AbsolutSurgen

1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:

That’s more of a modern trend.  And some do, some still don’t.
 

But it totally checks out why when that choice is made.

Which FPS games do you think had big “boss” fights vs. Set pieces?

13 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Depends on what you’re looking for.  Getting the “S” right is important for multiplayer, but FPS bosses are really hard to get right IMO.  You can have the best shooting mechanics around, but still have the big encounters boil down to a simple deathmatch sort of thing, a circle strafe war of attrition, or peekaboo firing explosive rounds from behind walls/cover.  It all feels so hollow compared to playing other human beings.

 

The Prime games largely avoided that by making bosses more about positioning than keeping your cursor on the target and/or running behind things.  I found that refreshing at the time, still do.

I don’t think bosses are a big part of the FPS genre. Which is why so many of them culminate with a set piece. 

1 hour ago, best3444 said:

 

I know you were a PC gamer before Halo on console so it didn't hit as hard for you. 

 

I guess you guys are saying Robocop is one of the best FPS's ever which is contradictory to review scores. The lighting and reflections must be awe inspiring. 

Games in 2024 are objectively better than 20 years ago. I’m only including games I’ve played, and 1 per franchise. 
If Halo 3 came out today, exactly as it originally released, with only a single player campaign, it wouldn’t review well. 

The best FPS games strongest points are their multiplayer, which is ignored in this ranking. 

9 minutes ago, Biggie said:

Destiny’s story campaign was awesome 

Agreed.  If I were to consider it a single player campaign, I would rate it very highly. 

6 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

Halo 1 on Xbox was revolutionary for console gaming. Wait, you put Robocop on your list because of the lighting? You sick bastard! 

I don’t differentiate between platforms. I agree the controls were revolutionary for a controller, but were still a step back from the standard set 8 years before with Doom (KB/Mouse). 
I still think Halo’s vehicle controls were garbage, and some parts (like jumping) felt terrible. As someone who played a LOT of PC FPSs in the 90s and I was extremely underwhelmed (if that’s a word) by Halo. 

4 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

Halo has to be on the list. Robocop? lol

Just for the lighting and reflections. 
I’ve never understood the appeal of single player Halo. 

GTA VI cancellation confirmation. 

1) Doom

2) Half Life 2

3) Titanfall 2

4) Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus 

5) Far Cry 4

6) Crysis 3???

7) Killzone 2

8) Resistance 2

9) Robocop

Franchises I’ve intentionally left off: CoD, Battlefield, Halo

Franchises I’ve never played: Metro, Stalker

Franchises I don’t think should count: Bioshock

Just now, TheLeon said:

Anyone have his Venmo? I wanna send him a cool $20 just for sharing that idea with us.

I do.  Coincidentally, he uses the same nickname as me, AbsolutSurgen.

6 minutes ago, best3444 said:

But I think Bioshock is a FPA too and shouldn't be on the list. 

I originally said that in my post, but deleted it because I thought I would get too much hate.

8 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Why not? Clearly there's still a fanbase and Ubi is still supporting it. Game is what? 10 years old now? EDIT: It's 8 years old. 

Ubi is focused on big swings, and I don't think For Honor 2 is a big swing -- unless they massively revamp it enough that it's no longer For Honor 2.

If they thought it was an IP that would justify a sequel, they probably would have done one by now.

24 minutes ago, stepee said:

I’d be curious in a next gen For Honor 2 

Is this a troll list?

CoD4 has the best campaign in a world where Titanfall 2, Wolfenstein and Doom exist?

Grand Tournament Announcement - atomicmassgames

WWW.ATOMICMASSGAMES.COM

There will no longer be a World Champion for any of their games.

1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

This is so true... they are STILL supporting For Honor which is shocking to me.  How old is that game now? 

32 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Still is apparently... people are still playing it.

Googled their concurrent player count.

10 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

So Sony’s resolution upscaling is targeting DLSS Performance mode. 

I don't think you can make that inference from that article.  I suspect it will have a variety of modes for different games, just like DLSS or FSR.

Sony’s PS5 Pro is real and developers are getting ready for it - The Verge

WWW.THEVERGE.COM

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Sony is pushing developers to focus on ray tracing.

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Sony is getting ready to release a more powerful PS5 console, possibly by the end of this year. After reports of leaked PS5 Pro specifications surfaced recently, The Verge has obtained a full list of specs for the upcoming console. Sources familiar with Sony’s plans tell me that developers are already being asked to ensure their games are compatible with this upcoming console, with a focus on improving ray tracing.

