@all

Sony counting on software

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/qp/ap/_a/sony-counting-on-software-nintendos-new/rfid188007059

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@all

Sony's 'Killzone 2' war game lives up to hype

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/qp/ap/_a/sonys-killzone-2-war-game-lives-up-to/rfid188408939

Very positive. Below were the low points:

Quote:

The dialogue and voice acting, for the most part, are amateurish. And Rico, your partner most of the way, is one of the most juvenile, annoying characters ever to strap on a machine gun.

Quote:

Three-and-a-half stars.

Last edited by fairlanefastback on 26-Feb-2009 at 01:07 AM.
Last edited by fairlanefastback on 26-Feb-2009 at 01:06 AM.

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@Lou

Quote:

As for your comfort level, I have explained in previous posts about resting your elbow on your lap and just moving your wrist.

Sorry but completely wrong. This is how you get the best Wii scores. Make sure Mom helps.

@BrianK
:

great link

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Star Ocean 4 helps 360 outsell Wii and PS3 in Japan last week.
http://kotaku.com/5161009/xbox-360-outsells-wii-ps3-in-japan

Ok, KZ2 arrived.

I've played perhaps 40% or more of the single player campaign, and a fair number of hours online. ('rank' of Master Sergeant)

Good game. Close to stutter free, and no noticeable slowdowns online with 32 players.

The graphics don't wow me, feels more blurred than 'amazing,' but they're good.

Definitely agree with some reviews, in that you're better off not looking for much of a story here - action is fast paced, just 'kill em all'!

Bluetooth headset online seems utterly hit or miss, and the lack of a prone position, as well as cover system in online mode, are slight detractors for me, but it's a good game. A few other nits I have with the game are around the lack of variation in Helgans, as well as completely no difference when playing online (both sides play identically).

The maps are wonderful for single or online play. Weapons aren't terribly varied. The M82 is effective as a poor mans sniper, but the scope on it is just odd with it's green tinge, and reaction under different lighting conditions. The controls are a bit..well, hit and miss. It's difficult to take out moving opponents at range with them, and the (ab)use of the R3 (analog stick depress) for zoom mode makes me find I often inadvertently depress the stick when in heated fights, which usually borks that particular fight.

People playing online are mostly clueless so far, or in their own 'l33t' clans. You can form ad hoc squads of 4 people, which has one very nice advantage - the ability to re-spawn on the squad leader, yet many don't seem to 'get it' - if your squad's in a fight and some get taken out but the leader is still standing, they can re-spawn at him and continue the fight. This would be great if it was made a bit more obvious in the game screen when you re-spawn. There's a minor glitch that makes you hit 'X' twice once it says 'hit X to re-spawn,' but it's minor, and consistent.

Single player is linear, but feels much less so than R2 for example..

Good game though, I expect MP to be a good amount of fun for some time. I'd give it a solid 8.5-9.0 score. Different games, but I'd put MGS4 slightly above it, and KZ2 > R2.

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My review of Killzone 2 single player, I completed the single player campaign on normal and I'm now playing in Elite mode. I killed about 700 Helgast so far and I earned about 35% of trophy score (just single player trophies).

The shiny graphics and the awesome 7.1 surround sound are absolutely top notch!. To put it short it's the best looking shooter I have played so far!

As Guerilla Games pointed out they went for a movie-like analog look and this works very well indeed. Especially the animations are very smooth, varied and very impressive, you'll see Helgast and allies jump over fences and die varied deaths, grabbing shot body parts, drop to the ground firing a last salvo and finally drop dead in a pool of blood. They added a lot of visual effects, lots of smoke, particles and blood splatters as you get hit and thus things will sometimes get hard to see when you get hit by enemy fire, especially as colors fade. Textures are very sharp and the lighting is awesome, although there are some loading slow-downs here and there, partly probably due to the game having no harddrive install (everything is streamed from the Blu-Ray disc). Strangely this seems to be happening significantly less in some of the later bigger maps (some are huge!) where I would run around without a "loading..." message at the upper left corner of the screen.

