SEGAbits Forums

Gaming => General Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: George on February 03, 2011, 06:41:15 am

Title: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: George on February 03, 2011, 06:41:15 am
At least their workers do. Dead Space games are great, I have the first one. They put some work on that engine, but they also work for EA. So ya, EA isn't the best company with consumers....  but at least the people working at Visceral (DS devs) are...

Check this out:
Quote
My friends dog knocked over her XBOX 360 and it ended up breaking the disc, she got upset and ranted about it on twitter. The Art Director to Dead Space 2 then happened to see her tweet, messaged her asking for her address and sent her this. A hand drawn picture of Isaac scolding her dog and a signed copy of DS2 signed by most of everyone in the studio.

Pics

http://oi53.tinypic.com/313ksj8.jpg (http://oi53.tinypic.com/313ksj8.jpg)

http://oi51.tinypic.com/r94n5c.jpg (http://oi51.tinypic.com/r94n5c.jpg)

Just thought I'd show that the dev teams a bunch of rather riveting ol' chaps and give them some love.
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... plains_on/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/fecn2/friends_dog_breaks_dead_space_2_disc_complains_on/)

I have also noticed companies 'advertising' games as users, I doubt this is EA marketing..
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: cube_b3 on February 03, 2011, 07:33:17 am
I like EA Dice.

As soon as I get my PS3 (fingers crossed for March) I'll start Mirrors Edge.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: SOUP on February 03, 2011, 08:32:10 am
Quote from: "cube_b3"
I like EA Dice.

As soon as I get my PS3 (fingers crossed for March) I'll start Mirrors Edge.
It's a good one :D.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: Sega Uranus on February 03, 2011, 05:33:00 pm
EA is the best publisher this year so far, and with stuff like Mass Effect 3 coming at the end of the year, I expect it to stay that way. Even then their digital department might be the best of this gen honestly.

I am not a fan of either Dead Space games, but I think they are very high quality products. You usually do not see stuff like this in the industry (only Bungie has done it a lot in the past few years), so this kind of thing always puts a smile on my face. Much respect.

[spoiler:3nd7kis5]Mirror's Edge is one of the most overrated games this generation.[/spoiler:3nd7kis5]
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: George on February 03, 2011, 06:11:02 pm
I agree with Mirror's Edge being overrrated. I own it and it could have been a $15 dollar title for PSN/XBLA tbh..

Anyway... They do put up high quality products if you ignore the super copy called Dante's Inferno.

They are quite behind true AAA titles though, like Uncharted and a few other games. They are at least better than Bungie when it comes to engines. Bungie is better at that online.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: Sega Uranus on February 03, 2011, 07:29:41 pm
Dante's Inferno is a pretty shameless ripoff, but it is very similar quality to God of War.

I disagree entirely on what you said about Bungie though. Halo 3 and especially Halo Reach both run phenomenally and make excellent work of the Xbox 360. Some of the facial models in 3 are kind of bad and some of the textures in both can look dull, but the games always run perfectly and remain smooth throughout. I know you do not play Xbox 360 much, but I think you would be impressed if you saw what they do with your Bungie.net profiles especially, with how they track basically every detail. The way they balance gameplay mechanics and how well their art works in their games is also extremely impressive I think.

Halo 2 had bad graphics I think, but it also ran well even with 16 people in the same room. Oni is their only other game I can think of that does not look as good as it could be, that could be forgiven with how hard the PlayStation 2 hardware was to use at the time.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: George on February 03, 2011, 08:56:00 pm
Yeah they ran fine, but they also didn't push the 360 at all. Sub HD games, Reach was pitted against Resistance 2, which wasn't even that great looking of an exclusive and mostly ran better.

http://www.lensoftruth.com/?p=25645 (http://www.lensoftruth.com/?p=25645)

I do credit Bungie for putting so much work and effort to their online play. That is where they really shine, not making engines, but making playing the game online fun.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: CrazyT on February 05, 2011, 06:41:46 pm
Battlefield bad company 2 >call of duty
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: Sega Uranus on February 05, 2011, 11:05:39 pm
Quote from: "George"
Yeah they ran fine, but they also didn't push the 360 at all.

Incorrect. Just because the games have some blocky models here and there sometimes does not mean much. There are more to games running than textures and polygon count.

Quote from: "George"
Sub HD games

That is your reasoning for saying they do not push the hardware?

There is no "True" high definition. It has and will continue to change every few years. The original Genesis model claims it is high definition, some games even say that on their box. I have seen NES games do it too.

