Halo 3!

[asleepathewheel]

This makes me wish that I picked up more than halo3 and NCAA08 at the store when I got my 360, I'm glad that there are better looking games out there.

[DrSpike]

Bungies' responses have been a bit defensive but I'm pretty much buying it - the lighting is well handled and the games runs very smoothly indeed even when there is a lot on the screen (remember with GoW & Bioshock it's mostly smaller firefights).

It's not killer graphics to be sure, but they are good and tbh I only really notice graphics when they are so poor they begin to make a game less fun to play. That clearly isn't the case here.

[Asher]

What is HD? PGR3 is also 640p, so was Tomb Raider IIRC. Not every game needs to be rendered at 720p to be called HD.

They made some curious decisions with their engine (rendering duplicate framebuffers for every frame for lighting), but to call it not HD is ridiculous.

It also depends highly on the TV you're viewing it on. I've viewed a lot of the screenshots, and then the videos, as well as the gamespot Halo 1/2/3 comparisons...there's no way you can't call this game HD.

Kuci: Of course GoW looks more detailed than Halo. It's a question of scale, Halo's engine is designed to run on a much larger scale than the largely enclosed GoW. That means things like character models and building architecture get more detailed textures + more polygons on GoW because there's fewer of them.

Anyway, Beyond3D has been the forum to discover this and debate it in far more intellectual way here. If you want to whine about how it "is not teh HD", then I suggest you go join the kiddos at the Gaming Age Forum. If you want to discuss the merits of the innovative HDR approach (eg, sacrificing 20% of the pictures for the most realistic HDR implementation in games), then do that on Beyond3D. If you just want to whine about a game you've never played, then just shut up.

Edit: The Kotaku article is awful. Not only the "not HD" bit, but the reference of PGR3 running at "600p" for "frame-rate reasons" is not true -- there's a whole bunch of technical reasons behind it, and all of them fall in the realm of framebuffer size and the eDRAM on the 360. It's a similar reason for Halo 3. Not framerate reasons. Irresponsible journalism.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon


It plays fine, but what the hell is up with the graphics? How can this be HD? Anyone else noticed this?

Bioshock on the 360 looks so much better than Halo 3, so it can't be the console. In fact most of my 360 games look better than Halo 3 does.

Do you:
1) Use component cables
2) Use a computer monitor?

On Beyond3D, people who used these tend to ***** a helluva lot more than those users who used VGA/HDMI on a real HDTV.

What TV do you play it on?

[Asher]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Bungies' responses have been a bit defensive but I'm pretty much buying it - the lighting is well handled and the games runs very smoothly indeed even when there is a lot on the screen (remember with GoW & Bioshock it's mostly smaller firefights).

Well, if I spent 3 years of my life working on a game engine that idiots on the internet misunderstand, I'd probably get a bit defensive as well.

[DrSpike]

Alas it appears we are in agreement on this one.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: the 640p thing, I'm more curious how they go from 1152 to 1280 or 1920.

Originally posted by Asher
Kuci: Of course GoW looks more detailed than Halo. It's a question of scale, Halo's engine is designed to run on a much larger scale than the largely enclosed GoW. That means things like character models and building architecture get more detailed textures + more polygons on GoW because there's fewer of them.

I wasn't criticizing either game; I think the balance is correct for both. Why are you so defensive?

[Kuciwalker]

I want my HDTV to arrive soon

[Wiglaf]

Do you have a job? My 2 year experiment with a job in college hurt my GPA a bit.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Asher I'd probably get a bit defensive as well.

I imagine you would get defensive, after all you're getting quite defensive now, about a game you haven't even played, let alone, had a hand in developing.

[Asher]

Because I think it's an interesting technique, certainly innovative. And to have 12 year olds on internet forums try to blast the developers for it is rather lame.

On a side note...was just at a EB Games, there's still tons of gamers buying Halo 3. There were about 4 in the 4 minutes I was there.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Bungies' responses have been a bit defensive but I'm pretty much buying it - the lighting is well handled and the games runs very smoothly indeed even when there is a lot on the screen (remember with GoW & Bioshock it's mostly smaller firefights).

It's not killer graphics to be sure, but they are good and tbh I only really notice graphics when they are so poor they begin to make a game less fun to play. That clearly isn't the case here.

Perhaps it isn't Bungie's fault then, but a hardware limitation.

That sucks if the flagship game on your supposed HD console isn't HD. Might as well buy a ****ing Wii then.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
Perhaps it isn't Bungie's fault then, but a hardware limitation.

That sucks if the flagship game on your supposed HD console isn't HD. Might as well buy a ****ing Wii then.

Oh, you can't be serious.

This is somebody's "fault" because they sacrificed a few pixels for the best lighting implementation in a game? It's a design choice. There are 1080p games on the 360, this isn't a "hardware limitation".

Talk about not understanding the basics of what's going on.

As for arguing about which is HD and which isn't HD, what are you talking about? HD is anything higher than SD, which is 480p. Halo 3 is HD, for obvious reasons. Not the least of which is it's in high definition. I've never heard of the definition that HD can only be 720p, that's a new one for me. Games can be rendered at non-standard resolutions then use the hardware scaler to increase to 720p/1080p (depending on console settings). This is far from the first time its been done on the 360 or any other console.

And "might as well buy a Wii"? Duh? Resolution is not the only factor in graphics. If it was, Bungie could've done that too -- it's processing more pixels per frame than even 1080p.

[Wiglaf]

IGN AU has a well thought out review of Halo 3: (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/822/822714p1.html)

Don�t get me wrong, the single player campaign is very strong, the action is tight, and the AI is F.E.A.R.-killing. But for every positive, there was an area of the game that left me wanting more � the backtracking, the overly cheesy storyline, the underwhelming visuals. And multiplayer feels too much like a HD-version of Halo 2 with a few gadgets you can toss around.

Based on the ad asher put at the start of the first halo thread, I also agree with this:

Cam: It's mostly Microsoft's fault really. The game was always going to be the subject of huge expectations, but the way the company has wanked on about the Master Chief and Halo 3 over the last couple of months has been - frankly - embarrassing

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
IGN AU has a well thought out review of Halo 3:

I tend to agree, based on my experiences so far.

I think it's far from the best shooter on the console. Rainbow Six, GOW and the GRAW games are better than this. When it comes to multiplayer, Warhawk is better than all of them.

I see they compare it with the phantom menace. Well, those things with the pointy heads reminded me of Jar Jar Binks, although at least you can shoot the ****ers.