bad textures.... bad particle effects..... bad lighting effects.... Farcry Wii looks like Gears of War compared to this

EEPiccolo said: OK, seriously, that can't be a full screenshot. If you look closely, you'll see that each rendered pixel is actually taking up 2x2 pixels in the JPEG image. That means the original image only had a 300 x 204. So the original looked like this: And this image still looks more jaggy than it would in the real game, because stretching it then shrinking it back down again results in edge distortion. I don't think anyone needs to worry about aliasing (the technical term for "jaggies"), as I think this is just a bad pic. However, I would be concerned that there are many Gamecube games that look better than this, even ignoring the aliasing.

 good point(s). 

To be fair, Cruis'n is not a full priced game.

EEPiccolo said: OK, seriously, that can't be a full screenshot. If you look closely, you'll see that each rendered pixel is actually taking up 2x2 pixels in the JPEG image. That means the original image only had a 300 x 204. So the original looked like this: And this image still looks more jaggy than it would in the real game, because stretching it then shrinking it back down again results in edge distortion. I don't think anyone needs to worry about aliasing (the technical term for "jaggies"), as I think this is just a bad pic. However, I would be concerned that there are many Gamecube games that look better than this, even ignoring the aliasing.

 Even assuming that it isn't the full screenshot the detail is pure crap. 

The curb on the left is just a big box with a flat texture.  No decals, no imperfections in the road, nothing on the curb.  Just a big box with an ugly texture.

The trees are just plain ugly.  I could make a better tree like that and about the only thing I'm good at modeling is placeholder art (which is what everything here looks like).  They just quickly threw some planes together on a pole and called that a tree.

I have no idea what's going on with the the little wall to the right. It looks like it has the wrong texture applied or someone didn't map it right so now it's horribly stretched. Whatever the case, it's ass.

The terrain has only two blended textures and is pretty flat and that's just unacceptable.  Once again, a really small texture applied on something really big looks like crap.

The buildings look like they could have a little more life to them but I'm willing to bet that if you get closer to them they are just a box (or maybe even 3 ooo) with textures slapped on them. 

Now, granted this is a racing game and you're supposed to be moving quickly gives them some leeway on detail, but even this is just pathetic.  All of that is why I was thinking this was just something that got leaked on the way to the publisher.  This seriously looks like it's just exiting blockout and they're getting ready to put detail in it.  I really *really* hope that's not representative of the final product.

I hope, for the sake of Midway's credibility, that these screens are immensely early beta...

Otherwise, Midway has clearly given up caring.

 Like I said, those screens should be at blockout stage.  Beta means features complete and alpha means all major art complete (more or less).

They matter when they're as offensive as these screens are. For a very early stage they are perfecly acceptable but for near final it's not at all. It screams, hey! the Wii is selling like hotcakes, quick somebody make a piece of shit and hope it sells decently!!

I haven't liked Midway for a while now and this just confirms my hate for them. I talked to them back at GDC when I was looking for a job and they were complete douchebags. The HR people were of course cool but as soon as you talked to any of the developers they thought they were the hottest shit ever and wouldn't give you the time of day (they were like that with most everybody so it wasn't just me :-p). After seeing this I'm quite glad they didn't talk to me for longer than five minutes (aka long enough to glance through my portfolio and then telling me to go away in a round about way).

Do you think this would be good for my garden? Because it looks like shit...

Wow, it looks beautiful, I'm going to get it for sure!