edgecrusher said:

My + rating is badass.

No one can ever + anything you write again.

robio said:

_Bear said:

I just realized I had a message from vader on my Wii U don't know how long it was on there. I don't see any notice of messages or anything. I really don't like that.

At the bottom of the pad there are 5 icons for the MiiVerse, eShop, Internet, TVii, and Notifications. Usually if you have a message you'll see the Miiverse sort of flash.... but it's not really even a flash. More of a pulse really. Anyway it's easy to miss it, particularly because it doesn't do that immediately when you boot up the system. It will automatically check if you have messages, but by the time it does that you've probably selected whatever game you're going to play.

Hey thanks, I just saw that ! Add me I added you but it seems my messages don't always get through like friend invites, same for you Edge I added you.

_Bear said:

Hey thanks, I just saw that ! Add me I added you but it seems my messages don't always get through like friend invites, same for you Edge I added you.

I'll add you right now. What is your username?

edgecrusher said:

Ravenprose said:

At the moment, the only problem I'm having with RE5 is being repeatedly killed by alligators in that damned swamp level.

Cmon..that level's easy.

I've died about 20 times. I'm fairly certain I'm doing it wrong.

Dvader said:

This is where you have to walk across the water that has the alligators to get the emblem for the door in that big boat section. All you do is run from them, a head will pop up and come at you, just go away from them, dont stop, keep moving till you reach the latter.

Godammit! I was doing it wrong! I was shooting them with my shotgun; I could get the emblem, but coming back, there was always one alligator that would not die now matter how many times I shot it.

I finally made it through! Thanks, Vader!

Ravenprose said:

Okay, I'll admit it. RE5 does not suck. It's actually a fun game . . . once I got the hang of it.

This is why everyone needs Vader mode.

edgecrusher said:

Man I really hope next-gen Call Of Duty has a lot less sensory overload, not knowing where the fuck you're getting shot from...and being killed by invisible grenades.

This kind of shit got old 6 years ago.

This. is. Call of Duty.

It will only get worse next gen. With extra power comes extra responsibility explosions and NPCs.

Dvader said:

NintendoLand Zelda is so amazing, both ways to play is fun as hell. i prefer the sword combat of course, I just beat Ganon, one of the best looking Ganons. I love the LBP like artstyle. There is so much content just in this one game alone. Any of the three main games can be played easily for over 7 hours.

I thought NL would be the game you hated the most. Your impressions are the complete opposite of what I expected. Good to hear, I'm looking forward to trying it.

_Bear said:

Wow I'm really loving Zombie U so glad I returned it and rebought it at Toys Our Us what a great game! Scary creepy, fun!

Wow. Amazing.

Really starting to wonder about those 4.5 reviews now.

Dvader said:

This is why everyone needs Vader mode.

Vader mode is overhyped. We are all still waiting for you to finish our copies of Bayonetta.

Archangel3371 said:

Meh. I don't know. I really haven't seen anything yet that was "dramatically" better then on the 360 myself. Regardless though when I get a Wii U it'll mostly be used for Wii U exclusive games as there's a number of reasons I'd opt for the 360 version instead.

That's cause Reggie is talking complete shit on BLOPS 2 which is where that dramatically quote came from, in context. In fact none of the ports look "dramatically" better. But there are performance improvements otherwise U would not be able to run Blops 2 on the U pad and on the main screen in multiplayer at the same time, Arkham Asylum wouldn't be able to run two different viewpoints 720p + 480p for the pad at the same time etc. Some of these ports are using V-Sync or a better form of anti-aliasing. U BLOPS 2 has no screen tearing for instance. But all this stuff is behind the scenes stuff that doesn't dramatically change the look of a game. But which can ironically affect the performance i.e frame rate of a game. BLOPs 2, people have speculated that the U version is using triple buffered V-Sync which would explain the large frame dips at some points, if it was double it would be lower. Digital Foundry at E3 said the U version of Arkham City was using V-Sync and post processed anti-aliasing, where the other versions had no AA or V-Sync. Perhaps if they dropped these extra features the game would run much better.

Others are saying that whilst an out of order CPU can run in order code, some people assume the OoO will just process everything easily when that is not the case and it runs in order code quite sloppily unless it's properly optimised.

I still want to know exactly what he meant by this: "I have to correct you. The specs are quite different than the competitor systems. Much more graphically intensive" I think he's just a suit beating his chest though.

Digital Foundry on Wii U at E3 said:

Unreal Engine 3 titles on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 typically cap at 30 frames per second, dropping v-sync when frame-rate dips under the target. Existing versions of Batman: Arkham City follow the same pattern. In normal 2D mode, the 30FPS cap is implemented in order to maintain an overall consistency to the whole experience.

On the Wii U, the entire presentation is v-synced from start to finish, and there's a definite feeling that performance suffers a little as a consequence, with some noticeable judder. However, it is worth checking out the full video of the entire walkthrough for additional context, as there is a rich amount of material often playing simultaneously on the second screen.

So is appears that instead of dropping v-sync when the frames dipped as it does on other systems, the WB team that ported it chose to run the U vesrion with solid v-sync all over which affected the frame rate. But all this was being done with an extra 480p to the gamepad at the same time. So it appears it was a sloppy decision by the port team not to drop v-sync when the frames dropped like they do in the other versions.

More on what DF found at E3:

DF said:

We 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 (GAF says yes)- 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.

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.

Reports continue to emerge from sources suggesting that Wii U is significantly more powerful than the current batch of titles may lead us to believe - the obvious inference being that these games have been created on incomplete hardware, perhaps with development tools that are still evolving, by studios unfamiliar with the hardware. In the case of Arkham City, we understand Warner Bros' Montreal studio is carrying out the work while Rocksteady continues on its own projects.


However, to survive the upcoming transition from the current HD consoles to their enormously improved successors, Wii U needs enough grunt to at least part-way bridge the generational gap - and there was scant evidence at E3 that the raw power required to do this was on tap. If it is a matter of getting to know the hardware and coaxing out maximum performance, the question is whether the third parties are prepared to invest the required time and effort. Looking back, it took a long, long time for the average standard of PS3 multi-platform titles to match what was being achieved on Xbox 360 and some might argue that Wii U doesn't have the luxury of time on its side.

So these are unseen improvments that do not dramatically see. The U cutscenes are realtime according to GAF, the other consoles could only do Bink video. The U version features solid v-sync so has no screen tearing but it does affect the framerate. The U version has some solid post process augmented anti-aliasing while the other versions do not. The U version is doing 720p + rich content to the 480p gamepad screen at the same time.

None of these things superficially will dramatically improve the look of a game but there are some obvious technical enhancements behind the scenes in some games. But at the moment it seems devs are implementing them at the expense of frame rate performance in some cases. Draw distance should be improved on U, you could see that in the Blops 2 comparison video and the Darksiders 2 one but its not a massive difference or anything. But if U is doing ACity cutscenes in real time which 360/ps3 could only do in compressed video form that's pretty decent IMO. You can tell the U is doing the cutscenes in real time because it has the same blocky shadowmaps evident in BLOPs 2 in some cases. I'm sure devs will be able to work around this problem in the future.