By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo - Mario Kart 8 pushes Wii U to the limit?

garywood on 19 May 2014

Given that the Wii U was deliberately created not to be a graphical powerhouse, it almost doesn't matter whether it pushes it to the limit. Unless you're obsessed by amazing graphics, it's clearly looking good enough for any game. A better question would be whether it pushes any boundaries in terms of gameplay. That's what Nintendo need to be doing.



Around the Network
bigtakilla on 19 May 2014
garywood said:
Given that the Wii U was deliberately created not to be a graphical powerhouse, it almost doesn't matter whether it pushes it to the limit. Unless you're obsessed by amazing graphics, it's clearly looking good enough for any game. A better question would be whether it pushes any boundaries in terms of gameplay. That's what Nintendo need to be doing.


Yes, pretty much every single game uses the gamepad as at least an ease of access to numerous things, such as drag and drop equiping of inventory, a hud to remove clutter from the tv, a map, a touch screen for changing game options, a "camera" on items such as the tri rotor for Blacklist or soon to be camera for Fatal Frame, a headsetless communication device, ect. 

Not to mention any sort of typing in anything. Using the thumb pad (on the PS4/XBone controller) is a HUGE annoyance to me now. 



PigPen on 19 May 2014
garywood said:
Given that the Wii U was deliberately created not to be a graphical powerhouse, it almost doesn't matter whether it pushes it to the limit. Unless you're obsessed by amazing graphics, it's clearly looking good enough for any game. A better question would be whether it pushes any boundaries in terms of gameplay. That's what Nintendo need to be doing.


Retro Studios & Shin'en says differently.  The Wii U eDRAM alone is a powerhouse.  It's definitely better then the Playstation 4 GDDR5.



fatslob-:O on 19 May 2014
PigPen said:

Retro Studios & Shin'en says differently.  The Wii U eDRAM alone is a powerhouse.  It's definitely better then the Playstation 4 GDDR5.

You just can't help but start up arguments can you ?

Let's see if this ends up being a forest fire ... 



curl-6 on 19 May 2014
garywood said:
curl-6 said:

If games like Mario Kart 8 and Art of Balance look this great in the Wii U's second year, I can't wait to see what the prettiest third year titles look like, as they get more familiar with the hardware and learn how to squeeze the most out of it.


Art of Balance isn't really in the same league as the AAA games though. It certainly looks nice but it's a very very simple game that has very little computation needed and has only a few objects to render. What pushes systems to the limits is how they manage when it comes to huge open games with many moving parts.

All the best looking games on every system use tradeoffs to get there, like Beyond Two Souls (and to a lesser extent God of War) having an almost totally scripted camera.

Art of Balance on Wii U uses 4k-8k textures, subsurface scattering, physically based shading, 512 samples per light ray, renders the whole scene three times for optimum reflections, runs at 60fps with v-sync, and has 240Hz physics. It technically outdoes anything released on the system so far, including AAA releases.



Around the Network
fatslob-:O on 19 May 2014
curl-6 said:

All the best looking games on every system use tradeoffs to get there, like Beyond Two Souls (and to a lesser extent God of War) having an almost totally scripted camera.

Art of Balance on Wii U uses 4k-8k textures, subsurface scattering, physically based shading, 512 samples per light ray, renders the whole scene three times for optimum reflections, runs at 60fps with v-sync, and has 240Hz physics. It technically outdoes anything released on the system so far, including AAA releases.

Evidence for these please ... 



curl-6 on 19 May 2014
fatslob-:O said:
curl-6 said:

All the best looking games on every system use tradeoffs to get there, like Beyond Two Souls (and to a lesser extent God of War) having an almost totally scripted camera.

Art of Balance on Wii U uses 4k-8k textures, subsurface scattering, physically based shading, 512 samples per light ray, renders the whole scene three times for optimum reflections, runs at 60fps with v-sync, and has 240Hz physics. It technically outdoes anything released on the system so far, including AAA releases.

Evidence for these please ... 

http://nintendoeverything.com/weekly-screenshot-art-of-balance-wii-u-3/

http://nintendoeverything.com/weekly-screenshot-art-of-balance-wii-u-2-marvelous-menu-screen/



fatslob-:O on 19 May 2014
curl-6 said:
fatslob-:O said:
curl-6 said:

All the best looking games on every system use tradeoffs to get there, like Beyond Two Souls (and to a lesser extent God of War) having an almost totally scripted camera.

Art of Balance on Wii U uses 4k-8k textures, subsurface scattering, physically based shading, 512 samples per light ray, renders the whole scene three times for optimum reflections, runs at 60fps with v-sync, and has 240Hz physics. It technically outdoes anything released on the system so far, including AAA releases.

Evidence for these please ... 

http://nintendoeverything.com/weekly-screenshot-art-of-balance-wii-u-3/

Tomb Raider the definitive edition also has subsurface scattering ... 512 samples for a couple hundred rays is actualy pretty small in comparsion to the PS4 being capable of doing 130 million samples per ray. The witcher 2 also has it's scene rendered multiple times provided that "uber sampling" is on. 

http://nintendoeverything.com/weekly-screenshot-art-of-balance-wii-u-2-marvelous-menu-screen/

It doesn't say that Art of Balance will use 4 - 8K textures ...

I'm not so sure about it outdoing every AAA game released ...



curl-6 on 20 May 2014
fatslob-:O said:
curl-6 said:

http://nintendoeverything.com/weekly-screenshot-art-of-balance-wii-u-3/

Tomb Raider the definitive edition also has subsurface scattering ... 512 samples for a couple hundred rays is actualy pretty small in comparsion to the PS4 being capable of doing 130 million samples per ray. The witcher 2 also has it's scene rendered multiple times provided that "uber sampling" is on. 

http://nintendoeverything.com/weekly-screenshot-art-of-balance-wii-u-2-marvelous-menu-screen/

It doesn't say that Art of Balance will use 4 - 8K textures ...

I'm not so sure about it outdoing every AAA game released ...

I wasn't comparing it to the PS4, I was comparing it to prior Wii U games, which it surpasses.

On 4k-8k texures:

EDIT: Shit, grabbed wrong tweet, gimme  a sec...



fatslob-:O on 20 May 2014
curl-6 said:

I wasn't comparing it to the PS4, I was comparing it to prior Wii U games, which it surpasses.

On 4k-8k texures:

EDIT: Shit, grabbed wrong tweet, gimme  a sec...

heheheh ...