Acting performances and the story are atmospheric, believable and adequate, but some of the dialogues sound a bit cheesy and rude (however Sven is forgiven, considering all the pressure in this "fucking" war. ) Lip sync is adequate but not perfect. The levels become increasingly more impressive and hectic as you push forward and that's just the way I like them to be! Some of the final battles are just jaw dropping and truly feel like a full scale war, unlike I have ever experienced in a video game so far!

The controls are excellent, although I changed the defaults. I enabled the L1 button for zoomed shooting, so when pressed it zooms for an over the gun look, hitting R1 to fire the gun and releasing L1 gets you back to normal view (default is pressing the right analog stick I believe and pressing it again for normal view). Running is done by first pressing forward with the left analog stick and then pressing it as you push forward, I think this works remarkably well. By pressing L2 you stick to walls and by pressing forward you are able to get out of cover to shoot at the helgast, after returning the analog stick to the neutral position you get back into cover, you can also walk while in cover and shoot from the side of walls. I like this control method a lot!

It's a Triple A game for me and I hope many future shooters will take example from this arty game!

Comparison with Resistance 2.

Two very different games (thus try both!), but both are IMO most excellent. For starters Resistance 2 looks significantly more cartoony, but you encounter massively huge bosses, also the story is more interesting for me (as like Indepence Day for Resistence vs Battlestar Galactica for Killzone). A big difference with regard to the surroundings, Resistance 2 takes place on Earth with big dense forests, swamps and urban areas in recognizable cities like San Francisco and Chicago, Killzone 2 takes place on a far away dark hostile industrial planet with fierce weather conditions.

Resistance 2 supports 60 player online battles and an 8 player co-op campaign with lots of objectives and modes. Killzone 2 supports 32 player online multiplayer, but I am not yet in the position to adequately compare them.

As much as I love Resistance 2's single player campaign, Killzone 2 tops it for me. The whole atmospheric experience and awesome polish throughout in Killzone 2 is IMO of must-experience-yourself quality! I hope this game will set new standards for the FPS scene!

Bring on Resistance 3 and Killzone 3, I can't wait!

Last edited by MikeB on 02-Mar-2009 at 01:44 AM.

@MikeB

Sony meant the PS3 to be difficult to program

"We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that (developers) want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" explained Hirai.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @MikeB Sony meant the PS3 to be difficult to program "We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that (developers) want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" explained Hirai.

or they just release software for other consoles instead (see Monster Hunter 3:tri)

@BrianK

Yes, that sounds stupid. He´s not a tech guy, the PS3 isn´t intentional more diffcult to get the most out of. It´s just provides an ahead of its time design (thus developing proper tools take some extra time) and they had to sacrifice some non-crucial conveniences (more so than is the case for the 360).

Last edited by MikeB on 02-Mar-2009 at 02:12 AM.

@MikeB

RRoD coming to an end? It appears Microsoft has the fixes down to a 'science'. Also, the newer consoles enjoy newer fixes which should minimize if not eliminate the problems.

IMO too early to tell. We'll have to check back in a couple of years.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @BrianK Yes, that sounds stupid. He´s not a tech guy, the PS3 isn´t intentional more diffcult to get the most out of. It´s just provides an ahead of its time design (thus developing proper tools take some extra time) and they had to sacrifice some non-crucial conveniences (more so than is the case for the 360).

That kind of sounds like an excuse for MS Dev tools consistently being better out of the gate than Sony's...

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@wegster

Quote:

wegster wrote: @MikeB Quote: MikeB wrote: @BrianK Yes, that sounds stupid. He´s not a tech guy, the PS3 isn´t intentional more diffcult to get the most out of. It´s just provides an ahead of its time design (thus developing proper tools take some extra time) and they had to sacrifice some non-crucial conveniences (more so than is the case for the 360). That kind of sounds like an excuse for MS Dev tools consistently being better out of the gate than Sony's...

As an Windows applications developer since '99, I can tell you they've had a great product for a very long time...not that I am a fan of MS mind you...

