Jimquisition: Children of the Resolution

[Dragonbums]

Basically this.

I mean seriously- Pokemon has been selling gangbusters since it's inception and up until recently did they finally go into 3D.

They were basically the last big franchise to predominately use pixel art.

Pretty sure the fans never gave a shit in the slightest. In fact if X and Y were still pixel art I still wouldn't give a shit.


As for the resolution war- it's fucking stupid. What actual difference will it make to be honest.

It's basically adding extra sprinkles on top of sprinkles for petty bragging rights and one ups. It means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.

EDIT: Christ almighty the amount of warnings and suspensions on this thread. We are only on page 3 children. This is hardly Jim's most controversial video. Yet alone anything to get riled up about.

I can't believe you all are getting warnings about resolution numbers on a screen.

Let's all go to the break room and get some water to cool down yeah?

 

[Thanatos2k]

It used to be that "graphics whore" was an insult. When did it become a point of pride?

 

[Commander Obvious]

GLORIOUS PC GAMING MASTER RACE REPORT IN!

Let us overclock our graphics cards and re-bind the controls on our keyboards in a way that makes shooters barely playable while dismissing the ease and comfort of a gamepad in celebration of our innate superiority over the dirty console peasants!

Omg all you elitist PC games think you're so cool. You know what the last master race was? Hitler.

The Xbox 4 will have like 240 bites of ram and you can't even get that on any PC right now. And like jim said, 720p is better than 1080 anyway. More immersive, since the human eye only sees in 720p, 1080 just confuses it with too much sharpness.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Love the title, we need more lyrics/quotations. Here's my submission;

Spoiler

The Resolution Will Not Be Televised

Was there any particular reason for linking to a sampled version of Gil Scott-Heron's seminal song/poem, rather than the original? Especially when this takes nearly three full minutes to get to the relevant lyrics, and contains none of the power and complexity of the original version?

 

[Dragonbums]

GLORIOUS PC GAMING MASTER RACE REPORT IN!

Let us overclock our graphics cards and re-bind the controls on our keyboards in a way that makes shooters barely playable while dismissing the ease and comfort of a gamepad in celebration of our innate superiority over the dirty console peasants!

REPORTING I--

Wait a minute.

re-bind the controls on our keyboards in a way that makes shooters barely playable

Why would we do that? They're already better than with a gamepad.

while dismissing the ease and comfort of a gamepad

Why would we do that? We can use a gamepad.

Oh, do you mean shooters?

With a gamepad?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

No, hold on, lemme catch my breath.

AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

It's like, nobody was able to catch the fact that the users entire comment was a joke. :/

 

[ghostrider409895]

When it comes to graphics, while I might have some issue going back to really poor graphic games, I never needed to have the most cutting edge visuals. That being said I was amazed when I first played a game on a PS3. I had only GameCube games before, so when I put in a borrowed copy of Bioshock I thought everything looked incredible. Still, if I want to go back and play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or Spider-man 2 I will even if the visuals might not be cinema worthy.

Honestly, had it not been for the fact that I visit the Escapist and read/listen to articles like this I wouldn't have even known this is such an issue with developers. While I can clearly see a difference from the past generation of games to the current generation I haven't noticed such a big difference between current games to tell graphical limits are being pushed - at least not enough to warrant all the extra money being put into games. I just feel the graphics idea is taking over too much. I would much rather have tighter controls since that is what takes me out of game experiences - not how good the grass looks.

On a side note, does it say what game was being shown during the video? It seemed neat, but I didn't see the name in the video.

 

[Dragonbums]

It's like, nobody was able to catch the fact that the users entire comment was a joke. :/

My comment was a joke too.

Alas, no one caught that fact either.

Dag nabbit Jack rabbit! :/

 

[madigan]

old or new shadow warrior?
because the new one is kinda pretty, dat gore.


i never cared much for consoles and didn't own a TV for the longest time so when my friend told me that 720p means 1280x720 i couldn't suppress the superiority laugh, 720p is a resolution i run on my backup/office PC.

