Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
How Turn 10 sabotaged Forza 3 by running its mouth
Turn 10 Studios, developer of the highly anticipated Forza Motorsport 3, has begun to foster quite an interesting reputation for themselves as time and time again the developer calls out rival racing studios with ludicrously absurd comments at demo showings and interviews. While it’s certainly somewhat admirable that the studio is confident in the quality of its upcoming racer, the remarks being spewed from game director Dan Greenawalt’s mouth are nothing short of pure and utter hyperbolic garbage. A recent interview with Xbox360Achievements.org highlights this fact all too well, and the consistency with which the studio lashes out indirectly (and sometimes very directly) against other racing developers is just laughable. Here’s a sampling of the truly ridiculous (and hilariously ignorant) quotes from the aforementioned interview to get us started.
I play a lot of racing games, including PC racing games and I have not seen anything that is even within years of what we’re delivering here.
Really? That’s so weird, because I could’ve sworn I’ve heard of this Gran Turismo game somewhere. And what about that GTR2 racer? Supposedly it’s pretty advanced too. Must be just a rumor.
We have lift, bump stops that can create a hell of an unbalance in the car, we even simulate the chassis stiffness that I’ve never seen in another game... where, like a Fox Body Mustang just twists under its own torque and it means that the tires can’t stay evenly attached to the road. We even simulate that.
Wow, that’s really deep. Strange then, that you can’t manage to simulate something as simple as a car hitting a concrete slab? It seems like that would be a more immediate concern than the way a Mustang reacts according to its own power.
I could go on and on with this material, and that’s from just a single interview. While I definitely respect that Turn 10 is trying to reignite the Forza flame so to speak, the fact that it’s effectively ignoring competitors like Gran Turismo 5 and even DiRT 2 is unbelievably bad practice. It’s not like Bungie presents a demo at E3 while ranting and raving about how there’s no other shooter on the market that handles the way Halo does. As a developer, you need to have a certain kind of reverence and respect for your competitors, even if they consistently outsell and outperform you. If anything, this should serve as inspiration to make your next project a labor of love that people can put up with the other guys side-to-side and say something along the lines of: “Wow, they really outdid themselves this time.”
With Forza 3, that is not the case. The hype over the much-improved graphics engine has led to a general feeling of disappointment as gamers finally got their hands on the recently released demo. The lighting model looks strangely “off”, illuminating the cars in a slightly cartoonish fashion that makes colors pop far too much and jaggies far too evident. Leading up to the release of the demo, trailers and gameplay videos never really made this fact apparent, but once I managed to get behind the poorly-rendered cockpit of the demo’s Mini Cooper (I’ve actually driven a Mini a few times in my life, and let me tell you, Forza does NOT represent the interior well) my hopes for a graphical competitor to Gran Turismo were dashed. Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, which released a little over a year ago, still manages to outpace Forza 3, all the while Forza is being heralded by the big wigs at Microsoft and many outspoken members of Turn 10 as the best-looking racer on the market. If the “market” doesn’t consist of DiRT 2 or any of the PS3-exclusive Gran Turismos, then yea, this statement would be 100% correct, but for those of us living in the real world, it’s complete and utter bullshit.
But wait, you say. Forza is all about the under-the-hood performance calculations and rarely seen physics flourishes! While normally I’d be inclined to agree with you, these have little to no effect on roughly 90% of the driving experience. When you’re racing on the road, your car will handle pretty much like every other racing game out there with asphalt tracks (albeit less exciting because of the poor sense of speed, a recurring problem with the Forza franchise). The only time all these supposed “advanced calculations” come into play is in very, very rare situations, and even then, you likely won’t think to yourself: “OMG! That’s totally what the car would have done in real life!” What’s most disappointing about these physics, however, is the fact that crashing your car in Forza is painfully underwhelming. Even in a game like Need for Speed: Shift, which has comparable damage modeling (meaning it’s terribly lacking) makes crashes interesting by blurring the screen and violently shaking the camera while your car smashing the center divide creates a nasty crunch of bending metal and shattering glass. In Forza, there is nothing exciting or remotely thrilling about smashing your very expensive car into a wall. In fact, there’s nothing to marvel at in any way when your Audi R8 side swipes a reckless driver as he speeds past you, because the damage modeling is almost IDENTICAL to Forza 2’s. A scrape here, some paint removed there. The whole ordeal is so unspectacular it makes one wonder what the hell the team at Turn 10 has been doing for the last couple years. Granted, Gran Turismo 5’s damage modeling isn’t anything to write home about either, but at least bits and pieces fall off after impacts and doors swing off their hinges so that it’s apparent from even the cockpit view that your car has been affected by that 50 MPH head-on collision.
I could go on and on about Forza 3’s shortcomings, namely the absolutely dreadful cockpit view and pitiful sense of speed, but really I’m just going to let Turn 10 embarrass itself further and laugh my ass off when Gran Turismo 5 eventually comes out and Forza is left in the dust. It’s not often that I want a game to fail, and even more uncommon for me to want a developer to get humiliated, but the fact that Polyphony is speaking with gorgeous trailers and screenshots, while Turn 10 retorts with childish remarks and not so subtle insults makes me wonder just how hard the developer is trying to sabotage its upcoming release. Turn 10, you should be ashamed. Well played, Polyphony. Actions really are louder than words.
Monday, September 7, 2009
District 9
You may of heard of about a little film called District 9 - its being promoted as a LOW BUDGET SCI-FI movie. Low budget. Low budget being 30 million dollars. THIRTY FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS. Just for a comnparison, J.I. Joe, the entirely computer generated action fuck fest, had 175,000,000. One hundred and seventy five million. FOUR TIMES AS MUCH and FOUR TIMES AS FUCKED.
IF YOU THOUGHT TRANSFORMERS WAS A GREAT MOVIE THEN YOU WILL HATE DISTRICT 9.
This one require you to think a little bit, not just open your slack jaw and crunch popcorn.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
More Console Concepts
PS4
Who saw these and began to uncontrollably repeat "Holy FUCK!"
? Its not just me..
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Thoughts from 25-35 year olds
2. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey but I'd bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time...
3. Was learning cursive really necessary?
4. The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase "Regards" again.
5. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this
ever.
6. The best thing about sex is that part where I have it.
7. While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it...thanks Mario Kart.
8. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
9. I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.
10. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.
11. Do you remember when you were a kid; playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in Australia did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.
12. It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.
13. Why is a school zone 40kph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for paedophiles...
14. The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There's nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.
15. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.
16. More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.
17. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
18. I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter?
19. Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.
20. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
21. Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?
22. There is a great need for sarcasm font.
23. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the f was going on when I first saw it
24. I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it.
25. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
26. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.
27. Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".
28. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?
29. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!
30. Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies"
31. What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?
33. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
34. I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.
35. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
36. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.
37. Bad decisions make good stories
38. Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!
39. Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every year?
41. Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a
problem....
42. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.
43. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.
44. I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren't watching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room.
45. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run
away?
46. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.
47. When I meet a new girl, I'm terrified of mentioning something she hasn't already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.
48. I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.
49. As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.
50. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
51. It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.
52. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
53. Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn't know what do to with it.
54. My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day "Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?" How the hell do I respond to that?
55. I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.
Sent to me by a friend.