@Weebleman @Kaloudz A regular 60Hz TV and console always have to update 60 times per second. If you're playing a 30fps game, the console just sends every frame twice to keep that 60Hz signal going, and it will look consistent. If your game is (shudder) 20fps, each frame will display three times.
But if the game is running at 40fps, it doesn't fit evenly into 60. You'll see half of the frames once, and half of the frames twice, leading to uneven pacing. This is why some people can tell when a game drops to 59fps, as it causes a noticeable stutter in the motion.
A 120 Hz TV doesn't have this issue with 40Hz, of course, since it can simply display each frame thrice! Or even better, a VRR TV actually changes its refresh speed to match the game. If the game is running at 51fps, then the TV will also run at 51Hz, making it look perfectly even.
I'd heard the same, but I found that vanilla NG2 is harder (and more "cheap") than NG1 Black. And most of the NES NG1, for that matter.
Unsure on what I'll do with the series from here: go back and try to finish II and Razor's Edge, start over with Sigma, or shift over to the remake. I don't have GP, so I won't just be hopping into NG2 Black on a whim!
@Kaloudz Sigma sounds a world apart from Ninja Gaiden Black and II, then! I'm normally a competent gamer (I beat the NES game, just as an example), but I felt that Black's difficulty was a little excessive, forcing me to focus on perfecting a single weapon instead of experimenting. This was on Normal; I knew about Ninja Dog mode, but it was never offered to me. NGII on 360 just drove me crazy, even on easy mode (Acolyte). I still haven't finished it. Though I largely blame it on having to wait 20 seconds to reload the stage after every death. If there was a simple "retry" option in the pause menu, it would've been much less of an issue. I wonder how NG2 Black will stack up in this regard.
@N00BiSH To clarify, I do agree with your original point, but only because of the mixed reception that Yooka-Laylee got (as it was a pretty faithful, if flawed, successor to BK). It makes no sense to use the audience's reception of spin-off titles as a way to gauge their opinion of the main series, though, and I don't think Tooie proves enough one way or another.
I'm confident that a Banjo-Threeie that properly respects and builds on the original game would be a success, both critically and commercially. It wouldn't please everyone, of course, but it'd do well. Of course, that all goes out the window if the devs decide to turn it into an online roguelite RTS royale with sport sim elements instead!
PS: I'm not averse to Nuts & Bolts as a game! It's just not Banjo-Kazooie at all, besides some surface-level presentation/homage elements.
@N00BiSH Tooie was very well-received in its day (90 on Metacritic, as an example!), and though its reputation has diminished a bit, that seems to be mainly to do with the huge levels causing excessive wandering and backtracking, not the BK formula itself. The original BK is still widely regarded as a true classic.
And then Grunty's Revenge was a scaled-down 2D rendition on the GBA (good for what it was, but it was never going to touch the original), and Nuts & Bolts wasn't even a platformer, so that doesn't mean much.
If you had said Yooka-Laylee, then I'd be inclined to agree with you! Though even there, not all of YL's criticisms were based on its faithfulness to the original material.
Many of us would be happy with a new BK, as long as it's good. And- I shouldn't have to say this- it should be a platformer, not a vehicle game with Lego building!
@SuntannedDuck2 I'm with you on wanting to see those later games make a comeback. However, I think an all-new Ecco game would still be great to see. Reviving an IP that's largely tied to the 16-bit era is very different from simply releasing those games again.
As far as re-releases, though, we've bought those old Genesis games already (maybe more than once!), and it's time for some Saturn, Dreamcast, Xbox, Model 2, Master System, 32X, Sega CD, etc. etc.! They have a gold mine of games and IPs, so I hope that the recently announced revivals do well, and that they continue to tap into their broader history- both with sequels/reboots and with straight remasters.
PS: Seeing as those stale Genesis games just got delisted, does that mean they're going to release them yet again? As apathetic as I am about getting to buy Kid Chameleon again, I do think games should be re-released and kept available indefinitely, if at all possible.
How are the standard, non-deluxe versions of 2K golf (or EA's series, for that matter)? I enjoyed Tiger Woods 05 a lot back in the day (and just recently picked up and got started on 04, in fact!), but those are complete games. The DLC nonsense of modern sports games is a big turnoff, though I'm not as bothered if it's just some cosmetics or something- which is what this mostly appears to be?
If they're struggling to bring the loading times below 20 seconds (which is literally on par with Sonic '06!), then it's probably not worth it. I've passed over many games on Xbone because of the unbearably slow loading. For an open-world game with streaming, 20 seconds for an initial load is more than fine. But if it reloads frequently (which this game probably does), just forget it.
PS: If there's a 20-second limit, then where do large, open-world games like The Witcher 3 fit in? Are there exceptions for games that rely on streaming?
@RadioHedgeFund This would not only make Series S ports higher-quality and easier to make (no getting painted into a corner like with Baldur's Gate 3), but Series X and PS5 would also benefit: if the S is getting anywhere near 1080p60, then that guarantees that the big consoles will get great results, even with minimal extra work!
...but people would complain that the games aren't pushing graphical boundaries, and that the Series S is holding the generation back.
The cycle continues: physical games skip Xbox due to low demand, so the target audience increasingly moves to PS5/Switch, so physical games skip Xbox due to low demand, so...
@GamingFan4Lyf It's great, because these are often the titles that needed a remaster the most- either because they're no longer available, or because technical issues are bringing them down.
It sure beats the "safe" bets like re-remastering The Last of Us or whatever!
@Feffster IGN says that, but their video shows it running at 30fps. Same with all of the other "60fps" videos out there. If you find real 60fps footage of it, please let me know! Unfortunately, I still have a last-gen potato, as there haven't been quite enough FPS boost games to convince me to get with the times!
@Feffster Nope, no reference to it being included in the FPS Boost program, nor are there any videos of it running at 60fps on YouTube. Unless this was a late addition (e.g, just this year), and it slipped under everyone's radar?
