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One of these is Call of Duty 4, the other is MW3. Try and guess the difference.
Good old consoles holding back development, got to love it.
Edited by Alias, 29 May 2011 - 06:01.

I'd disagaree that its just the consoles that are holding them back.

Never said it was, but it's a major factor.
Game publisher wants profit, more profit from consoles, therefore games are tailored to consoles as a result.

It's also partly what I've mentioned in the last couple of pages, in the fact that since Call of Duty 4 every game in the series is pretty much just a mod of it, which again relates back to Activision's greed and/or Infinity Ward's lack of imagination.

What can you possibly do something new with a sequel going in the same timeline ? Plasma Weapon equipped special forces flying over the bases with jet packs ? No. It looks same because there is not much you can do about it, there is a few kind of special ground forces and some normal ones; they will of course look similiar...

I think what he was getting at was the graphical similarity.

There's only so much you can do with an old engine even when updating. They are just saving money by not doing a complete overhaul of the engine like DICE did.

A complete overhaul wouldn't do them much good because the xbox360 is over six years old and therefore very obsolete - it would never be able to handle an overhauled engine. IMO MW2 DID look significantly better than CoD 4, and they have squeezed an absolutely inhuman amount of graphics, effects, detail etc. out of the considerably limited resources they are allowed to make it with - MW2 looks much much better than BC2 for example, I'd say (and better than BF3 too actually). For a reference as to how ugly it could've looked and how slow it would've run if IW hadn't been so efficient with the engine, refer to Black Ops. Nonetheless, I agree that a serious graphical update would be nice. After I get my new computer .
Edited by Chyros, 29 May 2011 - 09:37.

Not everyone is capable of playing the game on astronomic system settings, current engine of MW is nice but I agree on MW3 must be the last one done with that engine, they must change it for next ones.

Chyros, on 29 May 2011, 19:36, said:

So the X360 being an outdated piece of junk is an excuse for pumping out the same game 3 times? It's an efficient engine for sure, that's because it's pretty much idTech with a few custom parts rather than a completely new engine like Frostbite (I do give some credit to DICE in this respect, as their engines are 100% original which does tend to mean they're worse on performance than a proper dedicated engine like Unreal or idTech which has been developed for more than a decade).
It's a bit silly claiming that MW2 looks better than BC2 if you take into account the fact that BC2 maps are larger by a factor of ten and the fact it has a full physics engine on top of all of that, so of course some visual detail needs to be sacrificed, not to mention as I said before Frostbite is a custom engine unlike idTech, which tends to slow things down a bit as well.

My point more lies with the fact that most Battlefield titles are pretty indistinguisable from each other because DICE actually puts the effort into updating not just the visual component but the technical component as well, and there you have MW3 and COD4 pretty much the exact same game with little technical difference at all, with minor cosmetic updates and probably a few extra things in the engine that took a few weeks to code.

gah. graphics are not that important really.

Camille, on 29 May 2011, 19:52, said:

Never said they were, I am a strong proponent for gameplay > everything, but the thing is, the gameplay hasn't changed either.
At least if the technical elements (i.e. the engine) changed, they would at least have an excuse for not updating the other parts of the game, but the fact is they've done neither.

Think of it like HL2 and the episodes. Same engine with minor improvements with new levels, everything else is the same. The difference there, however, is the fact that Valve at least prices their episodes as if they were actually derivative games, unlike Activision who prices every single Call of Duty port at full price like it seemed to take the same amount of effort to make, which is completely rubbish.

Alias, on 29 May 2011, 11:48, said:

All this is true of course but it doesn't exactly come across as a plus to convert to a really new engine tbh .

Chyros, on 29 May 2011, 19:56, said:

Never said they need to switch to a bespoke engine, just that it might be about time to update the actual bit of the engine that does the work. It's pretty much idTech 3 (the engine which powered Quake 3 and Call of Duty 1) with some extra bits. id is up to idTech 5 now, so it would seem sensible to switch to a newer version but that's unlikely to happen with Activision making the decisions, considering idTech 3 is open source (and pretty much the only reason Call of Duty has been able to use it for this long) and idTech 4/5 aren't open source yet (however, apparently idTech 4 is going open sometime this year).
It's all cost cutting, really. Maximise the profits. Same reason that the supposedly 'new' Call of Duty games are priced at full price (more on that in my last post).

Alias, on 29 May 2011, 12:09, said:

Yeah, that makes sense. Really though, if they'd said they switched to Id5 for MW3, I'd go "nice", but if they said they removed DVK, I'd say a whole more than that. Though visuals are nice, it's IMO the gameplay that CoD needs the most urgent fixes in atm.

A newer engine doesn't just mean better graphics, it also means new gameplay-mechanics, new ways of interacting. Look at Bad company 2 and Battlefield 3 for example. The destructivess is updated so that you don't always need explosives to take down something. You can shoot cover to pieces even with your assault rifle. If CoD changed engines they could do better physics, better peneteration of objects, etc. Maybe no more invulnerable bananaleaves...

Wanderer, on 29 May 2011, 12:27, said:

If they wanted to accomodate new mechanics I'm sure they'd incorporate them. It's not as if they were conservative for MW2 after all. Besides, destructible environments really wouldn't suit CoD IMO. I would consider it a great disadvantage if it were in. As for the "better penetration of objects", that's just ruled by a set of variables. The banana leaves are only impenetrable because their material type has a penetration damage modifier of 0. Would you really want to be able to shoot through everything on the map? Because I sure as hell wouldn't.

I wasn't saying that destructible environments are the way to go. I used it just as an example of what you can gain from using a new engine. As for the penetrations, I feel that in MW2 it's abit unpredictable. I agree that you should not be shooting through everything, but I hope they can make it abit more reliable to shoot through things...

Wanderer, on 29 May 2011, 13:24, said:

How is it unpredictable? Oo

I dunno. In CoD4 I could trust it more, I knew exatly what I could shoot through etc. In MW, It's somehow weirder. Bullets not always going through and so on.

Wanderer, on 30 May 2011, 0:48, said:

MW probably has better hit detection than BO because even though I spew my FAMAS at people running at me, I still get knifed.

Wanderer, on 29 May 2011, 18:48, said:

Well that's quite weird because they didn't change a thing about the whole system . Penetration damage is simply determined by the bullet type, material type and path length through the material, nothing else. As I recall they didn't even change the material and bullet type modifiers .

More news on the subscription thing: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405..._LEFTTopStories

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deltaepsilon, on 31 May 2011, 7:01, said:

Edited by SquigPie, 31 May 2011 - 06:19.

This gametrailers series checks the realism of today's shooters. Most things are pretty obvious, but interesting nonetheless.

deltaepsilon, on 31 May 2011, 7:01, said:

They better keep realism out of my series goddammit. They can stick it somewhere the sun don't shine >.> .