Check out Spiderman 3 for the Wii

I've seen Blitz games by 10 year olds that looked better than this. Shame on you!


Oh and shame on these guys too:

GT Pro for Wii:




If this was art from a Blitz game I wouldn't be so harsh on it, but these are commercial titles, and the Spiderman one was just pushed out the door to make a quick buck. At least the matrix games, though crap, looked exactly like the movies. And that was on older hardware!

Btw,

GT Pro was made by these guys:
http://games.ign.com/objects/025/025673.html



And Spiderman 3 was made by these guys:
http://games.ign.com/objects/025/025232.html



Stick with Gameboy titles, you two!

Yeah, I was really disappointed with Spiderman3's visuals for the Wii, especially because it was Viscarious Visions behind it, and they've made some DS titles that looked better then that.

It's as if they only had 3 months to work on that thing according to what I've read regarding reviews...
(or they just didn't give a damn)

Does it have innovative Wii-trols? Those visuals are pretty pathetic ... the Wii is more powerful than the original Xbox and Spiderman 2 looked amazing on that system!

Only on the web-slinging according to IGN, combat and everything else is complete cack.

I find it ironic how Vic's DS rendition of Spidey3 got much better results.......I guess as Sswift mentioned, they should just stick to the handhelds since it's apparently their forté.

BTW, the movie is absolute garbage and I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone.

I agree, the movie is just pathetic. The Spiderman saga is far behind the first two X-Men movies or Batman Begins.

I thought the movie was ok. But as for the game, at least they didn't make it into a series of mini spiderman games. I'm not surprised considering Nintendo's stance on "innovation and quality" vs graphics. Too bad theres not much of any quality lately.

These developers obviously want to encourage the belief that the Wii = bad graphics. Way to attack your target platform...

How the hell do these people get development licenses, anyway?
With Nintendo letting garbage this in, logic says I should be able to email them and get DS dev resources the next day. (But alas, no).

Those screen shots really do look like early alpha versions to me. It's like they have missing artwork and instead they're using simple place holder textures.

Buildings with no windows? using a simple cube shape? what on earth!. These sort of things were from the 486sx days.

These have to be DS games that were quickly ported to the Wii, surely????

I thought movie was pretty good. But yeah, those games look aweful, I know graphics isn't everything, but that's taking the piss

Hah, even the Gamecube version of Spider-Man 2 was far better than this. Nintendo should have known better to have quality control on games like this. After all, if the Wii was supposed to have better games than its predecessor, this is most certainly not breaking that barrier, is it? I'd expect this to be more of a GC game than a Wii game, sorry to tell ya.

To be fair the textures only disappear when you go up too high. Normally I think the game looks decent:

I don't think the Wii GPU is more powerfull than the Xbox. Even if it is only because it doesn't support shaders on the GPU whilst the XBox had DX8 shader support.

Thats why wii games just don't look that great. The GPU is supposedly a higher clocked NGC one, and does have a higher fill rate than the Xbox.

Without shaders I can't see any game on the Wii being able to compete graphicaly.

no. Wii games don't have shaders and lots of devs got really lazy with them and their abilities and now they have to get back into "Good Art" mode... There is some good looking stuff on the wii... look at some of the minigames in wario ware... although... not most of them.. and there is some nice stuff in super paper mario later on... as it goes it builds on the look and become very complex.

The wii isn't designed to be a graphics power-house, it will force people to either not develope for it, or to develope games with great gameplay... I think it is a great expirement and I have enjoyed my romp in it just fine...

The Wii GPU is WAY more powerful than the Xbox...

Google 4tw!

Spoken like someone who doesn't even know what shaders are. Shaders don't replace good art, nor do they make bad art look better. In fact if anything, shaders require better artwork and more of it, so far from encouraging laziness, they make you work harder. They just happen to be a good way to do the same thing you were always doing, only faster and better.

shaders do exactly what it sounds like. Shade things. As in they typically alter the color of polygons or pixels to simulate lighting effects and color changes. And now even caustics. If the Wii doesn't have them, which I don't know as I don't tend to notice that stuff, and the reason wii games don't look as good is because of it, it is because they make people lazy.

I've seen tons of great low-poly art with no lighting of any kind... Then you have stuff like the ps1 final fantasy models...

http://itc.ua/img/dpk/2003/5/!final_fantasy_9_(psx)_2.jpg

compare the texture work on those to the spidey above..

or on the ps3 for that matter...



