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You know what? Sometimes I'm OK with slowdown

I like it when it's slowdown that is worked into the game and NOT terrible frame rates to do bad optimization. I get your point in the OP but when in a big battle in a war game or large scale mid evil type game, the last thing I don't want to be is in control due to the horrible unresponsiveness of bad frame rates.
 
Shadow of the Colossus when a colossi stomps his foot down.

I didn't know that was a framerate issue until years later. I thought it was intentionally slowed down, and I missed it in the HD collection.
 
Ravensmash said:
Can't say that it always irritates me or has a hugely negative impact, but to say that technical problems are an awesome feature that makes things more epic and helps gameplay?

lol, completely disagree
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Serious question: Have you ever played any version of Bangai-O?

You aren't really playing it right or experiencing the full game unless whatever console it's running on is buckling under the pressure.
 
Slowdown > dropped frames

One is pleasant and at least makes the game still somewhat playable and possible to survive, the other just gives you the middle finger, kicks you in the balls and hands you a Game Over screen.
 
Raging Spaniard said:
Those two words dont mean [...] I prefer

[...] it actually made it better.
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That's the same thing... Unless you don't prefer better experiences. Which would be weird(er).

But yeah as others said, instances of lowered framerate can be passable or beneficial for gameplay, like in shmups (not that you can't have a good shoot em up without slowdown either, just design the bullet patterns accordingly), but dropped frames like most 3D games these days do, no way, it's always awful and as far from a slow motion effect as something can possibly be, a sequence with dropped frames will last the exact same time as the same sequence in high frame rate, just be an unplayable mess with over half the feedback (assuming a drop to less than 30 fps, from the ideal 60) missing in the process.

And of course even where the slow down is intentional it would still be better if it was high frame rate slow motion instead.
 
I felt the same way about Red Faction: Guerrilla. When you were in the heavy loader walking through buildings and flailing its arms around, watching the buildings fall down in pieces around you, while a horde of EDF guys ran around and shot at you, and the frame rate chugged to like 10FPS, that shit was AWESOME.
 
The best kind of FPS drop is when you're doing something insanely epic and everything just slows down to a crawl, for example when using some crazy magic attack or something in an RPG.

Golden Sun does that well.
 
Giolon said:
Maybe it's from the fact that I grew up playing those old NES games and the like, but when something happens that kills the framerate in a game (as long as it's not just a constant poor framerate), then my mind still registers "OMG, what's happening on screen right now is so awesome that it can't be handled by the hardware!"
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Yeah I have the same, I never got why people were so annoyed with occasional framedrops, figured it was just gaf being gaf. Most of the times the truly epic stuff do not require much in terms of quick reflexes anyway. Then I played Far Cry 3 and it slowed down while nothing epic was happening. Then I understood.
 
Alextended said:
That's the same thing... Unless you don't prefer better experiences. Which would be weird(er).
Click to expand...

Thats not even close to the same thing. Smooth framerates make pretty much everything better. The moments Im talking about, if the framerate would have stayed intact they would still be cool but having the framerate drop gave me an alternate way to enjoy the situation, one that I did not expect to enjoy.

Im surprised its that hard to get that point across.
 
I'm surprised you think "it makes it better" (in this or that instance) and "I prefer it" (in this or that instance) aren't the same, but again, I don't understand why someone wouldn't prefer something he believes is better (I didn't quote "alternate" there).
 
comfy couches, angular angles and now... epic slowdowns?


imbdpRHsNhO2T.gif
 
I totally hear you, man. The end of Armored Armadillo's stage in Mega Man X would feel so wrong without that slowdown.

I'm pretty sure that as a kid I thought it was intentional, to make the action more dramatic.
 
I never like slowdown but sometimes the game is good enough to forgive such minor faults.The last story wich i am playing at the moment has quite some stutter too but i don't mind.
 
Slowdown is not bullet time.

You try and control your aim with dropped frames and janky weirdness. . . not good. That's exactly what happened in the OP's example when I played that scene.

So no.
 
Neuromancer said:
I felt the same way about Red Faction: Guerrilla. When you were in the heavy loader walking through buildings and flailing its arms around, watching the buildings fall down in pieces around you, while a horde of EDF guys ran around and shot at you, and the frame rate chugged to like 10FPS, that shit was AWESOME.
Click to expand...

Really? I never noticed this playing the game because I was too busy thinking about how fantastic the destruction was. I didn't mind the frame rate drops when things got crazy in that game. But I completely agree. The destruction engine in that game makes you feel like a complete bad ass regardless of whatever frame rate it ran in.

I was never really bothered all that much by the frame rate drops in the Saint's Row games because they gave me a moment to take in the chaos that was happening all around me. And in retrospect, the frame rate drops in Shadow of the Colossus and Odin Sphere were pretty cool even though they were unintentional.

Whenever I landed the killing blow in Odin Sphere, the frame rate would drop at that moment before it connected and then get back up to speed to connect the hit and watch the enemy fall backwards to their death in glorious way. Heck even the frame rate in Blighttown in Dark Souls wasn't that bad.
 
If you have to be in control of a scene like that then no, it sucks. But if it's like a small scene that doesn't require any interaction it can be pretty cool.
 
I've got the arcade slowdown option on for all the Cave games on my phone. Nothing like watching the game chug under waves of bullets. It actually helps make dodging everything a little more manageable too. The definition of epic slow down.

Other slow down sucks.
 
Honestly I'm not even surprised by things like this topic anymore when the other day on neoGAF someone said that neoGAF was being unfairly critical about the Wii U UI and that they wished the loading on the Wii U UI was a little longer, if only so they can listen to the music some more

after that sort of comment really.. anticipating framerate slow down so you can pay attention to an action scene seems almost typical

I'd rather the framerate not be shit, of course, but I am old fashioned that way
 
Reasons why console gaming is better than PC gaming according to GAF

1. Comfy couch
2. Lower resolution so things don't look as angular.
3. Cinematic framerates and unintentional slowdown.

I guess what they say is true, there's a fan for everything. Can't wait for people to start saying they prefer a bunch of jaggies over a clean image, and they prefer blurry textures over some good anisotropic filtering.
 
Bangai-O series is the only games where I have ever enjoyed slowdown, and in fact went out of my way to see how much slow down I could cause.
 
OP's just saying there are moments where slowdown unwittingly makes a cool moment cooler. It really only works in certain scenarios, of course.
 
10 fps does not mean slow motion.

If an even takes place in 2 secs, it will take 2 secs at 10fps or 60fps. It is a sampling issue.

fps = frames per second, event time does not change
 
Pinko Marx said:
Its not bad all the time. Its something I can overlook if the game is good enough. In something like Shadow of the Colossus it never bothered me. In Odin Sphere for the PS2 it did, but I played through the game and enjoyed it despite it. in ZoE2 it kinda irked me, still love the game though.
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Odin Sphere slowdown made me stop the game on the PS3. Does this still happen on the emulated version? The fight with the dragon.
 
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