Yeah, well, Im a filthy liar. I ditched my lobster narja suit the second I hit High rank and began getting tons of loot with my pickpocket palicos. Made about five half sets cause I thought they looked cool before ditching them cause I didnt like the skills.

Settled on a full Zinogre suit with evade 2 gemmed in. Being as Im an axe user and I dont block, Evading is kind of my thing. Looks like Im constantly breakdancing under the beasties feet, and that Zinogre is a freaking BAMF suit.

But then what does the game do? It throws early game Axes with white sharpness in my lap, that SHARPEN THEMSELVES WHENEVER I DODGE???

Game... Game...



My pockets are overflowing with monster organs. Its beautiful.

And Jesus, these knockouts... and straight up executions, holy crap the Charge blade man. Monsters going to sleep is like a freaking death sentence for them.

Oh, limping to your cave? *Whacks cannon fodder enemies around for a quick yellow charge and some phials on way to lair*

pulls out axe, walks up to head, just far enough so only the final hit contacts.

*KRUNCH!!!*

Quest Complete!

Ive always been of the rather unpopular opinion that sonic never was that great.

To me, all the 'bad' sonic games are just people realizing holding right and watching loop de loops with the occasional jump or roll just wasnt really that engaging.

Well, except 06. Thats just, wow.

Does any of that affect the gaming at all though? It could. But maybe not, depending on how well they compartmentalise their businesses.

Well... why dont we see how the next wipeout turns out, now that they've laid off studio liverpool aka psygnosis.

So is everyone assuming this is a 30FPS experience?

I am. Trilers have been uploaded in the 60 format, but the only thing that looked 60 to me usually is the splash screen.

Not really a big of a deal in games like this, whos combat revolve more around strategy than timely action. The resources would be better spent making a more immersive world than increasing the frame rate.

I would never have noticed they changed it with wind waker. You got any comparison shots or anything that demonstrate the difference?

I agree the world is and how it fits together so well is nothing short of flawless, but I also disagree that the game isn't difficult.  While some of it is just pure get to know the controls, if you play it without spamming the game with soul farming and naked dodging than it does become quite the challenge, especially when you first reach a level.  It took me on average 10 deaths at the start of each new area to really get a strategy going and to prepare based on that strategy could sometimes take an hour.  However, I do think the boss battles were not as hard as many have said, until the end that is.. Another thing that I really enjoy about the game is how you are left to really play it how you want, while sure some ways are a lot easier than others (AHEM pyromancer) some ways are incredibly difficult, such as the knight.  I don't see me getting into this new world as much as I did with the soul series, considering I am a huge fantasy nut, so I'm slightly dissapointed with its direction. Also, I can't see there being any diversity within the world, no forests, no lakes, no swamps only a post apocalyptic industrial age city.  So it will be neat to see if they can keep that level 4 world design, of if they pull a metroid based on what you said in the metroid discussion.

Well, difficulty is a subjective matter dependant upon perspective.

I am an avid monster hunter player, and as such, I found the purposefully timed and deliberate player animations to be instantly understandable, and found the enemies to be slow and predictable in comparison.

In Monster hunter, big weapons swing even slower, monsters move faster, have better ai, smaller openings, more moves to select from, hit harder, and have waaaayyyyyyy more health.

As for the different direction, bloodbourne is totally taking a Van Helsing direction, with the time, design theme, monster selection, and gadget like weaponry. So... As some people may realize for... reasons, im pretty cool with that.

Lololol that's quite the encyclopedic answer. Sorry to disappoint but I did already understand what field of view is. It's the last part I'm specifically questioning. So yes, I think you're right. Although the example you gave with the bottles was perhaps slightly bad as it was focusing on the perspective due to distance, more than curvature which seems to be the main issue here?
So I guess that width of the ledge, that is already an incredibly speculative method in itself, will change slightly based on the fov. Do you have actual evidence that they're using 100 though? I really can't tell myself. I can tell that main Zelda preview is higher than Darksiders. It's very hard to tell from the recent preview footage though! I suppose it's possible to reverse engineer if you make some calculations in-game. I'm sure someone's into doing that.

The example I posted was a curvature/perspective example. The distances between the bottles were all exactly the same. The only thing that changed was the fov, which means if you use the wrong fov in calculations for measuring distance using a the known height of an object (the bottle), your calculations will be off exponentially the more distance you try and measure.

In order to make any concrete measurements, you would actually need at least one, certified, official, measurement of a known object.