All the new graphics things serve one thing. Making really bad looking shadows that look fake, shading models unrealisticly and allowing the texture artists to slack off and make flat boring textures that look less real than those from ff9 on the ps1...

(Granted, the textures on the ff9 models weren't created by a 'person'.. but with the larger models.) But that isn't true of the fine texture work in Wc3 and i'm not sure but I think also WoW...

I think the Wii GPU must support some shaders, at least from playing Red Steel it did seem to showcase quite a few heat shaders as well as glass refraction shaders a la Doom 3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii#Technical_specifications
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_%28graphics_chip%29

Nobody knows

It probably does support hardware shaders, though, since it is not old hardware as people seem so intent on believing. It's modern hardware, built with efficiency in mind. (And hardware shaders are indeed quite an efficiency feature).

It's worth noting, though, that hardware shaders do not equate to pretty water / heat shimmers / refraction. Hardware shaders are a way to do those same effects that are indeed quite possible already, but on the bare metal so they are much faster. (Though also much more trouble to give good support for due to the many different types of hardware. That's why they are nice on game consoles!).
The technical definition: A "Shader" is a part of the renderer, which is responsible for calculating the colour of an object.
The Wii does not lack shaders; if it did, then it would hardly be rendering anything. (Sorry, that gets on my nerves :b)

Well, the Wii's big intent is to build around motion sensitivity controlling, as we well know. Graphical power is only secondary to that, I'm quite sure... Seems like comparing with a Blitz-made game, I'd expect better from a big league game on ANY console made in C#/C++, OR the PC...

yes, we can all agree this game looks pretty bad. And it looks just as bad on every other console... as that last screenie shows (unless IGN doesn't know what a Ps3 is...)

yeah it looks pap. I steer clear of movie licences anyway, and racing games unless they are something REALLY special like GT3 or Burnout.

Shame the movie isn't liked very much as I enjoyed the others (the first one the most).

Hehe, on the same token, I'd stay away from movie theaters based on high-profile PC or console games for the same exact reason. I mean, there's a niche that's meant for one thing that won't do so hot in another medium, this being one of those. Either the movie is better, or the game is, not both. Lesson learned here, Hollywood?

Which proves my point very nicely. You don't even know what shaders are.

Heh. I've always thought 'shaders' is a crap name. :)

Those Spiderman screenies are godawful, BTW. :/

Disagree about the movie sucking- I loved it. It wasn't comic stoyline perfect, and the script could have done with some reworking, but it was a blast to watch.

If any movie was a comic on screen, S3 was.

About the Wii... I couldn't care less if it has shaders or not. How the graphical elements are used together to enhance the game I'm playing is far more important. For example, Wii sports looks pretty darn good to me, and there's nothing really going on in that other than a glow effect and some well designed artwork. It's simple, but it still looks 'pretty'.

...And I've seen my games that look much worse than this!

It doesnt look that bad, comes down to if it has steady refresh rate and smooth game play. Im fedup with games that look really good, then stagger round like a.... staggery stuttery thing.
I have to susspend disbelief anyway, which is a lot easyer with "simple" graphics, than stutter.

I liked the film, except

"Your Fathers injories where cased by his own weapon"
"Well so was the F%£%ing scar, but it was still Spidermans fault".

I would have rescued MAryJane when no one was looking, and let vemon and Sandy kill the stupid web slinger.

Spiderman 4 is gonna be set out in the country or in the desert.

Nah - it'll be set inside an untextured cube.

I rather enjoyed the movie too... although the first one was definitely the best.

What the hell? Spiderman 2 looks better than that on the gamecube, and that works on the wii! That'sa sillymistake to make! Though it looks *much* better than the wii one lower down....




I have to agree here. I just bought Shadow of the Collosus, and thats a great game, but it drops down to about 9fps attimes!? What the hell is up with that?

really? I didn't notice any slow down with Shadow of the Collosus?

Gab.... You didn't continue to read what I said? Or... Maybe you cause the page before I finished editing it? (I do that a lot, re-write things I don't think are clear enough)

I did continue to read what you said. I didn't get the impression from anything you wrote that you were particularly clear what shaders were or how they could make one lazy. Nor did I learn how they could make one lazy from anything you said.

