• 21Feb 13

  I will not be an Early adopter of Ps4

  Im excited about the prospects of a new console and the games to come. What I am not excited about are a few of the Rumored features like built in motion control and the idea of paying some fee or potentially repurchasing Ps3 games I already own to play again on the new system is bad business in my eyes. Speaking of which, Theyve implemented a mandatory camera into the controller sensor bar...Cant say Im too comfortable with that idea...But I am interested in how the new features they talked about in the conference will be implemented in games. Whats interesting to me is the move control(yes the move controller demonstration impressed me) and the potential for user created entertainment...that is if implemented correctly.

  All in all though I probably wont be an early adopter of the ps4 though I will eventually get one, I find that there are still plenty of uncertainty with this system that they never addressed with the ps3 and until this is clear, I wont put my cash on the line for the "what if" scenario that Sony might be trying to sell the consumer. At the beginning of the life of the Ps3 we were promised many things some actually came to fruition while others...sadly...did not. At the beginning we were blown away by trailers of Killzone and Final Fantasy only to learn that later on the Killzone demo was only a cutscene and not real gameplay. We were shown not 1 but 2 Final Fantasy 13 games, to this day only one of those titles actually got released. I got to play some of the games I wanted to play on Ps3, however I felt that many games got left off of the ps3 and put on handhelds like the psp instead...which was not a good thing...Ps3 got many cross platform titles that in many cases were inferior versions or afterthought versions. I instead was hoping for exclusive and original titles and games that set a higher bar like what was done on the ps2.

  In the Ps4 event, I didnt see much that couldnt be done on the Ps3...much less a convincing arguement to upgrade to a new console. Though as a gamer who usually owns all the big 3 systems I was excited about the new games to come. What I wish forin the world of video games is more than just triple A movie-like blockbusters, I hope for solid hard hitting titles,and experiences I cant have on other consoles.

  Though I realize this is a different era, I think some of the potential is there to have a variety of unique titles through the indie development scene. I would like to see where their ideas lead. In the Press conference Capcom and Square Enix pledged support. I plan to play their games, however Square Enix showing an E3 2012 Demo that most of the world saw already and claiming for it to be the new Final Fantasy game just comes off like Dejavu. Didnt Square Enix learn anything from their Ps3 Era debockles with FF13? Cause they overpromised and underdelivered then and they are doing it again now! This does not instil me with much confidence in them and their ability to fulfil future promises. Capcom on the other hand made me want to try their game out and I look forward to playing it. Bungies game also looked like something I would play if they showed more of it.

  All in all I am looking forward to the PS4 but I will not be a day 1 buyer because to me there are some things Im not excited about namely them announcing for the most part what will be cross-platform games. I need more incentive to really jump out of my seat and say "YES! I must get Ps4 now because of_____________". And at this time I just dont see it..Killzone doesnt do it for me because I was never a Killzone fan. Also their ideas of the Vita-Ps4 connection leaves me underwhelmed until they do something about the Vitas lack of games. If all they are going to use Vita for is an expensive Ps3-4 remote then sorry no thank you.

  So what are your opinions on the Playstation 4? Did Sony really Blow you away with their press conference? Is there enough there to be a day 1 adopter? Let me know below!

  • Posted Feb 21, 2013 6:42 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 24Jan 13

  Why Gamers are picky about Games!

  Gaming is a thing that is different to different people for different reasons. When I was a kid I grew up in the Arcade era in the late 80s early 90s where there were all sorts of Arcade games. If you wanted to fight other players there were games for that. If you wanted to Race against people there was a game for that. If you wanted to fight Coop along side other players there were those games also. During the 90s when Sega stopped making Arcade machines and Arcade engine builds, what followed was an exodus from Arcade games and players playing more console games(that plus the introduction of internet connections to consoles)..many Companies that made arcade games also made Console games so they figured they would cut out the middle man and just make the home console version of a game. I feel that there was good and evil in this happening. The good was that the focus became more on making different types of games that could only be played at home and would only work well on a home console like adventure games,rpgs,action platformers were expanded upon. The Evil in it was that Arcades had communities(the good ones anyway) people had to get out of their house,off of their couches and go to their local arcade and play the games they liked most of which were games whos gameplay relyed on shorter more competitive experiences. During the fighting game boom of the 90s the competitve style of Arcade games exploded creating tournaments,betting,and many people who had skillsets in games like Street Fighter,Mortal Kombat,many of the famous Sega Racing games like Sega Rally and Datona racing machines etc. The problem came when these communities vanished overnight and everyone(or at least some) people started playing home consoles(on a side note I knew people back then who didnt own home consoles because they said its a lazy way of playing games..also the games on home consoles werent as good as the ones in arcades back then.) So all in all the competitive scene vanished, this happened especially around the playstation 1 era.

