I played the Xbox One and I'm disappointed...

So I just stopped by my local Futureshop (Canadian subsidiary of Best Buy) because my friend wanted to pick up Pokemon and lo and behold they had two Xbox One's set up with two Microsoft reps talking about the system. Surprisingly, there was very little amount of people around it (by which I mean like one person, who left promptly after we walked up) but that isn't really saying much. It was around 7 so who knows, maybe that's just quiet hour.

Anyways, lets start off with the good before I mention why I was disappointed. Dat Controller man. It is fucking fantastic! The part that sits in your palms is slightly bigger or more rounded and just nestles in real comfortably in your hands. Also those rumble triggers are freaking awesome. Playing Forza 5 felt amazing with the thing jumping around in your hand and the resistance provided by the triggers. And uh... yeah. That's about it. Fantastic controller.

Now for what disappointed me... Those graphics son... Playable were Forza 5 and Killer Instinct, and they both looked... meh. Killer Instinct actually looked decently snazzy with a bunch of shit going off in the background and lots of particle effects flying around, but being so close to the screen while playing, you really notice the really low resolution textures on stuff. Also Jago's hair had terrible aliasing issues.

The biggest surprise however was how bad Forza 5 looked. I mean it was so badly aliased that both me and my buddy had to confirm that this was indeed Forza 5 and not some upscaled version of a past Forza game. It just had SO MUCH aliasing it was boggling my mind. The thing is, I actually think Forza 3 and 4 on the 360 looks phenomenal... I guess, maybe I can chalk it up to maybe a bad setup or something but I was supremely underwhelmed. So much so that I feel like it must have MUST HAVE been running lower then 1080P, because if that's what the X1 pushes out as its top tier graphics then...

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That display looks like its set up like shit. Would not be surprised if they fucked up the T.V calibration.

Wow they did not even remove the stickers? 50 bucks says they did not turn off display mode.

@the_laughing_man: Those aren't stickers. The LG TV was overlaying them on top of the image. Meaning, it probably was indeed still in display mode. Which is why I'm giving it the slight benefit of the doubt. But the one playing KI didn't have those things, and still looked pretty jaggy. I can only hope it was a setup problem.

That or earlier builds. Heard nothing about that from other people who got to play them. But nice to hear the controller is great.

My only, and I mean only, interest in the Xbox One is the gamepad... to use it on PC. I don't care a iota about the console itself (nor I do about the PS4, to be honest), but if the gamepad is as good as you say, I'm definitely getting one for PC to replace my current 360 one. Though I don't see how it can improve so much on the 360 gamepad, which is, IMO, the best gamepad ever created (for 3D games, at least).

Aliasing is the biggest problem I have with current console games. I play on a projector at 110" and the aliasing in GTA V makes it hard to look at sometimes. I really hope the new machines are capable of better AA.

@joeyravn: It sits very comfortably in your hand. I mean as soon as I held it I was like "dayuuuuuuuum son" in the most annoying way possible. But seriously, it just sits really comfortably. The d-pad isn't absolute garbage anymore, same goes for the bumpers (which I hate on the 360 controller) and the triggers feel really novel with the rumble.

@liquidprince:

Is the aliasing as bad as it is in GTA 5? Because it kills me in that game. And anti-aliasing is the biggest thing I was looking forward to with the new consoles.

About the same. You see aliasing all over the car during the intro cinematic to the course, but I didn't notice it as much while driving, maybe because I was focusing on the road. At that point though, anything on the track that is vertical is horribly aliased. The track wasn't as jam packed as a typical GTA street, but what was there was pretty bad.

Am I wrong in assuming that early demos for games such as the ones at e3 and retail stores are not final? I highly doubt they just stuck a full disc version of Forza 5 in that XBO. It's nice to hear the controller is good and that they fixed the d-pad, but like it always happens there are conflicting reports about stuff like the d-pad....

I'm gonna hit up the local best buy and try these consoles for myself and then I'll finally see what all the hype/disappointment is. Sucks there's still no word on ps4 kiosks in canada :(

oh and OP, did the kinect do anything? Is it telling that you didn't even mention it?

@vinny_says: The d-pad isn't great. It's just not garbage like the 360 d-pad. Kinect did nothing. I dunno if it was even connected. PS4 Kiosks should be up in 3 weeks from what I've heard. The week before release.

Pretty much this, for me. When people talk about the DS4 and XONEC being so much better than the 360's, I'm skeptical, but enough people have said it that I'm really interested to give it a shot with my soon-to-be PC.