I dont know what shaders are. Well not really.

Hmm I think you're all being really overly critical about this. Sure the graphics aren't as super amazing as some of the newly released games, but as long as the game is fun right?

I still play PS1 games with 3D even worse than that, such as Metal Gear Solid 1, but the fact is the game is good fun.

As for that Final Fantasy 9 screenshot, that looks like a PC emulator render to me as it looks a lot more high res than I remember it, and besides you can't really compare the background to that screenshot since it's just a 2D picture they're all stood on!

> If this was art from a Blitz game I wouldn't be
> so harsh on it, but these are commercial titles,

That's just stupid. So you're saying that if these games on the Gamecube were made in Blitz you'd big them up and not criticise them? Or maybe you're saying that everyone's Blitz games AREN'T commercial titles and as such it's ok if they look shit and you don't mind bigging them up anyway? :)

Sure Spiderman and that racing game don't look that amazing, but I still bet most of you could never create a game like that, in Blitz or in anything else.

With this sort of team spirit on the Blitz forums it's no wonder that people aren't making any games other than puzzle.

That's not the point. We don't claim to be pro devs.

I was mainly talking about the texture of Steiner's Armor, and the folds and details in the other's clothing... something missing from characters in the spiderman game.

even if it is higher-rez, the textures on the models wouldn't be increased by that.

However, Enay, I do think that people here are much harsher on AAA games than they are on blitz games. Commercial or not. I'm consistant.

I don't actually care how good a game looks.. I do think people spend way too much time with fancy things and all these things that require crazy processing power to do, when you could do those FF9 flat textures on higher-poly models these days and it would look good enough to be emersive... While all the shaders make for water that looks the same as all other water, and the same shadows in every game.. and the same lighting effects.

Really, as long as the game is fun I'm happy.. and this spiderman game seems to not even be that fun.. but it is a movie tie-in so I'm not surprised.




Really.. It bothers me FAR more that atmosphere has become more important than playability.. Sure, it is more realistic sometimes (although, it also sometimes means wonky fake shadows and pure-darkness) but it also doesn't do anything for making the game more fun if it gets in the way...

Spiderman seems to not have bothered doing that, and I'm actually happy about that... I prefer that to things like... the default settings in Oblivion.. Where you can't see at night and you need to sit in a dark room with no lights to be able to see anything even during the day sometimes... well.. perhaps it isn't that bad.. but there were many places in the game where I had to adjust the brightness.. and I ultimately ended up sliding it all the way up and dealing with washed out graphics since it was more playable that way than looking good...

It isn't just darkness tho.. Could be bloom, the PC itself getting in the way, or even a camera that hugs walls rather than pulling out past them and letting you peer through the wall... Sure... that can't happen in real life... but it IS a game...

Dampe, I find it hard to believe you didn't notice any slowdown, straight from the intro the game runs at less than 25fps, which is fine, 15 pushes it, but at times it drops to lower than that even (Obviously I imagine it's limited to the refresh rate but the game gets really laggy....)

I'm watching the intro as we speak and it must be less than 10fps right now.

If I had the budget they had, I'd certainly bloody hope I could create better looking games than those two.

Nintendo have dropped the ball here by allowing these titles through. Badly. There are already prominent voices in the industry saying that the Wii controller is going to lose it's novelty and the Wii will be remembered as nothing more than an underpowered console. Having games like this around just gives credence to them.

Dampe, you're missing something.

This is not just bad looking graphics; it is distracting!

Look at Zelda Twilight Princess, for example. It has some pretty primitive graphics, technically speaking (puny textures!), but they make up for it by distracting you with what the GameCube can do well (detail), and they also have good enough art direction to keep it all looking surprisingly nice.

What does this say?
-> If you are knowingly bad at something, either don't put it in your game or make it so unnoticeable amongst the stuff that is good that nobody minds.
Spiderman 3 fails at this. The graphics engine is bad at distance stuff, there is no way they didn't notice it. They should have worked around it instead of having major landmarks draw like garbage!

You are working under the argument that "because they have horrible graphics, they must have given it good gameplay." Alas, no:

- This is a movie game. Movie games hardly ever have decent gameplay.

- This was obviously developed by insects. Any developer capable of devising decent gameplay would not let the above garbage slip.