@TTgowings Keep in mind that most of the remaining 30fps games are from the Xbox One or earlier, though there are unfortunately some modern games as well that can't hold a constant 60fps. I'm with you in that I want everything to be 60fps minimum (and will give up the modern bells and whistles to get that, if necessary).
At least many of these newer ones are future-proofed with 60fps and/or uncapped options!
Alice: Madness Returns, Lost Odyssey, Crimson Skies, The Darkness, Conker, Black, MX Unleashed, Breakdown... the list goes on! Emphasis on back compat games, since most of those don't have a 60fps PC version available.
Too Human and the Crackdown series would be nice, too, but I get that there's not exactly a financial incentive there!
Buying a One S at a nice discount, and then binging on Halo MCC and Rare Replay.
Finding out that all kinds of random '90s gems that I had missed, like Guardian Heroes, River City Ransom, Radiant Silvergun, and Monster World IV, are available for a few bucks each.
Playing 2v2 on Halo 2's Colossus, after someone decided to set it to 50 kills and give us all energy swords. Maybe that's a normal and popular config (I'm a n00b at Halo in general), but it made for some Mario Party-esque hilarity and tension.
@nomither6 That's basically what I meant, but I must not have expressed it clearly. The ambition is one of the things that stands out about the Adventure-era games in general (Heroes a little less so), and it was really impressive in SA1 especially.
And yeah, 06 had lots of potential, which is good... but that's also what hurts, as I can see what it could have been. Yeah, the story was always going to be kind of weird and lame, but there are some cool level designs, graphical touches, music tracks, etc., all throughout this game.
I've likened the Adventure vs Boost styles to Goldeneye vs Call of Duty, respectively. Sure, the latter is more polished and has a lot of spectacle, but there's less freedom, and it's ultimately less interesting to me.
PS: I guess P06 (the unofficial PC port of 06) is fully playable now, if not done yet? I tried an earlier build, and liked what I saw.
@themightyant If we're talking about something like Dead Rising 1, then sure, that feels very much like a PS2 game, and not even a late one.
But in general, I might just be too used to 5th-gen and earlier standards to really be bothered! (Or maybe I'm just forgetting, and I'll suddenly be hit with how clunky everything is, the next time I play a 360-era title.)
@nomither6 The potential of Sonic '06 might be what hurts the most, as I greatly prefer the Adventure style over the boost formula that almost everything has followed since then. But 06 basically sank that whole sub-series with its horrible execution- or should I say, it horribly and violently executed the sub-series?
@themightyant Yeah, that was a pretty dark time for technical performance. After an all-too-short generation where 60fps was the norm and loading times were typically ~5 seconds (and many of the games still looked great!), the 360 and PS3 felt like a big step back. And the next gen might've been even worse, since it normalized loading screens of over 30 seconds- despite jumping from DVDs to HDDs as the main storage medium.
I basically sat out that generation (Nintendo wasn't doing much that I cared for, either), but it has been nice to finally catch up on some of these on more capable hardware (PC) and enjoy them in a form that's easier on the eyes!
Not sure what you mean about outdated design, though. I was under the impression that games became fully "modern" around that time. But maybe just I'm too old-fashioned to notice.
@old-dad It's almost unfathomable how many games used to come out in the 6th and 7th gens (aside from the fact that we saw it firsthand, I mean). We're talking about large, flagship AAAs here, and the same series could get 2-3 quality entries in a single generation; now, we might have a single entry over the course of 2-3 console generations! (See: The Elder Scrolls, GTA, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime, Devil May Cry, Donkey Kong, Fable, etc. etc.)
@Elbow If you happened to get Hydro Thunder: Hurricane and one other game that I forget (possibly Daytona?) on sale, then you can thank me for giving in, buying the games at full price, and immediately unlocking sales for those titles ever since!
I already have physical copies of Conker and Blinx, though, so you're on your own this time. (I still have plenty more games that I might trigger a sale on later.)
Finding out that FPS Boost was happening. Such a great feature, and pretty well unprecedented in the industry. I don't know if Xbox knows how important this and back compat in general are (safe to assume MS HQ doesn't!), but back compat was the thing that really sold me on the Xbone, and FPS Boost almost got me to buy a Series X as well. If only it didn't cost $650 up here.
But yeah, this is an area where MS is really leading the industry (barring PC, obviously), and they should be doubling down on it, while their competitors should be following suit. At least in my opinion (and if they want me to buy more of their stuff).
And I'm in a similar spot, where there's not much need for handheld gaming in my life. If I have time to play, I probably also have a bigger screen and a proper controller handy.
A handheld that plays my existing PC (or maybe Xbox) library is more tempting than a dedicated system like a 3DS or Switch, since I know I could just jump into a game for a few minutes here and there, and then pick it back up on a proper setup once I'm at home. But there hasn't yet been quite enough reason to justify even that.
@GamingFan4Lyf Yeah, definitely a complexity thing. 2D games like this are usually the first ones to be playable, thanks to their relative simplicity. MVG even points out how Sonic Mania is a common one to see when emulation/translation layer projects get going, as it was also one of the first games (if not the first) to run in a PS4 emulator.
Minecraft is particularly interesting and impressive, given that it's 3D and already looking pretty accurate... even if it's hardly anyone's first choice for a game we want to see emulated!
@GamingFan4Lyf Probably more like 99%! But isn't it still worth releasing that 1% of the library from its console-specific shackles?
Even if you don't care about Halo 5 or whatever, I guarantee that there will be (or most likely already are) those who look back on it with nostalgia: "OMG, Halo 5 was my childhood!", etc.
PS: I do agree that it's less appealing than emulating a console with lots of exclusives. But not pointless!
Seems that they might've jumped the gun on calling the previous version "Deathinitive", then. Is this one even more deathinitiver?