  Where Im going with this story is simple...something important was lost back in that era with games and them being these internet based entities. When you look at fighting games now ,they werent designed well for actual competitive play. When you look at Street Fighter 4, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Street Fighter X Tekken etc there is no community in their multiplayer and the developers could care less....they more care about inandating people with dlc costumes, dlc content and pay to unlock schemes. Namco,Capcom and Many other companies formerly well known for competative arcade games,who made games that became famous in the fighting game communities have now sunk to scamming their customers instead of servicing them properly. If good netcode was implemented in fighting games, if a good competitive system that penalized rage quiters was put in place, if something was done to connect players better so they could identify each other better online in fighting games it could maybe create a similar feeling of having that competitive situation. And before people say it yes I know about EVO, yes I know about competitive fighting Circuits, but those dont address the situation that has happened to fighting games. They are practically an afterthought to the companies that make them once they create a barebones online vs system that seems to pretty much be it...and thats a problem! Consoles online services as they are now dont add anything to a community experiences around video games. Back in the day I thought when consoles went online, I figured that this would be implemented, unfortunetly it has not and this is something that both Game developers and Console creators need to take a real serious look at.Especially because the communities on both Xbox live and Psn are dwindling...

  • Posted Jan 24, 2013 1:28 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 22Dec 12

  Engines vs Games

  

  Agnis Philosophy: Will Future Final Fantasy games look like this or is this more wishful thinking?

  With More and more developers creating engines that push the visual and physics boundaries of whats possible in game creation, we start to hear more and more about the engines that run games and may run potential games. In the past as a 3d animator myself, I found it interesting that the amount of polygons that could be utilized within game engines grow exponentially and seemed exciting from both a gamers and a 3d animators perspective. On one hand the ceiling of what could potentially be raises more and more every day when the technology improves. The more a cg animator is able to articulate in a game scene visually,from smoke effects to lighting to shadow .. the better better the end result will be bigger more elaborate scenes,stunning visuals.etc On the other hand there can be a negative result which I will elaborate on in a moment. When we talk about Graphics engines..it seems like the graphics engines are starting to become as popular as some games are. Today in the game industry this is made a big deal and with good reason, much of the game physics and graphic capabilities of a game have a lot to do with the engine it runs on.

  

  Will Developers put up the content to match impressive visuals or shut up?

  The Unreal Engine,the Crytek engine,Fox engine,and lets not forget the engine Square Enix recently debuted at E3 2012. The Agnis Philosophy CG Cutscene demo was an impressive benchmark in terms of what could be done graphics wise and it wasnt just A cutscene according to Square Enix that could be what in game graphics will look like in the future(though we heard this song and dance before in the past with the Ps3...). Now that we are on the verge of a new generation of consoles and reaching higher PC game graphics benchmarks the question has to be asked..What about the games? Going back to 2006 with the release of the Playstation 3, Square Enix put out 2 Cutscene video promos of Final Fantasy 13 and Final fantasy Versus 13. Since that time to date only Final Fantasy 13 was released(though they did release Final Fantasy 13-2). I bring this up to simply point out this...Gaming has always been to a certian degree about hype and hyping what is coming next. With the newer game engines, fans get excited about what may be in the future but what games should we come to expect as the quality of the graphics get better? Will the quality of the games sink to a level of obscurity like this generation of games has for the most part? Or will developers finally understand that care in terms of quality of their overall pipeline of work and putting out a product to be proud of long term be a better alternative, rather than just forcing out a generic product in an attempt to gain overblown sales figures based on hype and name recognition?

  Time will tell. But one thing is for sure, I think that Game quality must be something that is addressed in this HD era. Developers must create games that are worth Gamers time content wise and not just create beautiful paper tigers.....I feel that many sequels for all their hype end up being underwhelming efforts because gameplay quality suffers and attention to gameplay sensibilities are missing. Take a game like Transformers: Fall of Cybertron that game had so much in terms of visual bang and yet so much opportunity was missed for making the gameplay long term fun and replayable. No coop, no interesting storyline, no interesting gameplay modes or multiplayer modes. As we move along in the future is this really what we have to look forward to in terms of gameplay from Hd era games forward? What do you think of this era of games and the hype of game engines?

  • Posted Dec 22, 2012 6:11 pm GMT
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