Where did it come from? Who knows. What we do know is that a promotional video for Ubisoft's recently revealed, Wii-exclusive Red Steel 2-- prefaced by a screen bearing the words "Destination PlayStation" for no logical reason -- has been uploaded to YouTube. The roughly minute-and-a-half video talks up the game's Wii MotionPlus-infused gameplay and depicts a guy (we'll call him "Joe Gamer") swinging away in his living room as some surprisingly good looking gameplay footage is shown.
We say "surprisingly" because it appears to be much sharper than Wii's 480p visuals are capable of. It is nice and smooth, which is in keeping with the game's purported 60 frames-per-second action. Pre-rendered or not, we totally dig the visual style, Ubisoft. More, please.
While I thought the video looked cool, there's absolutely no way you could move the sword like that. Here's hoping that this isn't the first game all over again where the trailer is impressive but the actual gameplay isn't.
The Wii's hardware frame buffer is the limitation to going higher than 480p. For it's size, it can hold a 1024x768 image in 16bit color. I believe the Wii's Opera browser renders in 1024x600 then downscales to the final 16x9 480p ratio.
What I think this video is using is full-screen anti-aliasing. It bleeds the color on edges where 2 different colors exist. It used cell-shading and FSAA so it looks better than 480p... Movies use full-screen anti-aliasing and that's why movies (DVD's) look great for 480p. Color-bleeding happens naturally with video cameras. With games it has to be programmed in.
Also, the Wii's gpu is internall 3x faster than the GC's. You rarely have framerate issues with the Wii. Infact, playing a game with framerate issues on the GC on Wii hardware (such as running up the middle in Madden '05 on the GC) is perfectly smoothe on the Wii in GC mode because they don't slow down the gpu, only the cpu to go to GC mode.
Like everyone else has said, it looks really good, but we've been lied to before by ubisoft with things like this. Bring on E3 and some gameplay footage!
I haven't seen the video yet, but that "Destination Playstation" line has me worried. Surely they wouldn't port this game over to other systems, would they? The Wii needs all the third-party exclusives it can get right now, especially considering the effort Ubisoft appears to be putting into this title.
Urgh, I hate Wii commercials/trailers like this. When was it filmed, 2006? They're just so cringey and fake. Though no doubt everyone will be fooled into thinking it looks "immersive". Does anyone actually play Wii games like this? Not in my experience, yet they're still trying to push this sort of image. So he's going to play a 20-30 hour adventure like that? Flailing around his living room like an idiot? He looks like he's playing along to some stupid exercise/aerobics DVD or something, not enjoying playing a video game.
Any and every time I play Wii Sports Tennis I always play standing up. And in other games, like FPS, I find myself leaning forward on the edge of my chair while playing, leaning as I look around corners, etc. For a lot of the people that ENJOY the Wii, there is much more of an immersion factor than in games with just a button.
I find button controls (ie. those of a traditional SNES-style controller) far more immersive as they're fun, comfortable, relaxing and actually work and I imagine you probably thought that too before Wii marketing told you otherwise. The feeling of any extra "immersion" from motion controls is mostly superficial and imagined. In fact having to do a motion in a game about five times before it actually works or having to shake the controller (annoying in itself) to perform an action on screen that has nothing to do with shaking (as seems to be often the case) is incredibly un-immersive.
Well, that's what makes it a game. Kind of a "well, duh" moment, don't you think? If properly done motion control helps fool your mind into thinking the experience is better then it's done its job.
But no... it certainly hasn't *really* put you in control of something suddenly turned real. *palm on face*
Red steel is awesome and I play split screen a lot, excite truck is awesome and you can listen to music while playing. The launch games were more serious and less family oriented, don't ever let me hear any of you diss the good old days.
