My only hope is that this type of stuff will eventually cause the market to crash and that weirdness and originality can someday prevail again.

Yer. Im playing Boom Blox Now thinking i want to see more orignal games like this.. Just Pure Fun to play and so well made hidden around intuitive controls and great physics.. Can' t beat these kind of games.

I noticed in the vid that you can now block/reverse a chainsaw attack. That was pretty much my only complaint about the first game' s gameplay was the fact that the saw was so overpowered. The graphics are fine with me. I wasn' t expecting Crysis or anything. As long as they don' t *** up the campaign. Personally, I hope there is a 4 player co-op rather than 2.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=BLVCd9r3Dds
Boom Blox

Meh, I like the idea but it doesn' t look challenging for an adult. I would get bored within an hour.

When i play games the two most appealing qualities is action and competition. Playing FPS games online is a good source of this. What purer form of competition than to be in a map with a weapon with the goal of kiling the other guy(s) with guns. When done properly you have teams that need to set up strategies and counter strategies under pressure. Halo for example fails at this because it takes too long to kill an opponent. Everyone is the same with no classes. That' s why the multiplayer component for Halo is trash. However playing co-op on Legendary redeems itself.

On the other hand a game like Team Fortress 2 is brilliant. Unfortunately the game is too small. If it had more maps and game modes, maybe an online co-op component, the game would have been a lot more successful.

This brings me to Left 4 Dead. Here' s an FPS that will get everything right. You have two distinct teams, the humans and the zombies. The zombies incude various zombie types with different abilities and such. Why didn' t Halo do this with the Coventant?

Imagine walking in a large map with three buddies knowing that dozens of zombies are hiding in new spots waiting to ambush your team. Of course you can also play as the Zombies. Like I mentioned before these aren' t the slow pussie Zombies ala Resident Evil, these are the fast & vicious zombies ala 28 Days later (awesome movie by the way).

I can' t imagine fumbling with blocks when I can play a game like Left 4 Dead. Don' t try to insinuate that you' re using more of your brain when playing these puzzle games, certainly not when you can memorize the solution after the first time playing. The possibilities are very limited with these games, and thus it gets boring. That' s why a puzzle game would never be more than a rental for me.

I play games for fun and atmosphere.

I tend not to nitpick too much about games, i though gears of war was great, and im looking forward to gears 2, the footage looks really cool, i like the huge enviroments.

I like VF think that we have seen the top of " real" graphical improvement this generation, on both the 360, the PS3 and even the PC.

As Crytek stated its no use making a killer game for the PC if it wont sell, console adaptions are inevitable so it sets the standard a bit lower.

I still dont think the PS tripple can archieve anything the 360 cant. Maybe by the time it does, the 720 will be released anyway!

The " hardware drawback" argument going on here is positively stupid. It has been proven time and time again this generation that the quality of the game' s graphics and performance rest primarily on developers and their abilities.

ORIGINAL: Nitro

It doesn' t look as improved as it should be. People are harping on about the lighting... but it should have been like that in the first game instead of the pre-baked bullshit we got.

You know what, at first I was like, yeah, it would have been nice to see more of a visual push but the more I think about it your argument becomes more and more invalid. Sure it' s been two years, but this is also the Unreal Engine. This isn' t a new engine built from scratch, it' s an Engine that been built upon for a decade. The engine has been going through an evolution its entire lifespan. It' s like Porsche, how much have they changed since the originals came out? Not much, but they are still considered some of the finest cars out there.

Gears, when it came out was the best looking game hands down. 2 years later, it' s still probably the second best looking game on any console. Sure, Killzone is looking better (though the direct feed I' ve seen along with the screens look less impressive than those cam shots which have the added benefit of motion blur from the camera itself and such making faults harder too pick out) but that won' t even be out by the time Gears 2 comes out... two Gears in less time than it' s taking to make Killzone 2.

Going back to how long the engine has been evolving, this engine is very grounded in itself. It' s still using the same foundation it did for the last consoles with added features. In order for Epic to do anything truly revolutionary this gen they will have to completely rebuild the engine from scratch which is something I' m sure they don' t intend to do. I mean you can even discredit your argument for GRAW to GRAW 2 jump because GRAW' s engine was still incredibly new when GRAW 2 came out, they had plenty of breathing room to work with it. When the next GRAW comes out I doubt we' ll see as big of a jump as we did between the first two.

