@BlueOcean that's definitively not true about performance mode. Draw distance is reduced so pop in is more frequent, lod is reduced, lower res textures are used, and those lighting and reflections are removed. Foliage and ground brush density are reduced. Maybe it's still better that 1s gfx (through the comparisons I've seen keep it very close) .... But there's very mucha downgrade beyond resolution. I only have 1080 displays, the difference is certainly visible.
I am however enjoying performance mode in cockpit and driver view
@NEStalgia Very slightly lower resolution textures and downgraded light reflections but you are overexaggerating since the beginning and now that I have played in both modes I have confirmed it. Pop in is more evident in FH3 than in FH4 in Performance Mode, I still play both games. Who would I trust, Playground, Digital Foundry and my own eyes or a person that is known for constantly having all kind of uncommon issues with Xbox hardware and software? Hm... No wonder you are the only one seeing all those issues.
@Ryu_Niiyama It is virtually impossible to break @NEStalgia, since he simply denies everything, and I am a Mad Titan, so the same goes for me. I just delay time, or erase an era altogether, to get whatever outcome is most favorable for me...
@BlueOcean You're welcome. Funny thing is, that I was actually wondering about the exact same thing, so the article was also an explanation for myself...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@NEStalgia Going up against Digital Foundry's conclusions AND Playground Games themselves?
I'm not entirely sure if I should count that as a new low or a new high, but I'm guessing the former...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@BlueOcean i do trust df. I haven't watched the video yet. Though i also trust what i see for myself in my own display: a 1080p pc monitor meant for graphics work. If absolutely nothing else, what we can conclude is that supersampling has tremendous impact. Though the stills of the low res textures and low density foliage really show this is more than "reduced to 1080p" what you are describing is what I expected to see, and wanted to see, but is not what i actually see. Both modes are cool but performance is simply not "the same settings rendered at 1080." Nobody with eyes (sorry ryu! ) Could conclude that.
Look. At. The. Trees.
In other news they really did something to external hdds on this os update. In instant on mode it just hammers them on for one second every minute or two, permanently. I'm going to have to turn off instant on, or unplug the externals every time i turn it off. Which means no downloads and patches automatically. Grrrrrrrr.i should know better to trusta Microsoft patch.
@ThanosReXXX i have the luxury of two consoles, two identical monitors in the house. Through the magic of game sharing, can run fh4 on both at once in the different modes. At 1080p (no 4k displays). It is not the same image. Period. I trust df, usually, but in this case were they testing quality mode at 1080p ss? Or on 4k?
The same woodland location in both modes will have more trees, more ground brush, and denser, more detailed foliage at the same location. While i do trust dfs testing, either that trust is clearly misplaced, or their test setup in this case is not testing the same output scenario.
Df may be great, but i can test myself, and the same scene in both cases..... At 1080 final on both cases, is simply not the same image. There's nothing to argue there. I'm looking at it myself right this very moment.
I'm not even sure how this degenerated into an argument. I made one post praising both modes and the game overall. Then another post citing that i didn't expect to prefer quality mode more but that the visual downgrade was noticible enough that quality, the default, mind you, is the preferable mode, and somehow you two went into witch Hunt mode for a week.
Now we're over analyzing the foliage in a racing game lol, we really are splitting hairs here aren't we. Game looks amazing no matter what and more importantly PLAYS great!
@redd214 which was my original point until those two started going into attack mode as though i just told them Forza sucks next to gran turismo or something
All I’ll say about Gorza Horizon 4 is that it’s NOTHING like the UK. For starters, the game should begin with the player driving around the council estates of Manchester or just Milton Keynes in some crappy cheap boy racer car with big thumping bass speakers then work their way up to become knighted by the Queen after a race against her around London, ending at Buckingham Palace
NEW WEBSITE LAUNCHED! Regular opinion articles, retro game reviews and impression pieces on new games! ENGAGE VG: EngageVG.com
So I started Forza Horizon 4 today (thank you game pass) and having never played a Forza Horizon before I feel a bit overwhelmed. So I hope you guys don't mind the noob questions.
First off the game looks gorgeous. I am playing it on the original Xbox One and it does look great. Controller are good too and I like the options they have to make it accessible to a variety of players.
Now comes my questions. The big one what do I do??? I did two races then some guy talked to me about being a stunt driver and now when I look at my map I see the two races I did and this stuntman thing that says story. Is that all I can view on the map? Is there nothing else of interest or does stuff unlock as I explore? Can I even explore or do I have to go straight to that story mission thing? Also I keep getting a message saying I need X amount of something to go to Autumn. Where do I get these points?
Also do I get more cars?
Apologies for all the noob questions but as I said I feel a bit overwhelmed.
RetiredPush Square Moderator and all around retro gamer.
