky darkness, but my favorite part of the game was how it nicely captured the feeling of being lost in the middle of Nowheresville, USA. There are signs of rural civilization all about, but they somehow make things more threatening, especially considering the nature of the enemies you encounter; it brought to mind the feeling of having wandered into an unfamiliar town, and its attached unshakeable dread despite the lack of any truly imminent threat.

It's been awhile since I played through it, but I don't recall the darkness overwhelming the rest of the presentation; at the very least it set itself apart enough to stand as one of the few third-person shooters I was interested in enough to finish, for whatever that's worth.

[Skykid]

^ It's an exaggeration: it's not pitch black as in there's absolutely nothing there of course. I understand the use of darkness in terms of fear factor, and it does have the desired effect - it's just that it's a really repetitive process of night running and day talking. After a while it's tiresome, running down obscured streets in an aimless fashion, often in the wrong direction. I felt its potential was untapped: these developers like to establish a simple gaming groundwork and then rely on all the atmospheric and cinematic bumph to support it, rather than realise that adventures of any kind require variety (and that requires effort).
It's good running around in the black the first three times, perhaps not so good the next seven.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Alan Wake always struck me as the fedora-wearing hipster of the survival horror genre. It has so many odd game design choices that leave a bad taste in your mouth, and the "use light to make enemies vulnerable" combat mechanic is basically a worse rehash of Obscure's. Obscure is actually a decent game with some unique mechanics (co-operative play, multiple characters, characters have special abilities so who you play changes things around), and the combat is significantly better since you've got melee options, none of the losing your few weapons over and over through the whole game, etc. The co-op element changes things a lot for the better as while one makes the enemy vulnerable via flashlight, the other character can close in and hammer away in melee (or both just shoot, that's cool tool). It's all wrapped in a bad B-movie grade horror plot, but it's ultimately not a bad game (one with a good soundtrack and a few good puzzles, like getting one of the shotguns - actually the soundtrack really is great).

Alan Wake's got a plot that gets borderline pretentious, but in exchange for the focus on plot and visuals, it's not very much fun to play, and one of the primary combat mechanics was ripped off from another game that frankly used it better. sine mora syndrome, anyone?

[Jonathan Ingram]

In my not so humble opinion, Remedy Entertainment has been on a downward spiral as a developer since after the first Max Payne. Max Payne 2 felt like an expansion pack for the first game and the bullet time mechanic somehow got changed for the worse. Alan Wake was in development for years and not only did it utterly fail to be the videogame recreation of Twin Peaks everyone was hoping it would be(just play Deadly Premonition, folks), it just plain wasn`t a very good game in its own right at all - a soul-crushingly monotonous, linear shooter with a pretentious story that required DLC for the closure. Well, if nothing else, it had a song by Roy Orbison, so I guess that's one good thing about the game. If Quantum Break keeps Orbison and adds Gene Vincent and Carl Perkins to the mix, I`ll consider it an improvement over Wake. The more Rockabilly kings, the better.

[Ed Oscuro]

MP2 feels like an entirely new something else - for me the issue (aside from the gameplay! don't remember the details exactly but I don't recall being terribly impressed with the changes) wasn't that it felt like more of the same but that it hit the uncanny valley something fierce. The dreamlike quality of some of the MP1 stages was replaced by soulless shinies and the story went from a nightmare version of something familiar, to something pretty much out there in conspiracy cloud cuckoo land.

[Mortificator]

My only issue with Max Payne 2 was that it reused the same maps for multiple chapters. You went through the renovated nightclub, what was it, two times? Three times? Went through the funhouse three times. I guess there was pressure to pad out the game's length, but recycling levels just diminishes them.

[charlie chong]

pretty annoying how you have to suspend the game application on ps4 to edit your 15 mins of game footage is it the same on the eggbone?
can i make more than one 15 min video in one game session?
also only letting you upload to facebook is a bitch move. i don't want nothing to do with that horrorshow

[Friendly]

@system11
A while ago you wrote there was something you didn't like about the sticks. What don't you like, the caps?
I just saw this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/ORB-Controller- ... B00GH7UA32

[Casey120]

Why would you need rubber caps on top of rubber sticks ?

I don't get it

[Friendly]

Maybe if you don't like the shape or texture. I don't know, in my opinion DS4 is excellent the way it is.