What about God of War III? It runs in 720p. It literally might be graphically the best game of all time but it runs in "Sub HD". Same with Little Big Planet, inFamous, Heavy Rain and many others deemed HD experiences. I can also point out titles like the Sly Collection actually only run in 420p, but they plaster the word high definition all over that.

Quote from: "George"
Reach was pitted against Resistance 2, which wasn't even that great looking of an exclusive and mostly ran better.

I do not see why they were put against one another. Besides shooting things in the first person, the two are very different overall, it is like comparing Shinobi's gameplay to Mario. Both are platformers where you can shoot things, but that is pretty much where it ends.

The sections they put against one another are also fairly stupid. The first few scenes of Reach are designed to be small, the characters are unaware with what is about to happen. With Resistance 2, it is obvious the world is ending right as it starts, or whatever is going on in that story.

Quote from: "George"
I do credit Bungie for putting so much work and effort to their online play. That is where they really shine, not making engines, but making playing the game online fun.

Besides ODST, they have made a new engine for every game they have made since like... Myth II... Maybe even before that...

They make a new game every two or so years. Not many developers are capable enough of making their own engine anymore, let alone with the amount of staff members they used to have (during Halo 3, they were much smaller than you would expect). The fact they can get these kind of games out and running so well, so fast is pretty damn impressive I would say. Halo Reach, for example has never had a patch and continues to run at 100% after months and billions of hours between all of the players. If there were any real issues with their games' engines I assume those people would be aware of it before you are.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: George on February 06, 2011, 04:48:46 am
So basically "Not pushing hardware doesn't mean they didn't push the hardware"

Are you saying that 360 is being pushed by blocky humans? Makes no sense.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: Sega Uranus on February 07, 2011, 03:48:42 pm
Quote
So basically "Not pushing hardware doesn't mean they didn't push the hardware"

Are you saying that 360 is being pushed by blocky humans? Makes no sense.

The only part of them that is blocky are their faces, at least in Halo 3, Reach's faces are fine. Great for a feature not even used that much.

You are basically making mountains out of molehills. I know I could point you out to some bad textures in something like Forge World, but the fact that even just half that area works so well so easily is one of the most impressive things I have seen this gen. The campaign has tons of areas far away from where you are even supposed to visit that have extremely impressive amounts of detail that is comparable to Shenmue in some cases.

But I guess less than 10% of the characters faces that do not even appear in the game that much are a really big deal and means the engine sucks.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: George on February 07, 2011, 05:04:02 pm
Not really. I disagree with everything you said. Graphically Reach and 3 are inferior to something like Gears, which really defined the 360 as a graphical powerhouse.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: Sega Uranus on February 07, 2011, 07:04:52 pm
On the topic of Gears, it looks good in screenshots and usually plays fine, but many of the mechanics are all over the place, Halo 3 and Reach are solid throughout, in everything from frames per second to controls. With Gears it is questionable, to say the least.

You are confusing lame character models to game engines, on how they actually run and work (this includes online that you mentioned). There is nothing to agree or disagree on.

Back to EA. Look at the models of the side characters in the Fight Night games. Some look terrible honestly, but the games overall are very impressive. I think the newest one is the first game to ever have "Eye jiggle" physics even, pretty cool.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: George on February 08, 2011, 02:51:15 am
I was talking about game engines. You are confusing controls with game engines I think. LOL The lighting, textures are superior in Gears. Halo games offered nothing impressive sadly, that is why they have high framerate. Can't even display in 720p.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: Sega Uranus on February 09, 2011, 04:22:31 pm
Oh, of course! Game engines! What was I thinking? Game engines only effect the look of their games, not how they run or play, stupid me!

Look at it this way. Look at the word ENGINE. What does that mean? Do you know what an engine in a car is for? The overall performance of the vehicle, not what it looks like on the outside!

Either you worded it wrong or did not know what you meant. In the cases of Halo 3 and Reach's graphics, those are the models they made for the games, which is literally not the same thing as if they made a graphical engine that upkeeps the look of the game. Who knows if they doubled the polygons for each model if it would still work good? Certainly not you.

I was talking about the game engines, not the graphical engines. Even in that case I would say the Halo games "Run better" than stuff like Gears.

IMHO Halo Reach is one of the most technical FPSs on consoles so far. The textures, the amount of polygons on the weapons and character models, the lighting, amount of colors, and advanced AI, the number of AI on screen are extremely impressive. Something like Killzone 2 looks great I think, but it uses many in-game filters and similar color schemes throughout to hide any jagged edges you could find.