Great game(s), but I hope they finally fix the glitches this time. DS2 easily crashes (at least on PC) if you try to shoot a certain DLC boss while it's flying, and this reportedly carried over from the original release. DS1 also had smaller bugs that persisted in its remaster, like a treasure chest that couldn't be opened.
@BAMozzy Yeah, I'm all for last-gen games finally being able to run smoothly, now that they've been unshackled from their potato console limitations. Seeing a huge leap forward and 60fps (like we did in the PS2 generation) would be great, but that kind of thing rarely happens now, so I'm fine with smaller visual upgrades if that's what it takes to keep things running smoothly. It's not as if most last-gen games are ugly!
I actually didn't buy a console... or a modern PC. All of the options right now are too expensive, and all of them (short of a 4090, apparently) get lacklustre performance in many of the latest games.
The problem isn't just with the consoles being too weak, as this time around, they're actually pretty capable. Plus, even beefy PCs are struggling more than they have in a long time. It's fine if ultra deluxe settings don't work well on today's hardware, but if you have to turn the game into a blurry mess just to hit 60fps, then something's wrong (especially considering how good a lot of cross-gen games look by comparison).
So I'm just staying on decade-old hardware for now, wondering if my next PC build will even be able to run today's games properly, or if I'll have to wait for the next one after that!
@BAMozzy More games should just target Xbox One and PS4 specs, and then they'll have the room to scale up from there.
But when they do that, people just complain that it's not "next-gen", so I guess there's no winning here. (Personally, just give me 60fps every time... preferably with decent visual quality, but last-gen graphics are perfectly fine.)
@RadioHedgeFund Good point, and a lot of people seem to miss that: a more conservative approach to graphics tech lets you crank the framerate, resolution, draw distance, texture res, etc., up to the max, whereas going all-out on fancy RT or whatever forces you to rein those things in.
The high-end game can actually look worse as a result, especially when it has to be scaled down for Series S, etc.!
@GamingFan4Lyf I heard a quote somewhere, along the lines of: "When a studio makes a properly functioning game, it's a miracle. If it's fun to play, that's another miracle."
It makes my head spin, seeing the number of moving parts that all have to come together to make a game work, like all of the assets that have to be created, imported, and then dynamically loaded and unloaded. Or the flags that keep track of the states of a thousand different events and objects (and where the game can become unwinnable if just one of these flags is set incorrectly).
However, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect games to run smoothly today, and that's solely because we've seen it done so many times before, on equal or weaker hardware.
In a vacuum, I might say it's impressive to make the Series S display anything at 60fps (at least when any coding is involved, as it's not like I could do better at this point), but we've seen gorgeous games running at 60fps on the Series S, One S, OG Xbox, etc., so the bar has been set.
@ZYDIO To be fair, the past two generations had pretty abysmal performance: almost all large-scale games ran at 30fps and lower, and the Xbone/PS4 in particular had painfully slow load times.
This current generation has got to be up there with the 6th gen for performance: 60fps is commonplace again, and loading is back down to a few seconds in most cases.
I do agree, though, that every new game should have been 60fps (or included it as an option), starting in 2020. We already know that open-world games with beautiful graphics can do 60fps on a potato system, so hardware isn't the issue.
To be clear, I'm not saying "devs need to stop being lazy", but rather that 60fps needs to be a priority/baseline for every game, without exception. Yes, the graphics will be a little less fancy, and I'm okay with that.
I have mixed feelings regarding Series S, but I'm really skeptical about the idea that it's causing games to run poorly on Series X.
If anything, it should be the opposite: if devs can get their games to run at 30fps on Series S, then that guarantees a ton of headroom (especially on the GPU) to get these games looking and running better on Series X.
I suspect that games are instead targeting hardware above Series X's capabilities. Then, they have to be optimized- or just as likely scaled down- for XSX, and then further downgraded to get some semblance of stability on XSS.
If devs targeted XSS, or Switch... or GameCube specs (as an extreme example!), then it'd be a piece of cake to hit 4K60 consistently without sacrificing clarity or draw distance. But it would be at the expense of all the bells and whistles, of course.
@Fiendish-Beaver If you remember Pong (which was 60fps), then you must also remember the 8-bit and 16-bit days, when 60fps (or I guess 50fps in your region) was the norm on consoles! 30fps was always a compromise used to push graphics that the hardware couldn't comfortably handle, whether that be early 3D before 2000, "HD" rendering in the 7th gen, or slightly "juicier effects and lighting" today.
I understand your point- that poor performance was commonplace from 2005-2020 or so- but it's really not accurate to speak of 60fps like it's some new invention that we didn't already have 30+ years ago, or that only young people would care about.
As for what changed to make people start caring about 60fps, that's a topic for a whole other rant. Personally, I've been grumpy and entitled for ~20 years, ever since I figured out why some of my games were so juddery and hard to see, while others looked smooth!
@FatGuyInLilCoat Unfortunately, a lot of people have become aware of this and started keeping sealed copies of things in more recent years, so these kinds of items aren't going to be so rare in the future.
On the other hand, I've been telling myself that, and certain products have still managed to increase in value, so...
@darkswabber Thanks for bringing up DoesItPlay- it's good to have a source with actual facts regarding this! However, as the numbers on that site show, there are many games that don't work fully without a download, even on PS5 and Switch. Yes, it's a major exaggeration to say that physical games are all just tokens now, but there's still some truth in it.
@Pabpictu It makes sense the first time around, when there's just a single S and a single X. But once the new consoles come along, the high-end machine (e.g., Xbox One X) then turns into a low-end/budget option, and now players are getting either the budget experience or finding out that they can't play at all... despite having the premium "X" edition.
@BAMozzy I agree that there's lots of room for technological advancement, and there always will be. There's always the possibility of larger crowds, more extensive RT, etc... and of course, true 4K at 120fps! Even today's games could be easily tweaked or expanded to make use of at least 4x the resources... but then, that just goes back to the issue of diminishing returns. How much better would they look and play? Would we even notice?
