I almost went so far as to
demonstrate how I felt HD pixel art characters should be done. What I felt was a misstep with the game using drawings it ended out to be (upper right) rather than improve the original (lower left) to HD-resolution pixel art (center) [image also shows how the character sprites were made from the 32x32 tiles on the upper left]. While that image I made (in the center) was still a work-in-progress which I never finished, notable by mistakes with the boots, arms/gloves, hair, jawline, breasts, and hat; I felt the actual game's style ruined some small subtleties the original game had, such as how every character's in-game face was in profile to show they were facing their opponent, maintaining Akiman's original style of the time, the color palette restriction for characters, and dithering technique used commonly for Capcom's pixel art at the time when SSF2T was released. (Also, yes, that is the alpha client of GGPO, I had 18 MF'ing Firefoxes open, my screen resolution was that low then, and I realize the image is a JPG which ruins pixel art with artifacts and blurs but I just wanted to show my friend my current progress with a quick screencap even though a PNG is ideal for pixel art >__<
Which brings me to the deal this past week of
Resident Evil 4, that I am still debating on getting. I already have the game on other platforms including the PS3 (it was on sale for $10 there long ago before), but I do love the game (and Ashley Graham's ballistics). I know it is a lazy "HD" port since all Capcom did was just use the old game and put it on the 360 which just upscans it to the display resolution. Polygons are resolution independent, but fortunately they used the Gamecube/Wii textures and shaders instead of the horrid PS2 textures and shaders. However I wish they would take the effort in improving the textures like the way
Beyond Good & Evil HD and
Perfect Dark did it, but like poor emulation it feels like a cash grab which makes me think twice about paying for the game once again.
[quote name='eastx']That's silly talk. You might as well say RE4 wouldn't be RE4 any more if they'd actually updated the graphics. Are you familiar with RE4 on Wii or PC? Both of those games support alternate control methods and yet they are still RE4. In fact, many gamers feel the Wii version is the best because it has more intuitive controls. Difficult, antiquated, or poorly-thought-out controls create a barrier between the player and the game. The barrier is not too great for most of us in this case, but it is enough for some people.
Anyway, the fact that Capcom actually did create an all-new and more effective control scheme for RE4 on the Wii is all the argument we need that they could've added a new
option on 360 and would've complained.[/QUOTE]
As for control changes, eastx did mention the Wii and PC iterations of
Resident Evil 4 which did take the effort to improve the controls a bit. I also found the newer modern control schemes worked well on the XBLA
Perfect Dark, and the added touch of a right analog stick camera control to the XBLA
Jet Set Radio did make the games better. I understand some games are about getting used to their style of controls like the old Xbox title,
GunValkyrie (which is not backwards compatible on the 360), or your first few times trying a fighting game. For
Resident Evil 4, it was part of its play to stop and take careful aim for the game's pacing, but maybe some people have grown accustomed to aiming with the right analog stick. Similarly
Deadly Premonition and the original
Dead Rising had left analog stick aiming modes, which made players adjust and adapt to its control scheme. The sequels to
Dead Rising did make the change to right analog stick aiming because so many are accustomed to that. It takes me a bit, but eventually I do adapt and can play a game fine for most titles.
[quote name='billydeewilliams']which dishwasher games is better?[/QUOTE]
I really loved the sequel,
The Diswasher: Vampire Smile, and is the one I personally prefer. The primary reason because it is easy, unlike its predecessor which got too difficult (for me) at a point that I had to stop. I especially love the song
The Sunken March, it should be like my theme song =P ... it is my most favorite track of the game. Reason enough to get it when it is on sale again. EDIT: As a special note, according to the [thread=292253]Xbox Rewards Wiki[/thread] from this site, the superior sequel does not count towards the Shocktober rewards. However, I enjoyed up to the point where I stopped on the original
The Diswasher: Dead Samurai which does qualify for the rewards offer. To me, that one is too difficult but has its worth in supporting the indie developer, James Silva and the rest of Ska Studios.
[quote name='Jackie Chandler']Don't be silly. No one on CAG gets to games in their backlog.[/QUOTE]
Well, it was a decent week for me. I managed to knock out
Bioshock 2 from my backlog, along with a couple of the DLC which I got from a previous sale. I did get A's on the Protector Trials (and some A+'s), it probably was my fault for playing this so soon after playing through the main game twice that I looked to each trial with trepidation (I don't wanna), but fortunately none of them are difficult (good for my perfect storm of game-playing inabilities) and upon completion it gave me an extra plasmid for the Minerva's Den add-on. I agree with most the sentiments on this thread that the Minerva's Den add-on was worth the 400MSP discount price, since I felt it had much better pacing than that of the main game, yet it gave a similar experience.
Once I finished
Bioshock 2, I was considering my next item to knock off my backlog. Fortunately PlayXBLA's Weekend Achievement Challenge gave me an idea, and I already had all the
Kingdom for Keflings achievements they were asking for. I owned
Banjo-Kazooie from a previous sale (which was lazy in the graphics being just upscaled in resolution, but the textures were still N64, but at least they took the effort to retool the game for XBLA like "stop n' swap") and wanted to gauge how difficult the 4 achievements they asked for were, and they were pretty simple, which gave me the go-ahead to purchase
GripShift since it was also on sale from the Sales and Specials + app.
For all the talk this past week of
Resident Evil 4 and Bioshock sales, I feel
GripShift was underrepresented on this thread, based on my initial impressions (to get the PlayXBLA 4 achievements, which were 4 of the 5 most common ones people have). I think only tylerh made mention of the game on sale so far. Granted it is my initial impressions, and I've only played the beginner stuff, so I have not seen how difficult the game could get. The game does have a bit of
Trials HD for me, when I try to beat some of my friends' times for the 3 objectives. The game is not necessarily a racer, it's also part platformer, but it does have a generic Mario Kart-style mode as well. I bit on the title because I had seen a few other friends play the game (which they recommended), it is currently on sale for just 400MSP, and it is a rare chance I actually will enter in a PlayXBLA sweepstakes. I just hope
GripShift doesn't stop me from playing it like
Trials HD did when stages got too difficult for me.
Anyway, now I still have to finish
Banjo-Kazooie from my backlog, which hopefully won't take me too long now that I actually started it. I am glad to have finally knocked off
Bioshock 2 from the backlog (did as much of it as I wanted, haven't even touched its multiplayer aspects tho) before Infinite gets released. Maybe soon I should start
Transformers: War for Cybertron I got a couple weeks ago since its sequel is already out. With all the sale action that has happened, and the wonder of what may be our deals for the coming week, I'm excited to see.