Zero Punctuation: Quantum Conundrum

[Pescetarian]

Hey, folks. I won an argument with Count von **** over his post on the Steam Forums, please quit bad mouthing him now.

 

[Kross]

Hey, folks. I won an argument with Count von **** over his post on the Steam Forums, please quit bad mouthing him now.

I always thought Count von **** seemed like a nice guy.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

Harsh but fair. And I'm happy I'm not a ****. PC elitists are douchebags.

On Steel Battalion I wonder if they patch normal controls in. Kinect is just not working in anything, really. It's Microsoft selling another crappy thing to silly americans by getting a couple of offensively rich black people to advertise it. Check their conferences, pattern is there.

 

[Strain42]

Despite being negative, it still made me interested in checking out the game.

Other reviewers, take note. This is how it's done.

This. I mean after looking into it, I don't think I'm going to buy it, but still. At the very least this video raised a few eyebrows that were nestling comfortably at standard level.

 

[General Vagueness]

I'd say someone reviewing PC games in this day and age should wait a week to 10 days for any early, important patches.

On the other hand, it's a valid point. At this day and age they should have had those options right from the start because I actually disliked the missing of them a bum! I mean a lot.

Also, his reason for not waiting for the patch is good too. He has deadlines and a rather strict list of titles he has to get through, he can't just switch around.

I wasn't suggesting he switch the schedule around, I was suggesting he make the schedule in a way where he won't review games that just got released in the first place if he's going to hold things that get patched against them.

 

[geier]

Calling someone a elitist simply by the fact that he knows what he is doing is really stupid.

It is not the guy's fault that you all are not able to really work with your PC's.

Is a architect a elitist because he can plan a house better than you, is a mechanic a elitist because he knows how to fix a car and you not ?

The only problem here is that you guys are to lazy to do some of tje actuall work yourself.
You are used to it that someone will spend hour and maybe days on the problem and then just telling you how to solve it.

How about some autonomy on your part ?

I blame companys like Apple and the consoles in gerneral for that, by simplyfying everything and now nobody knows of the real capabilitys and options of the hard- and software.

 

[Hyakunin Isshu]

Wow, mr Ben Croshaw is really cheap! He somehow can get a DS, a PSP, a 3DS, a PS3, a Xbox 360, a Wii, and all the newest games, but he can't get a laptop that isn't beyond 2006! Even iPhones can handle it now.

Then he has the balls to whine, like it was the game's fault! Well, I couldn't play Portal or half-life 2 because the graphics was too high, so I guess it's okay for me to whine about how awful Valve is. "Portal sucks because I couldn't play it!"

 

[DAJ_]

When yahtzee said he didn't like it I nearly got lockjaw. I guess I'm avoiding this game, then. It looked like the exact thing he would like, too. Then again, yahtzee is the toughest critic in the world, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. I was not expecting him to hate it though. I mean, wow. The gameplay videos looked so good too.

And this is what's wrong with Yahtzee's fanboys. All it takes is for him to express his disapproval towards a game and every facet of YOUR opinion goes out the window. You're doing the exact thing he blasted against in the Mailbox Showdown. You wait for a simple "Yay" or "Nay" and toss out every bit of free will you have if it conflicts with your ideas.

Yeah, some of these posts are kind of disappointing. Yahtzee has his own tastes and inclinations, and the problems he had with the game may not necessarily apply to you. Personally, I didn't take much issue with the first person platforming, and the chasm puzzle he talks about, while difficult, can be solved more than one way.

If you have any interest in Quantum Conundrum, you should at least try the demo to make your own judgement as to whether or not you'd enjoy it.

 

[DiamanteGeeza]

Motion blur and depth of field, both. *shudder*
(EDIT: No idea whether QC does the latter - just a general comment.)

DoF and motion blur can be fine when used properly, and by 'properly' I mean subtly. VERY subtly. DoF in particular can add tremendous depth to a scene, but it has to be really, really gently done.

The current favored use of both are cranked up so high it's like smearing Vaseline on your screen, and it's very annoying. Remember when lens flare was the 'in thing', ten or so years ago? Where you could barely see what was going on because of the horrible flare-ring sprites covering the entire screen? Ugh! Same deal: "Ooohhh, look at our sparkly effect we've spent weeks implementing and, just to make sure you don't miss it and can truly appreciate how amazing we are, we've cranked it up to full. Enjoy!"

Over-done motion blur was bad enough when it was simple full screen, but this horrible new pixel-based motion blur, as seen in all Unreal games and titles like The Club is just eye-poppingly bad. It looks terrible and very artificial, IMO.

 

[Somebloke]

Motion blur and depth of field, both. *shudder*
(EDIT: No idea whether QC does the latter - just a general comment.)

DoF and motion blur can be fine when used properly, and by 'properly' I mean subtly. VERY subtly. DoF in particular can add tremendous depth to a scene, but it has to be really, really gently done.

The current favored use of both are cranked up so high it's like smearing Vaseline on your screen, and it's very annoying. Remember when lens flare was the 'in thing', ten or so years ago? Where you could barely see what was going on because of the horrible flare-ring sprites covering the entire screen? Ugh! Same deal: "Ooohhh, look at our sparkly effect we've spent weeks implementing and, just to make sure you don't miss it and can truly appreciate how amazing we are, we've cranked it up to full. Enjoy!"

Over-done motion blur was bad enough when it was simple full screen, but this horrible new pixel-based motion blur, as seen in all Unreal games and titles like The Club is just eye-poppingly bad. It looks terrible and very artificial, IMO.

I see what you are saying and there is truth to it - especially when you see wierd effects, where objects are smeared individually, prior to compositing, and display sharp edges (keeping their regular outline) between blurred background and blurred foreground.

I'd say, however, that it's a matter of application: Depth of field is great for cutscenes, the shallower the better, even. It is not so much about getting a sense of depth, as it is making the object in focus pop, literally as well as figuratively.
In gameplay, though, I would like to decide what I am looking at, even if I don't have whatever that may be within my crosshairs.
Who knows; Maybe one day we'll see the effect successfully coupled with precision eye-tracking - that might work - they might even be able to work the LOD systems into that...


As for Motion blur; That is something that exists to compensate for a low frame rate - 24fps for film, traditionally -- in that case produced by choosing film with a suitably long exposure time.
We have come to subconsiously expect the look that that combination of aspects produces (along with aforemented shallow focal range), from professional movies, so the effect certainly does have its place, where the designer makes an artistic choice to emulate a cinematic experience. I could recommend the game "Stacking", which employs both beautifully, to convey both a sense of old-timey cinema and the miniature scale of the scenery.

Cinematography itself, incidently, is moving to 48fps.
Films will look the smoother for it, but there may well be some initial complaints about them looking home-video-ish, if not handled properly.

For general gameplay; If producing the motion blur uses as much processing as just rendering and displaying that extra intermediate full frame, in its crisp glory (and the effect is often produced exactly by rendering extra frames and blending them, sometimes resulting in "ghost images", rather than a "streak"), I think I'd rather have the real frame.

Sorry about the verbosity, but I thought your post deserved the attention.