Messages

201

TalkBack / Re: IMPRESSIONS: Wii de Asobu Metroid Prime

« on: February 25, 2009, 11:03:27 PM »

EDIT: Rize, you talk as if the game were dead! It's still epic now on both the GameCube and Wii. Hopefully people who never played it on GameCube will experience the awesomeness of MP1 now that it's on Wii. The third entry is nice and all, but the original's world is far more cohesive.

Btw, I totally agree.  If I had to put the MP series in order from best to worst, it would be a downhill ride from the original for certain.  I may pick this up yet... but I'm still a little annoyed that Capcom can be intelligent enough to include classic controller support in their definitive version of Resident Evil 4, but Nintendo can't be bothered to do the same for Metroid Prime.

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TalkBack / Re: Resident Evil 5 Skipped Wii Due to Developer Ambitions

« on: February 25, 2009, 10:56:33 PM »

Nintendo's ultimate problem with the Wii design is that the whole thing is a tradeoff.  If they had Xbox 360 comparable hardware with the Wii remote they could say they have an advantage because their console can do more than the others.  But the Wii CAN'T do more than the others, it is merely different.

Ultimate problem?  Actually, this is really the only problem with the Wii.  However, if Nintendo hadn't chosen this route, the Wii would almost certainly be no more successful than the GameCube was (marginally more successful at best).  The only thing Nintendo could have done differently was made the console more powerful and eaten the cost themselves.  They could have only eaten so much, so at best we'd have SD games with better shaders or Wii games as they are now in HD.  I like to get things for free of course, and Nintendo might have eventually gotten a return on their investment, but then again they might not have.

I've come to the conclusion that the Wii's third party situation has no realistic hope of improving.  Nintendo has just made a console that game developers are not interested in developing for.  They are so uninterested that they will make shovelware for the Wii to finance the creation of the games they want to make on the other consoles.  The waggle wand isn't good enough.  The Wii is actually so unappealing to developers that they would rather risk financial ruin than focus on it.  That's pretty idiotic since the Wii's hardware is perfectly capable of producing good games.

Funny, I had just come to the opposite conclusion.  While the very best developers can guide the publishing decisions, most of the time it is the other way around.  Now that the Wii is the unquestionable market leader, publishers will start forcing their developers to make Wii games.  However, this newer batch of Wii games will actually have budget and so we'll start to see some surprise games of higher caliber.

The Wii seems to be designed specifically to discourage ambitious design.  It's targetted at non-gamers with simplified non-games that are intentionally restrictive so as to not confuse or intimidate non-gamers.

Actually, the Wii is designed to require innovation and emphasize it over graphics.  It's perfectly possible to develop real games (Zelda, Metroid, Galaxy etc.) if the market demands it.

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TalkBack / Re: IMPRESSIONS: Wii de Asobu Metroid Prime

« on: February 20, 2009, 03:51:44 PM »

The final boss was the worst part of MP, it was more fighting the control (and the insane visor/weapon switching) instead of the actual enemy.  It'd be interesting to see how that battle handles with this control scheme...

I thought that was a solid boss fight, and the weapon switching was no worse than in the rest of the game (which trains you up real good for the final boss).  Also if you read all the scan visor notes, you had already formed a picture in your head of what Metroid Prime was like (and it probably looked nothing like what it turned out to be).  Then when you finally approach it and it looks like a skull hanging and then flips down into spider mode... that was some epic stuff there.  Man, what a fantastic game Prime was.

204

TalkBack / Re: Punch Out!! Rated Everyone 10+

« on: February 20, 2009, 03:47:14 PM »

I have a bad feeling that this game will have little to no new characters and play like a slowed down version of its predecessors (since you won't be able to be as quick or precise with motion control as we were with button presses).

If only they'd make a proper DS sequel to the series.

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TalkBack / Re: IMPRESSIONS: Wii de Asobu Metroid Prime

« on: February 19, 2009, 08:34:32 PM »

I have similar carpal tunnel syndrome issues that Rize has.  And I play guitar as well just to add to the wrist destruction.  It is more physically demanding than conventional controls.

