Xbone & PS4 playable at EB expo in Oct

[GeneraL CyberFunK]

Is he actually in the industry still? Or did his performance with the Dreamcast demote him to cleaning up the shards of broken cases from a well known warehouse?

[Candy Arse]

Last I heard was working for Namco Bandai...?

[lestat]

Was great catching up with Jizz and Gamma, we had a good time, been a while since I've caught up in real life with fellow ranch members.

Like Jizz the aim was to get a good idea of what next gen system is for me, I have a xbone on preorder but will happily switch to PS4 if it was better.

First thing was the layout, like jizz said, the microsoft area was pretty large, they had a crapload of real systems playing xbone games, I think ms said 100 systems? The only game that was running on PC was titanfall. In comparison the playstation booth was much smaller and they had around 20 ps4s upstairs on this landing, killzone was being demoed on devkits hidden behind locked cabinets, the other games were on real ps4 units.

One striking thing I noticed across all next gen games was the lack of AA/AF, all the games still have a rough look to them that current gen games exhibit, it's a shame when PCs these days deliver 4x/16AF across the board in games these days..

First ps4 game i played was AC4, the game looked sub 1080p to me, the stepping on the ships was quite noticable, a lot of aliasing and shimmering, textures looked ok but not super high res or crisp. Framerate appeared pretty stable, locked at 30fps with some dips but only very minor. This title still has a last gen feel to it and personally never got into AC games. This was my first time with the PS4 controller, wow what an improvement, the sticks are very similar to the 360 sticks, trigger placement and springs were perfect, felt comfortable in hand, the only letdown was the dpad, like jizz said has that bogged down feel to it, if they had the vita dpad on it there would be nothing to complain about. Very impressed with the PS4 pad.

We saw more PS4 games but mainly watched over the shoulder, just not enough time and ps4s to go around.

Driveclub - The aliasing in this title is bad, didn't look to be doing any resolution scaling but like jizz said there is a lot of trackside detail and it just ended up turning into aliasing mess in the distance. Game looks very fast with a good sensation of speed, which probably made the 30fps more noticeable, there was very little to no filtering in shadows, game had some vsync tearing and it just lacked a wow/pop factor. If they game was a lot cleaner and 60fps, it would be a looker I think.

Knack - 1080p full res, framerate was a little erratic but the texture work was really nice, didn't spend to much time watching it, not my cup of tea. Game looked very crisp though and wasn't plagued with the aliasing issues the other 2 exclusives had.

Killzone - I expecting to be floored but first thing i noticed was there was something wack with the resolution, there was this vertical stepping effect that got worse as you ran and moved quickly. Particles were being rendered in a lower resolution, there wasn't AA so lots of aliasing/shimmering. The map was the dark wet one and the water shader was creating lots of distracting aliasing. I read recently that killzone vita uses a technique of dynamic horizontal resolution scaling based on motion and framerate. I believe they're using it here. Lighting was excellent, lots of spot lights, plenty of particle effects at times it's a bit too much and was hard to see, shadows were pretty good, only noticed a few objects not casting shadows. One thing that jizz and I noticed was texture popin, pretty much like you see in unreal engine games which was surprising, I would of thought that with ample memory we would avoid it, I'm guessing it's being done for performance reasons not storage reasons. Framerate was 60fps but only when nothing was happening, as soon as you got into fire fights the framerate fell to 30-40fps, wonder if it should be locked to 30 if they can't fix that issue.

The rest of the Ps4 booth was some indy stuff, gamma was in love with octodad.

Moving on to xbone.

Forza 5 - Looked like a cleaner forza4, framerate was solid 60fps the paint shaders are nice, a little bit of aliasing in the distance down the track but for the most part looked clean. I got a chance to experience the xbone controller and trigger rumble, it was a wtf moment, not sure i like it, just felt weird. I didn't like the looser sticks and triggers, the tension was perfect on 360 why'd they mess it up, also the LB/RB placement felt all wrong, like it was moved to high, dpad is finally awesome, nice click feel to it. But overall the controller felt like a minor downgrade, maybe i need time with it but I have no idea how they spent 100m on it. Overall forza5 looked ace, it's good old forza has bathurst at solid 60fps, no surprises, if you played the crap out of 4 you may not feel like it's a worthwhile upgrade.