Even though Gears 2 isn' t leaps and bounds over the first, it' s still one of the best looking titles on any console and judging from what we' ve seen that will be coming out this year it should still be in the top two or three best looking console titles by year' s end. That' s not too shabby.

Really if you want to complain about this, I' m interested in what you are going to say when Crysis 2 is shown. Honestly, do you think they are going to be able to pull of huge advancements with that engine? It already looks insane... if it doesn' t look 100% photo realistic are you going to gripe about that too?

Meh, I like the idea but it doesn' t look challenging for an adult. I would get bored within an hour.

When i play games the two most appealing qualities is action and competition. Playing FPS games online is a good source of this. What purer form of competition than to be in a map with a weapon with the goal of kiling the other guy(s) with guns. When done properly you have teams that need to set up strategies and counter strategies under pressure. Halo for example fails at this because it takes too long to kill an opponent. Everyone is the same with no classes. That' s why the multiplayer component for Halo is trash. However playing co-op on Legendary redeems itself.

On the other hand a game like Team Fortress 2 is brilliant. Unfortunately the game is too small. If it had more maps and game modes, maybe an online co-op component, the game would have been a lot more successful.

This brings me to Left 4 Dead. Here' s an FPS that will get everything right. You have two distinct teams, the humans and the zombies. The zombies incude various zombie types with different abilities and such. Why didn' t Halo do this with the Coventant?

Imagine walking in a large map with three buddies knowing that dozens of zombies are hiding in new spots waiting to ambush your team. Of course you can also play as the Zombies. Like I mentioned before these aren' t the slow pussie Zombies ala Resident Evil, these are the fast & vicious zombies ala 28 Days later (awesome movie by the way).

I can' t imagine fumbling with blocks when I can play a game like Left 4 Dead. Don' t try to insinuate that you' re using more of your brain when playing these puzzle games, certainly not when you can memorize the solution after the first time playing. The possibilities are very limited with these games, and thus it gets boring. That' s why a puzzle game would never be more than a rental for me.

You have to play Boom blox to Understand Really. I Only just came from a good 2 hour Multiplayer session on the thing and was a real enjoyable and Competitive Experience. Looks like ill be playing it for a long time.. within an hour of playing it in single player mode it got so taxing and interesting i couldn' t let go of the Wiimote..

I like to enjoy different gaming experiences. From Q3 Clan matches to Wii fit , If they' re done properly and are enjoyable, i' ll appreciate and have time for them. Yes, lately it' s the fresh ideas that have been taking more my interests.

I don' t get why everybody is suddenly being so defensive. Nobody is saying it doesn' t look great, ...but we all did the " Gears looks amazing!!!1!!" shit in 2006... and that sense dulls over time. And what, i shouldn' t be critical of the visuals because i' m wrong to expect bigger improvements over what we' ve already had in the original game?

With respect to the engine... perhaps it' s reached it' s plateau on the platform? Perhaps in the time between the original being completed and now they' ve only been able to add these minimal improvements because they' re limited by the host hardware? It' s a great engine and is perfectly matched with 360... i' ve said may times that i' d have prefered Bungie to license UE3.0 for Halo 3 because it would have been a far nicer looking game.

All i said was i wasn' t as impressed as i' d expected i would be. It []doesn' t look that much different from the first game... so since it was never going to look any worse the impressive stuff has to be the grand sense of scale... or something? Well i' m an avid UT3 player - owning both versions - and i' ve already seen the engine handle 64 players and huge expanses without any load times.

Perhaps it' s my own fault for expecting a drastic improvement over the original, but my GRAW/2 comment can' t be written off as invalid because both games run on UE2.5. And my point wasn' t that GRAW2 was a better looking game than Gears... because at face value it isn' t... but it does do some things better (lighting, particle effects etc...). It' s not the engine that made those things more impressive, it was how the engine was used. If they' d used UE3.0 then they would have no doubt have been able to add even more impressive effects.

There are things they could do that are nothing to do with the visuals that would make the game seen even more impressive. Like when they run into the Brumak at the end... it just looks dumb because the thing must weigh as much as the vehicle that hits it and it just falls over. There' s no sense of impact, no sense of weight to anything. That' s not the engine, that' s just Epic. It was the same in Gears and it was the same in UT3.