EDIT: But, a question. I got into consoles about six months into the 360's life, so I've never really experienced a console launch. Was it common for retailers to let the public play unreleased games on unreleased hardware? It seems really bizarre to me, like letting people watch ten minutes of a movie with unfinished CGI and greenscreen.

Remember how bad XBOX 360 games looked at launch? It wasn't until Gears of War and Unreal Engine 3 that games started to look "next-gen" so I'd wait on the graphics. I remember countless people complaining that the games looked the same as regular XBOX games, and they did. I say give the graphics time.

All I care about is the controller being good. Everything else is gravy.

not surprised, seriously it's gonna take something like Burnout Paradise level of innovation to make me go "OH YEAH! That's what I want in the next gen." I keep hearing positive buzz on Killer Instinct. Even the most jaded and hardcore gamer will say that did have all the bells and whistle you expect. But as a fighting game fan, give me an emulation of SF2 on a SNES any day of the week.

word from the fgc on killer instinct is not great and appealing to the fgc really matters if any fighting games wants to be relevant 3 months after release. That team needs to do what Ono does with SF4 and bring in members from the fgc for comments and feedback.

@joeyravn: You'll get less latency on the controller i guess and DEM rumble trigger.

Launch titles.

It's going to be a while before we see what either console can truly do. But know that you'll be underwhelmed if you're looking for a PS2 to PS3/ Xbox to 360 increase in quality. From here on out, the jumps will get smaller and smaller with each gen as far as sheer graphical detail goes.

If your issue is solely with aliasing, then yeah, I'll bet my bottom dollar that the TV you played on was at fault.

That track looks like Laguna Seca, so you were probably playing the Gamescom build. To be honest the graphics in Forza 5 or Killer Instinct haven't seemed revolutionary at all to me, but then again you have to take into account how all early launch titles look. I mean Forza 2 was the first game of the series on the 360 and to me it only looked marginally better than the first Forza. The real advancements in gameplay only came with three and four when they'd had more time with the system.

Oh and anti-aliasing is one of those things that developers add at the very end when polishing the game. At least this is what I remember from playing different builds of older games. I remember games like Halo 3 looking pretty terrible in their alpha builds, but later on in the beta the anti-aliasing suddenly kicked in and everything was dandy.

Still it's cool to hear that the controller has managed to advance over the already fantastic 360 pad. I can't wait to get my hands on both new consoles early next month.

@isomeri: @shagge: The jump in graphics is going to be a lot bigger then people give these systems credit for. A lot of things will be physics based and calculated as opposed to just canned or baked, which in and of itself is going to make games look drastically better. That with higher resolution textures, higher poly counts, and a variety of post processing effects will make this generation something to behold by the time the next ones will be rolling out. I wouldn't be so quick to knock these consoles quite yet.

Also the Forza game had multiple tracks available if I'm not mistaken, and that was just the first one.

I've gotta agree with the laughing man as well as others echoing the same, there's a good chance they didn't feel the need to mess with the display calibration, maybe they even left the motion smoothing feature on (which really screws with how games look).

I really doubt that they would put their premier title out there and have it look so unappealing.

@liquidprince: Don't get me wrong, next gen already looks fantastic by any (realistic) measure. I just mean that it'll be more gradual in its improvement.

@liquidprince: How did those dual triggers work in Forza? I heard it was supposed to be like, when half your car drives onto the grass that half of the controller vibrates more intensely. Did it work like that and was it significant or was it kind of like "huh neat" but nothing special?

Did that model have a working dashboard that you could flip around? If so how fast was it?

man I could see the aliasing from that blurry-ass pic. That's pretty bad. Honestly I'd prefer AA and Framerate over better particle effects/textures, but I understand that the public sees and understands the latter a lot more than the former. But damn, how dope would it be if the next-gen consoles had graphical settings like w/the PC but more customizable for set hardware, so if you're a dude who cares about frame rate over all or antialiasing or whatever you can choose to max that instead of high-res textures or whatever.

Nice to hear the controller was good, how's the D-pad?

I'm suspecting the triggers were turned off when I demoed this. I felt nothing and had to ask the developer showing me the game, and he said it was mainly at the start of the race, which seemed pointless (but was also non-existent for me and a friend).

@sergio: @dystopiax: @humanity: The trigger rumble was on the whole time. So when you accelerated or braked they would rumble, and when you were turning corners, the rumble would move into the appropriate trigger. It was actually a very strong rumble and unmissable, which gave it a real cool effect. The console had a a dashboard, but we were informed that it was not the full dashboard, and we didn't really get an opportunity to investigate it. From what I saw it was limited to one screen, with just green metro looking blocks for the quick settings and such. The d-pad is kinda small for my taste and still not as good as PS3 and I'm assuming PS4, but still loads better then on 360.