I finished the new one a few weeks ago, so technically the older one at the moment. After playing both, I was surprised at just how closely the new one matches the old one's movement and combat/gunplay speed, even if the melee mechanics are totally different. Both are great fun, and the new one has some pretty jaw-dropping visuals. And I'm just talking art direction, not necessarily the graphics fidelity. The Shadow World levels and the finale at the mountaintop fortress are particularly beautiful. I'm hoping there will be more in the gaming press about Shadow Warrior once the PS4 version comes out, because I truly believe that it could be a contender for best first-person shooter of the year, or at the very least an honorable mention spot. Maybe "Best Franchise Reboot of the Year"?

 

[Waaghpowa]

I also find it funny that AAA devs/publishers will make such a big deal about graphics while being incapable of actually delivering HD levels of resolution.

In case some people didn't know, the current generation of consoles could not render games at HD resolutions, but could display at 720p. The games were scaled to fit 720P displays, but the game was still essentially considered low res.

It seems to me that the upcoming gen is going to be the same thing, scaled up screen resolutions to meet the standard TV resolutions while rendering at far less than that.

Hurray for jaggies?

 

[GoaThief]

Love the title, we need more lyrics/quotations. Here's my submission;

Spoiler

The Resolution Will Not Be Televised

Was there any particular reason for linking to a sampled version of Gil Scott-Heron's seminal song/poem, rather than the original? Especially when this takes nearly three full minutes to get to the relevant lyrics, and contains none of the power and complexity of the original version?

Any particular reason why you seem so bent out of shape over it? Aside from the fact the entire track is built around that single phrase whilst it's manipulated in a very pleasing bootay shaking manner which the original cannot compete with in any way? None whatsoever sir.

\o/

My apologies for ruining your day.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Are gamepads for shooters THAT bad?

They are. Every single time they have mixed the two audiences it's been disastrous for the controller users.

Developers know it too. Here, read this Penny Arcade news post guest-written by a developer of Friday Night Combat:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/01/24

Moving a shooter from the console to the PC has had some interesting challenges. Monday Night Combat is still the same game from a gameplay mechanics point of view. However, since the input mechanism has changed I have found some challenges in getting the game to a balanced state.

Now, ask any gamer who has played a shooter on both the PC and a console and they will tell you that mouse and keyboard is infinitely better than a console controller. PC players long for a game that they can play on a PC versus people playing on a console just for the pwnage of console newbie meat. We accept this as a universal truth. But why? Why is a mouse and keyboard so much better than a controller? Here?s my theory and analysis.

It all comes down to how each input mechanism affects your ability to turn. On a console, the angle in which a player can turn is a function of both time and displacement of the thumb stick. No matter how far players want to turn, they have to pay a time cost. Even at the highest controller sensitivity, there is a time cost to be paid. On a PC the angle of turn is a direct mapping of how far you move the mouse. The time cost is variable and the better players get that time cost to approach zero.

Now, on consoles we use an array of aim helping mechanisms all in an attempt to help with this time cost. View acceleration allows that time cost to not be linear from distance the thumb stick is moved. It's an attempt to guess that if players jam their thumb stick to one side and hold it they want to spin quickly, but if they slam it to one side and release they want to make a fast minor adjustment. So at the beginning of the time cost the rate of turn is slower and it speeds up exponentially, to a cap, as time goes by.

View friction slows down the player's turn speed when an enemy passes in front of their cursor. This makes it so they can shortcut that time cost by allowing players to turn up the sensitivity, thus lowering the time cost, but make it so that the turn rate slows down when you have an enemy in their sights. Hopefully, this makes it easier to get a target in the crosshairs.

View adhesion, which will cause the player's cursor to adhere to enemies passing in front of the player, is an attempt at taking the time cost away. This mechanic tries to match the player?s turn rate to a target moving in front of the player. Thus trying to remove the time cost for moving targets that should be easily hit.

Aim attraction is the last console helping mechanism. This is a system that takes a shot you make, sees if it's going to be close to a target, and adjust that shot ever so slightly so that it hits. This doesn't directly affect the time cost but does give some perceived precision to shooting on a console.

