I don’t doubt we would have seen a few games that looked better than the last generation of DC games that were released, but the fact of the matter is that the DC had a very straight forward achitecture, and therefore was much easier to get the full potential out of. The PS2, however, was much more convoluted, and only those that spent the time/money really got to see what the machine could do.
Take, for example, Devil May Cry or Metal Gear Solid 2. Those came out within a year of the DC’s demise (actually, the same year of it’s demise), and yet those games were visually much more detailed than anything seen on the DC up to that point. Granted, MGS2 got away with using a simpler color palette, etc, but the overall effect was amazing. Devil May Cry took control of the camera away from the player to maximize memory usage, but the effects, lighting, polygons, etc all used were beyond anything seen on DC.
I’m not saying that the DC wasn’t an amazing little machine. It was very competitive with the PS2 in terms of specs. But, in the end, the PS2 wins out in sheer power. Efficiency? Certainly not.
But, such a slight difference in power (when compared to, say, the difference between the Xbox and DC) meant nothing. In the end, it was the marketing hype and the game lineup that won gamers over.
The Grandia II comparison is unacceptable, considering the PS2 version was a partial port of the PC version of the game, which was a shitty port as well. Using a port of a port job for comparison’s sake is pretty unfair. I used Rez as an example because both versions were developed and shipped at the same time for Dreamcast and PlayStation 2.
As far as best looking 32-bit game, Panzer Dragoon Zwei? No way. I’d give Radiant Silvergun that crown any day of the week. With random flickering and polygons/textures that warp along the sides of the screen when environment stuff gets too close, while it may have been something special in 1996, it was easily overshadowed by Radiant Silvergun’s excellent art direction and superior 3D engine.
Code Veronica for the Dreamcast was also much better than the Code Veronica X fiasco for the PS2. The PS2 version had NO anti-aliasing and was just flat out ugly. The loading times were better on the PS2 though; I’ll give it that much.
Again - That’s a matter of porting. Code Veronica was built for the DC from the ground up. Japanese developers don’t really use much middleware, which makes it difficult to bring games from one platform to another (hence my comment in another thread about how you rarely see multi-platform releases from Japanese companies).
It wasn’t because the PS2 lacked overall power, it just was programmed to be optimized for a very different structure.
Of course it was a port. If it wasn’t, that would have meant that they had two separate teams working on programming the same game but for different platforms - it’s far easier to build one game engine and then adapt it onto somthing else.
Not really. The leap wasn’t that huge and both games still suffer from drained dark textures.
DC games still compared favourably to them at the time.
But it’s all moot anyway. People use power as an excuse for looking down on the DC, yet ignored the GC and Xbox.
The PS2 really wasn’t well designed, nor is the PS3. This time though, Sony will be held to account because the competition isn’t going anywhere. There will be somewhere else to turn now.
As far as best looking 32-bit game, Panzer Dragoon Zwei? No way. I’d give Radiant Silvergun that crown any day of the week. With random flickering and polygons/textures that warp along the sides of the screen when environment stuff gets too close, while it may have been something special in 1996, it was easily overshadowed by Radiant Silvergun’s excellent art direction and superior 3D engine.[/quote]
Zwei was pushing far more polygons than RSG, and the polygons folding was nothing to that seen in most PS games at the time . Ep 4 still to this days looks awesome, with some of the best water effects I’ve ever seen and Zwei organic art direction remains unmatched .
I tell you another game that looks ace onthe Saturn and that is Taromaru. Cost me a bomb to get it, but at times that do more effects than RSG, that Purple spider boss is one of the most amazing things I?ve seen on the Saturn
Not in the sense that I’m thinking of. For those “special” games that come out on one console, then eight months later a port is announced for another console (see: Grandia II, Skies of Arcadia, etc.), less care seems to be given than when a game is multiplatform to begin with (of course, that leads to which companies we’re talking about as well). Perhaps I’m not using the right terminology.
Rez is a good example to me of a game taking advantage of both system’s hardware. Don’t know about you all, but to me, seeing any Japanese game running at 60 FPS is fairly impressive, and if Rez was some quick port job for PS2, I really doubt it’d be running that smoothly. The jump from 20-30 FPS all the way to 60 FPS is a significant increase in the strain it puts on a CPU/GPU.
Since when does quantity matter? Aside from that, almost all the polygons are saved for the Radiant Silvergun bosses and the occasional objects in the environment set atop the high-res 2D bitmaps scaled and rotated to give the illusion of 3D. Panzer Dragoon Zwei also utilized scaled 2D bitmaps for the ground and the sky, but they weren’t nearly as detailed.
I’m not argueing Panzer Dragoon art style (which I am a big fan of), but art direction as in how games stand the test of time in terms of their appearance. Panzer Dragoon Zwei graphically looks like shit in this day and age, but Radiant Silvergun still manages to look respectable for an old game, simply because it better utilized what the Saturn was capable of.
It’s kind of like how Phantasy Star IV still looks respectable despite its age, but Phantasy Star II and III do not.
So, in order for Panzer Dragoon Zwei to have had better “art direction” as you call it, it should have been a top-down game so that they could have made more extensive use of 2D objects and therefor be able to give more detail to the occasional 3D object… And also ditch the dragons and everything else organic and go for something more conventional that would look more fitting even if blocky and low poly. Right?