Even more similar than you realize since I also play guitar (and drums).  Although I've honestly never felt that bother my carpal tunnel (well, I take it back, standing and playing guitar bothers my carpal tunnel but I never play guitar on stage/standing anymore).  Playing guitar instead is going to give me early onset arthritis in the fingers (but not my thumbs).

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TalkBack / Re: IMPRESSIONS: Wii de Asobu Metroid Prime

« on: February 19, 2009, 05:52:38 PM »

Umm...physical effort?

I would understand this if it was Wii Sports, Wii Fit or even something like "Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games" which requires intense waggle. But Metroid Prime?

I won't argue this since this is basically a matter of personal preference. But saying it requires a lot of physical effort when its pretty basic compared to other titles out there is exaggerating, in my honest opinion.

I don't know about you, but I'm just about twenty nine, and my job has me working on computers all day long.  Because of that and because of two years worth of Diablo II several years back, I have mild carpal tunnel syndrome.  To be honest, yes the physical effort of using my wrist to play Corruption for several hours at a time irritates my mild carpal tunnel problems (first and foremost) and even barring the carpal tunnel issue, definitely requires noticeably more effort than using an analog stick.  Maybe I'm just getting old.

207

TalkBack / Re: IMPRESSIONS: Wii de Asobu Metroid Prime

« on: February 19, 2009, 04:14:41 PM »

So the fact that the new controls feel better and more intuitive don't win you over?

I didn't realize that the "feel" of the new control system could be considered a fact.  It seems more like opinion to me.  As for my opinion of it, I would argue that it feels worse.  It requires a lot more physical effort to use the Wii control system considering that the precise location of your wrist determines your aim and movement as opposed to the location of your thumb).  It's not like Metroid Prime wasn't eminently playable with its original control scheme.  In fact, the distinct flavor of MP's controls is part of the appeal for me.  I would be more interested in buying a copy of Corruption that allowed the use of the GameCube controller than this.

As for intuitiveness, the new system might be more intuitive (that could be measured at least), but even if it is that doesn't mean much to me considering I've played the original game through at least 5 times (not to mention it's sequel 3 or 4 times) and have already mastered the old control system.  However, I never said Nintendo shouldn't be doing this, but that they should include the original control schemes in deference to people who prefer them but would like the advantage of the new wide-screen mode.  Really, is that too much to ask?

The point of these re-releases is to play classic games with enhanced Wii controls. If you want to play them with the GC controller, play the original releases.

Don't worry, I will.

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TalkBack / Re: IMPRESSIONS: Wii de Asobu Metroid Prime

« on: February 19, 2009, 03:28:00 PM »

There is no GameCube controller support, but there's really no reason for it: the retrofitted controls feel completely natural and not at all tacked on.

*sigh*

I probably won't buy this now.  I would have liked to play Prime in widescreen with it's proper controller, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

My memory may be failing me, but I don't recall a narrator stating your location when you load a save file on the GameCube

This was in the original Euro (and maybe Japanese version), but all narration was silenced for the American version.  Thankfully.

209

TalkBack / Re: Wii Exclusive Dead Space Extraction Goes On Rails

« on: February 19, 2009, 03:00:34 AM »

Yet another "real" game gets neutered for the Wii.  On a good note, anyone that wants to play the real deal can always pick up a 360 or PS3 and do so.  On an even better note, perhaps the fact that quality games on real consoles can be neatly translated to cash-ins the Wii will continue to encourage publishers to finance such games in order to drum up publicity for the Wii version.  I'm sure the rails version of Dead Space could be fun on its on terms and I hope it sells well.

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TalkBack / Re: EDITORIALS: Rick’s Rant - Episode 5: Powers Strikes Back

« on: January 26, 2009, 10:09:34 PM »

I'm in agreement with Rick (you know, I recall frequently being in agreement with Rick actually).

I agree with Ian and Rick.  In short, Nintendo has trimmed their hair and gone casual:

Yeah, that's perfect.  Now we just need to wait for Nintendo release reload, crash and burn with St. Anger and finally release some decent games again 10 years from now.

