US mag to have first hands-on report on a Revolution title - Ubisoft's "Red Steel"

LookingFor

Something to keep an eye out for - info should hit the web in the next few days:

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200604/N06.0407.1251.24078.htm

After months of waiting, Game Informer Magazine is proud to present the world exclusive first look at a game for the Nintendo Revolution.

But not just any game. Red Steel comes from the Ubisoft Paris team, which is comprised of industry veterans who worked on franchises like Prince of Persia, Far Cry Instincts, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell.

What kind of game is it? What is it about?

You’ll have to wait till the magazine hits the streets to find out. We answer these simple questions and many more in our eleven-page hands-on report. Look out for massive screenshots side by side with pictures of gamers actually demonstrating what you'll do with the Revolution remote.

In addition, we have an in-depth interview with Nintendo of America’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communications George Harrison, in which we poke and prod him about Nintendo’s upcoming console.

Guns + Blades + Revolution controller = potential for MUCH awesomeness :eek: Can't wait to hear about and see this. It'll be our first glimpse at what Rev games will look like, also, what standard they'll be up to graphically.

LookingFor

Ok, there are pictures on the web already. It looks quite a bit better than I might have expected - very decent graphical quality, from what I can tell. I don't know if I can post photos/scans here though!

tman

i've seen scans posted here many a time.

if you get banned, you can rest assured that i got to see the pics;)

Ciaran500

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/04/07/red-steel-first-revolution-screens-revealed/

Hugh Hefner

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, oh yes. Ohhhhhhhhhhh, ooooooooooooo. Mmmmmmmhhhmmmmm. Oooooo ahhh, yes.

More, I want more. Gimme more. Hard(core)er!

LookingFor

Some info from the blog that posted the pictures originally:

anyways, i just finished reading the actual article in game informer, and it says that the sword and guns can be twisted in your hand, by twisting the rev's remote. so you can shoot gangster style and block with the sword. also, there is split screen and online multiplayer planned, just no details yet. you can also jump over and take cover behind objects by moving the rev's remote towards a upturned table or a wall, and reload by pulling the remote back. by the way, they are ingame screenshots. this game is looking ****ing hot as hell.

It's also a launch game. Apparently, as well, you can lob grenades in different ways depending on how you move the controller - you can imitate the motion of underhand and overhead throws etc., to roll along the ground or whatever.

Dooom

I've never really been a Nintendo fan, but this game's really sparked my interest, especially with the use of the remote.

Looks and sounds very nice.

LookingFor

A few more quotes from the article - sounds really promising IMO:

While we didn't get to play through a full level populated with enemies, we did try to complete the shooting range challenges as quickly as possible to put the team's claim about controller speed and accuracy to the test. Unlike most console games, we found Red Steel more enjoyable to play while standing up - with the controller's movement-tracking abilities, we felt more natural playing while standing. The longer we played with it the more natural if felt, and the more quickly we mowed down the targets. Strafing around the targets is incredibly easy, as keeping the controller pointed at the object, while you move around with the analog stick keeps you focused on the target. Aim felt similar to using a computer mouse, as it is possible to quickly explore every direction in a three dimension space with quick gestures.

In many situations, there will be a higher-ranking enemy who commands the others in the area. By defeating him, and sparing his life, he will offer you his respect, and help. The enemies will surrender their guns, and the boss may offer you a new weapon, a special path, or another reward. Any time you spare an enemy, you will be rewarded. As it always takes more skill to spare a life, than to take it.

Although the majority of Red Steel’s gameplay will stress ranged combat, there will be times you need to get up close, and personal. You can switch to the sword at any time, and if you can get close enough to an enemy, you can use it for one-hit stealth kills. In other moments you’ll find yourself locked into intense one-one sword duels.

Sword Duels

You can also apparently push objects around by pushing the controller into the screen, to help create cover etc.