At this point, I feel that the hardware is good enough, and it all comes down to priorities: today's systems (even Series S!) can already produce gorgeous graphics at upwards of 1080p and 60fps, so as long as devs choose performance over pushing past the limits, I'm fine with where things are for now.
Regarding RT, "fake" shadows and reflections have been used very effectively for decades, long before RT was viable. In fact, those exact examples you gave were both in the Resident Evil remake on GameCube! RT offers greater fidelity, but it's an incremental thing. (RT seems like a bigger upgrade than it is, only because modern games all use techniques like SSR, which is so much worse than what Resident Evil and Mario Sunshine did in 2002!)
AI, on the other hand... I find that idea intriguing. I don't know if it would actually make the games more fun, but it would definitely be interesting if more games could allow the player to go "off-script" and then react accordingly.
@masofdas @BAMozzy Yeah, it's easy to forget how short each generation used to be. 5-6 years was the norm, but the Xbox only lasted 4 years until the 360 showed up, and GBA only got 3 years before the so-called "third pillar" DS started killing it off.
But this one still feels short. I chalk it up to a mix between getting old (5 years feels a lot longer when it's a third of your life!) and the diminishing returns of new hardware.
We're never going to see another leap like N64 to GameCube, and new generations don't really bring new gameplay or even presentation innovations that the previous gen couldn't already do, so why bother pushing a 5-year cycle at this point? I would be okay with 10-year generations, as long as devs stay within the systems' limitations, and I can't be the only one who feels that way.
As a few others have mentioned, it's not so much that these kinds of games have disappeared. Rather, it's mostly indies that cover that ground now. But indies don't always scratch that itch, the way an actual 6th-gen game can. I think the AA and AAA games of yesteryear sit in a no man's land: between today's monstrous AAAs on one hand, and most indies on the other. There's something different about non-AAA games (at least by today's standards) that were given a AA/AAA budget.
@NicolausCamp Some games were passed over by MS, despite the publishers being willing to put them on BC. In Blur's case, among many others, it was most likely a licensing issue, but I'm sure there are plenty of other games (especially on the original Xbox) that MS could've added before closing the back compat program.
@NEStalgia Hm, that's a fair point about the production runs. The OG Xbox infamously had a lot of variation in its quality/durability, thanks to the three or more DVD drive manufacturers. And various consoles have had die shrinks, sound chip replacements, etc., throughout their lifetime. Still no performance variation outside of actual revisions (e.g., Xbox One S), though.
Is it normal for consoles to actually heat up enough to start throttling under normal use, now? This used to be unheard of. If so, I could see that costing a few frames for some less-lucky owners.
PS: About binning (or the lack thereof), some of the better ones are already overclocked a fair bit, even out of the box- or maybe you were already taking that into consideration. Hey, remember the Pentium G3258? At least some of those must've been top-of-the-line i7s with half their cores disabled, as they were absolute beasts. They already punched above their weight at stock speed, and could reportedly approach 5 GHz with some luck. That was a cool little CPU. And its name and pricing indicated that it was pretty much bottom of the barrel.
Comments 321
Re: Far Cry New Dawn Getting 60FPS Patch Ahead Of Its Arrival On Xbox Game Pass
@Weebleman @Kaloudz A regular 60Hz TV and console always have to update 60 times per second. If you're playing a 30fps game, the console just sends every frame twice to keep that 60Hz signal going, and it will look consistent. If your game is (shudder) 20fps, each frame will display three times.
But if the game is running at 40fps, it doesn't fit evenly into 60. You'll see half of the frames once, and half of the frames twice, leading to uneven pacing. This is why some people can tell when a game drops to 59fps, as it causes a noticeable stutter in the motion.
A 120 Hz TV doesn't have this issue with 40Hz, of course, since it can simply display each frame thrice! Or even better, a VRR TV actually changes its refresh speed to match the game. If the game is running at 51fps, then the TV will also run at 51Hz, making it look perfectly even.
Re: Surprise! Ninja Gaiden 2 Black Launches Today On Xbox Game Pass
@Kaloudz "I heard that 1 is harder than 2"
I'd heard the same, but I found that vanilla NG2 is harder (and more "cheap") than NG1 Black. And most of the NES NG1, for that matter.
Unsure on what I'll do with the series from here: go back and try to finish II and Razor's Edge, start over with Sigma, or shift over to the remake. I don't have GP, so I won't just be hopping into NG2 Black on a whim!
Re: Surprise! Ninja Gaiden 2 Black Launches Today On Xbox Game Pass
@Kaloudz Sigma sounds a world apart from Ninja Gaiden Black and II, then! I'm normally a competent gamer (I beat the NES game, just as an example), but I felt that Black's difficulty was a little excessive, forcing me to focus on perfecting a single weapon instead of experimenting. This was on Normal; I knew about Ninja Dog mode, but it was never offered to me.
NGII on 360 just drove me crazy, even on easy mode (Acolyte). I still haven't finished it. Though I largely blame it on having to wait 20 seconds to reload the stage after every death. If there was a simple "retry" option in the pause menu, it would've been much less of an issue. I wonder how NG2 Black will stack up in this regard.
Re: Banjo-Kazooie Revival Would Be 'Instantly Hated' By Some Fans, Says Original Composer
@N00BiSH To clarify, I do agree with your original point, but only because of the mixed reception that Yooka-Laylee got (as it was a pretty faithful, if flawed, successor to BK). It makes no sense to use the audience's reception of spin-off titles as a way to gauge their opinion of the main series, though, and I don't think Tooie proves enough one way or another.
I'm confident that a Banjo-Threeie that properly respects and builds on the original game would be a success, both critically and commercially. It wouldn't please everyone, of course, but it'd do well. Of course, that all goes out the window if the devs decide to turn it into an online roguelite RTS royale with sport sim elements instead!
