• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

(ND Jan 23rd 2013) New Pikmin 3 Screenshots

Shiggy

Member
These game definitely look like HD Wii games. Try again. 0/2 so far.

Time for baby talk?


I named games that were comparable in terms of genre, feature set, number of characters onscreen, etc. Apples to apples comparison.

But you failed to consider the developer, the year of release, the inclusion of online multiplayer, and so on. Triumph Studios? I think a first party studio is supposed to show the capabilities of a system. Also, games from 2013 can look considerably better than games from 2007 or 2009, as evidenced by titles published by Sony and MGS.


But are you at all surprised? We experienced the same thing with the first animal crossing being moved to the gamecube, as well as Eternal Darkness. Then we had Twilight Princess being ported to the Wii with play controls as basically the only change.

What would it take to overhaul all the textures?

True. It would require financial resources for a game that probably won't sell too well and will not really sell many consoles. As a gamer, I prefer such changes nonetheless.
 

Lotto

Member
Game looks nice, textures aren't the best but it's not really a big deal. I'm not finding these screens as offensive as some of you are, the art is pretty much kept in tact and I have no doubt that the full environments will look fantastic in the end.
 

Margalis

Banned
Looking at Shiggy's post history it seems 95% of it is either bashing Wii U or defending Kinect Rare shovelware lol.

I like how he's in this thread saying Pikmin 3 looks like an uprezzed Wii game while in other threads he is praising the graphical tour de force that is Kinect Sports.
 

prwxv3

Member
These game definitely look like HD Wii games. Try again. 0/2 so far.



I named games that were comparable in terms of genre, feature set, number of characters onscreen, etc. Apples to apples comparison.

how the fuck does Uncharted 1 took like a HD Wii game.
 

Margalis

Banned
Time for baby talk?

What, are you going to start crying like a baby because I said some games looked like Wii games?

Name some games that don't look like Wii games please. I'm still waiting.

how the fuck does Uncharted 1 took like a HD Wii game.

How doesn't it?

If you're going to claim that Pikmin 3 looks like a PS1/PS2 game you lose the right to whine when someone says that Uncharted looks like an Apple 2 game.
 

zashga

Member
pjCFiBA.jpg

That's a really weird choice of screenshot from SC2. Why would you pick the high-poly cinematic model? If we're talking about graphics and style, it would be much more relevant to compare Pikmin with an actual gameplay screenshot. There's a reason the actual unit models in SC2 don't look like this screenshot.
 

prwxv3

Member
What, are you going to start crying like a baby because I said some games looked like Wii games?

Name some games that don't look like Wii games please. I'm still waiting.



How doesn't it?

If you're going to claim that Pikmin 3 looks like a PS1/PS2 game you lose the right to whine when someone says that Uncharted looks like an Apple 2 game.

This makes no sense.
 

Margalis

Banned
You've really raised the level of debate with your "I know you are but what am I." strategy. A bold but time-tested move.

Yes, because a debate in which people were agreeing that Pikmin looks like a PS1 game is a debate that should be approached very seriously. Obviously it's a thoughtful discussion grounded in logic and not complete idiocy that should be mocked.
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
More than the uprez Wii nature which is something it couldn't escape due to such humble beginnings, its imagining this game releasing in 2013 without a comprehensive online mode that gets me. It speaks of just how far behind the curve Nintendo's development teams are due to management not forcing them ever further into this "new" millennium.
 

Darryl

Banned
Game looks nice, textures aren't the best but it's not really a big deal. I'm not finding these screens as offensive as some of you are, the art is pretty much kept in tact and I have no doubt that the full environments will look fantastic in the end.

yea i don't see what people are complaining about either. maybe people are just looking for something to pick at. the textures don't even look bad unless you're looking at a close-up or something.
 

JordanN

Banned
Yes, because a debate in which people were agreeing that Pikmin looks like a PS1 game is a debate that should be approached very seriously.
So is this what you're so angry about it?

Not even the originals look like that dude and I don't think it's been argued Pikmin 3 goes below that.
 

Speevy

Banned
Yes, because a debate in which people were agreeing that Pikmin looks like a PS1 game is a debate that should be approached very seriously. Obviously it's a thoughtful discussion grounded in logic and not complete idiocy that should be mocked.

I don't recall anyone saying it looks like a PS1 game, but reasonable people are saying that as a current gen. (PS3/360) game, it is lacking.

You don't have to introduce all of these criteria to make the game appear better looking than it is.

Truthfully, the main problems are the image quality, which should not be an issue in this day and age and the ground textures.