Killer Instinct - I think we all agreed it looked like a game that could be easily done on 360, probably except for the particles and smoke effects. I don't think KI was big in australia so no real nostalgic attachment, its FTP so maybe worth a download, play for 5 minutes get bored and move on.

Dead rising 3 - This looked like a newer build with the dynamic resolution, I could see it in effect. Visuals were ok but the thing that impressed was the amount of characters on screen and how unique all the zombies looked, the environment looked detailed and in this demo they gave you lots of weapons to have a fun with. This felt more action orientated compared to the older games and more sandbox like. I was a bit meh before the demo but I think I'll pick it up, was lots of fun, I think jizz could see that by all the noise i was making when I discovered some new way to wreak carnage on a mass of zombies. Framerate looked pretty decent, locked 30fps a few dips, much better than some of the slideshow demos shown before.

Titanfall - was running PC so didn't really bother looking at it to much, most stuff running on PCs I largely ignored because I think it's a false representation of what the final product will look like, especially since they have a friggen sli system under the hood. It looked a but meh, but I did notice frame drops, so I think this game needs more time in the oven.

Ryse - Visually, WOW, the visuals gave me the same impact when seeing gears for the first time. The lighting and models were unbelievable, it looked photorealistic at times and best part is crytek seem to using SMAA, the game was very clean and crisp, most nextgen looking console game I saw on the day. but... It plays like crap, there are no combos, it's just mash 1 action button, the finish moves look nice but weren't satisfying to pull off, it was confusing what you had to do, gameplay is a real worry. It's a glorified tech demo which is a shame, rental so you can see what amazing visuals the system can pump out.

Fifa14 - The freebie you get for preordering looked pretty nice, 1080p, AA and solid 60fps, I think next gen sports games will probably be at that bar easily, next gen will be great for sports fans.

Overall I think I'll stick with the xbone preorder, there didn't seem to be any significant power difference, both systems need to compromise in areas when the going gets tough, both are plagued with AA/AF issues, I think it's just about what games you enjoy. Funny how the most visually impressive title was on the so called weaker system, but its always been like in console gaming, specs don't tell the whole story.

[itch]

Jaggies? Srsly?

[flipswitch]

Don't forget both consoles are not running on final hardware, still in development and are launch titles. Appreciate the impressions from everyone. Can't wait until I get to feel those new controllers.

[Jasper]

Actually the PS4 is a bit over 5 weeks away from release, and XB1 is a bit over 6 weeks away from release....

I'm pretty sure they are running on final hardware by now.

[lestat]

Hardware looked final. Just the software and firmware will see improvements.

Also heat output on the xbone felt very much like the s model. Noise levels were impossible to tell.

[Gamma]

Is he actually in the industry still? Or did his performance with the Dreamcast demote him to cleaning up the shards of broken cases from a well known warehouse?

Last I heard was working for Namco Bandai...?

That's right, he was there promoting Dark Souls 2. We contemplated approaching him and asking for a cheap Dreamcast but decided against it.


Most of my impressions are in line with Jizz and lestat... My main goal for the day was to try out the PS4 and Xbone controllers- I really like the PS4 controller, everything's well placed, the touchpanel thingy is accessible, but like the others I wasn't sold on the dpad. Mind you I didn't actually use it during any of the demos, just threw a few air hadokens. Hard to make a definitive call, I really like the PS3 dpads but they take some breaking in before they feel right so the PS4 controller could go either way on this point. Most of my playtime was with Knack. Looks pretty, flows well, plays like one of the later Ratchet and Clank games I suppose. Wasn't much variety in the demo, all I could seem to do was jump, double jump and perform a basic attack, but you pull out more impressive attacks as your little dude collects more bits of broken stuff and becomes a bigger dude.

The Xbone controller felt pretty similar apart from the obviously different stick placement, I wasn't a big fan of the triggers though. They're okay if you're covering the bumpers and triggers with just your index fingers, but if you actually place a finger on each of the bumpers/triggers it felt uncomfortable. Again, might just take some getting used to. I preferred the PS4 controller overall but the Xbone controller isn't a deal-breaker by any means. My hands-on time with the controller was playing Dead Rising 3... It's a very different beast to the first game. Basically felt like I was playing Dynasty Warriors with zombies, there was no survival element and I got bored quickly. The game doesn't look particularly impressive but there were an absolute buttload of zombies onscreen. I imagine it'll be good fun if you're into that sort of thing, and to be fair it was a timed demo so it makes sense to make it action-oriented.