Halo 3 was native 1152 X 640, with two framebuffers, but Reach is in 1152 X 720. Halo 3 had bad aliasing, but that is still kind of impressive for a somewhat smaller developer than most big IPs are known for. Halo Reach runs in 720p fine. The amount of pixels you are complaining about is incredibly strange. So what if it does not have that somewhat cool looking cave scene from Gears 2? The game is one of the best from last year, in every regard.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: George on February 10, 2011, 04:09:59 am
Are we serious?

I disagree with everything you said. Halo Reach the best fps graphical console game? Alright.. i'll take the bait.

Yes, have you checked what a game engine is? They don't just effect the way the game looks, it also effects the physics and most of the times the animation.
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features ... _game_.php (http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/529/what_is_a_game_.php) Show me where it says Game Engines = controls.

 I'm sorry that I said X game pushed the 360 than X game. Obviously I don't work for Epic or Bungie, thus I'm wrong and your right.

I said that Gears of War did more to push the 360 than Halo 3, ODST and Reach. One of the examples I gave was the graphics and the Unreal 3 engine.

Here you go, 'Technical FPS' on a console? You bring up textures and polygons... and even lighting. You will sit and say with a straight face that Halo Reach has better lighting than Killzone 2? I'm a bit surprise.

Sorry to tell you, 'color schemes' don't hide jaggies, that is what HDR lighting is for.

Saying that 'Bungie' didn't use superior textures compared to Gears because they knew it would run better with crappier textures  means that Resistance 2 is superior to Reach because it runs smoother. But it isn't tech wise.

Best game? Sounds like an opinion.

I think you should read up on Killzone 2's lighting engine. One of the best in the industry. I was a bit disapointed by aspects of Killzone 2, but the team did a great job with the lighting and graphical engine.

Basically the full lighting engine is 'real time'. No 'texture' tricks. Its funny cuz the developer was 'called out' by neogaf members saying they used trick lighting... but it was the opposite. Just lots of coding hard work.
http://www.ps3blog.net/2007/07/30/killz ... ng-engine/ (http://www.ps3blog.net/2007/07/30/killzone-2%E2%80%99s-lighting-engine/)
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: Sega Uranus on February 10, 2011, 03:15:48 pm
You are still kind of going off on weird stuff, I have been constantly saying that the Halo games are usually more "Solid" than other releases, especially stuff like Gears, which I think looks good, but has moments of shitty constant shit shit. I know you know what I mean.

Most of your comments seemed to be around character models, or at least they were before. I was trying to point out that those models are what Bungie made themselves, not the end all means proof their their engine cannot handle higher polygon count faces.

When I said you are not entirely sure what you are on about, I meant that I am not sure if you have even played those games long enough to judge them in any great regard. I did not outright say that because I have no way of knowing outside of asking you, but with how you have mentioned the title, it does not seem like you have.

And when I said it was one of the best games of last year, that is not a personal opinion, it is echoed throughout the industry. I can freely say the same about Red Dead Redemption, a game I never played yet.

*Name drop, link drop, joke drop here*
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: George on February 10, 2011, 03:53:04 pm
How long did you play Killzone 2? Do you own a PS3? I have played Halo Reach, beta and retail for more than 20 hours. I think that is enough not to be impressed by a engine.

MLB game by Sony is 'one of the best games last year', doesn't mean squat when I don't like it.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: Sega Uranus on February 10, 2011, 06:07:19 pm
Quote from: "George"
How long did you play Killzone 2?

I would say around three hours, but that was literally just the other day, so it is pretty fresh in my head, more so than Reach is. I had also seen a lot about it previously.

Quote from: "George"
Do you own a PS3?.

Yes, now I do, but what does that have to do with anything?

Quote from: "George"
I have played Halo Reach, beta and retail for more than 20 hours. I think that is enough not to be impressed by a engine.

Neither of us were talking about being impressed. I kept pointing out that their games just run better than stuff like Gears. In every regard. It should not matter if Gears looks better in screenshots than Reach does, the game works better in almost every category.

Quote from: "George"
MLB game by Sony is 'one of the best games last year', doesn't mean squat when I don't like it.

Well I was not talking about liking and disliking things, I was on about how things work, and Halo games (with the exception of 2 - And even that is arguable) run extremely well and are top of the line in performance in almost every way. The industry would not give it dozens of awards if it was not good in some manner.
Title: Re: EA has a team with a soul? Dead Space team deserves praise?
Post by: George on February 10, 2011, 06:34:10 pm
What the hell does 'having good ratings' have to do with having a technical engine? In this logic Mario Galaxy has a better technical engine than Halo and Killzone.

Y U NO ADD ME?