As for comparisons to Killzone... you' re right, it' s probably not fair. A far longer development cycle will obviously allow for a better looking game. Resistance 2 is a better title to compare visually seeing as the first one went up against Gears and got f.ucked in the ass and the second will be competing directly. The promotional stuff we' ve seen so far hasn' t looked that good but we should be seeing gamplay soon enough. I doubt it' ll look as good as Gears 2 though.

ORIGINAL: Nitro

Perhaps it' s my own fault for expecting a drastic improvement over the original, but my GRAW/2 comment can' t be written off as invalid because both games run on UE2.5. And my point wasn' t that GRAW2 was a better looking game than Gears... because at face value it isn' t... but it does do some things better (lighting, particle effects etc...). It' s not the engine that made those things more impressive, it was how the engine was used. If they' d used UE3.0 then they would have no doubt have been able to add even more impressive effects.

There are things they could do that are nothing to do with the visuals that would make the game seen even more impressive. Like when they run into the Brumak at the end... it just looks dumb because the thing must weigh as much as the vehicle that hits it and it just falls over. There' s no sense of impact, no sense of weight to anything. That' s not the engine, that' s just Epic. It was the same in Gears and it was the same in UT3.

As for comparisons to Killzone... you' re right, it' s probably not fair. A far longer development cycle will obviously allow for a better looking game. Resistance 2 is a better title to compare visually seeing as the first one went up against Gears and got f.ucked in the ass and the second will be competing directly. The promotional stuff we' ve seen so far hasn' t looked that good but we should be seeing gamplay soon enough. I doubt it' ll look as good as Gears 2 though.

Actually neither GRAW nor GRAW 2 use the Unreal Engine, they both use the YETI Engine (Ubisoft' s own proprietary engine). Go look on the cases for the games, " Unreal" is listed anywhere on them which is something you have to display if you are using the engine.

The first step is to start from a strong basis. For deployment, we had an in-house game engine, built from scratch within UBISOFT, the YETI engine, used for the original GRAW. This included nice features at the time like:
# Real-time dynamic shadows & dynamic lighting

# Heat effects & heat waves

# Highly detailed normal mapping & impacts

# Dynamic physics system & interaction with the world

# An array of filters and post processing

# Combination of HDR (High Dynamic Range) lighting & powerful anti-aliasing


We’re using a vastly improved version of YETI for GRAW2, which includes and improves all those native technologies.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooo FACED. Lol, I kid, I kid.

I completely agree with the Brumak thing. The impact with him was HORRID. I wish they put Euphoria in it, but that' s because I can' t get enough of it in GTA. I agree, there is plenty they could tighten up but nothing there took away from the game.

I' m not trying to be defensive, I just think you were over critical, but like you said, you probably expected just a little too much. I can' t lie, I was even expecting a little more but I really can' t complain. Like Duff said, " When its not broke don' t fix it!" I' m glad they don' t look on track to pull a Halo 2.

Soooo, why is everyone so worked up about a uninteresting trailer?

I' m kidding, but not about the uninteresting part, that was some pretty boring stuff. And since i didn' t play GoW 1 (shame on me!) and i' m not looking at the graphics, and ESPECIALLY not going " console-war emo" , i really fail to see anything especial there...

Hope to see something better, or at least more active in the future.

I' m pretty sure YETI is just a heavily modified Ubi branded UE2.5. They did the same thing with Chaos Theory (and Double Agent) and called it SCX and Convictions LEAD engine is modified UE2.5.

I could be wrong, but i' ll ask Don Williamson. I know he was at Ubi for about a year working on Conviction' s engine so he should be able to clue me in. It' s a shame there' s no official documentation to be found on the net

Well the graphics didn' t look that much improved. The dude' s hair looked more detailed I guess. It looked like the framerate was a lot higher though. And the artwork looked beautiful as it did in the first game.

I do wonder what they' ll add to the game though, mostly having to do with multiplayer. The chainsaw to chainsaw is kinda cool, but they better be adding more cool stuff. I don' t want the same game with new maps. I would also like to see more players in multiplayer. I do like the 4v4 and it works really well with the gameplay, but I think they could design some sort of gametypes that work well with more players.

Its hard for me to complain about graphics on the 360/PS3 anymore. I don' t think there has been a single game this gen on 360/PS3 that had graphics so bad that I couldn' t play it.

Gundam whatever on PS3.