Sometimes you have to save that first post for just the right moment. :)
Timex
1903
Again, it’s all semantics: that’s no downgrade, that’s optimization done in the final phases of development, a dev would say.
Yeah, it’s not a downgrade… Ultimately, it’s an upgrade. It’s just an upgrade of stuff that you had no exposure to in the marketing release.
In the marketing release, there were tons of things which were flat out broken. The game didn’t run smoothly. While textures on screen in that screenshot looked super nice, other places had no textures at all.
Software is a constant game of tradeoffs. You can’t maximize everything.
In a marketing release, you can simply hide anything that isn’t optimal… But in the actual release, you need to make everything acceptable.
Video on this German site shows the in game 90 minute day compressed into 90 seconds. Look at that sky! I like how the clouds have 2 layers a upper and lower.
So this game. I wonder if it will run on a dual core CPU?, i think to myself… AFTER having bought it on Steam.
Steam allows refunds as long as its before the game comes out.
Do you meet any other minimum specs?
OS: 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1)
Processor: Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz / AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 660 / AMD GPU Radeon HD 7870
Hard Drive: 35 GB available space
Timex
1908
Kind of a weird review, given that it cites numerous flaws, but then gives it a perfect score.
Has there ever been a flawless game? I have yet to play one.
It’s not that weird if you don’t consider the highest score possible to be an indication of perfection.
Correct. The review system Tom uses allows for five-star ratings on games that have flaws.
Perfect score should never indicate perfect game because perfect game does not and never will exist.
That review was awesome btw.
Interesting. I want to read that dammit. Send me a link or something :)
Timex
1914
Ocarina of Time maybe.
Perfect score should never indicate perfect game because perfect game does not and never will exist.
Sure, but some of the criticisms were seemingly non-trivial… Like saying that the combat was basically bad. Now, that’s not really in line with what other folks have said, but it seemed serious enough to result in some change of score.
no
“Battles have neither heft nor grace”
This is literally the only sentence in that review that concerns combat.
Now whatever he means by that, it seems that this “flaw” (which may not be a flaw at all but rather his subjective opinion or matter of taste) did not detract from the total magnificence of the game that deserves maximum score for all those numerous reasons mentioned in the review.
They just posted a teaser for something coming May 14th: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNVOTMx9oyA
“Heft” is a fancy word for every reviewer’s favorite buzzword “weight,” which to be fair is a decent description for the sense of impact and realness provided by the animation and controls.
Of course not. I can only think of one game that, for me, comes close to being flawless - Batman: Arkham Asylum - but since all games are ultimately “smoke and mirrors”, if you look enough at them, you’ll certainly find many flaws, even if you don’t see many at first.
Timex
1919
Heh, well I said maybe. It’s always the game that pops to mind when I think of a perfect game though. I loved Ocarina of Time, but that in itself wasn’t why I put it up there… because I tend to like most games. But OoT had an almost universal appeal that I’ve never really witnessed in any game before or since. Hell, it got my 60 year old father into video games.
Regardless, totally off topic. :P
Yeah, I just read that statement as being more negative than you did I guess. I read it as saying that the combat was uninteresting and bland. Now, this didn’t really seem to mesh well with other views on the subject, or what I’ve seen, but it did strike me as surprisingly negative given the perfect score.
It’s also possible that their scale of only 5 points leaves little room for nuance in scoring.
The phrase, “battles have neither heft nor grace” reads nice, but it’s a lot of non-information. The entirety of battles? The feel of your character? The enemies you face? The controls are clumsy? This could mean almost anything, while meaning nothing at the same time. It’s almost like saying the game is “visually stunning” in a lot of ways. If I had to make a guess, I’d say he felt the controls were awkward (clumsy) but given that he scored it a perfect, it’s like we’ve read elsewhere in that it takes a little getting used to and by a certain point you’re just a pro with how the combat works. The lack of heft is flying right in the face of everything I’ve seen and read though, so not sure on that piece. Again, “visually stunning” similarities.
It’s a little ambiguous and dismissive but I can understand what he’s saying. Maybe. I could be reading too much into it.
I’d say Dark Souls combat has a lot of heft due to the slow animations and shields and excellent sense of realness. You could say the Arkham games have grace in that you can fly around smoothly stringing beautiful combos together that never look awkward.
Like I’ve been saying for weeks, you can’t expect TW3 to have the same kind of budget and attention to detail for things like that, given that they have to make a huge RPG as well. But again, no one has said it’s worse than TW2 and many reviewers said it was better.
