A fair and balanced comparison:
you might be the greatest poster NeoGaf has ever seen lol.
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Polygon COD: Ghosts Review update: (XBONE better version)
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you might be the greatest poster NeoGaf has ever seen lol.
3rdamention
Member
Its more because the Battlefield 4 review doesnt knock the Xbox One version for lower resolution or worse framerate, but COD PS4 has better resolution and worse framerate and gets knocked half a point.
Plus, its COD Ghosts people are arguing over. Its a pretty shitty game...In a month, looking back, thid will be embarassing.
It will be interesting to see what happens if COD ps4 gets a patch for framerate, and it works, what will Polygon do next.........
IW engine could be described as a "Frankenstein's Monster amalgamation", if the only other game engine to exist in the universe was Frostbite. As it stands in the game industry, IW engine is a highly-polished, highly efficient game engine capable of delivering AAA visuals at low latency to the satisfaction of millions of people and game critics year after year.
The fact that multiple studios can easily use it, modify it, and produce blockbuster games from it every year is a pretty objective measure of a good game engine. Your personal opinions of Call of Duty aside
Puppet Shadow
Member
Do both Infinity Ward and Treyarch use the same engine? That might explain things.
Edit: Shosai answered this above, thanks. I guess Treyarch are just better at engine work.
We know Bethesda knowingly released a severely gimped version of Skyrim on PS3, as a developer on Fallout New Vegas admitted the game engine caused the PS3 to run out of memory, causing horrific slowdown later in the game. They knew this.
Did Sony sue them for it? No. Why?
Because Sony needs big game studios as much as they need Sony.
Insane Metal
Member
ElTorro is gonna end up killing me, lol.
What? Huh? This entire thread exists because the IW engine is a horribly-polished, extremely inefficient game engine that delivers AAA visuals from 2008 to the dismay of critics that have panned this game as a disappointment.
Boogalogist
Member
Lol. Polygon will be Polygon. No surprise they find any excuse to dock points off PS4 games.
JacksUsername
Member
While Polygon isn't my favorite site, and I think collectively they have the worst twitter public image of all the gaming sites, the majority of the reactions in this thread really feel overblown and definitely smack of a 'let's attack this site since my platform of choice didn't get the higher score" attitude.
First, it's not like their frame rate assessment is unique to Polygon. As others have pointed out, it's been mentioned in other impressions. Other reviews and hands on have conflicted with this as well, but it's definitely not isolated to Polygon.
Second, not everyone has such a sharp eye for technical differences between games. And while it's definitely an advantage to be able to identify the graphical fidelity between devices, whether it should be a requirement is debatable. Now if you run a site like Digital Foundry, yes, of course it should be required, but just as digital foundry focuses on the technical performance of a game, there should also be a place for reviewers who are more focused on analyzing the mechanics and systems of a game. As long as they can articulate their reasoning, it shouldn't be dismissed, even if they may not be able to identify resolutions with 100 percent accuracy. I guess that's why the reviewer's comment didn't bother me, since by saying that he was already looking for a sharper image due to the knowledge of the system resolutions, he's basically admitting that resolutions are not his specialty.
Regarding the whole resolution-gate thing, I think that it's completely overblown and that may lead to the opinions I've built on this thread. A higher resolution is definitely appreciated, and given the option, I'll try to always go with that. However, working in video, I gotta tell you that most people have no idea about resolutions. It's common knowledge that 1080 is better than 720, but if you isolate a video and show it to someone, most of the time they wouldn't be able to correctly define the resolution. I've had people compliment me on my HD video when it's actually a 360p video with a high bitrate. It frustrates me, since I try to make things as sharp as possible, but to most people out there, they will notice a drop in frame rate more frequently than they'll be able to identify a resolution.
I think there's a lot of a laughable and embarrassing things that go on in the 'games journalism' industry, but to be so aggressive to a site based on a review difference of .5 comes across as really immature, especially over a game that's seemingly just average in the first place.
First, it's not like their frame rate assessment is unique to Polygon. As others have pointed out, it's been mentioned in other impressions. Other reviews and hands on have conflicted with this as well, but it's definitely not isolated to Polygon.