Since when does quantity matter? Aside from that, almost all the polygons are saved for the Radiant Silvergun bosses and the occasional objects in the environment set atop the high-res 2D bitmaps scaled and rotated to give the illusion of 3D. Panzer Dragoon Zwei also utilized scaled 2D bitmaps for the ground and the sky, but they weren’t nearly as detailed.
I’m not argueing Panzer Dragoon art style (which I am a big fan of), but art direction as in how games stand the test of time in terms of their appearance. Panzer Dragoon Zwei graphically looks like shit in this day and age, but Radiant Silvergun still manages to look respectable for an old game, simply because it better utilized what the Saturn was capable of.
It’s kind of like how Phantasy Star IV still looks respectable despite its age, but Phantasy Star II and III do not.[/quote]
It was harder for the Saturn to do 3D polygons , that throwing around sprites, on that scale Zwei is better in my view . Zewi still looks good today and would more than acceptable on a Handheld , and still to this day, the watter effects on Ep look stunning.
I agree RSG still looks stunning today , another Saturn game that aged well is Dectathlete, that still looks class
I still maintain that the Saturn was best at merging 2D sprites with 3D graphics. Shining The Holy Ark still looks fairly decent today thanks to this mixture and so does Grandia.
PD Zwei had some great effects, and I still love the transparent riverscapes of PD Saga, but only the art stands the test of time. Nights looks awful and could have really shined on the DC given its texturing capabilities (DC = low poly counts, higher res textures. PS2 = more polys, poorer texture resolution but better multi-texturing).
Maybe the PS3 will be better at rendering certain types of graphics, but it’s not the console that’s light years ahead everyone is claiming it to be.
It’s simply the nature of the beast. 2D obviously ages better, we’ve barely had any real advancements in that aspect for many years now. 3D on the other hand keeps advancing seemingly daily.
This for example… www.enemyterritory.com
Just visit it and don’t click anything, wait for the trailer to start.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]I still maintain that the Saturn was best at merging 2D sprites with 3D graphics. Shining The Holy Ark still looks fairly decent today thanks to this mixture and so does Grandia.
PD Zwei had some great effects, and I still love the transparent riverscapes of PD Saga, but only the art stands the test of time. Nights looks awful and could have really shined on the DC given its texturing capabilities (DC = low poly counts, higher res textures. PS2 = more polys, poorer texture resolution but better multi-texturing).
Maybe the PS3 will be better at rendering certain types of graphics, but it’s not the console that’s light years ahead everyone is claiming it to be.[/quote]
Yep.
Saga worldwind watter effects on disc 2 , still look ace even today. Another great looking Saturn game was Dark Saviour . In my view the Saturn killed the PS when it came to texture mapping and textures
Nah, that’s just your oddball interpretation of what I said. Geoffrey pretty much covered what my stance is. The art style of Panzer Dragoon is incredible, but the games are an eyesore now. And it’s not like I won’t play them because of this… after all, I just finished disc 2 of Panzer Dragoon Saga again. I was amazed by the graphics of the game when I got it on release day, but it simply doesn’t stand the test of time all that well.
We can argue technical stuff all day long, but if you showed Radiant Silvergun next to any of the Saturn Panzer Dragoon games, any individual would say Radiant Silvergun looks nicer, and cleaner. And as far as PlayStation 2 versus Dreamcast, each console had its strengths and weaknesses.
As for the future, well… as I stated back during the Nintendo Wii argueing, I’m going to sit back and watch the fireworks. I have plenty to play and enjoy in the meantime.
Parn we were discussing which game used the hardware bette and your stance was that Radiant Silvergun did so simply because it has aged better. I’m sorry but that’s completely irrelative and only happens because of the nature of the game.
Panzer Dragoon Zwei may be in fact using the hardware even better, but the hardware itself is quite limited in its 3D capability compared to new systems, thus it hasn’t aged as well.
It also depends on the art style since panzer dragoon has organic looking creatures and objects which obviously don’t look so well when designed with a limited number of polygons.
Radiant’s spaceship however, while still low-poly, simply look more fitting because it’s ok for spaceships to look blocky.
That doesn’t make the use of the hardware better, it only shows that 3D has come a long way since then while 2D hasn’t advanced that much since it is more up to the artist than the ability of the console for sometime now.
The only way for PDZwei or Saga to have aged a lot better would be to make them completely different games that would use the hardware differently, not better. That is the point I was trying to make with my earlier post.
Um… how does utilizing heavy amounts of 2D sprites, integrating textured 3D polygons, and rotating high detail 2D bitmaps around to give the illusion of 3D in several scenes where the game rushes from one area to another NOT using the hardware better? The Saturn was designed primarily for 2D emphasis in the first place. Sure, Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Saga pushed the Saturn’s 3D engine capabilities to its fullest, but Radiant Silvergun pushed ALL of the Saturn’s hardware to its max.
Hell, I’d give Shining Force 3 a leap over Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Saga as far as hardware usage, and its cutscene segments are almost entirely 3D. Camelot Software Planning went as far as utilizing the audio chip to help render the graphics.