PS: I'm not averse to Nuts & Bolts as a game! It's just not Banjo-Kazooie at all, besides some surface-level presentation/homage elements.
Re: Banjo-Kazooie Revival Would Be 'Instantly Hated' By Some Fans, Says Original Composer
@N00BiSH Tooie was very well-received in its day (90 on Metacritic, as an example!), and though its reputation has diminished a bit, that seems to be mainly to do with the huge levels causing excessive wandering and backtracking, not the BK formula itself. The original BK is still widely regarded as a true classic.
And then Grunty's Revenge was a scaled-down 2D rendition on the GBA (good for what it was, but it was never going to touch the original), and Nuts & Bolts wasn't even a platformer, so that doesn't mean much.
If you had said Yooka-Laylee, then I'd be inclined to agree with you!
Though even there, not all of YL's criticisms were based on its faithfulness to the original material.
Many of us would be happy with a new BK, as long as it's good. And- I shouldn't have to say this- it should be a platformer, not a vehicle game with Lego building!
Re: Random: SEGA Files Trademarks For Classic IP, Is A Comeback Imminent?
@SuntannedDuck2 I'm with you on wanting to see those later games make a comeback. However, I think an all-new Ecco game would still be great to see. Reviving an IP that's largely tied to the 16-bit era is very different from simply releasing those games again.
As far as re-releases, though, we've bought those old Genesis games already (maybe more than once!), and it's time for some Saturn, Dreamcast, Xbox, Model 2, Master System, 32X, Sega CD, etc. etc.! They have a gold mine of games and IPs, so I hope that the recently announced revivals do well, and that they continue to tap into their broader history- both with sequels/reboots and with straight remasters.
PS: Seeing as those stale Genesis games just got delisted, does that mean they're going to release them yet again? As apathetic as I am about getting to buy Kid Chameleon again, I do think games should be re-released and kept available indefinitely, if at all possible.
Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Officially Tees Off For Xbox Series X|S This February
How are the standard, non-deluxe versions of 2K golf (or EA's series, for that matter)? I enjoyed Tiger Woods 05 a lot back in the day (and just recently picked up and got started on 04, in fact!), but those are complete games. The DLC nonsense of modern sports games is a big turnoff, though I'm not as bothered if it's just some cosmetics or something- which is what this mostly appears to be?
Re: Indie Dev Questions Whether Xbox One Is Worth Developing For In 2025
If they're struggling to bring the loading times below 20 seconds (which is literally on par with Sonic '06!), then it's probably not worth it. I've passed over many games on Xbone because of the unbearably slow loading. For an open-world game with streaming, 20 seconds for an initial load is more than fine. But if it reloads frequently (which this game probably does), just forget it.
PS: If there's a 20-second limit, then where do large, open-world games like The Witcher 3 fit in? Are there exceptions for games that rely on streaming?
Re: Rumour: Xbox Series S Could Have Big Impact On The Nintendo Switch 2
@RadioHedgeFund This would not only make Series S ports higher-quality and easier to make (no getting painted into a corner like with Baldur's Gate 3), but Series X and PS5 would also benefit: if the S is getting anywhere near 1080p60, then that guarantees that the big consoles will get great results, even with minimal extra work!
...but people would complain that the games aren't pushing graphical boundaries, and that the Series S is holding the generation back.
Re: Talking Point: What Are Your New Year's Gaming Resolutions?
My gaming resolution for the next while?
480i, as I want to start catching up on some of the OG Xbox games I've been accumulating.
Re: Croc Developer Insists There's 'Almost No Demand' For A Physical Xbox Version
The cycle continues: physical games skip Xbox due to low demand, so the target audience increasingly moves to PS5/Switch, so physical games skip Xbox due to low demand, so...
Re: The Thing: Remastered Launches On Xbox Following Mixed Initial Reviews
@GamingFan4Lyf It's great, because these are often the titles that needed a remaster the most- either because they're no longer available, or because technical issues are bringing them down.
It sure beats the "safe" bets like re-remastering The Last of Us or whatever!
Re: Almost 20 Games Will Be Delisted On Xbox In December 2024
@Pichuka97 You mean the modern(ish) 3D one, Golden Axe: Beast Rider?
Re: Talking Point: What Other Xbox Games Do You Want Patched To 60FPS?
@Feffster IGN says that, but their video shows it running at 30fps. Same with all of the other "60fps" videos out there. If you find real 60fps footage of it, please let me know!
Unfortunately, I still have a last-gen potato, as there haven't been quite enough FPS boost games to convince me to get with the times!
Re: Talking Point: What Other Xbox Games Do You Want Patched To 60FPS?
@Feffster Nope, no reference to it being included in the FPS Boost program, nor are there any videos of it running at 60fps on YouTube.
Unless this was a late addition (e.g, just this year), and it slipped under everyone's radar?
Re: Talking Point: What Other Xbox Games Do You Want Patched To 60FPS?
@TTgowings Keep in mind that most of the remaining 30fps games are from the Xbox One or earlier, though there are unfortunately some modern games as well that can't hold a constant 60fps. I'm with you in that I want everything to be 60fps minimum (and will give up the modern bells and whistles to get that, if necessary).
At least many of these newer ones are future-proofed with 60fps and/or uncapped options!
Re: Talking Point: What Other Xbox Games Do You Want Patched To 60FPS?
Alice: Madness Returns, Lost Odyssey, Crimson Skies, The Darkness, Conker, Black, MX Unleashed, Breakdown... the list goes on! Emphasis on back compat games, since most of those don't have a 60fps PC version available.
Too Human and the Crackdown series would be nice, too, but I get that there's not exactly a financial incentive there!
Re: Talking Point: Looking Back, What Are Your Fondest Memories Of The Xbox One Era?