Here's a game that has tons of characters on screen at the same time, but that is NOT the best looking game on a system.

Ratchet-and-Clank-Future-A-Crack-In-Time_2009_09-14-09_07.jpg



Do you see how relatively crisp that image is compared to Pikmin 3? The art design really shines.

It's not even necessary to post something like this.

2-1.jpg



We're reaching a point in the generation where games come from everywhere. There are $10 games on the PSN that have cleaner graphics than Pikmin 3. You don't have to get offended on account of this disparity.
 

Margalis

Banned
Here's a game that has tons of characters on screen at the same time, but that is NOT the best looking game on a system.

Looks like a Wii game.

I can do this forever. It's not hard.

This is a not a debate you can win when from the get go you make it clear that no statement is too ridiculous. It seems a bit lame to make obviously hyperbolic statements then complain when some hyperbole is thrown your way.

Edit: Check out the jaggies on that bottom-left orb thing!
 

mattchuuu

Neo Member
Truthfully, the main problems are the image quality, which should not be an issue in this day and age and the ground textures.

Here's a game that has tons of characters on screen at the same time, but that is NOT the best looking game on a system.

That Ratchet and Clank picture is showing only synthetic materials. If you look at the textures on that image, they are weak, but synthetic material can be rather smooth and homogenous. Nature, especially up close, is less forgiving on our eyes. If you look at an outdoors image of A Crack in Time, you'll see ground textures that are much, much worse than Pikmin 3.

 
yea i don't see what people are complaining about either. maybe people are just looking for something to pick at. the textures don't even look bad unless you're looking at a close-up or something.
I am bummed because I want to be wowed by Nintendo's visuals. :\

Trust me, I'm a huge Pikmin fan, I hope this thing does well, but damn it's been in development for like 9 years so I think fans can pick at it all they want.
 

Speevy

Banned
It doesn't seem as though you'll ever be convinced. If those graphics are fine for you, enjoy. I hope Nintendo finally realizes the artistic potential of its great IPs.
 

ohlawd

Member
It doesn't seem as though you'll ever be convinced. If those graphics are fine for you, enjoy. I hope Nintendo finally realizes the artistic potential of its great IPs.

Don't worry. A Pikmin 3 HD re-release is on the way after 5 years.
 

Darryl

Banned
I imagined that, but what media we have that prove that the final version is going to be 60 frames?

we had a thread on it before. dunno what media in particular you'd be lookin for as the only other thing that'd prove it would be a video, and it's not like lifting the fps in a final product is unheard of.
 

mattchuuu

Neo Member
It doesn't seem as though you'll ever be convinced. If those graphics are fine for you, enjoy. I hope Nintendo finally realizes the artistic potential of its great IPs.

At what cost? What would it take to overhaul every texture from its Wii origin? Looking at historical pikmin sales, would it be profitable to do so?
 

Yamauchi

Banned
I am sure the game will be great, but there is no reason for it to look like that. It is not a difficult task to port an engine and then improve the resolution of its ground textures.
 

Speevy

Banned
That Ratchet and Clank picture is showing only synthetic materials. If you look at the textures on that image, they are weak, but synthetic material can be rather smooth and homogenous. Nature, especially up close, is less forgiving on our eyes. If you look at an outdoors image of A Crack in Time, you'll see ground textures that are much, much worse than Pikmin 3.

Did you really think about this before you posted it?

textures_zps57c9902c.png
 

Birathen

Member
My father died in the last console war. He was killed by stray polygons during a Lolgraphix-raid on the Wiistern front. Even thou he fought for the Sonynation I have been able to look past these traumatic events and.. *sobs* go multiplat all the way(I know, I have no consolepride).

This game looks crazy fun. I never played the earlier ones but does it play like the Nintendo land attraction? Anyhow, unless this game sucks in some wierd way This is preorder material.
 

Margalis

Banned
If you look at an outdoors image of A Crack in Time, you'll see ground textures that are much, much worse than Pikmin 3.

Look at the texture seams on those rocks in the background! LOOK AT THEM!

Ok, being serious now: those really are some obvious and ugly texture seams!

The rocks in the background look terrible in general. There is a lot of stretching and wonky UVs, and on some of the rocks the texture is stretched by like a factor of 20 or so horizontally. So I guess what I'm saying is, Ratchet and Clank looks an awful lot like a Genesis game.