Codenamed Trinity, the PlayStation 5 Pro model will include a more powerful GPU and a slightly faster CPU mode. All of Sony’s changes point to a PS5 Pro that will be far more capable of rendering games with ray tracing enabled or hitting higher resolutions and frame rates in certain titles. Sony appears to be encouraging developers to use graphics features like ray tracing more with the PS5 Pro, with games able to use a “Trinity Enhanced” (PS5 Pro Enhanced) label if they “provide significant enhancements.”

Sony expects GPU rendering on the PS5 Pro to be “about 45 percent faster than standard PlayStation 5,” according to documents outlining the upcoming console. The PS5 Pro GPU will be larger and use faster system memory to help improve ray tracing in games. Sony is also using a “more powerful ray tracing architecture” in the PS5 Pro, where the speed here is up to three times better than the regular PS5.

“Trinity is a high-end version of PlayStation 5,” reads one document, with Sony indicating it will continue to sell the standard PS5 after this new model launches. Sony is expecting game developers to have a single package that will support both the PS5 and PS5 Pro consoles, with existing games able to be patched for higher performance.

I understand developers are able to order test kits right now and that Sony is expecting every game submitted to certification in August to be compatible with the PS5 Pro. Insider Gaming first reported the full PS5 Pro specs and indicated the console is set to release during the 2024 holiday period.

While Sony is improving the GPU side of the PS5 Pro, the CPU will be the same as the standard PS5 but with a new mode that clocks it higher. “Trinity has a mode that targets 3.85GHz CPU frequency,” says Sony in a document to developers. That’s around 10 percent more than the regular PS5. Sony will offer developers the ability to pick between a “standard mode” at 3.5GHz or the “high CPU frequency mode” at 3.85GHz.

The standard mode operates just like a regular PS5, where a certain amount of power is allocated to the CPU — it runs at 3.5GHz if the power budget allows for it or lower frequencies if the PS5 is performing “power-intensive operations.” Sony says these lower frequencies are rare and that unused power on the CPU side is sent to the GPU.

In this new high CPU frequency mode for the PS5 Pro, more power is allocated to the CPU, which means slightly less to the GPU. The GPU is downclocked by around 1.5 percent in this mode, which results in “roughly 1 percent lower performance,” according to Sony.

The PS5 Pro will also have some changes to system memory for developers. The standard PS5 memory runs at 448GB/s, but Sony is bumping this up by 28 percent to 576GB/s on the PS5 Pro. As the memory system is more efficient on the PS5 Pro, “the bandwidth gain may exceed 28 percent,” says Sony.

Developers will also get more access to overall system memory. Games can use an additional 1.2GB of system memory on the PS5 Pro, so that’s 13.7GB overall compared to the 12.5GB allocated to games on the base PS5.

The increase in memory speed and allocations “may be useful” for Sony’s new PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) support. This is essentially Sony’s upscaling answer to Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR to improve frame rates and image quality on PlayStation. Sony has built a “custom architecture for machine learning” on the PS5 Pro, which supports 300TOPS of 8-bit computation.

This new architecture supports Sony’s custom PSSR upscaling solution, which is designed to replace a game’s existing temporal anti-aliasing or upsampling implementation. Sony notes that “inputs are quite similar to DLSS or FSR” and that full HDR support is included. This support requires around 250MB of memory, which is why the memory allocations on the PS5 Pro should help here. Sony says there is around 2ms of latency involved in upscaling a 1080p image to 4K and that the company is working to support resolutions up to 8K and even improve the latency in the future.

If developers are able to get their games ready in time, I fully expect to see a PS5 Pro launch this holiday season. Sony appears to be following the same playbook as the PS4, with a “Slim” PS5 model and then a Pro edition. I’m expecting to see an “enhanced” library of existing games for the PS5 Pro launch and new first-party games arriving over time with improved ray-tracing support for this new console.

Sony Takes Down PS5 Pro Video From Known Tech YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead

WCCFTECH.COM

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Sony Interactive Entertainment has taken down a PS5 Pro video from last month from known Tech YouTuber 'Moore's Law is Dead'.

Quote

Remember last month's PS5 Pro video from YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead? This video is no longer available following a copyright strike from Sony.

We reported on the video from the known tech YouTuber following its release last month. In the video, the YouTuber shared a document about Sony's upgraded PS5 model that offered new details and information about the console. Interesting new details include substantially faster rendering, up to three times improved ray tracing performance, and Sony's rumored own upscaling tech - PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR). According to Eurogamer's Digital Foundry, this upscaling tech can allow for greatly improved image quality of existing PS5 titles. In addition, the outlet suggested that the Pro model will offer 1.2GB of additional RAM for games.

