2017年12月27日 星期三

Is Xenoblade Chronicles 2 too ambitious for Switch's mobile mode?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-does-xenoblade-chronicles-2-push-switch-mobile-mode-too-far

Is Xenoblade Chronicles 2 too ambitious for Switch's mobile mode?

Impressive when docked but portable play has issues.
It's been a remarkable year for Nintendo's Switch and Monolith Soft is ensuring a strong finish with Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Building on the technology that powered Xenoblade X on the Wii U, this new game expands upon its engine in numerous ways enabling cool new visual effects in the process, but this ambition is met with unexpected drawbacks that detract from its overall presentation, including the one of the lowest recorded rendering resolutions we've seen on record. Clearly, the developers have walked the tightrope here in terms of balancing new features with the hardware limits of the Nintendo hybrid and we're not entirely sure that it's fully paid off.
Technological challenges apart, Xenoblade 2 still delivers in many respects, delivering a massive world to explore with the freedom the series has become known for - but this time, it's not evident from the outset. Unlike the previous game, Xenoblade 2 is focused on narrative and the first hour of the game is designed to pull players into that story. It works and by the time you arrive in the first massive open area, you have a real objective driving you forward.
And what a world it is! Xenoblade 2 is a beautiful game in many ways, with lands stretching far into the distance, delivering an epic sense of scale. Exploring islands and cities suspended above the clouds channels a feeling we've not felt since we played Skies of Arcadia on the Dreamcast. It's immediately tempting to explore its outer boundaries, but it's when looking out across the game's expansive landscapes that the first major issue becomes evident - image quality.
As a reminder, Xenoblade X on Wii U - which serves as the basis for Xenoblade 2's engine - runs at a native 720p. For Switch users playing docked to your flat panel, resolution remains at that same level, despite reports of dynamic resolution scaling. Muddying the waters somewhat is a somewhat extreme form of anti-aliasing. A temporal solution is in place, effectively eliminating aliasing but introducing serious blurring and motion artefacts in the process. In certain scenarios, the impression is of a higher overall resolution, but all pixel counts we've carried out here resolve at 720p. The takeaway here is interesting: while the base resolution is the same as Xenoblade X, TAA helps to clean up the image. It's blurrier overall, but traditional aliasing artefacts are held in check.
A beautiful game that clearly plays best when docked - here's our technical breakdown of Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
However, everything changes when playing in handheld mode and image quality takes a nose dive. Unlike docked mode, playing on the go sees the developers deploy a dynamic resolution solution. The results range from 552p or so to 432p and even as low as 368p in some cases. There are probably other values in there as well but it's clear that this is not a game that ever comes close to reaching the native resolution of the Switch's integrated display. In fact, this is one of the lowest resolutions we've pixel counted since the PlayStation Vita era.
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What's worse, a strong sharpening filter is used here on top of the low resolution and the temporal anti-aliasing, resulting in a messy image overall. There's evidence of this filter in docked mode too but it's much stronger when playing in mobile mode, introducing nasty edge ringing everywhere. There's no doubt about it: Xenoblade 2 has the worst image quality we've yet seen in a Switch title running in handheld mode.
Bearing in mind how the Switch excels as a phenomenal portable, this is undoubtedly a real problem - and that's a shame as the overall improvements made to the engine are mostly excellent, and the presentation is clearly enhanced over Wii U's Xenoblade Chronicles X. The developers have really pushed the GPU here, introducing per-object motion blur, which looks particularly pleasing in the game's cutscenes. Animation is excellent, and the user of specular highlights in rainy scenes can also look great. Another impressive addition is the cloud simulation. The team has devised a method for rendering clouds which helps give them proper volume both above and below. Further exploration of the world reveals further improvements: water reflections are much improved over the last game and now make use of screen-space reflections, offering up a big upgrade over Xenoblade X's static cube maps.
Select a thumbnail to launch comparison tool
The density and quality of rendered foliage is also improved with plants now taking on realistic specular highlights visible while exploring the world. Unfortunately, none of the foliage can react to your character but at least it looks nice. The draw distance is acceptable as well, but pop-in is noticeable while exploring larger plains. Again though, it's a big upgrade over the last game.
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The quality of materials also receives a noticeable overhaul since Xenoblade X, with light interacting more correctly over materials - metal reflects, while wood takes on a more diffuse look. Ambient occlusion is also implemented well. When standing outside of direct light, there's a diffuse contact shadow present behind the character and in the nooks and crannies. But this is the Xenoblade X engine at its core and some elements remain unchanged. For example, shadows act much as they did previously - they are present and do cast upon your character and large objects in the environment, but despite the presence of a day/night cycle, the shadows remain fixed in place, disappearing altogether when night kicks in.
On the flipside, collision detection is now more robust. In Xenoblade X, players could run straight through any number of objects, which just looks excessively bizarre - though no doubt it helps a lot in maintaining CPU performance. While you can still move through smaller trees in Xenoblade 2, most objects now have a collision mesh that prevents players from passing through what should be solid objects.
The Wii U's Xenoblade entry was highly impressive for the hardware back in the day - here's our complete analysis.
So, overall, the visual feature set is improved over Xenoblade X but what about performance? This is where things get a little iffy as Xenoblade 2 exhibits some very strange behaviour. We observed what you might call 'hot spots' - areas that cause performance to drop. However, the impact of this drop persists when you return to areas that were previously fine. This suggests a performance bottleneck that isn't related to what's actually being rendered on-screen - and it can hit hard, causing sustained drops down to the 20fps area. Closing the game and restarting via a saved game restored the correct frame-rate, suggesting a pretty serious bug. Returning to the 'hot spot' once again caused the same prolonged hit to performance - a state of affairs that persists when testing the digital version of the game on both internal storage and a MicroSD card.
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Regardless, while performance in general seems to hold close to 30fps, there are instances such as this where things come crashing down. In terms of handheld performance, there's no way to accurately measure a 30fps title, but the general sense is that it runs similarly to the docked experience.
Ultimately, there's the sense that Xenoblade 2 is a game of two halves - it's a visually upgraded experience over its Wii U predecessor, and holds up pretty well when playing docked, but the handheld experience just doesn't hold up to anything like the same standard. The game is impressive overall, but compared to the pristine works created by Nintendo itself this year, Xenoblade 2 feels like a step down in many ways. It looks and runs worse than Zelda, that's for sure, while lacking some of the more advanced rendering features. That said, the game itself is great fun - the characters are charming, the world is engaging and the soundtrack is superb. It may be rough around the edges, and we're not entirely sure that the portable mode holds up well at all, but it's still an excellent RPG for Switch users that's well worth checking out.