LookingFor

Some more from another forum:

-Game development started shortly after E3 2005. Ubisoft saw and demoed the controller before E3 2005.
-Ubisoft Paris took their idea directly to Iwata and Miyamoto, and were given the go ahead. After that meeting they were given prototype controllers. The article states that Ubisoft worked "closely" with Nintendo's engineers in Japan on the title
-Game Informer mentions that while conducting the interviews with Ubisoft, they were handed the "latest version" of the controller

-During the beginning of the game, you are encouraged to use your weapons ruthlessly, but as the game progresses you become more proficient and strategic. This gameplay idea led Ubisoft to decide to give the game a martial arts setting. "Enter the Yakuza"
-The first third of the game will be all about being "brutal by necessity"
-You will be less precise and favor more devastating weapons (machine guns)
-As you progress and become more precise, smaller guns will be used
-"The goal...is to use five bullets to kill five enemies"
-"When fighting with this level of skill, the music and sound effects will reflect it, remaining calm and peaceful"
-"When you fight brutally, the sounds around you grow increasingly more intense"
-"Audio feedback"

-Freeze shot: by fighting effciently you fill the Freeze Shot gauge...fighting chaotically causes to decreases
-When the gauge is filled you can hit a button to momentarily stop time, and then target specific locations on enemy bodies
-Headshots thus are tempting, but non lethal shots, such as shooting guns out of enemy hand, can be more beneficial
-By defeating high ranking leaders who command others and sparing their lives, you will be rewarded. He will offer you respect and help (guns, help, new weapons, alternate paths, etc)
-Respect plays a MAJOR part in the game

Multiplayer:
-Split screen multiplayer with traditional deathmatches
-Totally original multiplayer modes Ubisoft is not revealing yet. Wait until E3
-They didn't talk about Nintendo Wi Fi (NDAs). Full details haven't been revealed yet
-Revolution works by placing a small sensor bar either above or below any TV
-You can stand at any angle and not lose any accuracy. You can even take your controller to a friend's house and instantly start playing without syncing up the controller
-"Perhaps most impressive is the fact that although splitscreen reduces the amount of onscreen space you are playing in, you don't have to make smaller movements - you can gesture as wildly as you want, and it won't interfere with the other player's onscreen quadrants

If Ubisoft get this right, it could be a killer-app for Revolution right from day one.

steviec

I'm really interested to see how this controller pans out. There's a few things about it I don't quite understand yet.

You have an analogue stick for movement, and then the main controller as your gun right? So then how do you turn? Assuming left and right on the stick are for strafing, and moving the main controller left and right just moves the gun. The d-pad on the gun maybe? Or pointing the gun off screen?

I hope the other movements work ok, gesture recognition in Black & White used to do my head in, but reports do seem positive. I just hope the game doesn't get confused between you wanting to push an object and wanting to point the gun in that direction or whatever. I suppose holding down a button at the same time when you want to do something other than move your gun would work. As far as I remember you'll have the trigger and a button under your thumb on the main controller, and a trigger on the stick part aswell.

I hope it feels ok sitting down too, I got sick of moving furniture to make room for eyetoy, not to mention the position of the tv meaning you'd be pointing down constantly.

So I'm a bit skeptical but hopeful

LookingFor

This might answer some of your questions:

-The two triggers on the front of the analog unit activate ducking and jumping. The analog stick controls movement, and the revmote controls aiming. No rails.

-Level consisted of shooting ranges that popped out from behind cover
"Aiming with the controller is as simple as using a laser pointer. You point your hand at a target and hit the trigger on the underside of the controller to fire

-"Unlike other FPS games, which tie the camera and aiming together, Red Steel's camera follows your aim with a slight delay. If, for example, you point to the edge of the screen, the camera will turn to re-center on your view after a second. With the sensitivity of the controller, a standard FPS control would move too much, potentially making the player feel ill

-"Thanks to the improved reaction that the controller offers, the team can create gunfight scenerios that would be extraordinarily diffilcult with a standard controller"

-Most console FPS games limit their enemies to horizontal planes to prevent player frustration, but targets on a vertical plane are just as easy to hit with the Revolution controller

-You can aim at a target as quickly as you can move your hand

-In the demo targets popped up on rooftops and in second story windows, as well as behind cover points on the ground, and all were equally easy to hit

-While you can quickly shoot enemies anywhere on screen, Red Steel never feels in a light-gun game - this is a true FPS, one that feels like it has drawn from the best of both the PC and console shooter worlds

-According to lead game designer Oriola, it takes roughly three seconds to turn completely around around in most console shooters, while it takes about one-quarter second in a PC game. In Red Steel, it takes one second

-AI characters will care for themselves. They will go for cover, attack you while you're reloading. They focus on risk management

-"They won't walk around a table to get to you. They will simply jump over the table"

-"The benchmark for their intelligence and aggressiveness, says Oriola, is the PC title F.E.A.R., which has widely been praised for it's AI"

edit - and a little more:

-Destructable environments. There's a pic of a giant explosion on a carm with gang members being thrown left and right by the blast. Nice effects. The lighting on the explosion and the store signs is pretty good
-GI: we found Red Steel most enjoyable to play while standing up
-Straffing is extremely easy and effortless
-"Aiming felt similar to using a PC mouse, and it's possible to quickly explore every direction in a three-dimensional space with quick gestures"
-"In the finished game, you will be able to push forward with the controller to knock over an object to use for cover, pull it backwards to reload, and twist it to lead behind walls"
-Lob grenades with the controller, or roll them on the ground like a bowling ball
-"gangsta style" shooting is cool
-Total immersion. Feels like you are living the game

-Game Informer: "the Revolution is real"
-Andy: It could change the very way all gamers are played now and forever

Dooom

Anywhere taking pre-orders for the Revolution?