Re: It Might Be Old, But The Xbox 360 Is Still An Amazing Console In 2024
@nomither6 That's basically what I meant, but I must not have expressed it clearly. The ambition is one of the things that stands out about the Adventure-era games in general (Heroes a little less so), and it was really impressive in SA1 especially.
And yeah, 06 had lots of potential, which is good... but that's also what hurts, as I can see what it could have been. Yeah, the story was always going to be kind of weird and lame, but there are some cool level designs, graphical touches, music tracks, etc., all throughout this game.
I've likened the Adventure vs Boost styles to Goldeneye vs Call of Duty, respectively. Sure, the latter is more polished and has a lot of spectacle, but there's less freedom, and it's ultimately less interesting to me.
PS: I guess P06 (the unofficial PC port of 06) is fully playable now, if not done yet? I tried an earlier build, and liked what I saw.
Re: It Might Be Old, But The Xbox 360 Is Still An Amazing Console In 2024
@themightyant If we're talking about something like Dead Rising 1, then sure, that feels very much like a PS2 game, and not even a late one.
But in general, I might just be too used to 5th-gen and earlier standards to really be bothered! (Or maybe I'm just forgetting, and I'll suddenly be hit with how clunky everything is, the next time I play a 360-era title.)
Re: It Might Be Old, But The Xbox 360 Is Still An Amazing Console In 2024
@nomither6 The potential of Sonic '06 might be what hurts the most, as I greatly prefer the Adventure style over the boost formula that almost everything has followed since then. But 06 basically sank that whole sub-series with its horrible execution- or should I say, it horribly and violently executed the sub-series?
Re: It Might Be Old, But The Xbox 360 Is Still An Amazing Console In 2024
@themightyant Yeah, that was a pretty dark time for technical performance. After an all-too-short generation where 60fps was the norm and loading times were typically ~5 seconds (and many of the games still looked great!), the 360 and PS3 felt like a big step back. And the next gen might've been even worse, since it normalized loading screens of over 30 seconds- despite jumping from DVDs to HDDs as the main storage medium.
I basically sat out that generation (Nintendo wasn't doing much that I cared for, either), but it has been nice to finally catch up on some of these on more capable hardware (PC) and enjoy them in a form that's easier on the eyes!
Not sure what you mean about outdated design, though. I was under the impression that games became fully "modern" around that time. But maybe just I'm too old-fashioned to notice.
Re: It Might Be Old, But The Xbox 360 Is Still An Amazing Console In 2024
@old-dad It's almost unfathomable how many games used to come out in the 6th and 7th gens (aside from the fact that we saw it firsthand, I mean).
We're talking about large, flagship AAAs here, and the same series could get 2-3 quality entries in a single generation; now, we might have a single entry over the course of 2-3 console generations! (See: The Elder Scrolls, GTA, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime, Devil May Cry, Donkey Kong, Fable, etc. etc.)
Re: The Original Xbox Is Now 23 Years Old, But It's Still Relevant In So Many Ways
@Elbow If you happened to get Hydro Thunder: Hurricane and one other game that I forget (possibly Daytona?) on sale, then you can thank me for giving in, buying the games at full price, and immediately unlocking sales for those titles ever since!
I already have physical copies of Conker and Blinx, though, so you're on your own this time. (I still have plenty more games that I might trigger a sale on later.)
Re: Microsoft Is Now Advertising Pretty Much Every Gaming Device As An Xbox
This is reminding me of Apple's "What's a computer?", and that's not a good thing.
Re: Talking Point: What's Your Favourite Memory Of The Xbox Series X|S Generation So Far?
Finding out that FPS Boost was happening. Such a great feature, and pretty well unprecedented in the industry. I don't know if Xbox knows how important this and back compat in general are (safe to assume MS HQ doesn't!), but back compat was the thing that really sold me on the Xbone, and FPS Boost almost got me to buy a Series X as well.
If only it didn't cost $650 up here.
But yeah, this is an area where MS is really leading the industry (barring PC, obviously), and they should be doubling down on it, while their competitors should be following suit. At least in my opinion (and if they want me to buy more of their stuff).
Re: Talking Point: What's Your Favourite Memory Of The Xbox Series X|S Generation So Far?
@Lofty1985 See, the problem there was that the PS5 is just a giant router (look at it!), and routers are prone to getting fried by surges.
But how many times have you heard of a well-ventilated mini fridge getting zapped during a storm?
Re: Rumour: Xbox May Be Gearing Up To Reveal Handheld Device In 2025
@Balaam_ I got a chuckle out of this, so thanks!
And I'm in a similar spot, where there's not much need for handheld gaming in my life. If I have time to play, I probably also have a bigger screen and a proper controller handy.
A handheld that plays my existing PC (or maybe Xbox) library is more tempting than a dedicated system like a 3DS or Switch, since I know I could just jump into a game for a few minutes here and there, and then pick it back up on a proper setup once I'm at home. But there hasn't yet been quite enough reason to justify even that.
Re: YouTuber MVG Takes A Look At New Xbox One Emulation On Windows PC
@GamingFan4Lyf Yeah, definitely a complexity thing. 2D games like this are usually the first ones to be playable, thanks to their relative simplicity. MVG even points out how Sonic Mania is a common one to see when emulation/translation layer projects get going, as it was also one of the first games (if not the first) to run in a PS4 emulator.
Minecraft is particularly interesting and impressive, given that it's 3D and already looking pretty accurate... even if it's hardly anyone's first choice for a game we want to see emulated!
Re: YouTuber MVG Takes A Look At New Xbox One Emulation On Windows PC
@GamingFan4Lyf Probably more like 99%! But isn't it still worth releasing that 1% of the library from its console-specific shackles?
Even if you don't care about Halo 5 or whatever, I guarantee that there will be (or most likely already are) those who look back on it with nostalgia: "OMG, Halo 5 was my childhood!", etc.