[Blinge]

Not to suck on sony's dick or anything but I never understood the criticism aimed at Dualshock either..
Maybe it's because I've never owned an x-bawx.

Anyhow, my Progear hi score (18mil) was done on a dualshock 2: u mad, stick purists? =]

[Skykid]

Not to suck on sony's dick or anything but I never understood the criticism aimed at Dualshock either..
Maybe it's because I've never owned an x-bawx.

Anyhow, my Progear hi score (18mil) was done on a dualshock 2: u mad, stick purists? =]

Well that's over 3 million more than mine, so I can't argue. There are a lot of better control pad interfaces than the DS though (DS4 notwithstanding).

[Jonathan Ingram]

Not to suck on sony's dick or anything but I never understood the criticism aimed at Dualshock either..
Maybe it's because I've never owned an x-bawx.

If you haven't played a sidescroller with the 360's d-pad, you haven't felt what hell is like.

[replayme]

Not to suck on sony's dick or anything but I never understood the criticism aimed at Dualshock either..
Maybe it's because I've never owned an x-bawx.

If you haven't played a sidescroller with the 360's d-pad, you haven't felt what hell is like.

Ah, the 360 control pad is not that bad. It still takes you places. Just not places where you want to go...

[Skykid]

Not to suck on sony's dick or anything but I never understood the criticism aimed at Dualshock either..
Maybe it's because I've never owned an x-bawx.

If you haven't played a sidescroller with the 360's d-pad, you haven't felt what hell is like.

It is absolutely abominable.

[KAI]

Try playing fighters whit it.

[Blinge]

There are a lot of better control pad interfaces than the DS though (DS4 notwithstanding).

Fuck yeah Gamecube!

also as for bad d-pads.. i suppose the dualshocks (and gamecube =/ ) are pretty bad too, when compared to Dreamcast. I really like that d-pad.

[Friendly]

The best d-pad ever is the one of Sega Saturn (similar to the one that Mega Drive's 6-button pad had).
The best pad of any modern system is probably the one of PS Vita.
The d-pad of DS4 definitely is a huge improvement over the old DS1-3 d-pads and appears to be very precise, but I haven't yet properly tested it with any 2D-games (I've been saving Resogun for the Xmas holidays).

[Friendly]

Sorry for the douple post, but the next bomb just hit: PS4's CPU is actually more powerful than Xbone's.

Both systems have 8 core Jaguar based CPUs from AMD, but prior to release Microsoft was promoting the fact that their CPU was clocked higher at 1.75Ghz. The benchmarks here imply the PS4 CPU is actually running at 2Ghz in order to produce 14 MB/s versus 12 MB/s for the Xbox One. The other possibility is that these figures are for the whole CPU and not a single core as labelled. In that case it would imply PS4 is using 7 cores at 1.75Ghz versus 6 cores at the same frequency.

A developer who is working with both systems just confirmed it:

Yes, you can get more out of the PS4's CPU than you can the Xbox's.

http://gamingbolt.com/substance-engine- ... spectively

[moh]

you can go ahead and update the thread title now >____>

[Friendly]

Here's your chance to get a PS4 for $399 USD, and in time for Christmas if you are in America: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BGA9WK2/
Amazon.com just received a large shipment (about 2 hours ago, so you better hurry or it's gone).

[Obiwanshinobi]

The dreamlike quality of some of the MP1 stages was replaced by soulless shinies and the story went from a nightmare version of something familiar, to something pretty much out there in conspiracy cloud cuckoo land.

Max Payne 2 is a love story. Downright melodramatic and all the better for it.

[Ed Oscuro]

That's maybe a third of the story, if that. Most of it is about cleanup crews and other bizarre shit. I would say that the love story part is where it does best, though - but it doesn't rescue the rest of it.

[Obiwanshinobi]

"Transcending time and history, the tale of love and guilt eternally retold."
The only thing (other than Payne's new mug) I found wrong with 2 was the backtracking. Or, to be precise, the fact I sometimes would get lost. The first one was a delightfully straightforward run & gun, like Gunstar Heroes or S&P, in terms of making dudes choke on it one by one. Meanwhile, in 2 I somtimes had no clue where to go (i.e. where next dudes were).

[system11]

Still hasn't sold out at Amazon, but the machine has jumped back to the #1 sellers so the shipment must have been huge.