No..seriously

LookingFor

Spike wrote:

Anywhere taking pre-orders for the Revolution?

No..seriously

You can probably get on waiting lists to preorder at certain places You won't technically be able to preorder until they announce a SKU for retailers, AFAIK.

projectmayhem

wait a minute, i thought revolution's graphics were supposed to be sub-par muck?

sign me up.

steviec

projectmayhem wrote:

wait a minute, i thought revolution's graphics were supposed to be sub-par muck?

sign me up.

Its a gamecube with twice the clockspeed for the most part, the gamecube had excellent graphics so at standard definition it should have really excellent graphics.

The amount of RAM seems a little low to me if they want big expansive environments at that level of detail but having about as much memory as my phone never seemed to hurt the gamecube so there you go. I hope they work their magic on load times, that was one of my favourite things about most gamecube games.

GrumPy

steviec wrote:

Its a gamecube with twice the clockspeed for the most part, the gamecube had excellent graphics so at standard definition it should have really excellent graphics.

The amount of RAM seems a little low to me if they want big expansive environments at that level of detail but having about as much memory as my phone never seemed to hurt the gamecube so there you go. I hope they work their magic on load times, that was one of my favourite things about most gamecube games.

Yeah, gamecube was a powerful little beast, some games even had better graphics than some decent xbox titles.

Retr0gamer

steviec wrote:

Its a gamecube with twice the clockspeed for the most part, the gamecube had excellent graphics so at standard definition it should have really excellent graphics.

I heard 3 times the clock speed.

The GC was a power house for the specs it had. It may have been less powerful than the xbox but with the right artists and modellers games like Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4 and FF: Crystal Chronicles look better than anything on the xbox despite games like Halo 2 being technically better.

I really think it will surprise us with how well it compares to the other two consoles. the screenshots look gorgeous. I'm getting very excited about it. Might even put down a pre-order if the E3 feedback is good. I've never even considered doing that for a console before.

flogen

I'm very optimistic about the controller; stuff like this only justifies that even more.
The one issue I have is the lack of buttons, I know that that's the beauty of the controller to some degree, and I know addons could technically give as many buttons as possible but in this game for example, the trigger button is obviously to shoot, the two analogue buttons are jump and duck... so will the A button on the front be weapon select? Or will it be the two smaller NES a and b buttons (awkward as hell!!)? While the controller gives huge amounts of potential it also runs the risk of limiting options...

As for the screenshots, wow.
As Retro points out, the Cube can do amazing things desite it's appearances on paper; doesn't the PS2 have higher specs on paper than the Cube? Enough said.
I think the fact that the Rev's architecture is so similar to the Cube's is a masterstroke too... every gen of consoles are hindered in their early years by developers getting to grips with the power of a machine, the PS2 only started to produce graphically impressive titles in the last year or so (GT4, for example). So while devs are getting to grips with a new set up on the 360 and ps3, they'll feel right at home with the Rev... they can focus on turning things up to eleven rather than wasting time getting their bass and pitch levels right

Retr0gamer

flogen wrote:

doesn't the PS2 have higher specs on paper than the Cube? Enough said.

Actually the Cube has far higher specs than the PS2. The processor is about 1.5 times as fast and the gpu is far superior to the PS2 gpu.

The Free Man

this is what ive been waiting for, i had my thoughts on what this would and should be like, and from the reviews it seems to have lived up to my expectations.

i want one NOW!

LookingFor

flogen wrote:

As for the screenshots, wow.
As Retro points out, the Cube can do amazing things desite it's appearances on paper; doesn't the PS2 have higher specs on paper than the Cube? Enough said.

As is convention, Sony released peak performance figures e.g. 60m polys a sec etc. In fairness, they also released some figures with all effects on etc. that are closer to what you'd see in a game. Nintendo made a point of releasing very conservative performance figures based on 'typical' performance in a game. The chips themselves are more powerful, generally, than PS2's (with a couple of "ifs"), the GPU is a lot more robust. Moreover, GC is a very "clean" architecture that's relatively easy to get performance out of.

