Computer games: Page 44 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Computer games

Captain

Re-watched the watch dogs gameplay spot because it peaked my interest since E3 and I really don't know what to make of it. Seems very ambitious but really can't see how it will be a coherent game. It hints at being an MMO (in which case my interest dwindles), but I'm not quite sure.

Klaus

I think it'll be singleplayer. Looks like it's going to be one of those terrible games who waste a good ambition. Bit like the Assassin's Creed series maybe. At one point in the gameplay video they came across a robber in an alley and I was just thinking to myself: "This is going to happen about fivehundred times in the finished game." The whole concept of extracting personal information from your surroundings just begs to be abused by a million sidequests and achievements too.

Captain

I dunno. The cctv was controlled by a different character who was apparently trying to hack you and there seems to be heavy emphasis on that, which is what lead me down the MMO path. Also, the commentary on this video is quite strange:

In saying that, Ubi marketed ZombiU in a similar way and that ended up being quite linear with only limited social integration.

Klaus

They might have played some kind of versus mode, possibly...? I have no idea to be honest, but it's unlike Ubisoft to turn something like this into a MMO.

Captain

You're right of course, just strange that the designer would say "no objectives, do as you please". But again, ubi were tight lipped about ZombiU's game design and only announced the story details etc. a few weeks before release. The online elements were significantly toned down from what they promised as well. MMO just seems to fit this whole online mantra that the ps4 presentation was running with.

Guess we'll see at e3.

Klaus

Loving Year Walk at the moment. Everyone who has an iphone or an ipad should give it a try.

Work of genius.

Gazza M

new tomb raider looks pretty good. very uncharted vibe to it.

Rex

Used to be a big Lara Croft fan. Maybe something to get back to.

banduan

I don't understand the Watchdogs vid.

I'm also wondering what would happen if a game about hacking gets hacked. How meta would that be? Even better, if Watchdogs has a mini-game about hacking you can hack in game, then someone hacks Watchdogs to hack the mini-game, meaning he or she'd be hacking a hacking game hacking a hacking game.

Timbob

Thats the exact plot line for Inception 2.

Klaus

So apparently none of the games you've bought on Playstation Network will be transferrable from the PS3 to the PS4. None of the PS3 games you've bought in retail will work either. Cheers Sony.

Rex

Really?! That's horrible.

Captain

They need a good reason to make you pay for their online services.

Captain

Having said that, I probably won't buy a ps4 until 2015 depending on a couple of factors. It currently holds no value proposition to me whatsoever.

Armor

I won't be buying the new one straight away thats for sure. I've barely played the ps3 recently, theres a lot of games i want to check out.

Captain

Only two games on PS3 I'm genuinely interested in this year; 'the last of us' which is a guaranteed purchase and 'remember me' which is a maybe.

Will get four announced games on WiiU and maybe 6-7 on 3ds.

I'll only end up playing four of them or so...

Burnwinter

Klaus wrote:
So apparently none of the games you've bought on Playstation Network will be transferrable from the PS3 to the PS4. None of the PS3 games you've bought in retail will work either. Cheers Sony.

That's a technical, not a commercial issue. They've decided (IMO correctly) to return to mainstream hardware. None of those games will work without a port.

Captain

Gakai is going to stream (yeah right) all of those games and offer a netflix type experience on the ps4. It's a bit of both in my opinion; if they wanted the BC, they would have it.

Klaus

That's my opinion too. I'm aware it's because the architecture is different. It doesn't change anything. It should be on Sony to make the games work. Imagine Apple telling you to buy all your apps again because they can't be transferred from an iphone 4 to an iphone 6.

Burnwinter

If you'll forgive the pun, that's not an Apples to Apples comparison. The tradeoffs and commercial incentives are quite different.

Apple (and Android) has a community of third party developers building technically simple apps that can tolerate the carefully managed shifts in the iOS development APIs. When a breaking API change does occur, app developers (who are mostly on an equally carefully managed continuous delivery cycle) rush to work around it and release updates.

By contrast, Cell was a noble innovation that at the time Sony and IBM thought might be practically useful for general purpose computing: office workstations running a variant of Linux etc. That didn't really take off and now it has to fade into the background. Sony is obliged to "fail well" here and keep hold of developers by not proposing another high-investment, short-lifespan development platform.

Unfortunately at the C++ development level Cell is like chalk and cheese compared to a more standard multicore CPU / massive GPU architecture.

I'm sure a backwards compatibility layer could be built, which either allows PS3 games to run natively, or with minor porting, but there's no point announcing it if it's not certain or complete, and it would only be economical if a significant proportion of new discretionary spending from users was expected to flow as a result.

In addition, the majority of major game releases contain their own internal compatibility layers which allow them to run on different hardware and be sold on different platforms - but the platform vendors don't control that, or how it works.

The most important decision for Sony is to stop chasing Cell or other exotic architectures, and that's a good call. The rest of the offering has to be conditional for solid commercial reasons. I'd suggest it's more up to game developers to port their older releases to the PS4 and sell them as DLC, perhaps at a nominal price to existing owners. The possibility of more and more incompatible consoles proliferating in everyone's loungerooms is certainly a bit odious.

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