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TalkBack / Re: Jesus, I'm Old

« on: January 21, 2009, 10:10:16 PM »

Yep, welcome back.  I hopped on board at the veeery end of the PN2k days.  I tried to quit last year but Windy wouldn't let me.  Guess I better start writing some blogs.

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TalkBack / Re: Advice to PS3 Fans from a Nintendo Fanboy Part III

« on: December 30, 2008, 02:33:45 PM »

I think a price cut would help Sony when it didn't help Nintendo.  The PS2 was exceptionally dominant.  There are still hoards of people that don't have a 360 or a PS3 and they would prefer to buy a PS3 if they could afford it.  Right now they're buying Wii's instead because it's inexpensive and brings something new to the table.  The Wii will tide them over until Sony drops the price into an affordable range.  The trouble is the PS3 is *really* expensive to manufacture.

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TalkBack / Re: PREVIEWS: Guitar Hero: Metallica

« on: December 17, 2008, 06:20:24 PM »

It's cool that they're making a version with double bass pedals.  Very cool in fact.  However, the set list is just a joke.  None of those Metallica songs *have* any serious double bass.  I can see why they'd want to avoid songs like Battery and Trapped Under Ice which contain balls to the walls double bass sections, but they could have at least threw One in there.  The only double bass in that set list (the Metallica songs anyway) is accenting triplets.

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TalkBack / Re: Who Turned Out the Lights?

« on: September 25, 2008, 07:30:21 PM »

"Corruption has virtually no dynamic lighting."

There's a virtually absolute statement.  And it doesn't hold up.

I realize that now don't I. 

Unfortunately the site is set up currently so that I can't edit my own blog post once it's posted.  So I'll either have to request an update to the blog post which will take some time.  I'll happily admit that I was slightly wrong and that you were the one that set me straight.  Instead, of Prime 3 having "virtually no dynamic lighting", it should be "...practically no dynamic lighting, excepting morph ball bombs and a few other odds and ends.  In particular, beams do pretty much nothing now..."  Or whatever.

The "dynamic lighting" in the previous Prime games were just glowing triangles, that lit up and travelled along with some source, whether it's a standard Power Beam pellet or a rolling Morph Ball.  They lit up per triangle, not exclusively the texture.  The different speeds produce different impressions, but it's the same principle effect among all 3 games.  We're dealing with the same GameCube tech in all 3 games, afterall.  The same technique is emphasized for flashlight lighting in Resident Evil 4 and Eternal Darkness.  The lighting appearance looks more appealing and gradual when there's an abundance of triangles, traditionally on main characters (Prime 2, REmake, RE4).

And that's all the dynamic lighting is in Prime 3, except there's a lot less of it.  By the way, bloom lighting isn't dynamic lighting, it's just an overly saturated texture that pulses a little bit.  It doesn't cast light on its surrounding (barring additional programming which Prime 3 doesn't have).

Prime3 just has clearly different aesthetic priorities.  Beam Weapon lighting may have been a big deal in the first Prime in the first year of GameCube's life, but it's old news.  Bloom is the new baby, and dynamic triangle gimmicks have been de-emphasized.  Sanctuary Fortress in Prime2 comprised a good 1/3 of the game, and the majority of Prime3 became a techno-wonderland (as opposed to earthy-organic), with many surfaces blooming just for the sake of blooming.  Additionally, Prime3 surfaces don't light up unless the "source" is close enough -- in Prime1&2, everything seemed to want to light up anyway, otherwise you just didn't see other eye candy alternatives applied, just reliable dull surfaces.

Clearly it does.  Another possible reason for practically eliminating dynamic lights from beam weapons is that it might have made the visuals too "busy" making aiming more difficult (particularly now that free aiming is an option).  That doesn't mean I have to like the new aesthetic priority.

I'm also under the suspicion that bloom lighting isn't "compatible" with the glowing triangle method, and bloom will have priority.  The bloom on a surface can be sufficiently bright, and I won't see them lit by Beam Weapons at all -- no superposition, no combined color values to produce greater brightness intensity.