Also, they could do weapon-changes in a number of ways. But the A button would probably make sense., or perhaps even the d-pad (the controller isn't very big, your thumb could probably reach it pretty handily).

flogen

Retr0gamer wrote:

Actually the Cube has far higher specs than the PS2. The processor is about 1.5 times as fast and the gpu is far superior to the PS2 gpu.

Oh right; well your xbox/halo example is just as effective

Retr0gamer

The gamecube gpu was quite amazing for it's time. It could do transparencies and distortion effects extremely well and also had gorgeous fur shader effects that we are only seeing now in the last few months of PC developement. The new GPU will probably be at least on par with the latest PC gpu's but will be used a lot more efficiently since it's a standard system.

Giblet

Well a custom built CPU and GPU will always outperform faster processors clock for clock for the specific tasks it was built for. Not just slighty better either.

As for PS2 peak performace tri/sec, how many games use 60m polygons? Wtih all the shader effects, it would be stupid and costly to even have poly counts into the 10's of millions. UT2k3 has 10,000 polys per character. Displacement and normal mapping do all the work now at less expense. High Def resolutions are what use the RAM, and while games do look nicer, if it's a nice looking piece of crap whats the point.

flogen

LookingFor wrote:

Also, they could do weapon-changes in a number of ways. But the A button would probably make sense., or perhaps even the d-pad (the controller isn't very big, your thumb could probably reach it pretty handily).

Actually; the D-pad would probably work brilliantly; had completely forgotten about that!

Mokong

I don't know about changing between guns, but i thought (out side the box :cool:) of one awesome why to change between a gun and the sword, which could be used to change between different guns aswell i guess.

Imagine that the main character carries the sword in it's seth(sp?) on his back (like Link in the Zelda games does), and has a holseter for his pistol (as an example) on his side. So how would you switch between them. Say you're holding the pistol already and want to switch, you have to put the controller to your side "pretending" to holster your pistol. And then you "reach" over your shoulder to "grab" the hilt of the sword to draw it out.

flogen

Mokong wrote:

I don't know about changing between guns, but i thought (out side the box :cool:) of one awesome why to change between a gun and the sword, which could be used to change between different guns aswell i guess.

Imagine that the main character carries the sword in it's seth(sp?) on his back (like Link in the Zelda games does), and has a holseter for his pistol (as an example) on his side. So how would you switch between them. Say you're holding the pistol already and want to switch, you have to put the controller to your side "pretending" to holster your pistol. And then you "reach" over your shoulder to "grab" the hilt of the sword to draw it out.

Noice; not sure how practical it would be, but it could be cool if it worked...

Hugh Hefner

Maybe some kind of option to turn on or off this "Life-like weapon change" system? Smooth.

monument

http://www.endangeredgamer.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elmoco/124806829/

Matt Simis

Retr0gamer wrote:

The gamecube gpu was quite amazing for it's time. It could do transparencies and distortion effects extremely well and also had gorgeous fur shader effects that we are only seeing now in the last few months of PC developement. .

Christ, youre really starting to push it now! I really like my GC (it was 70% of the games offered that I didnt like) however your statement is grossly exaggerated, bearing in mind the GC didnt even offer Programmable vertex and pixel shaders (something added to GeForce3 on PC, many, many years ago). GC GPU power is more similar to a super charged GeForce2 with some graphical improvements on a dedicated platform (vs open on PC).

RE4 (GC) looks great on a TV screen, but they reduced Viewable screensize and introduced fogging (which suited the game) to reduce draw distance, which are clever cheats. On a HD or simply large display, its very blocky and muddy (still far better than PS2 version). Compared to PCs 2 years ago, it doesnt bode well, let alone games and PCs in the "last few months". GC is an architecture designed around a 640x480 screen res, again, by design. I agree GC should have been considered by a lot more people, but you need to let go of the rose tinted glasses..


Matt

Retr0gamer

The view distance on Resi 4 wasn't exactly crap. Quite a few games also had faked vertex and pixel shaders that looked decent. These effects were also very new at the time. Halo was probably the first game to implement shaders fully and it was a long wait until PC games started to implement them.And the volummetrically lit fur shaders looked excellent. The xbox GPU was better but was limited by whatever Direct X version it used. There were a lot more effects the GC could do that the Xbox would have to use a lot of power to emulate. For sheer raw power however the xbox was superior.