Second, not everyone has such a sharp eye for technical differences between games. And while it's definitely an advantage to be able to identify the graphical fidelity between devices, whether it should be a requirement is debatable. Now if you run a site like Digital Foundry, yes, of course it should be required, but just as digital foundry focuses on the technical performance of a game, there should also be a place for reviewers who are more focused on analyzing the mechanics and systems of a game. As long as they can articulate their reasoning, it shouldn't be dismissed, even if they may not be able to identify resolutions with 100 percent accuracy. I guess that's why the reviewer's comment didn't bother me, since by saying that he was already looking for a sharper image due to the knowledge of the system resolutions, he's basically admitting that resolutions are not his specialty.
Regarding the whole resolution-gate thing, I think that it's completely overblown and that may lead to the opinions I've built on this thread. A higher resolution is definitely appreciated, and given the option, I'll try to always go with that. However, working in video, I gotta tell you that most people have no idea about resolutions. It's common knowledge that 1080 is better than 720, but if you isolate a video and show it to someone, most of the time they wouldn't be able to correctly define the resolution. I've had people compliment me on my HD video when it's actually a 360p video with a high bitrate. It frustrates me, since I try to make things as sharp as possible, but to most people out there, they will notice a drop in frame rate more frequently than they'll be able to identify a resolution.
I think there's a lot of a laughable and embarrassing things that go on in the 'games journalism' industry, but to be so aggressive to a site based on a review difference of .5 comes across as really immature, especially over a game that's seemingly just average in the first place.
99% chance they'll change the score. They did that like 3 times with the Sim City review
A 7/10 doesn't say "horrible", even if you do discount every other game made by every previous iteration of the IW engine
EDIT: Nor would I frame infrequent dips below 60 FPS as "extremely" inefficient. Exactly how many PS4 games live up to that standard at this point? One?
This is exactly why I'll never buy SLI. This has been happening on and off with practically every MAJOR developer, and video card manufacturer since 3dfx Voodoo first introduced SLI. I'm sorry to hear that, but these things almost always get fixed.
Ever since SLI came out with the Voodoo2 and later with nVidia and later again with Crossfire, SO MANY games don't work right until about a month later. You can say I'm wrong if you want, but many many many games on launch have problems with dual GPU solutions.
Voodoo2 SLI problems
Unreal Tournament Voodoo 2 SLI problems
If I had the time, I could go on and on for a VERY long time from games from 1999 all the way up to 2013, and not even CLOSE to just Infinity Ward. All the major developers and card manufacturers.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=524733&highlight=unbias
https://twitter.com/botherer/status/312249489832411136
Pretty good reason not to take the guy seriously, at all. He is the biggest "double down" talking head, the game press has.
Edit: To add
If the Xbox one REALLY has no FPS dips and the Ps4 does(even if it is minor) the Xbox one version will be the better version for multiplayer. That said, that article is clearly trying hard to downplay the differences that you can see, to the point of it being just silly. Still though, I think the focus of all this anger really should be directed to the game more then anything. The loss of the Call of Madden yearly release is getting stale and needs a kick in the ass. Hopefully this will help in lost sales, which will hopefully make activision rethink their business plans with COD, since the games have been good.
phosphor112
Banned
Lol, was reminiscing about that movie (and game) just a couple days ago.
Also, what exactly would they sue for? Even if Sony were willing, I'm unaware of any requirement for Bethesda to not gimp Skyrim. Sony's only real recourse is to keep them off the platform, and they'd probably rather have Skygimp than nothing.
LittleJohnny
Banned
Yeah, but they'll probably lower it to take a stand against all these patches or something.
Meh, I've been using SLI for years and I love it. Rarely have problems. I will go SLI again.
Infinity Ward's incompetence will not sway me. The correct decision would have been to "Not buy Ghosts", not switch to a single GPU setup.
Parapraxis
Member
The IW engine looked good with COD 4, World at War, and maybe MW2, even then it was showing it's age, you really have wool over your eyes if you think it still holds up in regards to newer engines.
Aizu_Itsuko
Member
I'm dying!A fair and balanced comparison:
DarkoMaledictus
Tier Whore
Lol, how does a shit ass looking game get bad framerates on next gen and pc's is beyond me. Activision should of invested some of those billions into actually bringing some talent into IW... GEESH!
You can have my internet. A good day to you Sir.
Battlefield 4 is the elephant in the room with a gigantic sign on it that says "The Call of Duty engine doesn't cut it, anymore".
They came out a week apart, I bought them both, I'm playing them simultaneously. It's impossible for me not to directly compare, and why shouldn't I? They're both modern games that I paid $60 for.
If a game engine's value was measured purely by it's ability to spit out a high polygon count, than Crystal Tools would be the best engine made this generation, and we know how that turned out.