@Lou

I've written Windows code professionally as well, although thankfully, not for years now. It took them a *really* long time to get there (come on, MSVC 2.0 IDE was notepad with an extra button or two, vs Symantec Visual Cafe, no contest!!), but yeah, since Dev Studio 6 onwards (~late 90s-~2002?), they've gotten it together, and it's a good standard to compare others to. You can tell they've taken measures to provide devs with the tools and documentation required. Anyone I know that's gotten an initial PS2 and now PS3 dev kit says similarly - MS > Sony for the overall dev package, docs, etc.

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@wegster

Quote:

wegster wrote: @Lou I've written Windows code professionally as well, although thankfully, not for years now. It took them a *really* long time to get there (come on, MSVC 2.0 IDE was notepad with an extra button or two, vs Symantec Visual Cafe, no contest!!), but yeah, since Dev Studio 6 onwards (~late 90s-~2002?), they've gotten it together, and it's a good standard to compare others to. You can tell they've taken measures to provide devs with the tools and documentation required. Anyone I know that's gotten an initial PS2 and now PS3 dev kit says similarly - MS > Sony for the overall dev package, docs, etc.

I didn't get my feet wet until V5.0. :)

@wegster

Quote:

That kind of sounds like an excuse for MS Dev tools consistently being better out of the gate than Sony's...

Obviously what I stated makes sense and counts just as much for 3rd party middleware as well.

Taking new, better more innovative approaches has disadvantages as well, the disadvantage of being different. If everyone is riding a bike and you have a car, the available roads may only be really suitable for bikes, but that doesn't mean your car doesn't have the potential to go significantly faster, but it will take some additional time to build proper roads for new car owners.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @wegster Quote: That kind of sounds like an excuse for MS Dev tools consistently being better out of the gate than Sony's... Obviously what I stated makes sense and counts just as much for 3rd party middleware as well. Taking new, better more innovative approaches has disadvantages as well, the disadvantage of being different. If everyone is riding a bike and you have a car, the available roads may only be really suitable for bikes, but that doesn't mean your car doesn't have the potential to go significantly faster, but it will take some additional time to build proper roads for new car owners.

Lol. MIke- you didn't say anything counter to: MS tools > Sonys.
You can have the best < insert whatever > in the world, yet if no one can use it, or you provide poor (dev) support, it's useless to most. Sony's tools aren't useless, but they're definitely sub-par, including in information, vs MS. This is 'Sony's style,' for better or worse, but it doesn't help in boosting initial growth when it's an unusual architecture, and with tools not as well polished as the competition. Better tools (including documentation) = better results, and quicker, or in some cases, the difference between seeing a port of something or 'not at all,' and it'd be worth Sony's while to learn lessons in that respect, without dominance by any definition of the word with the PS3.

Having said that, hopefully the PS4 is evolutionary rather than 'revolutionary,' and will allow people that have become PS3 proficient to continue to use that knowledge. (Note - ps2 wasn't revolutionary, just marketed that way, and many devs hated coding for it..it was only it's dominance that changed the mind of some, something the PS3 doesn't have the luxury of.)

Last edited by wegster on 02-Mar-2009 at 09:36 PM.

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@Lou

http://www.garnettwilson.com/XNA_LGP.htm
GpGPU example on ATI's Xenos.

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@wegster

The existing tools are more than enough for competent developers. Various PS3 exclusives are already way more impressive than any of the 360 exclusives (despite being on the market much longer and more similarity with legacy solutions / common tools) and things will only improve as times go on.

Even some multi-platform developers acknowledged that PS3 development practices are well superior to anything Microsoft recommends. Sure if you are a Direct X Windows programmer the 360 is easier to develop for, but that counts for porting to any non-Microsoft platform.

Various developers have said the PS3 is not hard to develop for at all, in fact in comparison to developing for the PS2 it's easy, they say.

Last edited by MikeB on 03-Mar-2009 at 04:00 PM.

@MikeB
You twist the statement as usual into somewhat related, yet something else entirely. This is not about 'practices required to make the Cell perform being beneficial or not in some cases, elsewhere.'

it's about the dev kit supplied from the start, by Sony, to PS3 developers, versus the tools MS supplies. MS > SONY in that respect, and historically as well. trying to change that statement into something that was *not* said yet is more 'Sony loving' or palatable to you, does not change that fact.

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