Sometimes I think the folks from Razor 1911 would be better at making games than lots of big game companies today.

 

Because only people who can afford a 1500+ dollar gaming rig should be allowed to play PC games, right? :awesome

 

Mine was about 850 dollars, last year, bought using parts from a couple years before that. and I play most pc games that have come out recently on medium-high to HIGH.

For instance, I play Assassin's Creed Revelations on almost Max settings (only AA and Multisampling are at less than max.)

 

Bullshit.

My kids pc cost 300 bucks several years ago. It's cobbled together mother board, evga 8600 I got for 30$ off ebay, and whatever the AMD dual core was that came out in 2004/2005 with 4 gigs of RAM. It can play any iso-view game fully maxed with it's only issue being occasional frame lag if there is a fuck ton of mobs on the screen with particle effects, and that's more CPU limitation then anything. It plays Borderlands cranked up, Oblivion on medium (high in some areas), etc.

Needing a 2,000 gaming rig, or a 1500 rig with a upper mid range video card for good gaming isn't required anymore, as long as you have a mid range graphics card, and even those hold for YEARS not, not 10 months tops anymore. My 8800gtx from 2006 was playing most shit on high/ultra high up until last year when it finally went out, and I expect it's replacement, my gtx560ti, to last me at least the next 5 years unless I decide to move to 3d gaming, then I'll just need to buy another one for 200$. Most companies are being lazy as shit and making the games look like garbage to make it easier for them to make their console ports, saving money reusing the shit console textures for computers.

A Game like Diablo 3 is going to be only taxing from things like flame/particle effects, and whatever the hell way they decide to handle the networking aspect of it. The devs like to talk about playing it on a laptop, a medium known for nearly every unit besides the specialty niche having integrated, or out right garbage, video cards. That right there rules out having to have even a medium end desktop to play it.

It's not graphically taxing at all going by the HD videos, and it can't be since they want to port it. Don't give me that "talking about it doesnt mean it'll happen" spiel either, they've been talking about how "great" the game plays with a 360 controller for years.


*shrug* just saying. No I don't think a dev should build a game to be a system breaker for high end machines only. Crysis did that, more from piss poor optimized code then graphics, and it's sales, which were still awesome, weren't what they could have been. But if you're going to talk nonstop about your new art direction constantly, and how blown away we're going to be at the graphics, for the last 4 years, I'm just a little bitter that what they brought to the table, was 4 years outdated, 4 years ago. Then again Diablo 2 didn't look great when it was brought to the table either, but at least at that time of it's launch computers were still pure shit, and nearly all of them had integrated video cards, with a few gigs of storage. No excuse by today's even super low end machines.

 

Xiph0: Tooncraft II: Wings of Liberty.

The zerg went from being badass motherfucking aliens...to something you'd see straight out of an 90's sci-fi movie. 'Nuff said.

 

Jesus it's like someone resurrected the hate on Wind Waker all up in this thread.

 

Out of thumbs, but basically what Xiph0's just said.

Pre-Warcraft 3 games were dark, grim, and fucking atmospheric.

Hell, even the early (and I mean early) Warcraft III alphas and betas had that style and atmosphere.

Then, it all changed.

The trouble is that Blizzard utterly failed to adapt to true-3D engines; what is supposed to be serious, ends up being a joke.

World of Warcrap's success only fucked things up further - it's all Blizzard knows how to make, now.

 

I never played any of Blizzard's games before Warcraft III, so I guess that's why I don't find any of them really offensive at all.

While WoW is definitely not what it used to be, and fuck knows about D3, Starcraft II is definitely one of the best games i've ever played though. Both SP and MP.

 

The cinematics are good - Blizzard have at least managed to keep one digital testicle intact...but the art style in-game is shit.

In order for it to work in that PoS engine, they had to dumb down the art direcion for all the units and structures, and that includes the ones that do not have a shit design in general (such as the sexalicious-Hydralisk).

This was basically proven by the early engine and alpha tests of Starcraft 2, where the units and structures were basically remade 3D ports of their original SC designs. This excluded scaling, which was another poor decision on their part, too.

Graphics don't make a game in its entirety...but they are a huge part of it.

 

SC wasn't great because of the direction of its art. It was great because it managed to balance 3 factions in a cohesive manner. SC2's priority was that. It managed to do a comparable job while changing the races quite a bit. And while the art took an annoying change the story stayed similarly good. Not sure why Blizzard's getting hate for SC2's art when that should be low priority for anyone playing that game seriously or just for the story.

D3's art is what it is. I'm not happy with it but I'm also not going to condemn the game for it. I'll do that when the talent system makes me hate playing for longer than an hour per week after a month of playing.

 

I understand what you are trying to put across, I just don't really agree with it. I like the art style.

No real idea what you mean by out of date though. Could they make the graphics really pretty? Yeah, they probably could. But they're not exactly bad, compared to similar games.

 

This. Blizzard is THE company to beat when it comes to in game cinematics, no one else even comes fucking close. The Warcraft 3 cutscenes, jesus christ.

 

Hmmm, so I just got a Beta invite a few hours ago. I'll get to see firsthand whether it's worth it, so that's nice.

Well, once it finishes downloading...

 

Got a beta invite, have been playing the shit out of it (200MBps connection <3). All I can say is the game is awesome.

 

I was watching the WoW cinematics, the ones in game (especially after killing deathwing) and I sadly was not impressed. I hope the quality goes up again for D3, because those were one of the best parts of the blizzard experience.

 

...Wait, what? Did you even play Warcraft 3? How about Starcraft II?

 

It's not the quality that was the problem. I just watched it to see what you meant, it's that they kept the art style of the cartoony game, and it didn't transfer well to cinematic that tried to take the cartoon and make it look more realistic. Any W3 cinematic still beats almost anything being put out today in sheer epicness. I can't say about SC2, haven't check it out yet, so many it beats W3

 

Arrggghh. 100k beta invites went out.

And of course I wasn't one of them. Shiiit.