The big "crack" in the rock face is just a super-stretched seam!
 

ohlawd

Member
My father died in the last console war. He was killed by stray polygons during a Lolgraphix-raid on the Wiistern front. Even thou he fought for the Sonynation I have been able to look past these traumatic events and.. *sobs* go multiplat all the way(I know, I have no consolepride).

This game looks crazy fun. I never played the earlier ones but does it play like the Nintendo land attraction? Anyhow, unless this game sucks in some wierd way This is preorder material.

Pikmin's a real time strategy game.

Get a 100 of your little horrors called Pikmin and command them to destroy giant shit.
Nintendo has to purposely make this game shit for it to be not fun.
 

mattchuuu

Neo Member
Did you really think about this before you posted it?

It was established in page 1 of this thread that the texture clarity depends on the angle of the surface area to the viewing point, due to the lack of anisotropic texture filtering. You're playing this game almost entirely looking top-down, where that very surface area would look defined, and nothing like that. The screen shots are giving us non-gameplay angles.

Also, Pikmin 3 has much better water than that, don't you agree?
 

Speevy

Banned
Well, Ratchet's water isn't really meant to be water for the purpose of player interaction, but yeah Pikmin 3's looks better than what you see in that screenshot.
 
It was established in page 1 of this thread that the texture clarity depends on the angle of the surface area to the viewing point, due to the lack of anisotropic texture filtering. You're playing this game almost entirely looking top-down, where that very surface area would look defined, and nothing like that. The screen shots are giving us non-gameplay angles.

Also, Pikmin 3 has much better water than that, don't you agree?

Then maybe Nintendo should release gameplay shots that look better if they want to convince more people to spend $60 on their game.
 

Margalis

Banned
The Ratchet games in general look very good IMO. But it's very easy to see lots of issues in them if you want to.

It's not hyperbole to say that the texture work in those rocks is in places beneath Gamecube level in terms of texel to pixel ratio. The ratio on some of those rocks is like 1 texel for every 40 pixels.

There's no way you can honestly claim that those rocks are not a technical disaster. But the game still looks good, because some texture stretching and seams on background rocks doesn't make a game look like a Gamecube game.
 

mattchuuu

Neo Member
Then maybe Nintendo should release gameplay shots that look better if they want to convince more people to spend $60 on their game.

Does this do anything for you? It's more akin to an angle you'd use.


edit: I think these shots are meant to be playful, for the fans. They are all from a pikmin's point of view. It would be interesting if there was some way we could experience the game this way as well. For example, If at some point we had a devastating loss of guys somewhere on the map but we weren't present to see what happened, we could watch replay footage at the end of that day from the first-hand account of the pikmin who were there... until their screen goes black. As if losing any of them wasn't sad enough already!
 
Is it wrong that I want this to play more like Pikmin Adventure than Pikmin 1/2? Adventure is just so much more focused and streamlined and it takes away the additional stress of harvesting more Pikmin. I guess the core mechanics of Pikmin just stress me out too much to be fun. Having to manage of bunch of cute little things that are easily killed never sat well with me.
 
That idea only works if there are graphics on display that work well in certain contexts, while not in others.

For example, comparing the open world of Skyrim with the relatively smaller areas of Uncharted 2.

Pikmin 2 doesn't have a scope that excuses its graphics, sorry.
Sorry, but the scope of games like Uncharted 2, Motorstorm, Gears of War or Skyrim doesn't include potentially 100+ AI characters on screen or running close to 60fps (or even half that in some case really). Different priorities will lead to different graphical results, and that's fine. But it's also why Pikmin 3 should be compared to games that actually have similar design aims rather than literally every game you've mentioned.

So again, can you name a PS360 RTS that shames Pikmin 3 visually?


Wasn't this suppose to come out in the launch window, ending at the end of March?
This and several others, yes. The Wonderul 101, Wii Fit U and (outside Japan) Game & Wario.
 

Speevy

Banned
Sorry, but the scope of games like Uncharted 2, Motorstorm, Gears of War or Skyrim doesn't include potentially 100+ AI characters on screen or running close to 60fps (or even half that in some case really). .

So if Uncharted included some bugs that crawl around Nathan Drake's feet in a completely predictable pattern according to one button press or another, it would have the same scope?

Way to move the goal post. We've already established that other games have the scope. Now it's this nebulous Pikmin AI, as if game designers are scrambling to figure out the secret behind getting a small creature to follow, attack, or regroup.

No matter how much you try to make it seem otherwise Pikmin 3 is, like many Nintendo games, based on a philosophy of conservative development. Nintendo thrives by this philosophy, and it has actually served them well in the past. But they're not going to be winning any tech awards. They haven't since about 98.
 