Now, all these systems sound like cheating but they all revolve around the same concept; make the time to aim as small as possible. None of these systems are needed on the PC because that time can get to be nearly zero by sheer player skill.

They have to literally turn missed shots into hits to make it seem like you're accurate on a controller. It really is that bad.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Aside from the fact the entire track is built around that single phrase whilst it's manipulated in a very pleasing bootay shaking manner which the original cannot compete with in any way? None whatsoever sir.

Good sir, I ask you please to stop committing sacrilege against one of the most important songs of modern history. This copy-pasted generic techno track (and I like techno) cannot even come close to the funk-levels and bootay-shakingness of the original.

If you find this pabulum more moving than the original, then I think that you might need to look deep within yourself and ask if your level of funkiness is truly adequate.

 

[Magmarock]

My resolution is 2560 by 1440.

I do think the higher the revolution the better. To me it's not a graphics thing as it is a picture quality thing. You can take an old game from the 90s run it at 2k and compare it to a game released now run that at 720, and the 90s one will actually look better. I had a PS3 next to my PC and the difference was huge. The higher resolution makes a world of difference no matter the art style.

 

[TomWiley]

I always felt that the arguments regarding resolution on the two consoles seem to come mostly from people who (to quote one Jeff Gerstmann) "seem more interested in jacking off to spec-sheets than actual games".

Overall though, it seems like both consoles are struggling with full HD, with Sleeping Dogs and many other next-gen being 720p on both systems. It's kind of disappointing, but it'll be a while before developers learn to optimize games after the new systems, and if resolution is that important to you, you're probably better off with a PC anyway.

 

[Mr.Fancy Pants]

Imagine if this spec wankery started in the original generations when we were growing up.

Super Mario World? 256P. Frame rate problems. Revolutionary open ended platformer? You jest. This isn't running at 480i. NINTENDOOMED

Sonic The Hedgehog 2? 224P. Screen Tearing. Framerate problems. Blast processing my foot. Can't hold 60FPS. Someone should fire that lead programmer.

Zelda: Ocarina Of Time? 224P. Blur filter. 20FPS. Still not 480i. Nintendo are still doomed.

Final Fantasy VII? 256P. Glitches and basic character models everywhere. Framerate craps itself in battles. Still not 480i. Sony have to be joking right?

Shadow Of The Colossus? 224P and Framerate problems on a console that could do 1080i. Utterly abominable. They should have fired Team Ico.

So five of the greatest videogames ever committed to print. And by modern standards, they are all garbage. Right?

 

[GoaThief]

Aside from the fact the entire track is built around that single phrase whilst it's manipulated in a very pleasing bootay shaking manner which the original cannot compete with in any way? None whatsoever sir.

Good sir, I ask you please to stop committing sacrilege against one of the most important songs of modern history. This copy-pasted generic techno track (and I like techno) cannot even come close to the funk-levels and bootay-shakingness of the original.

If you find this pabulum more moving than the original, then I think that you might need to look deep within yourself and ask if your level of funkiness is truly adequate.

And I ask you to stop blaspheming, taking the Lord DAVE's name in vain and actually having the tenacity to call it generic. About a pioneer of the genre no less! There is no doubt a warehouse full of political activists in Hackney whom would like to have a little conversation with you over elevenses (what else could it be played at?) regarding this matter. I bid you good day.

;-)

Seriously though, I'm glad someone got the reference - I was getting worried about it there for a while. Do you know much about the UK Acid Techno scene by the way? If not I can assure you this track was not made "just because", as above it is pretty politically charged and no doubt made as a homage. Out of interest, what subgenre of techno tickles your pickle?

Speaking of new consoles, I hope more games feature techno in their soundtracks as it's sadly so lacking in representation. I'd forego 1080p, only just, to have that. Sub 720 wouldn't be worth it.

(^_-)



Ninja edit, would love to have the AA side of Hydraulix 009 (A side is the tune posted) as a response as the hook is "kicking out the funk". Damn and blast you internet, you fail to deliver once more.