Quick Look: Titanfall (360)

@xbob42: No no no, don't get me wrong. I will be one of the first to say that resolution matters, and I was furious with many people during that bullshit "resolution-gate" stuff. It looks sharper for suresies. I would never deny that it looks better and more fluid. But the way Vinny reacted to seeing it during that stream was as if it were a night and day difference that makes the Xbox One version look ugly in comparison.

I mean, there's looking at this version of the game and thinking it looks categorically worse and really crappy in some spots and being super shocked by the differences, and then there's looking at the Xbox One version and stock 1080 PC settings and thinking there's an ocean between the two versions. There really isn't. If you have the resources to go with the PC version, why not; but the degree the staff can take graphical differences does come off as spoiled.

The way some people praise PC versions as being dramatically better seems disproportionate to how much they actually are.

At first I was thinking, yeah it's not great, but the XBONE version wasn't that great either. A lot of grey buildings and grey warehouses.

But then I loaded up the Quick Look of XBONE version (PC version?) And it looks AMAZING compared to the 360 version.

Really the screen tearing was distracting me the most, I may play it at 30 fps if it means no constant screen tearing.

@liquidprince: Yeah, Halo 4 is still one of the prettiest games I've played.

There's a pretty significant difference. Especially when you see them moving, since the Xbone version is 768p, doesn't manage anywhere near a locked 60fps and tears just as badly as this one. It's night and day in my opinion, but I guess it all just depends on what you're used to and what your standards are.

@aretak said:

Hence, the s-word.

Haha!

I think they might be a little too nice about this. Titanfall on PC isnt anything that blows my mind with textures... im not so sure they are spoiled... this looks bad like a really early 360 game. Atleast to me.

They really need to use a more quality/complex compression on the archives... I mean i get that the live streams need to be realtime and thus will use a crappy 1 pass baseline h264... but 4000kbps is plenty for 720p video, there's no reason for it to look like a terrible blocky mess in the archive.

@themasterds: Jeff uses the carbine almost exclusively, then talks about how similar it is to call of duty. Well, yeah, if you play it that way. I use shotgun or smg exclusively and never stop sprinting and wallrunning. It feels massively different.

I think it's just a matter of the person in this case. Vinny is obviously an image quality focused guy, he works in production and stares at this stuff all the time. It's his job to evaluate image quality, whether it be setting up the cameras for a live event or determining the best compression for videos that get uploaded to their site etc.

As a 3D artist I too am guilty of the "hyperbolic" reactions to what might be considered small differences in image quality by some, mostly because I sit all day tweaking renders and my eye has just naturally been trained to pay attention to that kind of stuff. That's not to say that I can't put it out of mind and enjoy games that aren't visually pleasing but it certainly helps when they're nice and crisp. The PC version of Titanfall is a breath of fresh air compared to the Xbox One version and it's plainly obvious (despite not being a particularly visually mind-blowing game to begin with.) While the assets and visual effects remain basically unchanged there's no denying that exponential jump from 720ish to 1080, it affects every aspect of that games visual presentation.

I'm not a PC elitist, I love playing games on my PS4 but I definitely also love playing games on my PC. We've reached a great point in gaming, resolution increases will continue to happen and graphics will continue to look better but we're also starting to head towards diminishing returns of that resolution. Especially when you weigh rendering a game at a higher resolution versus sticking with 1080 and simulating/rendering more particle effects etc on screen. So for right now, personally, I'm just fine with 1080p games for the next couple of years but instead pushing the limits hard in other areas. I've seen the 4k and even 8k TVs in person and they're absolutely incredible, the 8k screens look like a moving photograph and it's astonishing, but I also realize striving for those resolutions in real-time gaming is a little silly for the foreseeable future. I'd much rather push the limits in real-time lighting and such sooner than a higher resolution. The resolution increase can and will come later.

Wow, that texture pop-in was almost as bad as an Unreal game.

very nice of you to be fair, but this game is teh uglay.

The FPS is pretty good and I think that the graphics are okay. I don't know what you guys expect from the 360.

Brad is such a size queen when it comes to this stuff. In the Dark Souls 2 PC quick look he was talking about lighting effects (that also exist in the 360 version) as if they were mind-blowing. He has often said that games are "nearly unplayable" (Far Cry 3) etc, when they are perfectly fine. We get it, PCs look better. Brand new consoles look better - no shit. But to act like this is like looking through shit-smeared camera lens is taking things a bit far.

Looks fine.

@larrydavis: I know, right? So much fun that way!

Ah! Getting flashbacks of buying Double Dragon on Master System after only ever playing the arcade. Poor bastards.

Made it 2:31 through before getting Brad-ed...

It's surprising they got it all in there (again, I assume: Brad often makes me rage quit) and despite appearing muddier than even more recent cod games, the sheer amount of mechanics at play during a match is definitely resource intensive. It wasn't a matter of simply lowering the texture qualities and calling it a day. The fact they pulled it off, and that the machine could do it are both impressive for sure.

Also: looks super poopy!

I've been spoiled by running, and absolutely enjoying, Titanfall on my shiny new graphics card. Everything's maxed out, and I'm running an easy 60. That said, if you can't get that experience, titanfall is still great at 30. It's not really full of content, but if you love FPS, and you've got a 360, drop the $60. It's short but it is so fucking sweet.

