edgecrusher said:

Word.

Fucking Trine is a sweet lookin' game. I may have to scope Steam out & see if they have any deals on the first one.

The sequel is so much better.

Usually Retronauts is unlistenable  -- and completely without recommendation at all.  However, this one was good:

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9098844

^ Interview with Victor Ireland of Working Designs fame.  Some real gaming trivia nuggets uncovered.

Also, another good listen this week was a rather frank interview with Sony's Worldwide Studio President Shuheui Yoshida (from IGN) :

http://au.ps3.ign.com/articles/122/1225017p1.html

Seems like a great guy, and was very forthcoming. IGN also did not shrink away from the most awkward and painful questions, good for them.

Isn't it pointless to use the mote and chuk AND the wii u pad screen?

Ravenprose said:

gamingeek said:

Isn't it pointless to use the mote and chuk AND the wii u pad screen?

Yes, it is. Nintendo is just forcing the Upad into games just to make them seem more "unique."

Using either one would be fine, Gamepad or Wiimote.

Gamepad plays like Gamecube Pikmin with a map screen. Wiimote plays like Wii Pikmin.

Mother of God, I am reading this Digital Foundry WIi U article and they start comparing Batman scenes comparing the various platforms and they put these screens up for comparison.

What. the. f*** is the point?

DF said:

Arkham City is an interesting case in that we have a game that by default has a whole series of enhancements available to the developers courtesy of the existing PC version. Many of these are DirectX 11-based, so almost certainly beyond the reach of the Wii U GPU, but there are a range of tweakables available within the inner workings of the Unreal Engine - draw distance and the like - that the creators of the new version could draw upon.




We pulled a number of shots from the Wii U footage released by Warner Bros. and went back to the original PC/Xbox 360/PS3 versions in order to get some idea of the direction taken, and came up with some intriguing conclusions.




First up, in this comparison shot taken from Two-Face's head-to-head with Catwoman, we find that the Wii U version offers up obvious improvements in terms of texture resolution, and something we didn't notice in our original Face-Off: the PC version runs this scene in real-time, while the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions appear to be offline renders presented via FMV, which may explain deficiencies in image quality.




As we're comparing a lossy Wii U grab up against pristine HDMI captures, we can't confirm whether Wii U is rendering this in real-time or not - but it is telling that even with this disadvantage the additional detail in the new game resolves easily. However, even if the Wii U title is using an offline render in a video sequence, it would demonstrate that brand new assets have been created for the Wii U version that would more fully utilise the 25GB of Blu-ray storage - something we didn't even see in the PS3 game.

If you load up the screens in different tabs and flick between Wii U and 360 you can see tiny, tiny improvements. Like spotting an ants penis. They go on like this for ages about other scenes in Batman, I'm wondering why I read these things.

DF said:

Now here's where things get really interesting. This next shot, taken from the exploding bell tower scene after Batman's first confrontation with Harley Quinn, demonstrates that the developers of the Wii U game have opted to go off in their own direction in a remarkable manner. We see a very close level of overall parity between Xbox 360, PS3 and the DX11 PC version running at 1080p/max settings. However, Wii U demonstrates a number of changes.



First of all, there are fundamental differences in the lighting model - positioning is different, and some light sources are added, others taken away. Wii U also seems to be sporting motion blur, different settings in the atmospheric rendering, along with the addition of brand new assets to the scene - not just the banners hanging from the tower, but new textures in some places too - it actually seems to be more accurately representing the look of the building when you first make your way towards it after saving Catwoman in the game's first chapter.



The scene is dramatically transformed but where there are some new additions, we also see cutbacks too. Long-range draw distance appears to be pared back noticeably, while in the mid-distance we see missing buildings, and the introduction of minor new scenery like additional water towers. Curiously, thin geometry seems to be entirely absent in places for some reason. We won't draw definitive conclusions until we're hands-on with actual code but it does seem to suggest that elements have been added and removed to better suit the capabilities of the hardware.



We're also fairly sure that the basic console 720p presentation has been augmented with FXAA or some equivalent post-process anti-aliasing, which is present in all the gameplay clips, but disabled when "detective vision" is in play. The PS3 and 360 versions feature no anti-aliasing at all.

Agnates said:

You'll probably need the Upad to start up the system (unless the Wiimote still works for that), you might as well place it on the coffee table in front of you with the stand and play like that. As long as it doesn't require you push anything on it and merely displays information for you. At least it allows you to have something more distinguishable than a mini map since it's closer to you and bigger than any mini map has been in any game. But maybe it's optional?