I cant tell exactly what the fov is, though I can tell its considerably greater than 60, which Nintendo used for Zelda until ww (gc ww). I am very good at identifying fov's with pc games, but thats because they are designed for 60 degree fov (thanks ps360), so when you slide it way past that to 120, you get some serious frustum/fish eye distortion, although you become a god and people think you have eyes in the back of your head. As long as you stay away from scopes.... (Why do so many studios have problems with this? Change the fov for scopes, they are scopes! Thats what they do!).

Here are my approximations on fov for 3d Zelda games

oot-ww 60 degrees
tp gc 60 degrees
tp wii- 80 degrees (I recall them being very pleased with this in an interview, perhaps an Iwata asks? or perhaps a lecture... The increase was simply do due to wideescreen support)
ss wii 60 degrees (I recall them being less than satisfied with this)
wwhd ==100 degrees (They were so pleased by the increased fov, that they actually bothered to rework the game a bit around it, like moving npc's)
Zelda U ==100 degrees

I know the original Xenoblade also had a fov of around 80 or 90, it doesnt seem to adjust well during gameplay when you zoom in, which made zooming in right on the characters and trying to play like that really awkward.

Although it is super fun to mess with on dolphin.

With the increased fov you can see where the game decides to clean up and draw, its pretty neat.
Except for the hud elements... ew, non-vector....

Hopper cam is awesome. I am going to lose soooo much time to this doo dad.

NoA....

Yeah, I wouldn't take it too seriously as an accurate estimate. But as a rough estimate, it seems quite plausible to me.
I wasn't sure what you were suggesting by field of view though. Which part of his calculation would've been altered by the fov?
 
As for #2, I assume you mean in proportion to the real map? Yeah, there's no way of knowing that for sure. I think generally the safest assumption is that it is in proportion. The reason being that that's the easiest way for developers to handle drawing the player's cursor on the minimap (just read the X-Z coordinates and then scale them down by a constant)

Oooh, time to take a ton of time explaining minutia that is pretty much pointless! Sweetness.

The field of view (also field of vision, abbreviated FOV) is the extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment.

The field of view in video games refers to the part you see of a game world, which is dependent on the scaling method used.

Most modern games use a 60 degree field of view,so they can get away wit rendering less on underpowered consoles because they believe their consumers are too stupid to notice the ever shrinking field of view. Most all shooters, actions games, and pretty much every AAAAAAAA graphikz game utilizes a 60 degree fov, so they can render less on screen, and focus more on what they are rendering.

Nintendo games tend to use much wider fov's, particularly post gc when all games became at least animorphic wideswcreen, and third person ones. Nintendo likes wide fov's, and windwaker hd increased its fov even more for its final release than its early showings. WW is a good example of Nintendo prioritizing wide fov, they increased WWHD so much from its gamecube 60 degree field of view, that during cutscenes, characters who were supposed to be off screen, were now photobombing cutscenes with their shenanigans, so Nintendo actually altered npc positioning for wwhd.

Both WWHD and Zelda U look to be using at least a 100 degree fov. You can instantly tell at a glance just by observing the fristim distortion and how much wider the viewfield is when comparing other games.


Darksiders 2 is your typical 3rd party 360/ps3 action game sitting at an unadjustable (even on pc) fov of 60 degrees. DOnt pay attention to the size of the character, but rather, how much world you can see, particularly at the edges of the screen.



There is a LOT more real estate on screen in Zelda u, even when completely ignoring the draw distance and just looking at the part of the screen closest to the edges (Closest to the camera).

Thats because Zelda U uses a much wider fov than the average AAAAAAAAAA publisher standard of 60 degrees.

So now that weve explained and provided some visual examples, what exactly does it mean?

Well, to give a real life example with cameras, the shorter a cameras focal length is, the wider its field of view is. Which results in this:


The bottom picture has the smallest fov, like the 60 degree fov used in most videogames.
The top

In his calculations, he assumed we were using the fov of the bottom image, while we were using the fov of the top image. If you notice by doing something similar to what he did you will notice a startling difference. Perspective distortion!

The height of the red bottle is enough to cover the distance to the light plug in the top picture, but falls just pver halfway sort in the bottom picture.

In this case, one meter tall does not necessarily directly translate into one meter wide, you have to find the point in space where they match up 1:1.

That cliff, according to the map, is more or less a straight rectangle peninsula, with a rounded nose.