PS: I do agree that it's less appealing than emulating a console with lots of exclusives. But not pointless!
Re: Random: Xbox Extends Phil Spencer's PS5 Controller Joke
@PsBoxSwitchOwner
https://i.imgur.com/Rsiv7bx.png
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@NEStalgia This is interesting to hear, but something's not adding up: SMT came out in 1992, didn't it? Pokémon was planned out in 1990 (though not finished until 1996, of course), and the monster capturing/trading mechanics were described in detail in its original design doc- with storyboards and everything!
GF also released their first game (Mendel Palace) in 1989.
So if Tajiri looked at SMT, it may have been more of a comparison thing, and not so much about drawing inspiration from it.
Re: Darksiders 2 To Receive Free 'Remastered' Upgrade For Xbox Series X|S
Seems that they might've jumped the gun on calling the previous version "Deathinitive", then. Is this one even more deathinitiver?
Great game(s), but I hope they finally fix the glitches this time. DS2 easily crashes (at least on PC) if you try to shoot a certain DLC boss while it's flying, and this reportedly carried over from the original release. DS1 also had smaller bugs that persisted in its remaster, like a treasure chest that couldn't be opened.
Re: Ubisoft Hints At Potential 60FPS Xbox Update Coming To Assassin's Creed Syndicate
@evan23 @themightyant Yes, Unity has supported 60fps on Series S/X for a few years now, as part of the FPS Boost program.
Re: Starfield's 60FPS Mode Put Through Its Paces On Xbox Series S
@BAMozzy Yeah, I'm all for last-gen games finally being able to run smoothly, now that they've been unshackled from their potato console limitations. Seeing a huge leap forward and 60fps (like we did in the PS2 generation) would be great, but that kind of thing rarely happens now, so I'm fine with smaller visual upgrades if that's what it takes to keep things running smoothly. It's not as if most last-gen games are ugly!
I actually didn't buy a console... or a modern PC. All of the options right now are too expensive, and all of them (short of a 4090, apparently) get lacklustre performance in many of the latest games.
The problem isn't just with the consoles being too weak, as this time around, they're actually pretty capable. Plus, even beefy PCs are struggling more than they have in a long time. It's fine if ultra deluxe settings don't work well on today's hardware, but if you have to turn the game into a blurry mess just to hit 60fps, then something's wrong (especially considering how good a lot of cross-gen games look by comparison).
So I'm just staying on decade-old hardware for now, wondering if my next PC build will even be able to run today's games properly, or if I'll have to wait for the next one after that!
Re: Starfield's 60FPS Mode Put Through Its Paces On Xbox Series S
@BAMozzy More games should just target Xbox One and PS4 specs, and then they'll have the room to scale up from there.
But when they do that, people just complain that it's not "next-gen", so I guess there's no winning here. (Personally, just give me 60fps every time... preferably with decent visual quality, but last-gen graphics are perfectly fine.)
Re: Stalker 2 Hits The Headlines For Apparently Running At '25FPS' On Xbox Series S
@RadioHedgeFund Good point, and a lot of people seem to miss that: a more conservative approach to graphics tech lets you crank the framerate, resolution, draw distance, texture res, etc., up to the max, whereas going all-out on fancy RT or whatever forces you to rein those things in.
The high-end game can actually look worse as a result, especially when it has to be scaled down for Series S, etc.!
Re: Stalker 2 Hits The Headlines For Apparently Running At '25FPS' On Xbox Series S
@GamingFan4Lyf I heard a quote somewhere, along the lines of:
"When a studio makes a properly functioning game, it's a miracle. If it's fun to play, that's another miracle."
It makes my head spin, seeing the number of moving parts that all have to come together to make a game work, like all of the assets that have to be created, imported, and then dynamically loaded and unloaded. Or the flags that keep track of the states of a thousand different events and objects (and where the game can become unwinnable if just one of these flags is set incorrectly).
However, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect games to run smoothly today, and that's solely because we've seen it done so many times before, on equal or weaker hardware.
In a vacuum, I might say it's impressive to make the Series S display anything at 60fps (at least when any coding is involved, as it's not like I could do better at this point), but we've seen gorgeous games running at 60fps on the Series S, One S, OG Xbox, etc., so the bar has been set.
Re: Obsidian Confirms That Avowed Runs At 30FPS On Xbox Series X|S
@ZYDIO To be fair, the past two generations had pretty abysmal performance: almost all large-scale games ran at 30fps and lower, and the Xbone/PS4 in particular had painfully slow load times.
This current generation has got to be up there with the 6th gen for performance: 60fps is commonplace again, and loading is back down to a few seconds in most cases.
I do agree, though, that every new game should have been 60fps (or included it as an option), starting in 2020. We already know that open-world games with beautiful graphics can do 60fps on a potato system, so hardware isn't the issue.
To be clear, I'm not saying "devs need to stop being lazy", but rather that 60fps needs to be a priority/baseline for every game, without exception. Yes, the graphics will be a little less fancy, and I'm okay with that.
Re: Talking Point: Does Microsoft Have A '30FPS' Problem With Its Xbox Series X|S Output?
I have mixed feelings regarding Series S, but I'm really skeptical about the idea that it's causing games to run poorly on Series X.
If anything, it should be the opposite: if devs can get their games to run at 30fps on Series S, then that guarantees a ton of headroom (especially on the GPU) to get these games looking and running better on Series X.
I suspect that games are instead targeting hardware above Series X's capabilities. Then, they have to be optimized- or just as likely scaled down- for XSX, and then further downgraded to get some semblance of stability on XSS.
If devs targeted XSS, or Switch... or GameCube specs (as an extreme example!), then it'd be a piece of cake to hit 4K60 consistently without sacrificing clarity or draw distance. But it would be at the expense of all the bells and whistles, of course.
