Anyway most developers of the Beyond 3D boards agree that the PS2 is roughly equal to power to the Gamecube, and the games prove it - other than Rogue Leader, what games on the Gamecube look as good as the best on the PS2? Gamecube ports are largely inferior to the PS2 versions across the board (unlike PS2->Xbox), which would indicate that there isn’t a surplus of power available to compensate for architectural differences when a port is being made.
The PS2’s only weakness is image quality, and the latest libraries from SCE are making big strides in that area - games like Baldur’s Gate: DA, Burnout 2, and Onimusha 2 are almost complete “jaggie” free, and have image quality as good as the Xbox/GC.
The PS2 has a massive library with quite a few interesting and AAA titles. The Gamecube is alright if you simply adore exclusive Nintendo content (all of which are some of Nintendo’s weakest efforts; even the best of the bunch, SMS, isn’t half of its precursor), or if you wanna save $50, but fore pure diversity and quality of content, give me the PS2 any day.
Argh, “Guest” is me. Coulda sworn I logged in; apparently not.
And how is the Xbox as PC for your TV? I think the PS2 has more PC ports. As for hardware, Nintendo isn’t much better - a PowerPC plus an ATI sub-Radeon 6500-level chipset makes it a Mac, if specious analogies are going to be drawn.
The gamecube’s GPU isn’t related to the Radeon at all. The designers, ArtX wasn’t it? Were bought buy ATI after the flipper chip was finished.
The new PS2 stuff is looking fantastic. The latest Renderware engine is really, really nice. Stuff like SOCOM and NFL2K3 and Tekken 4 have 480p modes. There’s still some kick in the system.
wumpus, you’re not playing PS2 games on a Casio TV watch are you?
Argh, “Guest” is me. Coulda sworn I logged in; apparently not.
Dammit Doug, I can’t tell who is saying what in this thread with all the “guest posts” and “I was guest posts” and “that guest was me thinking I had logged in, but I came up as guest again” posts.
Come to think of it, what are PC type console games. I assumed that meant strategy/rpg/RTS games which none of the consoles have an overabundance of. Of course, if you have a PC you should play the PCish games on the PC. Consoles are for kicking, punching, super special combo moves and driving really fast. Plus, the rare blow job from a hooker.
Turok is “better” on the Gamecube, as well, for what it’s worth. There’s a few games like Ty, Timesplitters 2, and Burnout, that are identical to the PS2 version but have improved image quality. Still, a good 80% of ports (especially all the EA and Midway titles) are a fair bit better than the Gamecube ones, which usually feature slowdown and reduced features as their artifacts of the porting process, whereas the Xbox versions are often a fair bit better.
By “friendly to PC audiences”, I meant that thr PS2 simply has a larger library that doesn’t rely on platformers or arcade-style games to be compelling.
Obligatory geeky correction: the SCE libraries don’t have much to do with how good a game looks. The better looking games are a result of people having spent more time with the PS2 hardware, not because Sony just dumped some new code on them. :D
On the Beyond3D forums, several PS2 devs commented on how Sony’s new libs added support for progressive scan, which helps those of with TVs that support it in the image quality arena. ALso, isn’t a 640x480 full frame buffer required for progressive scan? That would at LEAST encourages devs to not use the ugly-ass 640x240 mode some of the older PS2 games (like Ridge Racer V) use.
That’s true that progressive scan support was added. Seeing as how I don’t have a TV that supports it, I tend to gloss over stuff like that. :D
BTW, 640x240 does not have to be ugly. BG:DA, IIRC used 640x240 but since they could maintain 60 Hz consistently they could effectively get a 640x480 buffer out of it (rendering alternate lines every frame). That’s what I mean when I say that games look better because people are more skilled with the hardware. :D
The PS2 has a lot of games that look great like GT3, MGS2, FFX, etc. because those games were coded with just the PS2 in mind and got the absolute most out of the hardware. The place where the PS2 can fall down is in games that are not specifically coded for it like NHL Hitz 2003. I rented it for the PS2 and it was a lot of fun but kind of pixely and laggy at times. I decided to buy it for the Xbox and it was like I was playing a totally different game. I was amazed at how clean and fast it was.
GT3 doesn’t look “great” to me; I can barely make out the turns in the distance due to all the pixelation.
You guys really need to take your computer and hook it up to your TV (most video cards have tv-out these days) so you can play with the different resolutions in a few games and see what 640x480 actually looks like. Otherwise, ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
GT3 is amazing looking even now it still looks great a year and a half after it’s release I played it not too long ago to see. We have had this argument before GT3 is 640x480. Even PGR and Ralisport Challenge don’t look as good as GT3 using the Xbox’s superior hardware. You must be blind yourself to not see this. Christ quit bringing it up over and over again. You get slapped down by a number of people each time when you bring this up, do you like being abused over and over again? Don’t bother answering because we clearly know the answer.