This is not true at all.  They're perfectly compatible with one another, except Retro may have chosen to deliberately eliminate dynamic vertex lighting in certain areas for aesthetic or performance reasons.

By the way, this isn't a competition.  It's a blog post.

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TalkBack / Re: Who Turned Out the Lights?

« on: September 25, 2008, 10:59:23 AM »

Ok, you're somewhat right, but I wouldn't get too excited:

First let me refer you to this part of my blog posting:  "I didn't delve further, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a touch of lighting in controlled situations (morph ball tunnels) and other cut-scenes, but lack of lighting from Samus' beam weapons is rather glaring."

Upon further inspection, in the absolute darkest places in the game, sometimes, some surfaces will light up a little if you use morph ball bombs. [snip]

[edit: Actually let me rephrase that, even in medium lit places you can see the light from bombs.  They are quite bright.  I must have tested those in too bright a local.  But still ...]

[unsnip] Once you've discovered which surfaces light up a little, you *might* get them to make the tiniest flash by using your gun (or if they're too big, you might not).  I finally noticed some light when I used a bomb under the gunship.  The bombs actually produce some decent light, only if you're in a very dark place.  Compare this to previous Prime games however, where all kinds of thing create far more light even in places with existing lights.  Everything I wrote is still essentially true, except any near absolute statements (which I try to avoid).

It does shed light (no pun intended) on Retro's reasoning though.

By reigning in the lighting so tightly, they prevent any vertex lighting artifacts and they keep the frame rate high.  The only problem is that, at least in regard to beam weaponry, they've reigned it in so tightly I thought it was gone completely.  Charged shots look no brighter than normal shots which don't look bright at all.  The only thing I've gotten to light significantly with the plasma beam (and even then it aint much) is the dark pylons on Samus' gunship.  And that was only after I discovered it was amenable to lighting through use of the morph ball bombs.

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TalkBack / Re: Who Turned Out the Lights?

« on: September 25, 2008, 10:41:37 AM »

Let's just say Rize jumped the gun on this one:  MP3C has dynamic lighting, and plenty of it.

Dynamic lighting is present:
- Whenever you use the PLASMA BEAM
- Whenever you use the CHARGED PLASMA BEAM

What's messing with Rize's head is the Greeny/Nova Beam itself, which apparently doesn't emit light at all.  I don't know why Retro decided that, and the rest of you probably don't either.  Unless, they're trying to make the point that the Nova Beam is concentrated, directed energy that lacks random "exothermalating" properties, much like lasers that don't largely don't emit light/energy away from its axis of travel until the beam strikes a surfaces and reflects to our eyes.  Power Beam is like little light bulbs and Plasma Beam is like fiery spl**ge, so there's some sense in them emitting light, but I guess the Nova Beam is marketly different and we happen to see it at all cuz it's a video game with powerful new-generation graphics.

If the only save file he loaded up was his near-end-game file, then sure he's not going to see any lighting from the Nova Beam.  The rest of the game is fine.

I have no end game safe file currently.  The file I loaded his on the Pirate home world with the Plasma Beam.  I tested there, and I went to several different worlds (Bryyo, Elysia and the Federation Cruiser during a new game).

I carefully observed the world geometry in several places and just retested again in for your benefit.  Either my Wii is broken, my copy of Prime 3 is different than yours or something is fooling you.

Let me ask you this, if you go underneath Samus Gunship and shoot bullets past the ship, do you see the bullets lighting up the underneath of the gunship as they travel away?  This should be easily noticeable with a charged shot.  I don't see a single drop of light.

I also tested bombs and morph ball mode.  Bombs make a big pretty explosion with a giant glowing halo effect, but that's not dynamic lighting that's just a glowing texture.

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TalkBack / Re: Who Turned Out the Lights?

« on: September 25, 2008, 01:11:13 AM »

Fascinating work, Dave.  I too always noticed something different about Corruption's visuals, but I probably would have never figured out the answer.  I still think it's a beautiful game and plan to play through it again as soon as I have time.

