Kojima's ideal MGS4 bites off more than PS3 can chew

If you consider irrelevant, rambling, incoherent character dialouge, embedded heavily into overwrought cut scenes then by God don't let me stand in your way.

MGS3 is hardly incoherent, it makes more sense than most games, they have army specialists help with the accuracy on the games, then they put a story behind it. Granted it can seem a little weird at times, but it's just a game you know.

MGS2 is hard to follow, but when you think about Raiden having no prior experience, being thrown into a situation that only a hero could succeed in, and attempt to fill the shoes of the legendary Solid Snake, it's actually quite interesting.

Oh also...

All games are irrelevant.

Compare PS2 launch software to PS2 end-of-life software. Also, this is finally the point in time where developers are starting to realize that brown and bloom isn't really the best way to make a game look good.

Pff... let's please not treat game consoles like PCs, OK? Think smarter and do more with what you have, rather than whine about the brand new generation of graphics cards. We've not even seen a fraction of what the PS3 can do until development tools and engines mature.

What are you talking about every MGS has added new things to the table and this game by all accounts and previews looks to be not only the best MGS but possibly the best video game in the history of the genre. The amount of control you have over everything in this game is out of this world. I think people who have never played the MGS franchise might be intimidated by the amount of controls especially for shooter-esque type of game. MGS essentially created an entire genre that many others have copied and tried to improve upon.

If you don't believe the gameplay is revolutionary in every way just watch this gameplay demonstration:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22703.html

A lot of the game is played within the HUD but once you get accustomed to navigating the system is becomes second nature.

Please. Each new installment of MGS has had marginal improvements at best. MGS1 rocked. No doubts. Then we had MGS2 which was MGS but with ps2 graphics. Oh, and the alarm system lasted a little longer IIRC. Then we had MGS3 which was MGS2 but with camos and eating random wildlife. I can't imagine any of these 'upgrades' were terribly CPU intensive.

I've played every MGS game to date (except for the remakes and stuff), and while I enjoyed them, I have no problem easily stating that they were all the same stinkin' game. Why are Sony fanbois having such a hard time admitting this?

@jcd

Well we can agree to disagree in that case ... I seem to remember a new system for healing yourself in MGS SE ... By your logic all games are the same with little improvement ... Halo 3 was just Halo 2 with different scenery ... Its not a fanboy issue in my opinion and you trying to turn it into one just shows your contempt for the series ... With this final iteration we get an online mode with tons of options, all new controls and weapons and who knows what else ... Isn't the point of a sequel to be a continuation of the narrative with improvements ... heck Kojima even threw in a first person mode this time around ... Tons of new stuff in each MGS game

i agree i wish someone can show me a game that is on both consoles that are better on PS3.....When stuff came out on the ps2 and xbox you already knew what to expect. It amazes me the stuff fanboys say to make their console seem better...its interesting though that then ps2 fans didnt care about power "its about the games"

McPoop, you misunderstand me. Clearly a numbered sequel is going to be derivative; its implied in the naming convention. But talking about how 'innovative' and perfectionist Kojima is is like saying how the Madden series has really driven the sports genre forward year after year.

Take for instance a first person mode as you mentioned. This is something that should have been available in MGS2! For crying out loud, FPS mode should be standard nowadays. Oh, guess you got shot by a guard in front of you that you couldn't see because of the top down camera controls forced on you!

Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed the MGS series. I played all three, beat em all, and still have them around here somewhere. But when Kojima starts talking about how he was disappointed in the cell's processing power because it didn't give him the juice to accurately simulate hiding under a cardboard box, I'm gonna laugh. Hard.

Oh, and IMO Halo 3 *IS* the same as Halo 2 but with purdier graphics and some other minor enhancements. I didn't even bother getting it to be honest.

It's not that drastic, though. The processors don't really have to run in sync, since the tasks are broken down into frames and each SPU has local storage.

You have to think differently to program this kind of massively parallel processor, but it's not necessarily very hard -- so long as the compilers and documentation are decent.

@Burnt Meatloaf

I have to agree with what your saying on this thread. I do not have a background in programming but I have a degree in computer animation from Full Sail and have written a few scripts. What I am getting at is the problems developers face are not hardware issues but they are software and code issues. Once true optimization happens we should see drastic increases in the physics aspect of PS3 games. From a lot of the articles I have read it seems to me the real strength of the PSS is in its ability to do intense calculations. I think the graphics are already pretty amazing on the 360 & PS3. I do think that graphical enhancements will continue to get better as more and more tricks (like when normal mapping first started being widely used) start to happen. Obviously the best way to increase graphics is to have a higher polygon count. These sort of things are not currently possible in a real time environment because it will cause a lot of slowdown.

I am fine with the graphics the way they currently are for the most part. We will see more photo realistic graphics as this generation of consoles continues on and in the next iterations of consoles. What I am truly waiting for (for example) is the ability to be on a real time virtual beach were all the individual grains of sand act independently of each other. Some stick to your feet, some lift up when you walk and you can pick up a handful and they will act realistic. This sort of real world physics will not be possible in real time virtual environments until the next big leap in computing happens. Like a video game system based on a quantum computing processes.

Well you have to admit its the best his development team could do at this time ... There is always room for improvement ... For the record the people saying the power of the PS3 has not been fully tapped into are actual developers ... Not Sony's PR spokesman ... I have seen nothing wrong with the PS3 thus far ... Heavenly Sword had by far some of the best voice acting and facial technology I have ever seen ... Uncharted was a game that did things other games haven't really attempted and at the same times had some of the best presentation and graphics seen this generation ... Gran Turismo Prologue has the most photo realistic graphics and physics in a racer ... The PS3 has some good things going for it and is very under rated in terms of its games library ... Remember the 360 games around the same time frame? ... Sure you had Gears but there were also games like Prey that at the time seemed like the best that could be done ... There will always be improvement with all of the consoles ... Look at the stuff the PS2 is putting out even now in comparison to early titles

Out-of-order processors are more complex to make and use more silicon. Whether our-of-order architecture is a benefit or not depends on whether the investment in extra silicon will deliver enough of a performance boost to justify the extra complexity. On a PC, this is a no-brainer. On a console, it's a problem. The only reason why any console would use out-of-order processing is if the manufacturer was too lazy to have a custom chip built and just used a multicore version of an off-the-shelf PC component.

In-order processing is preferred on game consoles and many embedded devices, because the code is only running on one family of processors, and is therefore already optimized for the chip. On PCs and servers, a single piece of code has to run on multiple architectures under unpredictable threading conditions, so out-of-order processing offers an actual benefit by re-arranging instructions to suit the particular family, or even stepping, of the CPU.

Consoles are not PCs. They can share some technology, but consoles really must use that technology differently. As of yet, many developers just haven't gotten used to the particular way the PS3 does things... or they don't want to, because the 360 is just more traditional.

Why would the CPU have to access the VRAM except for frame buffer effects and swap space? There's a reason why it's called VRAM.

Yes, 512 of unified memory would be better, but in the real world, half the memory will be used for the CPU and half for the GPU. So, an even split of memory isn't that big a deal. Really, the fact that the CPU can even read VRAM at all is a good thing.

Methings you don't know how things work in the real world.