Raven10

One of my favorite parts of the new generation is how fields now can have actual grass on them instead of (or likely in addition to) a big green texture map. Makes exploring a world far more interesting.

Well it's not like the developers inspire much confidence. CI Games has a history of making mediocre knock off games. They've made a business on making shitty Call of Duty clones. Imagine Gameloft if instead of making $5 phone games they made $30 PC games that were somehow even less inspired. I'm sure this game will work and be relatively polished. But unless Deck13 has somehow upped their game since such atrocities as Venetica and Blood Knights then I don't have much of any hope for this collaboration. I'd love to be surprised, though. Even Techland occasionally manages to put out something that isn't pure crap.

That really does leave just Kevin as the entire San Fransisco editorial team then, right? I know they have the UK branch which does some of the reviews, but I would bet at least half of the reviews done going forward will be by freelancers. I wouldn't be surprised if they went to more of a Gametrailers format for reviews where they have one guy read all of the video reviews and bring back the collective first person voice. I think it's a shame things went in this direction, but to be entirely honest I've felt for a while that quick looks were far better at helping me decide whether or not to get a game than any review.

@igniz12: Not entirely true. This engine was not built to deliver next gen graphics. It was built to display last gen graphics at 60 fps and 720p. Up until this game, IdTech5 had a very limited real time lighting and shadow system, and definitely none of the vegetation systems this game has. I also don't recall seeing any destructibility in previous IdTech5 on the scale that you see in The Evil Within. So Tango had to bolt all those additional features onto an engine that wasn't designed for them from the start, and note that John Carmack no longer works for Id so it's not like he could help update the engine for them. Basically, I would bet good money that if Tango had used CryEngine or Unreal 4 (or even a heavily modified Unreal 3) they could have gotten better visual results with better performance. But Bethesda has basically started to require every game they develop to use IdTech so I doubt Tango had much say in the matter. People calling the engine poorly optimized are actually probably right in this situation. It's what happens when you start bolting new features onto an engine never designed with them in mind. IdTech5 is a very unique engine designed with very specific goals in mind. I don't know why Bethesda would use that engine for a game without any of those goals (basically a game with large, uniquely textured, levels running at 60 fps) but I would assume that once everyone involved realized the engine wasn't going to get them where they wanted it was already too late to start from scratch and so they just did the best they could with what they had.

Here's the thing. People are saying that it might be a technical choice because the game performs so poorly with the bars. But if the bars were part of the plan from the start then the designers would obviously be accounting for them and pushing the engine further in other ways as a result. When it comes to technical design you make the game look at good as possible while still hitting your target framerate. If the artists knew they wouldn't have to render half the screen then they would have taken that into account when building the levels.

Basically, people are assuming the bars were created as a reaction the the game in its current form not performing well when rendered in full screen, but the truth could really be the exact opposite, that the developers thought there would be more headroom due to the black bars than there turned out to be and they pushed the engine too far as a result of that.

Yea that wasn't a smart thing to do. It's one thing to be mad at Valve for messing up the launch of a game you spent several years of your life working on. It's entirely another to trash Valve and Steam and threaten the life of the owner of that company. Even the former would normally be enough for one company to end its business relationships with the other. But threatening someone's life is not only unprofessional, but also illegal. As much as I feel for this guy for losing year's worth of work over a stupid tweet, making games is as much about knowing how to work with others as it is knowing how to draw or program.

@boozak: Yea if CI Games know how to do anything it is to make their crap look way better than it is. Their use of the CryEngine has helped of late. Makes for pretty pictures and videos despite their games being ugly, buggy, messes when they are actually released. And I should note that Giantbomb doesn't even list all of their games. They made something like 3 first person shooters a year between 2000 and 2010. Just an insane number of nearly identical games none of which are especially good. Mind you they aren't terrible. I've played much worse. They are just super uninspired and rote and, again, often filled with a lot of bugs.

@boozak: I'll trust CI Games to make a good game after they do so. Until that point I wouldn't put too much faith in a studio whose most successful franchise is the pretty bad Sniper series (the last two of which were subtitled Ghost Warrior or something like that to try and separate them from the earlier even more broken titles). Point being at their best I expect a workmanlike competence from CI Games. At their worst I'm lucky if I can get some of their games to make it to the title screen without crashing. They make Techland's games look like AAA polished masterpieces. Insomniac, meanwhile has a history of making excellent games. Even their worst games are more inspired than the best stuff put out by CI Games.

Not exactly "death" per say, but maybe my favorite system related to failure that has come about recently is the rewind system from Forza and Codemasters' racing games. Frustration for me in a game sets in when I have to do something I've already mastered over and over just to get to the point of failure. Since you don't get to practice that one section multiple times in a row it is tough to get better at it. It's actually quite similar to the Sands of Time system from the PS2 era Prince of Persia games. Because you can practice doing the same thing multiple times in a row you are much more able to get better at it, also in part because you are more willing to make a risky jump or take a corner at what might be a little too fast of a speed.

@bybeach: I want to say Vinny enjoyed the first one. I could be wrong about that but that is what my memory is telling me. I bet Rorie at least tried it. I would place my bet on one of those two being most receptive to it. This is one of those situations where I really miss Dave. He would definitely be into this.