It looks like he simply placed the horizontal measurement where it would be the most convenient and easiest for eyeballing, however, thats about a foot high off where links vertical form comes into contact with the horizontal ground, which is where it should be measured from... Unfortunantly it goes off screen, and since I dont know how the image was cropped, may be affected by frustum distortion anyways.

Basically, it should add bit to each 1.7 meters he measures out, which over the course of 7,000 x 6,000 meters, could end up being a few square km more. Which in the big picture is pretty irreleveant. Which is why he probably didnt care and simply used the approximate symbol.




Yeah, I meant the proportion of the game map to the world map.

Everything you said is true and makes perfect sense, yet you would be surprised at some o the things that are done instead. *Looks at crystal bearers map, shakes head*

If the demo's anything to go by 3d is a must all the time because without it I've noticed its quite hard to judge spacing etc between player and monster. Drawback being frame rate is reduced.

Used to have all kinds of visual tricks memorized for this, angles of monsters legs compared to hunter etc... After a while it became second nature and I didnt think about it anymore, and then once the series went 3d, I did a complete brain dump on it all.

For charge axe users wanting to go element up, but not wanting to waste phials getting to the super swing, if you have your axe out, simply pressing both attack buttons at the same time will start the super slam immediately, to which you can element up by pressing R, getting all phials stored into element up.

Oh that was gameplay? Huh. Having never played a game by these guys (possibly because they haven't made one since like 2005?) I really didn't know that their other games were good and was basing my thoughts only on the trailer, which imho looked a bit boring. Who knows, perhaps it's one of those zen games like Journey..
Oh well, carry on then.

You can thank the current state of the industry for that.

Journey is heavily inspired by team ico games, likely one of the reasons why Sony published the game, and kept granting it extension after extension to be finished the right way. It also doesnt come remotely close.

The games are equal parts action and immersion. However, they dont suffer from todays not good design tropes of 'We have to shove crap in the players fat stupid face every five seconds, like jingling keys in front of a baby, so their microscopic attention span doesnt peter out'.

The game spends its immersion period by having the player interact with the npc, and navigate wonderfully designed terrain with a PLAYER CONTROLLED movement system, that still puts assassins creed 'give the computer suggestions, and it will do everything for you while constanly screwing it up' to shame to this day. Any surface that has a large enough ledge to grip, or something to grab, can be clung to, and climbed. Epona from Zelda U is a DIRECT homage to Agro from SotC. Shiguru Miyamoto loves team Ico games, and he was blown away by SotC. I still remember the Dice 2003 summit where he sat at the presentation, watching the Nico demo, mouth agape. He said the game directly inspired him to pay tribute in Quadraxis from MP2, Twilight princess, with two bosses you use the grappling claw to grab onto, and again in mario galaxy, with Megaleg.

In SotC where these rules of climbing where no applied to gigantic collossi who could move themselves, and combined with an EXTREMELY impressive for the time physics and animation engine, which took into account the angle of the surface, inertia, and other factors, if the colossi suddenly learched forward, you would find yourself toppling on your butt if you didnt grab onto something. Players who werent indoctrinated to be stupid, found they could use this physics and inertia system to their advantadge, creating amazing shortcuts, stunts, and incredible leaps, making fast reactions to the colossi's behavior a meta game in and of itself. Colossi battles could be fought a million different ways, as each colossi was a package of physics based possibilities, and it was ALL PLANNED that way. The games producer, Kenji Kaedo worked on a game called Cameltry, which was about the strategic rotation, and collision, of large moving objects. All the stunts and speedrun shortcuts from this game, were things the developers wanted the player to expirement and try.

The colossi werent enemies, they werent bosses, they were enemies, bosses, and the levels all put together. They were a physics object, and a playground, a package full of possibilities, where so much could happen, because shadow of the colossus was the epitome, of a system that 'worked' on its own, as opposed to a scripted series of events, ie, modern AAAAAAAA garbage, like say, uncharted.

But words can only go so far when someones never even experienced whats being talked about.


Here a player accidentally discovers the fall from the wing to be caught by the tail.

This was ps2. Standing on the shoulders of this, going bigger and better from HERE, was the future we were at one time heading towards.

The last guardian would have used this as its main mechanic. Instead of killing the collossi, it would be the players npc freind. The player would platform on the colossi, to reach new areas, as it platformed itself.

But then... the rise of the age of stupid. Stupid games, made specifically for stupid players. How far we have degenerated. Now, a game like SotC would become completely heterological, instead of focusing on the best parts of games like this, they all devolved to the worst, easiest to design parts. Things like being able to use physics and the creature turning to leap off the wing and catch the tail would now quick time events, the same things happen the same way every single time, creativity and exploration are discouraged by design, and things are kept flashy to keep the stupid indoctrinated.