Thanks.  I definitely plan to continue my play through so that I can more fully appreciate the differences.  Then I may well go back and play the original and soak up the dynamically lit goodness!  And get used to the original controls again.  I was surprised to find they felt a bit clunky after playing Prime 3.  Until then, I always thought of them as flawless (and perhaps for a controller they are).

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TalkBack / Re: Who Turned Out the Lights?

« on: September 25, 2008, 01:06:24 AM »

It makes you wonder if, despite their similar hardware, there are some things that GameCube does better than Wii.

I don't think the Wii contains a copy of the Cube's chips for backwards compatibility (the way the PS2 contained the entire PS1 chip set to provide accurate emulation).  I think the Wii is simply an extension of the GameCube architecture rather than a separate architecture piggy backing on the Cube's design.  In other words, the Wii, at the very least, should be able to access the same hardware lighting the Cube had. 

It's possible that the lighting hardware was not extended beyond the Cube's capabilities which could make it unbalanced and difficult to use in games that have far more polygons than GameCube games.  This is complete speculation unfortunately.  I'm not aware that Nintendo ever revealed the Wii's capabilities as they did with the GameCube (which could do "8 hardware lights" according to Wikipedia).

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TalkBack / Re: Who Turned Out the Lights?

« on: September 24, 2008, 10:16:37 PM »

Well, corruption runs in wide screen mode, it has more polygons on screen and it has some effects going that echoes and the original didn't have (a ton of "bloom" lighting) for example.  It's possible they couldn't enable the dynamic lights without hurting the frame rate (which they pretty much had to keep at a rock solid 60 fps to match their previous work).

Still you would think they could do some dynamic lights.  I wonder if it wasn't simply an artistic decision to mostly avoid the dynamic lights due to the inferior quality of vertex lighting.

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TalkBack / Re: Who Turned Out the Lights?

« on: September 24, 2008, 06:39:06 PM »

No there aren't a lot of totally dark areas because that would reveal the lack of dynamic lighting.  They intentionally avoided them I'm sure.  The darkest things get are on the Pirate Home World, and that's the planet on which I noticed the lack of dynamic lighting.

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TalkBack / Re: Who Turned Out the Lights?

« on: September 24, 2008, 05:42:06 PM »

It is strange that it was taken out, but I can't say I noticed/care.

I wonder if any game reviewers will feel embarrassed for failing to notice (for my part, I'm inclined to start consulting a technical check list when I review games from now on).

Please don't do this.  We don't need any more Matt Casamassinas.

A list doesn't mean you need to reiterate every item on the list in every review, it just prevents you from failing to consider something when writing a review.

Mr. Jack: define much of a difference?  To the gameplay, sure that's true.  To the graphics and atmosphere, it's actually a pretty glaring hole once you realize it's missing.

As I wrote in the blog posting, I noticed something wasn't quite right all along, but it took me until now to pin down what it was.

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TalkBack / Re: Who Turned Out the Lights?

« on: September 24, 2008, 05:36:57 PM »

I think you forfeit any right to complain about this by taking 13 months to notice it.

Catchy, but I disagree.  The game will always exist as it was 13 months ago, so it's perfectly valid to revisit it and criticize it as necessary.

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TalkBack / Who Turned Out the Lights?

« on: September 24, 2008, 09:06:37 AM »

<a href=/blogArt.cfm?artid=16729>http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/blogArt.cfm?artid=16729[/url]