I forgot about that stand, that will come in handy. If the battery only lasts 2.5-5 hours though I want to know how long the freaking recharge cord is because I will probably leave it tethered like my laptop.

Ah nice:

Eguchi on the length of the Wii U charging cable…




“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about the length. We’ve definitely taken that into consideration.”

EDIT:

Looks like we have our reason as to why Nintendo's first party games are 720p, most of them are 60 FPS, Pikmin 3, Nintendoland are confirmed at 60 FPS.

Eguchi

"It’s worth it to point out that we might consider using 1080p, but, for example, if we want to get 60 fps, at a particular stage of development, it may seem 720p is more realistic.”

EDIT:

Whoa I just opened full screen a couple of the Arkham City comparison shots of the tower. Why do the PS3 and 360 versions have no AA as the article says? That cannot be right? This scene look like ass.

PS3 screen

Wii U screen

The article says it looks like FXAA is used in the Wii U version which according to what I read gives you some anti-aliasing, but also blurs the picture. But it has no real performance hit.

If the animated short is of similar quality to the Halo comic book from last year, it's safe to say it'll kill all momentum of the game and cause people to slit their wrists and/or throats (whichever is easier to reach).

edgecrusher said:

Ok let's all admit it....if THIS was the final thing Nintendo showed at the E3 event and said "Retro Studios would like to give you a blast from the past" we would have all went nuts and completely forgave the rest of the crap:

That video was SO legit....that they even had the token Super Mario joke with the mask thrown in there.

Best thing out of E3.

I think it would just be a 3DS remake trailer though. If it weren't fake.

GG you liked Giest didn't you?

You should check out some Dishonored vids...a lot of similar ideas.

After reading that Digital Foundry Wii U Arkham City article, I went to look at some PS3 vs 360 screen comparisons. This article is pretty good, it has rollover screens so you can easily see the difference.

360 looks better, more detailed, sharper, better lighting. But I keep seeing aliasing in both versions. I was noticing it more because in the Df article I read it said:

"The PS3 and 360 versions feature no anti-aliasing at all."

Did you guys notice this at all? I don't remember any particularly bad alising in Arkham Asylum and I just assumed City looked better. Why is there no anti-aliasing? You can see it in the screens.

The DF article says about the Wii U version, aside from the other improvements like better textures:

"We're also fairly sure that the basic console 720p presentation has been augmented with FXAA or some equivalent post-process anti-aliasing, which is present in all the gameplay clips, but disabled when "detective vision" is in play."

So as normal or according to E3 visitors as 'bad' as the Wii U demo looked, it was running the game once on the TV in 720p with FXAA anti-aliasing + outputting a second 3D, separate image of the engine on the pad screen at 480p. If you consider this, it gives you some indication of the capability of the machine - for instance 360 could not render the normal Arkham City and then another separate 480p image too of a different 3D scene right? It's also telling that the 360 CPU is supossed to lag in comparison to the PS3 but the PS3 version has noticibly worse textures and lighting, as we hear the 360 GPU is better and easier to program for.

I think there is wiggle room in Wii U's graphics, if for instance in a future Batman game they turned off the pad screen for 3D scenes - they would have the power that they were using to render the separate 480p image spare.

I was reading that Nintendo's first party games were only 720p at E3, but then Eguchi later revealed that it was because they decided their games will be 60 frames per second. After reading some more it seems that Rayman Legends, Nintendoland, Pikmin 3 and NSMBU are all 60 frames per second.

The DF article was running a frame rate analyser over broadcast TV footage and saying that games were 30 FPS.

I also read once again that the 360 does not have a separate sound chip and sound processing eats up the CPU power, whereas Wii U does have a sound chip which frees up the CPU cores just for the game engine.

Even though the PS3 CPU is more powerful, because it's more difficult to program for, most multiplats look worse, but exclusives look better?

All this bodes fairly well for Wii U, once the middleware has been optimised if you believe the rumours you will have a better graphics card, an equal CPU that will be more capable because of the separate sound chip. So you will see in ground up games (from good developers known for their graphics) a decentish bump in performance. Nothing groundbreaking or generational leap better or anything but still, it will be more capable.

It's fairly promising that a latter gen game like AC3 can run on Wii U as good as it does on other systems as a launch game - it still needs obvious work though. If you saw the footage, it looks a bit better than the PS3 videos, but probably because of the feed.