‘PC tastes’ go around the spectrum but I agree the PS2 has much more to offer. Between GTA3 and RoTK VII (strategy - unavailable on the PC) it’s been money well spent. Plus the fact it can play cheap, and sometimes classic, PSOne games as well as DVDs. I haven’t seen anything yet on the X-Box that really compelled me to buy it even though, on specs and concept alone, it was going to be my initial choice. The titles I liked were mostly on the PS2 and GTA3 just made my mind up for me.
Rob, I’m glad your standards are low enough that this doesn’t matter to you. You are clearly in good company, since the average joe on the street doesn’t seem to notice how crappy the PS2 resolution is, either.
I’ll do some screen caps when I get home, and you’ll be able to compare Sega GT 2002 to GT3 directly. But I’m hardly the only person to notice how pixelated GT3 is:
There are cracks in the illusion of course, not just the imperviousness the vehicles have towards any kind of damage, but the lack of anti-aliasing creates the minute jaggies that critical gamers find annoying. While those can be easily overlooked, the incredibly two-dimensional spectator crowds will have you laughing in disbelief.
I really only have two complaints, the first being the camera options. We’ve gotten used to having at least 3 options; first-person (in the car), close behind the car and far behind the car. Ridge Racer V limited you to only the first-person and close behind angles, and GT3 has followed suit. I realize that this won’t matter to anyone who likes either of those two, but there are plenty of driving game fans who’ve grown to love the third option, and we’ve been left out in the cold. The other complaint would be for the jaggies and flickering, but that’s more the PS2’s problem than the game’s.
My only gripe with GT3 is that it does not look as good as I expected. Do not get me
wrong, this game is beautiful. My problem is when you are racing, everything you see in
the distance at the middle of the screen looks like shit. This all clears up and looks great
when you pass it, but honestly, the area you spend the most time staring at looks like a
pixelated nightmare. This is most seen coming off the last curves of Trial Mountain. The
clouds in the upper background always look great, and there is nary a hint of slowdown
ever, but it did bug me; I expected more after playing the demo months ago. I also noticed
a very tiny bit of pop-up on some tracks. These few gripes about the graphics are the only
thing keeping this game from being perfect, so I have high hopes for Gran Turismo 4.
Seriously folks. Try 640x480 via TV-out on your TV. It’s nowhere NEAR as jaggy and pixelated as your average PS2 game. Of course the gameplay matters more than the graphics, but 640x240 is goddamn ugly, and it does make it difficult to see the turns in the distance-- which directly impacts gameplay in GT3.
Some people are going to tell you that this is the most beautiful racing game made to date… and those people have never played Gran Turismo.
About Sega GT2002’s graphics from IGN:
In comparison to the all-powerful Gran Turismo 3, Sega GT 2002’s gets the nod, but barely.
Barely better against a game that is a year and a half old.
You can take all the screen caps you want but it doesn’t prove jack. I have seen PGR and Ralisport Challenge and GT3 and GT3 still looks better (I have not seen Sega GT 2002, still waiting on Blockbuster to stock it for rent). As anecdotal evidence we showed a co-worker (PC FPS Gamer btw) Ralisport Challenge for the first time and let him play a bit and showed him the ice reflections etc. Then we fired up GT3 as an afterthought to show him that and he said he was far more impressed by GT3s graphics.
Rob, you’re confusing resolution with subjective aesthetics. I never said GT3 didn’t look good-- merely that it’s low resolution. The two are not mutually exclusive. You can have a high res game that looks bad, or a low res game that looks good. The former happens all the time on the PC-- jacking counter-strike’s resolution to 1280x960 doesn’t exactly make it beautiful.
Unfortunately the resolution has an impact on the gameplay in this case, because you end up staring at the road in the distance most of the time-- as the last link correctly points out. I’m more sensitive to this than most, because I’ve followed 3D graphics obsessively since its inception on the PC.
It did bug me quite a bit while playing GT3. Is that a turn in the distance? Who can tell? What’s aggravating about it is that this is a limitation of the PS2, not the developers.
This is an inane comment. I have had pretty much every major video card made since the Voodoo1 other than maybe the V5 and original GeForce. I am a stickler for graphics quality and framerate as well. I just don’t agree with you. There is nothing you can post or quote that will change my mind.
It did bug me quite a bit while playing GT3. Is that a turn in the distance? Who can tell? What’s aggravating about it is that this is a limitation of the PS2, not the developers.
Who could tell? I could. I played through 89% of the game and never had an issue with it. I did play mostly from the front of the car view, maybe that made a difference in the way I viewed turns in the distance.
I just don’t understand how you can cite this as a problem with GT3. If you don’t know the circuits inside and out, you’re not going to succeed at the game. Even if your eyes are so bad you can’t make out the next turn (which I think is a ludicrous statement), you can certainly remember it after running the circuit the fifty million times necessary to earn all the cars, etc. On top of that, if you played any of the GT games before this, you’ll find some of the same tracks!
I think you’re blowing it way out of proportion. I’ll agree that the PS2 has some games that look crappy due to resolution. In fact, Kingdom Hearts suffers from the PS2’s distinctive renderer (which looks too much like the PSOne at higher res) more than any other game I’ve played on the system. But to say the resolution of GT3 impedes your gameplay is just pure hyperbole.
