FistOfThe North
Senior Member
Originally posted by srankmissingnin
I personally would never have given Skyrim GOTY for some of the reason you mentioned. It's buggy and the graphics suck, but that said I think the story is decent and I think the game play is fun and addictive.Did pieces of paper blowing around really enhance your play through of Arkham City? I didn't play AC on the pc but I've seen the side by side video comparisons and it isn't enough of an improvement over the console version to say it looks better than Uncharted 3. Also I much prefer the stylized realism of the Uncharted 3 facial animations and lip synching to LA Noir's creepy wooden mo-cap work. LA Noir might deserve some sort of award for the tech they used for mo capture, but a graphics award? Aside from the facial animations it has the same sub par GTA / Assassins Creed level graphics. I have a decently powerful rig, I played The Witcher 2 and Deus Ex on my PC at max settings and they of course looked beautiful... but nothing beats Uncharted on a 70 inch tv... except for Uncharted on 80 inch tv but I don't have that.
I'll just have disagree with you on skyrim being fun and addictive. Even with all the hype pre-release I was reluctant to give it a chance, thanks to oblivion, but went ahead and did so, put in about 10 hours over a few days and said forget this for the reasons i've mentioned above. So i'm done with elder scorlls. I'll give it another chance in 10 years.
And physx isn't only about pieces of paper blowing around. It allows for real world (physical) activities that make the game look more, bellieveable visually. It does enhance the experience and mood.
Particles like smoke or flare smoke, which moves and looks just about realistic as it does in the real world, (see Mafia 2 cigarrette smoke, you could almost swear that the programmers somehow copy and pasted video of real cig smoke and programmed into the game, metro 2033 smoke looks even more convincing). There's interaction with particles and light and it's effects. Like for example if you have dust blow through some light rays indoors, physx tech would blot out that certain part of the ray that's being affected by the dust. The way leaking or spurting gas looks like from a broken pipeline underground and the gust it causes. You have real world wind gusts, debris flying around, broken glass shaterring to pieces and not dissappearing into thin air afterwards like they do without physx. All unscripted and in accordance to whatever in game experienced caused the actions all in real time.
It may not be the end all determining factor on whether or not to play the game but it does give you that extra sense of credibility and immersion. And games like that have a higher replay value than the norm. And this is just the start. On the other hand Epic games is trying to master complex image based lighting, with point light reflections and depth of field. real world/ real time style. They're doing things with water and hair unheard of.
Now imagine that mixed with a more advanced version of physx and then tell me if your gameplay experienced is enhanced.