L Thammy

Member
Is it strange that I actually really like the visuals in the game? Perhaps not on a technological level, but it appeals to me so much so that I got the NPC versions of both Pikmin games and played them for the first time.

Miyamoto taking the Pikmin 1 route makes me feel a lot better. Pikmin 2 was a horrible game. When people said the dungeons were the only bad part, I hadn't figured that 90% of the game would be in the dungeons.
 

Tookay

Member
Is it strange that I actually really like the visuals in the game?

That's because it focuses on good, charming art that advances the mechanics of the game over the "look at me!" shit-tastic technological wizardry being presented as exemplars in this thread.
 

ohlawd

Member
Is it strange that I actually really like the visuals in the game? Perhaps not on a technological level, but it appeals to me so much so that I got the NPC versions of both Pikmin games and played them for the first time.

Pikmin 1 and 2 were easy on the eyes. I'm glad Pikmin 3 is too. Maybe its the art direction or the use of colors but whatever it is, I want more of it.

Pikmin 2 was amazing. The time limit sucked. Get rid of time limits unless it's a racing game or something.

you mean the 30 day limit in Pikmin 1 that should have been cut by a third because 30 days was far too generous? You mean that time limit?
 

Darryl

Banned
So if Uncharted included some bugs that crawl around Nathan Drake's feet in a completely predictable pattern according to one button press or another, it would have the same scope?

Way to move the goal post. We've already established that other games have the scope. Now it's this nebulous Pikmin AI, as if game designers are scrambling to figure out the secret behind getting a small creature to follow, attack, or regroup.

No matter how much you try to make it seem otherwise Pikmin 3 is, like many Nintendo games, based on a philosophy of conservative development. Nintendo thrives by this philosophy, and it has actually served them well in the past. But they're not going to be winning any tech awards. They haven't since about 98.

The complexity in Pikmin's AI comes from a combination of the things you can control in your immediate area and also what they do when you're away from them.

From what I'm aware (it has been awhile since I played) they're capable of walking across an entire map, through potential object collisions (attacking objects, maneuvering around distanced Pikmin also carrying objects), in a fully player-predictable, bug-free manner. That's a much more complex scheme than you're making it out to be. The new one even looks like it has shortcuts and layers. I can't really think of many AI systems that are on this level, most of them are pretty simple.
 

Speevy

Banned
you mean the 30 day limit in Pikmin 1 that should have been cut by a third because 30 days was far too generous? You mean that time limit?

Yes, that one. Doesn't matter whether you would fail it. It only matters that it shouldn't have been there.

No reason for it. You want players to explore this world. You want them to have fun. Time limits put a number on how much fun you can have.

Game designers are on my side with this one. You'd see a timer in many games game back in the 80s, but nowadays there are barely any timers.
 

MarkusRJR

Member
Pikmin 2 was amazing. The time limit sucked. Get rid of time limits unless it's a racing game or something.
I agree with this. Maybe it's because I'm easily stressed but I could never enjoy my time playing Pikmin 1 because I felt too stressed to find stuff and work at a certain pace. There was never a chance for me to just casually explore and look carefully at my surroundings. It's not even that I wouldn't be able to finish it in time. I'd definitely be able to do it in the time limit even if I explored a lot. It's just that the looming and ominous time limit makes me work super hard so I don't end up fucked in the end, because that's happened a lot in games. I'm a huge fan of Pokemon and Animal Crossing so maybe I just like slower paced games, but still. Pikmin 2 was much more enjoyable for me.
 

ohlawd

Member
Yes, that one. Doesn't matter whether you would fail it. It only matters that it shouldn't have been there.

No reason for it. You want players to explore this world. You want them to have fun. Time limits put a number on how much fun you can have.

Game designers are on my side with this one. You'd see a timer in many games game back in the 80s, but nowadays there are barely any timers.

the bolded is the sad part. We need more games with time limits. And good time limits at that. I have fun with them in place so don't just write me off man :(
 

Speevy

Banned
The complexity in Pikmin's AI comes from a combination of the things you can control in your immediate area and also what they do when you're away from them.

From what I'm aware (it has been awhile since I played) they're capable of walking across an entire map, through potential object collisions (attacking objects, maneuvering around distanced Pikmin also carrying objects), in a fully player-predictable, bug-free manner. That's a much more complex scheme than you're making it out to be. The new one even looks like it has shortcuts and layers. I can't really think of many AI systems that are on this level, most of them are pretty simple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywj9FFGSKN0

$10 game.
 
Top Bottom