@Tasuki Things unlock as you do more stuff. At first during Summer it bottlenecks you into doing specific stuff before opening up slightly. As you do things - pretty much anything - you're earning influence which is what progresses you through the tutorial seasons and acts as your experience throughout the entire game. Until you get a house you can't buy any cars, but you'll get to choose another one before that free house comes along.
OK, so this hard drive thing is really annoying. I have two xboxes in the house, each with two pairs of identical drives in identical enclosures. It's worked just fine all this time until the update, when both boxes started spinning up the drives every 40-90 seconds non stop (I probably have 1000 power cycles on the hard drives just from the weekend.)
So I googled around and found tons and tons of complaints about this problem from years ago. Apparently it's not a new problem. People said it went away with the dashboard update, but it took months. Apparently they've now reintroduced this problem. Some people (in the past) said they went through disabling auto-updates, disabling "turn off drives when off", shutting down fully, turning off the drives, rebooting, turning it all on, shutting down completely, rebooting, then firing up the drives. After a while of this, box #1 now seems to have calmed down, (so far) and no longer spins up the drives constantly, normal. Box #2, however even after going through that process and rebooting like 6 times (which is a very slow process) at first it didn't even shut the drives off at all. I just left it like that. It was as though it ignored the "turn off drives" setting and was now worse, leaving them permanantly 24/7 on. Apparently during the middle of the night though it went back to turning it off.....but then went back to hammering the drives every minute. So the same process to fix this problem on 2 identical setups seems to have maybe worked on one, and done nothing (more made it even worse) on the other, and it still hammers the drives, still rendering instant-on and/or auto updates useless. Which is frustrating when there's 200 games in need of updating. I'm hoping it will magically "solve" itself with some more rebooting, or that they'll issue another OS update this week to rectify it, which I'm not optimistic about. That's pretty unacceptable for a console...this is the kind of "magic bug" to troubleshoot I left PC because of. Nobody will ever convince me X1 is not just a Win10 Media Center box. (@grumblevolcano didn't I tell you? )
@Tasuki Yeah there's a lot of not just "events" but just "random things to do". The game will guide you to some. The racing series are kind of "campaign mode" but then as you do some it will pop up plenty of exhibitions just for fun. But some it waits for you to explore and find. There's billboards (little A-frame boards) to smash into, viewpoints to stop and look at when you get to them as a "photo op", you'll find things like cliffs you can jump off and go for distance, and speed traps (trying to get the 3-star speeds through them.) etc. It's not just race events but random things in the open world too (once you do a few they'll show up on the map.) It unlocks barn finds a little later where you search in a designated area for a hidden salvage car.
Basically the game has a "leveling" system RPG style with how much Influence you earn. It's structured like you're an up and coming pro amateur elite racer gaining fame and notoriety on social media etc through doing all these "style" things around the world.
@NEStalgia Oh, just give up and sell your Xbox. I don't know anyone with more issues on their Xbox than you, you are suffering so much, it's not worth it and people are worried about you. You don't deserved this.
As a side effect, the glory of better hardware and software on Xbox will no longer be sabotaged on this thread by you one minute after anything positive has been said about an Xbox console or game.
It's too dangerous for you to keep your Xbox. It might explode any minute! You'll be safer and happier on Push Square and the PS4 fan thread. Just be careful with your PS4, a single private message can "brick" your console and force you to restore to default settings, which means that you'll lose all your save files because Sony doesn't back them up for free. And no, it's not a joke like an exploding Xbox, but a real issue since last week that has not been totally fixed yet. Apart from that and credit card details being stolen nothing to worry on PlayStation Paradise, where nothing wrong ever happens and consoles are silent, beautiful and safe.
@BlueOcean Due to possible confusion in translations, I'll attempt to say this in your native tongue of British English: P* off, you git! Push Square? Who do you think I am? Cobalt? LOL
Seriously though, nah, I'm a multiplatform fan...no PS or XB fanboying from me. Some Nintendo fanboying probably....but that's at least tempered I honestly do like all the platforms and I honestly do get ticked when they start screwing up stuff that didn't need to be screwed up.
Sony earned my long time distrust of their network with the hacks and my CC being used to buy WoW characters in Singapore. But at can at least excuse that message thing: They didn't break it, hackers found an exploit and are abusing it. Their website can't be excused though.
Nintendo actually gets a slap on the wrist this month too. I keep hearing that 6.0 introduced some issue of spontaneous reboots while sleeping. Hasn't happened to me but it might involve sleeping while docked while internet connection drops. Apparently 6.1 doesn't fix it, but Nintendo's at least aware of it.