2017年12月22日 星期五

【心得】也有人覺得亞版代理後遊戲反而變貴嗎?

https://forum.gamer.com.tw/C.php?bsn=31587&snA=4031&tnum=4


【心得】也有人覺得亞版代理後遊戲反而變貴嗎?

樓主 ソラ tinaneil
1 -
 
巴哈上的價格算是代理商的建議價格,

目前幾乎都是1790起跳,特別是幾款任天堂的遊戲,

反觀之前還未有正式代理前,遊戲價格還比較正常,而且便宜很多。

這次代理商的售價感覺有點不合理,代理價普遍定價高過水貨,有人也有這種感覺嗎?
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LV.24
GP655
 
2 樓 新北鯨魚粥 joy88joy12
2 -
 
水貨比較便宜都是代理商那邊的問題吧...
不要用什麼代理要賺錢,所以比較貴當理由
水貨商也要賺錢
這些廠商代理過來不可能用原本的售價當成本

先不比較其他平臺
UBI的瘋狂兔子和華納的樂高都賣得比本家遊戲便宜

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LV.46
GP4k
 
3 樓 林凱樂 gn07
0 -
※ 引述《tinaneil (ソラ)》之銘言
> 巴哈上的價格算是代理商的建議價格,
> 目前幾乎都是1790起跳,特別是幾款任天堂的遊戲,
> 反觀之前還未有正式代理前,遊戲價格還比較正常,而且便宜很多。
> 這次代理商的售價感覺有點不合理,代理價普遍定價高過水貨,有人也有這種感覺嗎?

剛看了幾款,的確。
往前推,WIIU跳過,沒代理。
WII和NGC,有代理的任天堂自家的遊戲,價格大都壓在1500元上下。
ps:非馬系遊戲會比較貴。


那就....想要便宜買水貨、有保證的買公司貨。

其次,馬力歐系列的遊戲售價,常常是死豬價。

最後....可以選擇小賣店,售價上比較便宜。

最最後,日幣最近還真是便宜啊,都忍不住買了幾萬元。
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LV.24
GP655
 
4 樓 新北鯨魚粥 joy88joy12
3 -
 
硬要戰人事成本和宣傳費用
先不管switch的宣傳好不好

水貨商通常就只是進口國外商品
再用自己的匯率拿來賣
所以通常會比國外原本的售價還高
以明年的魔物獵人世界來說
日本賣9698日元
水貨商賣2540臺幣
然後台灣JSD定價是1790元臺幣

我們再來看看這次JSD代理的XB2
原價8618日元
台灣售價2350元
根本完全照搬日本匯率過來
更何況我們消費稅和人家不同

你要跟我說他是為了宣傳和人事成本
我是覺得啦
這樣的話那些宣傳部門的人應該都得喝西北風了

隔壁的$ony宣傳都比他們有力

你說我是索索?

先附上人權圖
不好意思,小弟屬於玩遊戲而非戰主機的那派

我是覺得卡帶成本高這點還情有可原
但為什麼美國能XB2 瑪奧 薩爾達都均一價60鎂
而亞洲就不行呢?




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LV.48
GP49k
 
5 樓 生鏽發條 mildly
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留言已趨向筆戰
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