Critics are almost always all lined up on one side or the other, Robio. It just means that your opinion is not as objectively sound as theirs.

IdeaMan from GAF said:

GAF Wii U rumour: Games run at 720p



If running intensive visualls on the padlet screen too

About the resolution of the games from which my second-hand knowledge come. This may precise a tad more the Wii U power, in a specific context, how third-parties handle the system. It’s related to everything I’ve said before.




The games concerned run ALL in 720p on the main screen. For now, from the mouths of my sources, it's not a console that looks to manage software with complex engines with such ease that their resolution might be 1080p, even at 30 fps. The 720p resolution is best suited for these titles to have a smooth framerate, in addition of the subscreen.




Now let’s talk about the context, which is as important as the information itself:




- Both games have an intensive use of the padlet. More concretely, 3D scenes, different angle of what is on the TV (bird eye view for example). The system is therefore capable of displaying a main screen of AT LEAST comparable quality than current gen versions in 720p (with I guess, a certain amount of AA, etc.) AND another 480p content on the tablet.



- The titles are ports that will be available on actual HD platforms, or more “exclusive” ones but build on inhouse engines already deployed in previous softs. They aren’t tailored from A to Z for the Wii U particularities. And everything is still in development, + dependent of the evolution of dev kits that are changing regularly (at least until now). So it can only improve, and the situation may be different for Nintendo and first-party titles.



- The dev kit involved are the V4 ones. The “V5” is a little more powerful, but apparently not to a point to push these games from 720p to 1080p.



- My sources added that the resolution is the one chosen for now, but a hypothetical other power boost that may occurring post V5 need to be important to allow the system to run these games properly in 1080p.



- These titles will change in the visual department as, like I said, some effects will be applied more in the “end” of the development, with perhaps graphical features not handled by current gen, thanks to the more modern Wii U GPU. So the end result on the main screen will be prettier than on PS360, with a higher resolution (many current gen content are not in true 720p) and especially in conjunction with a heavy use of the tablet. We might expect that games leaving it for simple things will be even more impressive on the TV.




From these informations, several speculations can be derived as:



- The possibility that games with simple engines, such as family titles, Mii-based ones, etc, will be in 1080p.



- Maybe other developers, with a simplistic use of the padlet + after all the optimizations and hardware boosts/tweaking until the dev kit finalization (if they are only moderate and not extensive to a point that it will change this situation completely), will release games in 1080p (with less AA than on 720p, less FPS, etc.), but it doesn’t seem possible at the moment, if they want their titles to reach a certain level of sophistication and quality in visuals on the TV + intricate use of the subscreen.



- I guess we can speculate further on the power and the amount of some components with this, such as memory / buffer, the GPU…




All these infos are related to my previous posts (it’s the same context) about the hardware power scale, the impressions of my sources, the tablet usage, the memory, the surprising amount of RAM occupation from the OS/Background (it will surely be better and therefore have a positive impact on the general performances, etc.).




Nothing revolutionary as I warned you, but it can help narrowing a little more the Wii U capacities in this particular context, what you can expect from third parties ports/not exclusive games (because having followed each page of these threads, I saw many gafers who are anticipating these titles to be the 1080p versions of their current gen counterparts, but for now, it’s not the case). This does not necessarily mean that the Wii U is underpowered EITHER: manage a visually ambitious game in a solid 720p & framerate, at the minimum a bit prettier than on Xbox 360 + an additional 480p screen with a complex scene rendered on it, is not a small thing.

So it would be rendering 1200 lines instead of 1080 lines but they would be split across the main screen and pad screen. But this dude says that that is only for ports of existing games at the moment, not ground up stuff. He also reckons that the Wii U screen is 480p which I don't quite understand because at E3 some people said the Zelda demo looked better on the sub-HD resolution Wii U pad screen than it did on the HDTV.

So the sytem can do 1080p games but if running different viewpoints and having to render scenes twice the resolution would be split.

He's said more now, here.

edgecrusher said:

My advice is to check out more of her.

Does your girlfriend know you watch all this porn?

So Kid Icarus is doing allright in the reviews so far, bar Destructoid.

I haven't read any of the reviews yet. The game looks kinda weird when I saw the on foot stuff and heard that those segments are 70% of the game. Then the trailers concentrated on the multiplayer.

Guess I should do some reading. I'm sort of interested.

EDIT:

So I'm wondering what's your position on whether this counts as a new franchise - for those people adament that nintendo never does anything new. It's a game with a 20 year gap.

Does it count as new, or can be lumped in like 'another mario' sequel as a nintendo rehash?

To me, it's a new hardcore nintendo game.

Gamesradar pre-review:

"Kid Icarus: Uprising has a stunning amount of polish and refinement, even by Nintendo's high standards. Despite any early misgivings we had with the controls, each stage is masterfully designed, rewarding exploration and experimentation. Uprising has a shocking amount of depth and it appears that the decades of wait were worth it. Like Metroid Prime, Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time before it, Kid Icarus: Uprising is another Nintendo franchise making the transition to three dimensions (almost) flawlessly."

Anyone else playing The Last Story? It's pretty rad.

.

Looks like Bioware is making Dragon Age 3.

I really deeply hope they go back to the style of the 1st game which IMO destroyed the 2nd game, even though I did like DA2 very much. I just liked everything about DA1 much more.

So many reviews to read. Kid Icarus sounds awesome. The DS had a ton of games where you had to use the stylus the entire game, so you had to hold the DS with one hand. Why is this such a big issue now?

Ninja Gaiden 3 IGN review is amazing.

Foolz said:

Tomorrow. We can do a two man podcast around this time then. Remember to show up pls.

I have nothing better to do. I'll be in a hotel room. Granted lets hope that hotel has good internet, it wont be the same as the one I am in tonight. This time you can talk about the ME3 ending with someone who knows what is going on so I can really explain why it is a big piece of crap. Everything else about the game is pretty damn awesome though. Oh and I want to get into some psychology of the gamer so think about this for me, the ME3 ending hysteria has shown that there are many many people that hate the entire series simply because the last 10 minutes after the game is over is not what they wanted. The 40 hours or so before that didn't matter to these people, just the ending. I want to explore that mentality cause I don't get it.

Foolz said:

Alright, well if you don't mind taking the risk I'd rather do it tomorrow as I'm not feeling that great right now. Might be worse tomorrow, but at least I'll be prepared.

Its already too late tonight so tomorrow it is.