It's not always that launch titles look dissapointing though. I remember being blown away by Mario 64 and original Halo, to give two examples, even if those consoles went on to do better-looking games. But you're right, the leap in graphics from the current generation to next gen won't be nearly as high as between PS2->PS3 or Xbox->360.

I personally care more about what the new consoles can do in terms of gameplay (better AI etc.) than graphics.

@liquidprince: Sounds good. The D-pad is somewhat unreliable on the 360 but when limited to simple functions like switching weapons in games I didn't have any serious issues with it - a better one is definitely good news. I was going to buy a PS4 come november simply because the XBO won't be available in my area, but considering I don't like any of the launch titles on either console and that most other games are also coming out for PC I think I might hold on and just wait until next November. I'm kind of attached to my Gamertag and stuff, there is a legacy there that simply wasn't a factor when I switched off from PS2 era to 360 for this gen.

Posted this in the Ryse thread but he mentions Forza as well:

You have to remember nobody outside Microsoft has seen this version of the game. Any other people who have played it are referencing the demo we've been showing from E3, Gamescom and PAX. - pre GPU and CPU upgrade. Same goes for any of the Forza footage. That's what's on the betas people have, and that's what's on the tour.

When Phil showed me this trailer a few weeks ago, I was telling him this better be the real thing. I was told directly this was taken from XBO builds, with the exception of unlocking the camera for the battle scenes to make it more dramatic.

So this is the real thing.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=86495482&postcount=1025

Ryse looks amazing in the new build, with clear improvements and upgrades in lighting, shaders and materials, so we might see something similar from Forza as well.

Funny how he tries to say the improvements are because of the upgrades. It's because Crytek makes pretty games, not because of a bit more processor speed.

I played Forza 5 at E3, the graphics didn't impress then either. It's fine, but someone said Forza 5 has that "next gen wow" going on, it most definitely doesn't. I'm sure MS will have more time to spruce up the graphics on Forza 6.

Your mind is playing tricks on you with the controller. The triggers do not push back or vary resistance in any way. They just rumble. I was very underwhelmed with the trigger rumble. Personally it just felt like a fast trip to white finger to me.

I didn't get any chance to try the D-pad when I used the controller.

The Xbox 360 controller and the Dual Shock 3 already both have the ability to vibrate the left and right halves of the controller at different strengths. Heck, the Dual Shock 1 had this ability.

I did find the rumble feels stronger on Xbox One, because the controller is lighter, so you don't have to grip it so much and that means the relatively small amount of shaking it (or any battery-operated controller) can do seems stronger.

Except that Ryse has actually had clear upgrades since most likely due to software updates. Probably more related to the API updates from MS than hardware improvements though that helps as well.

Anyway I think the important part to take out of that is that the demos being shown around are from their old builds.

Heard a few folks mention the aliasing in regards to the X1, thought we'd be finally passed that in this generation. But who knows, this is just the beginning. Haven't heard from to many folks who've played the PS4 so can't comment on that. Hoping to get a chance to play one at some point soon if stores start having them in.

Look at the differences between Project Dark Zero and Grand Theft Auto 5... sometimes it takes a long time before we see the best of a console.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/09/17/a-visual-reminder-of-how-far-xbox-360-games-have-come-in-eight-years/

Killer instinct looks like shit anyway. I would be surprised if Forza looks as bad as you make it out to be. Hard to tell much of anything with the potato camera. Either way launch gen shit.

Forza doesn't look bad, it just doesn't look really next-gen. Launch games rarely do.

Remember Forza 2 and how it didn't add much graphically (except for better GUI overlays) over Forza 1 even though it was a 360 game? Then Forza 3 looked a lot better even though it was on the same hardware as Forza 2?

I expect something like this. It won't fully use the new console capabilities, the next one will.

And what I saw at E3 (while it may be dated now) went right along with this.

Did the Kinect 2.0 ask for your credit card or social security number?

I think it will take a year then we will see some improvements on next gen systems. I wish the focus for next gen is framerate.

A few aliasing problems will not bother me but make the games run super smooth!

I wouldn't be shocked if all the launch games didn't look all that great. A lot of the launch 360 games didn't look that much better than original Xbox games. Forza 2 was only slightly nicer looking than the original Forza. Forza 3 was substantially better than either of the previous versions.