Fast forward one month and the video from 'Moore's Law is Dead' is no longer available on YouTube. "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Sony Interactive Entertainment", the link to the video now reads. While this doesn't necessarily mean that the information or details mentioned in the video were the real deal, recent reports, and rumors do seem to indicate that the leaked document was legit. Over the weekend, The Verge's Tom Warren said that the PS5 Pro is real, and Sony is reportedly asking developers to get their games ready over the summer. Down below we've included the rumored specs of the PS5 Pro that came out of the alleged leaked document from Moore's Law is Dead:

• Larger GPU with faster memory, providing 45% improved performance in rasterized rendering;
• Massively improved ray tracing architecture that should deliver 2-3x speedup over the regular PS5, with peaks of 4x;
• Custom machine learning architecture that supports 300 TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second) at 8-bit;
• The ML architecture was built to enable the so-called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaling technique. The leaked document describes it as Sony's version of Multi Frame Super Resolution based on the PlayStation Machine Learning (PSML) algorithm. According to the leaked info, PSSR currently supports up to 4K, but there are plans to add 8K support;
• PSSR is an ML-enhanced version of Temporal Anti-aliasing Upscaling (TAAU) that requires similar inputs to NVIDIA DLSS or AMD FSR and fully supports High Dynamic Range (HDR) pipelines. Moreover, no per-game training is required, just like with the latest version of DLSS. The document goes on to say PSSR requires just 250MB of the PS5 Pro's memory, with a current rendering cost of 2 milliseconds to upscale from Full HD to 4K, although optimization is still ongoing;
• The document also includes an image comparison with TAAU and AMD FSR 2, reportedly showing that PSSR offers superior image quality.

12 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I saw that and almost got pissed, but then I saw that Unisoft seems to be using “season pass” the way the industry did back on the Xbox 360/PS3. Where season pass was just the post release DLC or the post release DLC for a year. 
 

that seems less egregious. However I don’t like what sounds like a day one mission being locked behind a higher tier. That is where we start getting into “they chopped up the full game to sell it for parts” territory. 

Ubisoft has been using the term Season Pass consistently on almost all their big releases since 2015.

They have frequently had missions or other content locked behind preorders or premium versions.  Usually, these become buyable with "Ubisoft points" after a couple of months (the points you earn from in game achievements).  In the past, the missions are superfluous to the game -- the equivalent of a minor side mission, with rewards that are nothing special.

Ubisoft is also known for adding tons of post-launch content for free in their games to keep you engaged, in addition to the paid DLC.

The "Wrath of the Druids" and "Siege of Paris" DLC from AC: Valhalla were both well worth playing -- and while I wouldn't pay full price for them, they were included in the Gold version I bought for 30-40% off on Black Friday,  I would expect similar things with SW: Outlaws.

33 minutes ago, Biggie said:

That wasn’t directed at you. I’m just saying it does seem like certain developers can do whatever but others get nailed for it on the internet. 

Damn lol

It's mostly the interns at IGN rage farming for clicks.  They wrote this a few days ago:

Star Wars Outlaws’ Expensive Gold and Ultimate Editions, With Their Season Passes and Early Access, Spark Debate - IGN

WWW.IGN.COM

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Ubisoft has sparked a debate after announcing Star Wars Outlaws’ expensive gold and ultimate editions, which offer early access and a season pass.

Quote

It’s worth noting that Star Wars Outlaws is a single-player only game, which has caused some to question the need for a season pass at all (by using the word "season" Ubisoft suggests there will be more than one).

Ubisoft has called them season passes for almost 10 years (I think AC Syndicate may have been the first game), so it's bizarre that the world's biggest game site couldn't figure it out.

Just now, Biggie said:

My problem is some companies get a pass on certain things while others get railed on. For the exact same business practices. 

For example?

It will be like every other Ubisoft game.

You can get all the content for $20/month if you sign up for their subscription, then cancel.

Or, if you're willing to wait 3-4 months and buy the Gold Edition for 40% off. 

Ubi's single player DLC has been pretty good for the past couple of years.

In the end, it's probably like 15 minutes of content, that's normally nothing special, in a 30+ hour game.

Having missions locked behind pre-orders and/or having to buy premium editions is nothing new.

The value the developer gets from making a great game, is I'm significantly more likely to buy the next one (or perhaps even DLC).

AND, I recommend the current one to friends, so it sells more.