 <a href="/media.cfm?artid=16729&MedTID=4&medtndx=1"><img src="/media/16729/4/th/1.jpg" align="right" border="0" alt="">[/url] I was recently replaying Metroid Prime 3 when I noticed something peculiar.  Corruption has virtually no dynamic lighting.  What makes it particularly odd is that the first two Prime games, despite running on lesser hardware, had plenty of it.  What makes it odder still is that no one seems to have noticed its absence.    <P>
I always thought that something about Metroid Prime 3 didn't look quite right, but I was unable to put my finger on it until now.  It's a testament to Retro's artists that they were able to cram the world with enough glowing displays, bloom lighting and shiny things that no one noticed that the dynamic lights were turned off.  And when I say no one noticed, I'm not exaggerating.    <P>
I just looked at every Corruption review linked on Game Rankings and not one reviewer mentioned that dynamic lighting was excised from the game.  Many reviewers praised the game's lighting in general, apparently referring to the bloom lighting, particle effects, a few random shadows and psuedo-specular highlights (which to be fair, do come together quite nicely to distract from the lack of dynamic lights).    <P>
If you're not familiar with the technical jargon, let me make the difference between the presence and lack of dynamic lighting perfectly clear.  In the original Metroid Prime, every single shot fired from your arm cannon shed light on the world.  Some weapons (the wave beam or charged shots for example) shed more light than others, but they all did something.  When the power went out in the labs of Phendrena, you could actually navigate by the purple light of your Wave Beam shots as opposed to using the Thermal Visor.  In Echoes the dynamic lights were a bit more subdued for regular shots, but still quite noticeable for charged shots.  I'm not sure if that was an artistic decision or one designed to let Retro ramp up the graphics in other areas, but it probably contributed to our failure to notice the lack of dynamic lighting in Corruption.      <P>
I honestly couldn't quite believe that Corruption had no dynamic lighting when I first noticed it.  I loaded a few different save files and visited every world to see if I could find any dynamic lighting.  Finally, upon starting a new game, I noticed just a bit of dynamic lighting in the opening cinema.  There is a pulsing blue light on the left side of the screen in a brief scene featuring Dark Samus.  There was also a light in the next scene illuminating Samus' Zero Suit as she awakens from hibernation, but that was the last I saw before the gameplay begins.  In the next main scene, there is a conspicuous lack of lighting from the glowing thrusters on Samus' gunship as it flies by a Federation cruiser, just as there is no lighting any time the ship takes off or lands during gameplay (although the gunship casts a fake shadow).  I didn't delve further, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a touch of lighting in controlled situations (morph ball tunnels) and other cut-scenes, but lack of lighting from Samus' beam weapons is rather glaring.  (Note: one of our readers, Ningurl69, has pointed out that you can see some dramatic lighting if you use a morph ball bomb in a dark place, and you can sometimes even get the beam weapons to light up a really dark triangle).<P>
To be fair, although dynamic lights are nice, the GameCube (and Wii) implementation can get messy since lighting is only calculated at triangular vertices and then interpolated across the triangles.  This looks quite alright when triangles are small (such as the ones that make up Samus and her Gunship), but it can look pretty bad for some of the big triangles that make up the game world.  You can see what I mean in the original Prime by performing various tests.  If you shoot the middle of a big triangle, then very little lighting occurs.  If you shoot the corner if a big triangle, the lighting will extend across the whole thing (fading as it gets to the unlit vertices).    <P>
Perhaps Retro thought retaining the vertex lighting would do more harm than good to the game's image since games on competing consoles almost invariably feature per pixel lighting these days.  Admittedly Corruption does have a squeaky clean look that vertex lighting would have sometimes marred.    <P>
In any case, now that I have noticed exactly what was tickling the unconscious part of my optical lobe, I can't fail to notice what's missing, and I have to say I don't like it one bit.  Even though it was messy sometimes, the dynamic lights of the original Prime add animation and vibrancy to the game world that Corruption is missing.    <P>
I wonder if any significant number of people out there will care about this.  I wonder if any game reviewers will feel embarrassed for failing to notice (for my part, I'm inclined to start consulting a technical check list when I review games from now on).  I wonder if anyone at Retro would be willing to comment.  We shall see. <P>

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TalkBack / Re: Capcom's Bionic Commando Not Approved for Virtual Console

« on: August 13, 2008, 01:41:14 PM »

Come on this is obvious.  The last boss looks like Hitler and when you kill him his head explodes graphically.  Nintendo is playing it safe.  Sadly.

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TalkBack / Re: Defecting to the Enemy Camp

« on: August 07, 2008, 06:11:14 PM »

I didn't defect to the enemy camp, but Nintendo picked up camp and moved half way across the country and I was too uninterested to follow them.  And meanwhile MS and Sony are right next door and I already know the territory so what do you expect?  At least a good portion of the DS faction of Nintendo's camp hasn't gone anywhere.