I skulked around the Nintendo booth periodically to farm Streetpass hits, but the lines were always long enough that I couldn't be bothered waiting to get in... There didn't seem to be much point, I already know I'm going to buy Pokemon, Mario, Zelda and Layton so playing them early would just be an exercise in spoilers. The new Scribblenauts on WiiU was on display separately and it looked pretty sweet.

As for the other games, I did a lot of watching and only a little playing. Forza 5, Driveclub and Gran Turismo 6 are racing games, in which you drive a car along a track in an attempt to cross the finish line before your opponents. It's a bold new idea but it might catch on. Seriously though, the framerate in GT6 was all over the place, Forza didn't have much in the way of track-side detail, and Driveclub while busier had a bit of shimmering action on the go. Clearly I'm not invested in this genre though so whatever.

Watched a fellow from WB play a bit of Batman Arkham Origins. He seemed like a good bloke- at one point he was interrupted by an extremely loud Assassin's Creed 87 promotion, and made a wanking gesture while waiting for it to end. The gameplay appeared to be a carbon copy of the last entry, in a much bigger world. Nothing appeared to have been fucked up as a result of the change of developers, and I'm happy with more of the same in this case.

Beyond: Two Souls looked pretty nice, I can't think of a worse game to try and demo at a noisy exhibition though so I kept moving. Tried to get a look at all of the PSN titles, Rain looks really nice and I liked what I saw of Contrast. Played 30 seconds of that weird kite-flying eyeball game and didn't really get it, I assume the audio was a pretty important aspect and again, the conditions were less than ideal. Admittedly I skipped past the Vita stuff, Fifa looked fairly green but I can't really confirm more than that.

Adventure Time looks fun, Lego Marvel Super Heroes looks awesome, and Dark Souls 2 showed a wider variety of environments and improved lighting over the previous entry. Killer Instinct looks pretty forgettable, not a bad looking game but I expected a one-on-one 3D fighter to look more detailed than this on new hardware. Killzone looked like more Killzone. Worth picking up if you're getting a PS4 anyway but not a reason to buy the console in and of itself. And I guess that was the over-arching theme; no compelling reason to invest early in either console.

Anyway, it was good to catch up with 'lobber and meet lestat, and disproportionately hilarious to see Steve in the flesh. My opinion of the various consoles didn't really change- there's some good stuff coming out on the WiiU and 3DS, nothing on the Xbone is really grabbing me, for better or worse I paid no attention to the Vita, the PS3 has life in it yet, and the PS4 has console exclusivity on Octodad: Dadliest Catch, which might be the best game ever made.

[flipswitch]

I meant they weren't fully developed on final hardware devkits.

[Vince]

Great impression Lestat.

Confirmed at launch for my xbone are obviously Fifa 14. NBA 2K14. Forza 5. Strangely I'm really interested in Ryse so I'll grab that. Dead Rising 3 thanks to Lestat's impressions! Now just to hear final impressions on cod ghosts and battlefield 4 in relation to resolution and especially framerate. Both give good results then add them to the ever growing launch line up. Plus Killer Instinct!

[GameHED]

Remember people these are launch games which are not going to tap into whatever power the hardware has because they have to be ready soon. Don't be too judgemental.

Games like gears of war may have blown you away on xbox 360 back in the day but they are shallow in gameplay compared to lesser-known stuff like vanquish.
And titles like skyrim mght impress by the world, but it's not advanced enough in combat compared to darksouls, (a lowly "inferior race" console game) . Judge games by fun. Some of the best game experiences are by titles you guys under-rate like crackdown, bayonetta, just cause 2, etc not big budget war shooters with linear campaigns ad scripted events and dull racing sims which are tied to the realism of our own world so can't really evolve much. (ie gettin a more pretty version of the same thing is not going to be enough to sell a person on buyng new hardware. A brand new IP which is only possible on next gen will)

Don't forget it's the creative people too that make your games fun. One half of the game is how technically advanced it can look on the surface, the other is in how the games are designed and the fun things you do in them. Which is why ugly as sin Saints Row was able to get its fanbase durng the time before rockstar had anything to show on xbox360/ps3 ,and then when gta iv appeared and was hyped with the 10 10 10 scores, people whined it was not as good as they wanted.

