Jay said:Metal Gear Solid 4? The game that may as well be a movie for the first 20 minutes? If that's your idea of a quality game then it's no wonder the PS3's market share is so bad. MGS4 is my idea of a Final Fantasy equivalent. You spend so much time watching what's happening that you don't really play a game as much as you sit and watch a movie.
I don't recall commenting on the quality of the gameplay. I merely used it as a technical reference to illustrate that games made from the ground up to take advantage of the PS3's power aren't easily ported to the 360.
I also find it odd that you're commenting on a game you most likely haven't played all the way through. Kind of a trend it seems, given your quick loss of interest in Oblivion due to unrealistic rat fighting. Do you turn off movies if the first ten minutes fail to entertain you? Do you toss books aside when the first chapter isn't what you were expecting?
You called it a quality game. When I'm looking at quality, I look at the visuals as well as the gameplay. I watched a friend "play" MGS4 for about 20 mins. He started at the beginning. Right around the 4th cut scene, in a room full of gamers, we were all shouting "enough already! let us play!". The first 20 mins seem to be mostly cut scenes that couldn't be bypassed. I really have no interest in playing through a game that's probably going to stop every so often and play a cut scene that I can't bypass. I absolutely can't stand that about games.
EDIT: It's possible that we were able to bypass some of the cut scenes. I honestly can't recall it that clearly. My main point is that there were so many in the beginning of the game that it just got stupid. When he first started to play, he literally moved 5 ft (in game) and another cut scene started. That was just lame.
When I start a game, I do that to play it, not watch 20 mins of opening video that's trying to explain some kind of background story. To top it off, even if the game wants to show that much video, at least let me bypass it. I watched the guy try to bypass it with every key on the controller and nothing worked. That's why we eventually turned it off and turned a movie on instead.
I don't turn off movies or stop reading books because they are meant to be watched and read. A game, by its very nature, is meant to be played, not watched. Maybe that's why Portal was voted Game of the Year by a few gaming magazines, even though there's no multiplayer and you don't shoot anyone.
Have you even played COD? A headshot does immediately kill your opponent (at least COD4 does). If that's not how it is on PS3, then that's a shortcoming of that port. In the PC world, a headshot is an instant kill and has been since games like DOD. Maybe you weren't playing on Expert though. Maybe the PS3 doesn't have multiple difficulty levels. Most of the time the computer AI won't even take a shot at your head since it's a small target. I can assure you, on the PC, when playing online, headshots are instant kills. Yes, it's a little frustrating, but unless you're sitting still for long periods of time, you'll be difficult to hit.
I've been playing online a long time and a headshot is in no way a universal one-hit kill, nor is it always a one-hit kill in COD4 with all weapons. All arms get damage multipliers on headshots, but that doesn't ensure instant death, particularly with smaller arms. Perhaps a headshot is always an instant kill with any weapon in Expert mode, but that's not the game's default and not what I was referring to. Yes, the PS3 has different difficulty levels.
From what I've played, it's not that you can't get an instant kill with a pistol, it's just really hard. If you walk right up behind someone and put a gun to their head (doesn't matter which one), you're going to kill them. But try doing that during the heat of combat and you'll likely never land a shot. I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion, so it's certainly possible.
All that's necessary for textures is to release high resolution ones. The same thing has been done in the PC world for ages. You simply download the "high-res" textures and boom, games instantly look better. If the developers have high res textures available, they could easily be downloaded for an instant game "upgrade".
You're assuming Nintendo's next console will be backwards compatible with the Wii. Seeing as the Wii was Nintendo's first console to incorporate backwards compatibility--and mostly because the hardware is so similar to the Gamecube's--I wouldn't count on that. Let's also hope Nintendo can be bothered to make some decent internal storage options available on their next console so this texture upgrade--which will never, ever happen on any Wii game ever--is possible.
Seeing as how not having an internal hard drive hasn't hurt them in the market, it wouldn't really surprise me if they didn't include one on the next system. Of course, hard drives are so cheap now that they could easily include one at very little cost.