MS gets a special slap on the wrist though because they RE-INTRODUCED a problem that they'd already solved. Classic Windows. But that's the big big big no-no in software. Don't re-break things. It's weird though. Both machines with both identical pairs of drives started having the same problem with teh update. The one solved itself with rebooting and such. The other one won't resolve it at all. Strangely if I turn off "turn off drives" it actually does turn them off, then turns them back on again. If turn on "turn off drives" it doesn't turn them off for minutes after it shuts down, then does, but starts turning them on again. That's the real issue here: It's actively breaking my $300+ of hard drives unless I disable a ton of useful XBox features and go with power-save mode. Due to a re-introduced bug.
I'll have you know I actually ordered the "official" Seagate Game Hub (I actually paid money for a Seagate.....that's how bad the situation is.... ) to try. I was going to anyway just because it's a cheap 8TB for archive. If it's dog slow I'm not using it. But at least if I have to leave it on 24/7 I feel better running that one than an X300 performance drive that idles over 130F if I don't have the enclosure fan on. Not happy about having to buy that right now due to an MS bug breaking things in the update. But I can justify it as I wanted the archive space anyway. Even if it's in ugly white only. I suspect it will have the same problem. I dont' think it's a drive compatibility problem since the other drives have been fine for 6 months until the patch. But at least if I'm stuck running the drive 24/7 (which is better for it than constant spin up/down) that drive is cooler and quieter. GRRRRR
When I did PC, I had all kinds of strings of weird hardware and software failures. My last rig burned up TWO GPUs and they were almost never even used for gaming. Then two HDDs. Then a PSU. Like $1200 hardware in a $2500 super rig all burned up and I almost never even used it. Ryu and Thanos have heard all about that
" PlayStation Paradise, where nothing wrong ever happens and consoles are silent, beautiful and safe."
Unlike the X360 I had to pay attention to mainboard revisions and manufacture dates to be sure I wasn't getting one of the "guaranteed to fail!" models?
To be fair, PS hardware has never failed on me. OTOH to be fair, I've never really used my PS hardware nearly as much as my Nintendo and XB hardware.... Also to be fair, I really really wanted the SixAxis...no....DualShock 3 to fail....
@GrumbleVolcano Did I not tell you I was given the "born under a dark cloud" perk when my character was created? If you want to go to a casino and bet against the house, just make sure I'm the dealer: instant jackpot.
Edit: yes, it's abuse of smileys, but I figure when I go on a sarcastic rant someone's bound to take me seriously and get offended.
More fuel to the Fable 4 rumours. My guess is that Forza Horizon 4 will stay for a while with us, so take your time to enjoy it. If you need more, Forza Horizon 3, 2 and 1 are all available and 3 and 1 are X-enhanced on Xbox One. If you are anything like me you have hundreds of hours ahead on each game.
Because, apparently, Playground is focused on Fable 4 since the racer launched and will be for years to come.
@Ryu_Niiyama Ok so I'm finally getting to this one. I'll try to pare down the text walling. I'll try
Lore: Lore is dead. The Animus is now a simulator for whatever you want. The Brotherhood of Steel was there 35 years after the first vault opened on the East Coast. WWII had cyborg women on the front lines. Ganon turned into a giant pink spider after Hyrule went high tech because IDK. If you want consistent lore, 2018 video gaming is not the place to be I can buy that this model of animus is a simulator. Because why not? Actually it's more believable than the original technically though I thought the original was more interesting. Ok, so it's shoe-horned in to let people pick the protag's gender. But it would have made more sense if both of them were either separate characters like Evie/Jacob or if it was Alexa/Alexios, whichever gender you imagine them being, as a single character rather than two completely different individuals. Yeah, gender selectors kinda break the lore, maybe it's not the best mechanism, but generally it's probably better to just suspend some disbelief in lore to piece most of it together well for everyone.
I agree, they screwed the story with the DNA strand thing. I'd have been cool with "the hero Alex" (fill in the appearance blanks here.) It would have made more sense than the weird lore maipulations. But that's kind of the problem with trying to fill in lore in an evolving interactive entertainment franchise: It can't really ever make sense long term. And the more dots you connect the less it makes sense later.
In some ways I think the problem is "the books." I don't look at books, comics, films, animes, etc to build the "lore" of a game. I don't think 80% of the people buying the game do. They outsource that stuff out. It may be "canon' but they don't adhere to their own canon. For me (and most players) what's in the game and on the box is the story. As such, most people aren't going into this game with any expectation that Kassandra is the lead. Just the niche that read the side stories. For most people Alex is on the box, it's his game. or as a pick your own it's equally either, whoever you want. But personally I see now "Kass is lead" just going into it with the game itself without outside reference. Maybe Alex leads, maybe neither leads. But Kass definitely doesn't lead for most people that didn't read that. Of course the game is competing directly against Lara who's selling just fine and setting records, so it's not an industry thing. It's just a Ubi thing or AC franchise thing, certainly not a consumer expectations thing.
raises hand I'm one of those 6 that bought Liberation on Vita! I wonder who the other 4 were?