How incredibly, incredibly far we have fallen from the future that was right before us.

Here is a fantastic analysis of the game, in an age that has become so indoctrinated by the manufactured stupid, that people can no longer express what was so great about SotC, theyll spout garbage they've been indoctrinated to believe over the past gen, nonsensical crap thats constantly spouted by AAAAAAAAAAAAAA devs like 'emotional impact, which is just a mere byproduct of the real reason.

The article is appropriately titled 'It was the gameplay, stupid.'

http://www.kotaku.co...f-the-colossus/

Eh, idk why everyone was so excited for a game that looked mediocre and has zero gameplay footage.

Pedigree.
 
And it did have gameplay footage. The second half of the e3 trailer was all gameplay. And it looked, like it played like a team Ico game, on a grand and fantastic scale. The games predecessors, Ico and SotC are untouchable experiences to this day, monuments of a time when videogames were on a path to amount to something more than the garbage everybody wants them to be today.

Haven't most Zelda games had NPC schedules and backgrounds?

I know Skyward Sword definitely did..

 

Skyward sword didn't, because skyward sword didn't have a day/night cycle. Character events were triggered by event completions, and they were at one place at day, and another by night (Whih was changed over manually when the player slept in a bed), unless changed by an event (like completing a sidequest).

 

Windwaker did, with the most notable being windfall island, which was like a mini, (really mini), Majoras mask bit.

Right now, I am torn.

 

I want to make many different, powerful weapons, but I don't want to spend large amounts of time farming low and high rank monsters with low and high rank gear.  I need to just push to G rank.

 

I already lost that battle with myself. Multiple times. Half finished armor sets, helmet here, faulds there, abandoned for another after checking skills immediately after forging, abandoned weapons everywhere, monster carcasses overflowing from landfills.... Its a horrible sight, and I havent even gone online yet.

 

I think as of right now Im going to take my gore, rathian, charge axes, and my flickaxe +, and a Narga/lobster highbrid (Evade+evade distance) and then push to G from there, because my bunny suit just isnt going to cut it much further..... And I never liked the way it looked. (Im a sucker for evade skills)

I'm still looking to see if this large world carries with it an actual improved and larger game.  I'm talking actual NPC's that have schedules and backgrounds, and rewarding non fetch side quests. But every single thing I have seen and heard about this game so far is fantastic.. ITS ALMOST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!!

That would be:

 

Every zelda game could use a huge freaking helping of majoras mask, in the npc/sidequest department. Hopefully this one channels majoras mask into its overworld, towns, and npc's, because that WOULD be fantastic.

 
Gotta get things setup!

We got the same pin! Were.... Pin pals




Oh, by the by, I chose the smarmiest most obnoxious face for my hunter. I just couldnt help it, his face was just soooo smarmy. And then I found the samurai ponytail hair do, and a little facial hair... and it turns out I am Jetstream Sam.



Holy crap this face makes the cutscenes hilarious.

Here is a GameXplain video interview with the creator of the fake
 

That is... Impressive hair.

Spoiler

I gotta say, Shagaru Magala went down a lot faster than I thought he would. I hadn't even cut the tail off. Rathalos charge blade might have been overkill.

 

Charge blade anything is overkill, it is sooooo op, but it feels soooooooo good.

Just got myself my first Gore Charge Axe. I like the single player very much and online too. But somehow it feels a bit less epic. Maybe because mh3 was my first and as such a big impact.

That said, I don't have much time to post...must...go...back...to...it

Definatately more epic than tri. Nothing will ever beat that feeling you get when you get your first successes, and defeat your first walls. Although I do like tri's music better.

But I think I said this earlier, the reaction of newcomers to their next entries in the series is a good thing. As long as they feel that way about that entry compared to the new one, I feel like that entry was all right, because thats pretty much what happens to everyone, whether moving from freedom unite to tri, or tri to mh4, or what have you.

As long as that entry has newcomers who feel like its more 'epic' than the next one they play, and as long as there are 'gamers' who conditioned to think they are super awesome at videogames, while actually never having to develop any skills because they play AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA garbage, and call monster hunter crap because it puts them in their place, then I know for sure the series hasnt lost its way.