What will push gaming forward are things like new ways we interact with the games like the VR goggles, and the details like proper environments which are destructible. You still play a lot of games where you are equiped with powerful weapons but the environment doesn't react realistically despite looking real on the surface. Eg a bush in gta v can stop trucks. It look shit in motion. It may have nice effects but if it isn't reacting to how it would in the realworld then I would prefer more power go to physics and other things because these things actually affect gameplay.

The pressure to keep up with pc, can go get fucked. Just work on the environments reacting to our behavior correctly then you can whine about jaggies. DriveClub looks interesting. It will probably be a more advanced test drive unlimited.

I predict ps4 will win next gen. MS already admitted they went with less powerful hardware and kinect needs to sacifice some for the motion sensing which the average cheeseburger-eating fat american does not like unless it is a dance game or fitness title. It's just a reaction to wii not something that will wow existing gamers.

Nintendo as usual will survive because they still make the best g rated content and the games are polished before release. They don't give a fuck what you think as long as you keep buying their shit and wishing they were third party developrs on other systems lol

[lestat]

The pressure to keep up with pc, can go get fucked. Just work on the environments reacting to our behavior correctly then you can whine about jaggies. DriveClub looks interesting. It will probably be a more advanced test drive unlimited.

Hate to break it to ya, but the game isn't open world, you're still limited to tracks. I decided to check out forza horizon, it's in my backlog to compare. Wow forza horizon looks better, substantially cleaner since horizon looks to be using 4xAA, same 30fps and dynamic lighting but forza is an actual open world racing game, it's quite visually impressive considering the dated hardware its running on.

Also we saw stuff like Dark Souls 2 which looked extremely good for last gen, castlevania 2 looked pretty awesome, current gen still has some legs in it, which is why I think next gen systems may struggle to convince people to jump in, for a lot of people current systems probably have graphics that are good enough and developers build engines now that just scale features based on hardware power.

Also I think developers should be focusing on using more AA in games with that power, from what I saw on saturday, just bumping the resolution doesn't really improve image quality so much on plasma/lcd tvs, just because TVs tend to have all sorts of image processing done before displaying the image, they're not like a monitor so displays end up doing some scaling and ruin the extra sharpness, even with overscan disabled I've seen TVs do minor scaling.

I think sometimes it's easy to get lost in specs/numbers when it really just comes down to what your eyes can see and using techniques to improve quality per pixel gives better visual bang for the buck.

I'm optimistic now that given time developers will deliver some amazing looking games, but also there needs to be focus on delivering gameplay we've never experienced before, that's key to getting people onboard.

[BigSwingingUdders]

The pressure to keep up with pc, can go get fucked. Just work on the environments reacting to our behavior correctly then you can whine about jaggies. DriveClub looks interesting. It will probably be a more advanced test drive unlimited.

Hate to break it to ya, but the game isn't open world, you're still limited to tracks. I decided to check out forza horizon, it's in my backlog to compare. Wow forza horizon looks better, substantially cleaner since horizon looks to be using 4xAA, same 30fps and dynamic lighting but forza is an actual open world racing game, it's quite visually impressive considering the dated hardware its running on.

Also we saw stuff like Dark Souls 2 which looked extremely good for last gen, castlevania 2 looked pretty awesome, current gen still has some legs in it, which is why I think next gen systems may struggle to convince people to jump in, for a lot of people current systems probably have graphics that are good enough and developers build engines now that just scale features based on hardware power.

Also I think developers should be focusing on using more AA in games with that power, from what I saw on saturday, just bumping the resolution doesn't really improve image quality so much on plasma/lcd tvs, just because TVs tend to have all sorts of image processing done before displaying the image, they're not like a monitor so displays end up doing some scaling and ruin the extra sharpness, even with overscan disabled I've seen TVs do minor scaling.

I think sometimes it's easy to get lost in specs/numbers when it really just comes down to what your eyes can see and using techniques to improve quality per pixel gives better visual bang for the buck.

I'm optimistic now that given time developers will deliver some amazing looking games, but also there needs to be focus on delivering gameplay we've never experienced before, that's key to getting people onboard.

I came away feeling exactly the same. When I saw FF XIII Lightening Returns and Castlevania, I kinda had a reality check when seeing current gen games still looking so nice. At the same time, you know that towards the end of the next gen there will be some visually stunning games that really maximize the hardware, just like we are seeing now with current gen.