That said given how the industry is treating digital and unlimited broadband assumptions, it's not just gender demographic that they pander only to majorities....it's in all things. Internet is spotty almost everywhere but as long as the major metros are fine that's "the bulk of the game buying population" for them. Good enough! That's probably going to be a lot worse than just pandering to straight white males age 14-28, that actively cuts off access to huge market segments.
"Motivation for playing": Well I put men wanting to play Alex because they want to be him forefront. There's also the men that will want to play female characters to stare at them. Similarly there are women that will want to play Kass to be her. But don't underestimate the sheer number of women that will play Alex to stare. That's a thing. You once said (and I quote) that you "don't get hetero"...you really weren't kidding! Matter of fact I was showing the game to someone and explaining you could pick the male or female character (I was demonstrating so I picked Alex) and the response was "oh yeah, he's good.... (alarmed)I don't have to play as a woman do I??" IF the roles would have been reversed a thousand Kotaku-ites would have piled on the mysoginist pig for oogling attractive female video game characters. But the reality is: Alex is for (straight) women what original Lara was for men (ok, old Lara never actually interested me much, but I'm not the internet. ) Don't underestimate women playing the hunk to look at the hunk any more than men playing the babe to look a the babe. You and I may both be old skool prudes, but the rest of the world is apparently not. You don't play a female character and oogle her. I don't play female characters and oogle them. But lots of men do. And lots of women do the reverse. We're just weird. Also 95% of men will agree with you that women have terrible taste in men.
Still I wholly agree with you that a female character (in a historic) setting would have a very different adventure. But, again, that won't sit well with the PC/equality crowd who's narrative is "Women are men too." Any difference between the two is not acceptable. And they have the loudest voice on any gender issue, so that's what the money pays attention to. Don't rock the Kotaku crowd! In a modern game or future game, sure, that's enforced in the modern world. There are women in the marines, they're held to identical standard as men. There are women in the elite ops of the air force. They train with the men and must pass the same tests as the men. In a modern military setting, a female character is interchangeable with a male character...IRL as well. You're either a marine or not, you're either an elite ops officer or you're not. Gender separates nothing. There's few women. Because while the PC crowd pretends otherwise, most women can't match the same strength/endurance tests as as many men. But there are some. Set a game in 2018 and you're golden with any character interchanged with name and VA. Set it in 3024 and you're fine. Set it in Sparta........ yeah that doesn't work.
Shepard works. Both characters are Shepard. The interchangeability works for the time period. Whether it's a male or female shepard you're just playing Shepard. AC went with more of an RPG cardboard but not quite model, worse than EA's model. Jade Empire just had totally different characters. KotR had pure cardboard.
Controls: I don't know. I haven't plaeyd Odyssey enough. Origins though, it feels parkour-ish enough and assassin-y enough more times than not. I don't really brawl in it ever unless things go bad. Odyssey does seem more combat heavy though. Like Connor. Ugh! But it also has a stealth focus skill tree, so I'm thinking as you advance it can be more brawl or more stealth oriented. IMO Parkour was only truly great in the first game.
I do agree that true AC is dead. I do like the new series but I think of them separate. 1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations was the last actual AC. 3 was not AC (the worst of the bunch but they may fix that in the remaster!), 4 wasn't AC AT ALL it was a Skull and Bones Beta with an Assassin's DLC pack. Great pirate game, but not AC. Unity was probably good if you could get it to boot. I wouldn't know Syndicate....it was....it was a cool steampunk Hitman/Thief/thing? It did some things better, some things worse. Good game, but I never felt Victorian was the right setting for AC. Too modern. Origins though....I really like it. It returns to the roots of 1 in many ways, but also reboots it. It's "Real" AC, but in an MGSV sorto of way instead of a Prince of Persia way. I miss PoP but I can recogize AS's new direction as equally AC. Odyssey: Too soon to tell. So far it's very Origins but with some BotW. it's not the old AC, definitely. But that doesn't make it worse.
I've been waiting or AC: Japan since the teaser at the end of 1. I think that kept me from enjoying 2 as much as I should have....I was bummed it wasn't the hinted Japan.
"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." - Thomas Jefferson, quote just seems fitting.
In other, briefer, news just read Crysis 1, 2, and 3 are coming to BC today. Really enjoyed those games last gen great others can experience them as well!
"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." - Thomas Jefferson, quote just seems fitting.
In other, briefer, news just read Crysis 1, 2, and 3 are coming to BC today. Really enjoyed those games last gen great others can experience them as well!
Another one, the good is brief is twice as good. If only eight words are needed, he will use 800 words twice.
I had no idea about Crysis, thanks for posting it. I was always curious about them but my PC was not powerful enough to run them.
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