DarkoMaledictus
Tier Whore
Dude, if you got an engine with shit graphics, shit performance and the competition runs far more polys and far faster you are in a shit ton of trouble regardless of how you look at it...
Parapraxis
Member
So, what exactly do you consider to be the properties of a good game engine, if not putting out higher resolution, framerates, FOV, and textures etc?
Sounds like you care more for gameplay, which is fine. But please don't try to sit there and tell me a game engine's objective capabilities don't matter.
Do you work for IW or something, jesus.
toddhunter
Member
Nice post, but that still largely misses the point of resolution gate. Even if people don't notice the difference between 720p and 1080p it still represents a big difference in the capabilities of the two systems.
For an individual game it may not make all that difference. Where it will matter is when games are matched on resolution and presumably the PS4 has a lot more power in reserve to dedicate to other tasks.
For example in this case, you could presume they could drop the PS4 version down to 720p and get it running rock solid at 60fps or even higher right? (assuming it isn't a bug of some kind). It doesn't change much when looking to play the game, but it should be a significant point when deciding on a purchase of the console.
I'd normally agree and wouldn't even dream of suggesting a console maker would sue a dev over something of this nature because well shit It reflects poorly on dev more than anything. But in this case COD is a launch title for each system and is the second largest selling franchise behind GTA and is THE game for most casuals who despite what we as serious gamers like make up a wide majority of the intall base of any system so any negative difference could be the difference between cementing the lead in market share in the US or not So it really would be a huge issue if it were to be done with intent. Now all of that said my initial comment about a lawsuit was sheer snark at the thought of Activision opening them selves up to something like that to the ends of whatever conspiracy people could concoct.
mitchman
Gold Member
Dent is also the guy that was absolutely certain BF wer4e running in 1080p native on Xbone, he had seen it with his own eyes:
https://twitter.com/TheKevinDent/status/395008003071418368
https://twitter.com/TheKevinDent/status/395040125534498816
So yeah.
After Modern Warfare 3 came out, I actually expected them to purchase Sledgehammer and merge them into Infinity Ward, or something like that.
The relationship between Sledgehammer and Activision is pretty ambiguous, at this point, as far as I can tell. I'm sure they're working on next years CoD game right now, but they aren't officially owned by Activision, right?
DarkoMaledictus
Tier Whore
Yep totally agree, its all about that extra power. Its not going to go just in resolution... these first games its pretty much the only place it could be used with so little time till launch...
Wolves Evolve
Member
He is so so vile and does this all the time. Why he gets quoted all the time here baffles me. Current level of fame: Emily Rogers 2013. Deserved level of fame: Emily Rogers 2010.
A quick google search shows tons of games with stability, crash, and performance issues, at launch, sometimes working less well with SLI than single card solutions. This is not exclusive to IW.
When it works it's great, when it doesn't and you have your new shiny game right out the box and it doesn't, well...
id / RAGE: http://forums.evga.com/tm.aspx?m=1264102
Epic / Gears of War: http://forums.epicgames.com/archive/index.php/t-660193.html
SLI sometimes requires waiting, even from the big guns.
Higher than what? Frostbite? Defining good is subjective, but my definition of a decent engine is certainly broader than "having a higher resolution, framerate, FOV, and textures than Frostbite".
DarkoMaledictus
Tier Whore
Not sure, but it seems like a very poor judgement call to have this type of franchise success and not even build a new engine that out muscles the competitions.
Its not by resting on your laurels you remain on top, its by continuously striving for greatness!
Colbert
Banned
DarkoMaledictus
Tier Whore
If I notice its on I can't not watch it
Joe Shlabotnik
Banned
No matter how many times it's already been said, always bears repeating: Kevin Dent is the worst.
Developers like Crytek and DICE have been working on updating their engines to make them "next-gen ready" for years (at the expense of current-gen performance, Crysis 2/3,BF3/4 are kind of a joke on current-gen), and now the fruits of their labors will pay off.
Activision has been pumping out sweatshop CoD games year after year without any chance to significantly upgrade the engine and now they are being properly left in the dust.
NoMoreTrolls
Banned
CosmicGroinPull
Member
"Can't tell the difference"?
Awesome. Were they playing on a 720p TV? And sitting 10 feet away? XD
Awesome. Were they playing on a 720p TV? And sitting 10 feet away? XD
DarkoMaledictus
Tier Whore
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