OPM (Official Playstation Mag) UK reviews Lair/Heavenly Sword/Warhawk...

[sieanr]

KBG29 said:
I am content with the scores. They are just trying to get across that these things are more like movies that you play through than games. I have always been looking forward to gaming at this level so it is right up my ally. Ever since I played FFX and MGS2 I have had an deep atatchment to these movie like games, and they are my favorties. I am glad that they have cut the length down in games like GeoW, Gow, HS, and Lair I just don't have the time to play 40 hours on every game. Shortining up games is a good way to pull in the working people, having to put 40+ hour into a game is why a lot of my friends quite playing a lot after graduation. GeoW sold extreamly well to the mainstream crowd because of its shortness and little time consumption.

As for Blu-ray meaning longer games. Yeah it can allow for longer games in some cases, but their are a lot better uses for Blu-ray than stretching a game out for 40 hours. Here are some of the best reason for Blu-ray:
1. Devs can grab in game assets for cut scence and touch them up a little, then play them back in HD while the game loads in the background.
2. Having all of the extra room allows for the devs to have a larger varity of textures making game worlds more varied.
3. Their is plenty of room for uncompressed 7.1 sourround sound. (both HS and Lair do this, and if you have ever heard compressed vs uncompressed sorround, then you would much appricate the differance)
4. A developer never has to wonder if they can fit their vision on the disk, because their is always going to be planty of room.
5. Less processing power is being used to uncompress data and more is placed on making the game play and feel better.
6. Data can be streamed in HD off the disk allowing devs to create larger levels, with more epic feel.
7. Extra content can be thrown on the disk to show how the game use built all the way up to a hole movie.
Their are tons of advantages to developing on Blu-ray, and as the generation pushes forward the devs will get more and more space. By 2010 we will have games in 3d running on 100GB BD disks at 1080p, and their will only be one place to find it, and that will be on the PS3.

Every post from you is gold.

1. What?

2. Larger textures aren't an issue, unless Bluray magically makes the PS3 have more RAM.

3. True, but few people have a sound system that can actually take advantage of this.

4. Too bad they have to worry about the small install base and if their 20mil game will break even. j/k

5. Uncompression occures when the game is loading data, not when its playing. In fact, compressing is an advantage even on Bluray because it reduces load time.

6. Whats the difference between "HD" data and normal data? And I could've sworn GTA did this on the lowly PS2

7. Yeah, you can have lots of extras on one disc instead of two. However, you're on crack if you think games will be on 100gb disc - the PS3 was designed to handle only dual layer, and no firmware update can change this. Oh, and you don't need 100gb to have a "game running in 3d" - look up polygons.