Re: Obsidian Confirms That Avowed Runs At 30FPS On Xbox Series X|S
@Fiendish-Beaver If you remember Pong (which was 60fps), then you must also remember the 8-bit and 16-bit days, when 60fps (or I guess 50fps in your region) was the norm on consoles!
30fps was always a compromise used to push graphics that the hardware couldn't comfortably handle, whether that be early 3D before 2000, "HD" rendering in the 7th gen, or slightly "juicier effects and lighting" today.
I understand your point- that poor performance was commonplace from 2005-2020 or so- but it's really not accurate to speak of 60fps like it's some new invention that we didn't already have 30+ years ago, or that only young people would care about.
As for what changed to make people start caring about 60fps, that's a topic for a whole other rant. Personally, I've been grumpy and entitled for ~20 years, ever since I figured out why some of my games were so juddery and hard to see, while others looked smooth!
Re: Random: Xbox Fan Discovers Their '$13K' Copy Of Halo Is Only Worth $25
@FatGuyInLilCoat Unfortunately, a lot of people have become aware of this and started keeping sealed copies of things in more recent years, so these kinds of items aren't going to be so rare in the future.
On the other hand, I've been telling myself that, and certain products have still managed to increase in value, so...
Re: GameStop Takes Jab At Xbox 360 Store Closure, Backfires Immediately
@darkswabber Thanks for bringing up DoesItPlay- it's good to have a source with actual facts regarding this!
However, as the numbers on that site show, there are many games that don't work fully without a download, even on PS5 and Switch. Yes, it's a major exaggeration to say that physical games are all just tokens now, but there's still some truth in it.
Re: Xbox 360 Store Completely Removed From Console Dashboard After Shutdown
Hey, Microsoft finally managed to deliver an ad-free dashboard, and it only took what, 13 years?
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@Pabpictu It makes sense the first time around, when there's just a single S and a single X.
But once the new consoles come along, the high-end machine (e.g., Xbox One X) then turns into a low-end/budget option, and now players are getting either the budget experience or finding out that they can't play at all... despite having the premium "X" edition.
Re: Talking Point: Do You Think This Generation Will Be A Short One?
@BAMozzy I agree that there's lots of room for technological advancement, and there always will be. There's always the possibility of larger crowds, more extensive RT, etc... and of course, true 4K at 120fps! Even today's games could be easily tweaked or expanded to make use of at least 4x the resources... but then, that just goes back to the issue of diminishing returns. How much better would they look and play? Would we even notice?
At this point, I feel that the hardware is good enough, and it all comes down to priorities: today's systems (even Series S!) can already produce gorgeous graphics at upwards of 1080p and 60fps, so as long as devs choose performance over pushing past the limits, I'm fine with where things are for now.
Regarding RT, "fake" shadows and reflections have been used very effectively for decades, long before RT was viable. In fact, those exact examples you gave were both in the Resident Evil remake on GameCube! RT offers greater fidelity, but it's an incremental thing. (RT seems like a bigger upgrade than it is, only because modern games all use techniques like SSR, which is so much worse than what Resident Evil and Mario Sunshine did in 2002!)
AI, on the other hand... I find that idea intriguing. I don't know if it would actually make the games more fun, but it would definitely be interesting if more games could allow the player to go "off-script" and then react accordingly.
Re: Talking Point: Do You Think This Generation Will Be A Short One?
@masofdas @BAMozzy Yeah, it's easy to forget how short each generation used to be. 5-6 years was the norm, but the Xbox only lasted 4 years until the 360 showed up, and GBA only got 3 years before the so-called "third pillar" DS started killing it off.
But this one still feels short. I chalk it up to a mix between getting old (5 years feels a lot longer when it's a third of your life!) and the diminishing returns of new hardware.
We're never going to see another leap like N64 to GameCube, and new generations don't really bring new gameplay or even presentation innovations that the previous gen couldn't already do, so why bother pushing a 5-year cycle at this point? I would be okay with 10-year generations, as long as devs stay within the systems' limitations, and I can't be the only one who feels that way.
Re: Soapbox: I Miss The Type Of Pick-Up-And-Play Games We Got On Original Xbox
As a few others have mentioned, it's not so much that these kinds of games have disappeared. Rather, it's mostly indies that cover that ground now.
But indies don't always scratch that itch, the way an actual 6th-gen game can. I think the AA and AAA games of yesteryear sit in a no man's land: between today's monstrous AAAs on one hand, and most indies on the other.
There's something different about non-AAA games (at least by today's standards) that were given a AA/AAA budget.
Re: 'Blur' Is An Xbox 360 Classic That Deserves Backwards Compatibility
@NicolausCamp Some games were passed over by MS, despite the publishers being willing to put them on BC.
In Blur's case, among many others, it was most likely a licensing issue, but I'm sure there are plenty of other games (especially on the original Xbox) that MS could've added before closing the back compat program.
Re: Digital Foundry Explores Why Some Games 'Run Better' On PS5 Than Xbox Series X
@NEStalgia Hm, that's a fair point about the production runs. The OG Xbox infamously had a lot of variation in its quality/durability, thanks to the three or more DVD drive manufacturers. And various consoles have had die shrinks, sound chip replacements, etc., throughout their lifetime.
Still no performance variation outside of actual revisions (e.g., Xbox One S), though.
Is it normal for consoles to actually heat up enough to start throttling under normal use, now? This used to be unheard of. If so, I could see that costing a few frames for some less-lucky owners.
PS: About binning (or the lack thereof), some of the better ones are already overclocked a fair bit, even out of the box- or maybe you were already taking that into consideration.
Hey, remember the Pentium G3258? At least some of those must've been top-of-the-line i7s with half their cores disabled, as they were absolute beasts. They already punched above their weight at stock speed, and could reportedly approach 5 GHz with some luck. That was a cool little CPU. And its name and pricing indicated that it was pretty much bottom of the barrel.