- A game is as much about how it is presented as how it is interacted with. You could come up with the best puzzle game in the world, but if the pieces are all compressed to oblivion so you can only tell them apart by what shade of grey they are, it sucks. If the renderer shoves a rainbow-coloured frame in between every real frame, it is distracting and the game is unplayable. You can claim all you want that "the gameplay is there!", and it very well may be there, but that does not make it accessible, interesting, fun, or worth getting your eyes incinerated over.

For a game with better graphics than the racer above: http://www.kineticrealities.com/

Sometimes I still play Deus Ex, amongst others

Enay makes a good point, graphics aren't everything.

But I think with licences, it's more important to refer to a recent column I read with a Maxis employee in PC Zone - who said that all games rely on familiarity. i.e. a familiar interace, a familiar theme etc.

And with licences, the reason they sell well is because the familiarity aspect is covered before they've the game is purchased.

It is a very commercial look at it. The Spiderman game will sell well, no doubt, but it could have sold even more if it was a fantastic game too. You can look at a game like OoT.. The game was sure to sell well just for being a zelda game, sure.. but they didn't just do that...They went on to make one of the best games of all time, and now they get to sell it on the Wii and make even more money off it.

Spiderman 3 will not ever be part of a classic-pack... And it won't end up on some Virtual Console type thing.

Making money is only part of the goal of a business.. Providing a good product is part of it.

Rubbish. There are thousands of companies that thrive off selling junk. Take McDonalds for instance.

McDonalds started by selling good tasting food, quickly, to a lot of people.. With things like the drive through window and new cooking methods. There was a time when this was considered a good product.

There was a time when tabacco products could be called 'good products'.

McDonalds, Ciggs, Gas, and a lot of now 'bad' products are starting to see some down-turns. They will either have to change their business plans or end up dying out... Like a lot of the rail-road companies did.

There will always be businesses that try to take their customers for all they are worth.. But that isn't a goal of business. That is a goal of some businessmen.

Business is all about making a product that people need, to fit that need.

McDonalds filled the need of people on the go. People are still on the go but are willing to take an extra 10 min to stand in line at Chipotle's to get something better... McDonalds bought Chipotle... Why? Because they know it is a better product and they need to find a way to change the fast food burger joint's image... And they try.. They offer salads and other things now.. And they will only follow what people want MORE as time goes on.. Otherwise. People will stop buying it.

Now, A lot of people are happy with their Spiderman 3 game... It isn't terrible, and they did try to make something different.. Not like that Ghost Rider god-of-war-rip...

The over-all goal of business is to STAY in business. Making money is part of that, as is providing a good product. Meaning one that people are willing to pay for.

Tie-in games will always suck, they meet these needs just fine... The problem is that a lot of OTHER games don't meet this need... Which is why the sales of the Tie-ins seem so inflated.. The regular games should be selling better, because they ARE better. Typically they aren't..

It is almost like we have all the nothing summer movies.. The action movies... In the form of games... and then have nothing else. Movies have a lot of various types.. And some of the indie films are truely fantastic and can compete on the same level as the other films. There are art films, and sad movies, and documentarys...

Games don't have that... so they only hit a small sub-section of the population.. at least normally..

And when one over-shoots that.. we don't really put in the effort to find out why it has so much wider appeal.. Like the Sims...

you're confusing a good product with something people think they want. They don't even have to like it when they have it, they just have to part with their money. And they do. And when they churn out another crappy movie game, they'll do it again. Business has nothing to do with a good product, it has to do with finding a way to get people to give you money time and again. If that happens to necessitate a good product, so be it, but often it doesn't, and so be that too.

admitting that is the first step towards becoming that. Maybe you already have become someone who trys to sell a crap product.. I'd like to think there are some people out there that try to help the world, not just make money.. And there are lots of people who do that.. Who are spending lots of money on things that will help people, and might make them money in the end, but which also might not ever recover from the devlopment costs.. People fight for that every day.

Wow. What business is that then? Not a single business with a superior product has ever been successful.

They're called non-profit organizations (as opposed to businesses), although it should be noted that SOME non-profit organizations (like the peta) are actually businesses.

Sure. The key to marketing any product is to address the needs or wants of customers. This of course like Gabe said doesn't necessitate a good product (however you define that).

From the shareholders point of view, a good product is one that sells well. Period.