Anyways, was doing a lost forest or whatever harvest run looking for killer beetles and gluegloppers, when I ran into my first rathian. Of course, i didnt eat, I didnt pack any potions (more room for rat packing hoarding issues), and of COURSE I had just equipped my new fire element peco spander, so, of course I was like, 'Yeah, im gonna hit that'.

So then Rathian decided to call her buddy Mr. giant rattle snake stegosaurus, and I was like, Yeah, Im gonna hit that too.

So two kitty carts later and now I have a brand new flick axe and a rathian loin cloth.

Good points.

But honestly, I feel Nintendo can eliminate a ton of this crap by simply marketing their games effectively. putting out high quality screenshots and videos all over the web (YouTube, create and send to ign etc...).

With X especially, unless you already own a wii u it was nigh impossible to see a good look at the footage.

If you see the YouTube videos, the "screenshots" all over the web, etc., they all look incredibly muddy, washed out, etc.

Then... You see the "direct" that moment Monolith put out and it's like "what the ohmygoshijustvomitedthewheatiesiateforbreakfastbevausethislookssofreakingamazing!"

It looks nearly like a different game because the difference between conpressed, decompressed, and decompressed again by the time it shows up anywhere. Then that crappy conpressed video gets a screen grab taken and compressed again into an even more crappy conpressed JPEG.

It actually makes me a little angry as this would be so freaking easy to fix by sending press kits with high quality screens and videos to the major players. And it would cost nearly nothing.

And the stinking media sites KNOW THIS. and they choose to use junk screens of junk videos.

When I show people the latest gameplay and tutorial video they unanimously freak out and have to have it.

Before then, they've heard of it a bit and weren't impressed.

It's all in the presentation.

Come on Nintendo.

Yes, we appreciate that you are focused on the GAME, not on swindling people out of their hard earned money.

But dadburnit, get with the program and have one or two people focus on marketing it right and leaving the industry with a proper high impression of the game.

Of course the media knows what they are doing to this game. They arent covering this game, because they are paid pr mouthpeices for AAAAAAA publishers. Nintendo refuses to play their reindeer games, so they give them gimped coverage, and the anti nintendo 'nintendo is backwards' narrative, because AAAAAAAA publishers want to make sure you know games that work the way they are advertised, work the moment you buy them and put in the disc, come complete for the buying price, instead of half a game for full price with a season pass sold seperately to get the whole game, is backwards because it doesnt have arbritrary feature that is nowhere near the big deal people have been brainwashed into thinking it is.

Voice chat is a nice feature. It is NOT a necessity for a game to not be worthless crap. The game actually WORKING when you put the disc in the machine, IS. But dont tell that to the media, thats not the picture their AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA retainers want to paint.

. There is no longer an enthusiest press for videogames, only extended pr mouthpeices.

Besides, there is no amount of advertising than cut through an entire generation of publisher media brainwashing.

People who are saying this:


Does more, and looks better, than this:




Are beyond the ability to objectively assess reality.

It seems that most early stage monster are a lot weaker than when I played them on mh3.

Most early stage monsters from tri were a lot weaker than their counter parts in 1 &2 unite etc.

Fine by me. It lowers the entry barrier for newcomers, and wastes less of the veterans times to get to the meat of the game.

As long as there are obnoxious outsiders giving the games bad reviews, because 'I hit the dinosaur like FIVE TIMES and it still didnt die!!! 6/10' Then it hasnt gone too far.

Already done a few hours of hunting between solo and with my brother.  Don't forget to download the free DLC after making your character:
 
http://www.capcom-un...-super-surprise

Oi, thanks for this, I would have totally forgotten!

Damn... And I already farmed like, half of that stuff through the early quests XD

Jebus, the anti Xenobade trolls are at it again.

Every single article, they flood it with 'Its not doing anything Skyrim didnt do! Red dead redemption looks Way better!!!'
'It looks worse than last gen, it just has massive scale, thats all its got going for it over ps360!'

You cant discuss this game ANYWHERE outside without them showing up and crapping everywhere and circle jerking each other. How do they even believe their own garbage?

Monolith threw in a Gears reference.

Oh, there are peices to make pretty much every character. I saw ones that make for a Jin/citan, and a slight alteration of which to make a dunban, an elsmeralda, an ellie.... Pretty sure I saw parts you could use to make a bart complete with eye patch.

From what Ive seen they pretty much have everyone covered Well... Unless.... You are... a Man... of the Sea!

I only hope they let you really make pronounced features, like van damn style pronounced, becuase the first thing Im making if you can is Big Joe.