However, I can't believe Drive Club looks so current gen! You could put it next to current gen NFS Hot Pursuit and you'd have to spend time working out which looks better. Sony would have been much better spending time getting GT6 ready for PS4, but instead we have a new GT game that struggles badly running on current gen HW and a PS4 launch game that doesn't do the HW justice...

Anyway, it's all 1st gen software, it has always been an incremental improvement at best over the previous gen, with the exception of the Dreamcast launch. I played Soul Calibur for the first time in a decade at the Expo Retro Garden last week, and it still looks pretty good!

[jizzlobber]

I honestly think it's the least exciting console launch i've seen in terms of games and visuals... and that's after 7-8 year life cycles before it.

playstation/saturn, n64, dreamcast were all amazing to me, xbox1 had some pretty stuff, xbox 360 had pgr3 and kameo which really wowed me at the time... ps4/xbone is so boring in comparison.

time will tell this time, I think it'll be a while before we see if ps4 is really that far ahead of xbone

[mech]

People say that about every launch though. I remember first seeing Soul Calibur and going 'meh', same with Perfect Dark Zero, Motorstorm, etc. 360 took about 6-12 months before the REALLY amazing games like GOW came out.

Some of the games DO have a huge wow factor though, same as previous launches, but it'll only be apparent later how good it looked. A lot of people (including on here) thought Deep Down was CG, nope, it's realtime. The new Infamous looks stunning.

IMO this is one of the more exciting launches - TONS of great games on the way, and a lot of great indie ones launching alongside too, no baby steps like the 360 / PS3 launch.

And I am so fucking keen to get 1080p / decent AA on everything. Imagine GTA5 with a decent framerate at 1080p. Fuck yeah.

[lestat]

time will tell this time, I think it'll be a while before we see if ps4 is really that far ahead of xbone

PS4 gpu and architecture is a straight forward PC GPU, we should be seeing a difference now imo if there is a substantial one. Xbone is the one that is complicated with the ESRAM and requires more work to extract performance, I expect to see more gains there as drivers mature and developers learn how to harness the superior combined bandwidth and latency but work with the more constrained 32mb space.

I think the power difference between the systems has been overstated just by looking at raw numbers, carmack has already said they're very close, I think so too.

[MiNiStRy]

One game I'm really looking forward to and is already on pc is outlast for the ps4 its free in 2014 with ps+.

[GameHED]

Would like to see this on next gen console:

bethesda should publish this. Elite was sort of the 'daggerfall' of space trading games on the c64.

the days when programmers only had 64k of ram...

skip to 24:39 to see the galactic chart. Daggerfall equivalent of this was the world map. There are 8 galaxies to roam around in. Elite was a big game.

[jizzlobber]

People say that about every launch though. I remember first seeing Soul Calibur and going 'meh', same with Perfect Dark Zero, Motorstorm, etc. 360 took about 6-12 months before the REALLY amazing games like GOW came out.

Soul Calibur didn't impress you?
I came from playing fighters megamix and stuff like that, SC blew my fucking mind!
And sonic adventure made me flip, I first saw screenshots in sega saturn magazine and thought it must be CG or something... the step up from the sonic jam hub world to sonic adventure was huuuuge.

I don't think any other gen made the same impact for me, dreamcast had me so excited, add selectable 60hz mode, VGA, VMUs etc

If I didn't have my bonus coming I wouldn't be buying either xbone or PS4 until at least titanfall and destiny arrive (if they are good that is).

[flipswitch]

He must have been more impressed with Tekken Jag Tournament and Ridge Racer V on ps2

[jizzlobber]

still hold up well today!

[GreyWizzard]

Soul Calibur and Sonic Adventure looked amazing. I hadn't seen graphics like it ever. Some joke about quite impressed.

[pilonv1]

What did you blokes think of the improved vibration in the XBONE controller?

Also was Crimson Dragon there?

[jizzlobber]

nope, wish it was.

I hardly played any games, just dead rising 3 and ryse, and to be honest I wasn't even thinking about the pad so I guess it was comfortable enough.
I didn't get to try forza, I was about to right at the end but they were switching them all off

[pilonv1]

IIRC from e3 Forza was the only one where it was noticeable, other than the controller demo showing off the new features.