Game engines you especially like/don't like

[Mr Puggsly]

curl-6 said:

Mr Puggsly said:

Based on how great the game looks, I can't imagine much remained from an original Xbox tech. Also, Xbox support was pretty much dead by 2004 in my opinion.

I guess it makes sense to stick with UE2.5 if they were really comfortable with the engine. Also, the early days of UE3 seemed like a struggle. I think I'm more curious why did Splinter Cell games stuck with UE2.5 even in 2013. I would have never guessed that was UE2.5 and it looks great considering.

Probably not much left from the early build in terms of graphics, but it's amazing how long legacy code can hang around in an engine; I read a Treyarch dev during the 7th gen say the COD engine circa 2009 still contained remnants from the original Doom and Wolfenstein 3D.

And yeah, Blacklist's use of UE2 as late as 2013 was quite an interesting oddity, especially as, yeah, it looks damn good considering. It's a similar situation to how this year's Mortal Kombat 11 still runs on a heavily modified UE3. A lot of the time when devs have years worth of work invested in their own customized version of an older engine they can be loathe to part with it simply cos it saves them so much time and money to have a lot of their work already in place from past games.

In regard to UE3, I think I would have liked to seen more developers using that over UE4.

Arkham Knight, Outlast 2 and Mortal Kombat 11 are actually some of the best looking games this gen and run at a high resolution. UE4 though, its really a mixed bag and has games running at 720p on a base X1. It seems to me UE3 would have been sufficient for numerous UE4 games, would have delivered comparable visuals with better resolutions and likely better load times.

The premium consoles do see significant improvments on premium consoles, but sometimes its just for 1080p like on the PS4 Pro. There are exceptions though, I consider Gears 4, Crackdown 3, Fortnite and Days Gone impressive. I'm sure there are other technically notable games using UE4.

On a side note, it possible moving a game from UE3 to UE4 isn't too difficult. However, the Batman remasters showed a simple port would have been better. While Gears of War: Ultimate is basically a great port and engine "upgrade" with improved visuals. Probably could have been 60 fps if they stuck with UE3 though.