It's almost incorrect to call Titanfall a "Source" game and that it would reflect on how it plays on consoles (which didn't orange box play like crap on 360? I remember thinking it was all really bad even back then compared to it's PC counterpart but not sure, anyway) but the Source framework was just the starting framework of the engine design very very very early in the development. It's like calling Call of Duty a game built on the Doom engine because it started off using the same level design code. I'm not a programmer, but I've listened to a number of industry pro's that are discuss this at length.

I think there are definitely Xbox 360 games that look nicer than Titanfall 360. You go back and look at like, the original Black Ops, or Gears of War 3, and those games have sharper textures, better lighting, etc. Titanfall 360 really does feel like... when those companies were trying to squeeze PS3/360 games down to work on the Wii, you know? When it was obvious they didn't give a crap or design for the limitations of the hardware, they just crushed textures to get it to fit.

And no offense, Brad; I really like you, but your "I'm surprised this even works at all" thing feels a bit naive to me. We're talking about an arena shooter, here. There is nothing about Titanfall mechanically that couldn't work on the Xbox 360. Titans are just really big players with really big hitboxes. Speaking as somebody who has done game development, if this was a game specifically designed for the 360/PS3 instead of being squished down to fit, you wouldn't be saying things like that.

Glad to know Brad is the type of guy to waste time not killing an enemy just because he wants to melee kill.

Does this game seem super blurry to anyone else? I have the video on Progressive HD and I can still barely read a lot of the game text. Game looks TERRIBLE.

Oh, you mean the 'not good at video games' type?

Also, how is this at all impressive that they got it working? It's a Source Engine 6v6 small map shooter with mechs. We already knew it was extremely scaleable just based on the PC version. So they scaled it down and made some tweaks to have it not look completely terrible. Speaking of which, as someone who doesn't own a next gen console yet and still has a 360/PS3, even through the ridiculously horrible compression it looks like a normal 360 title. We are just spoiled.

This looks completely satisfactory to me. It definitely looks a lot better on Xbox One and PC, but I'm not much of a graphics whore so as long as the frame rate's decent, and I'd say it looks decent, then I could definitely enjoy this just fine. So I'm very glad that this 360 version came out alright, since I don't plan on getting a One.

EDIT: and I don't have a PC, just a laptop with Intel HD graphics so that's not going to do the job, so the 360 is my only Titanfall option.

Looks pretty bad. I know the 360 can do better than this, but I suppose they wanted to prioritize frame rate above all else.

@themasterds: It also dominates people who try to play it like COD. I consistently get like... 14-1 scores in attrition. Most people don't understand how to play it, even now. It's so weird for me, too. I'm used to constantly getting shot in the back in multiplayer shooters, dating way back to counter-strike. All that Mirror's Edge playing paid off!

At some point I was waiting for Vinny to ask the question: "Is this running in DOSBox?"

Yeah... Looks like a last gen game.. Could have been worse!

@thinezzy: 700,000 copies sold so far, not bad for a first outing.

It amuses me how the "I can't believe they drag on about the graphics, it's fine/unfair etc.etc." comments are sometimes immediately followed by "I can't believe they changed the graphics of the QL, Imma cancel my subscription!" comments.

Wow, a good frame rate and few visible jaggies... how does this version look better than the xbone version?

Pop-in is still horrific, though.

After the bullet hole it was made clear that VinnCo. does way more comprehensive test then Digital Foundry.

I agree with Vinny: this does look slightly worse than the usual high-profile 360 game. Stuff like the annual COD games or Gears, for example, looked better than this.

To be fair I don't think the source material looked that great. TitanFall doesn't look great artistically or technically anywhere

I just had a quick peek at the Halo 4 video, I'd heard that's the best looking 360 game and yeah it does look significantly better than this. Admittedly they are both doing different things but this does look a little bit worse - albeit fine.

@kittenmittns: The cleanest of face

Is it just me or the first minute or so got some serious tearing issue. Is it the video player or the game

Maybe i missed something , but why doesTitanfall look so much worse then let's say Battlefield 4 on 360 ?? ( online i mean)

Titanfall has 6 players , battlefield has 32 to my knowledge and seems to play way smoother online . With a lot more in a match then just bots and mechs ......

Why did they have so much trouble to make it work ?

As of now i didn't see anything that the 360 wouldn't play at 60 fps minimum in Titanfall , so what's the deal with this game ?????

It's running on source engine so technically it IS an early 2000's PC game...

Every time I start to think Brad's ok and that I give him too much shit, he does something else...

"thank you ty-ty fall"

dammit i was so hoping that guy was going to turn round and shoot brad in the face.

Nah, I definitely think this looks bad even for a 360 game. Like, there were parts of this video that just looked horrible.

First minute of gameplay involves Brad being bad at games. Not sure if troll bait???

Doesn't look much worse than the XB1 version at all.

@lunalicrichard: It's mainly the game engine behind it performing and looking the way it does. The chose to go with Source because they knew it would run wonderfully on the PS3, but then MS and EA struck a deal without telling them, making it the worst idea, making them look very bad.

Had it been the good old Quake3 based and modified engine they got used to working with from the COD days it would have been just below 720p and 60fps most of the time on the 360, no doubt about it.