ilserpente

I played through both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus for the first time last year (the PS3 versions) to prepare for the Last Guardian. I had messed around with the PS2 version of ICO when it came out, but never got much further than an hour in. I have to say, ICO hasn't aged very well. It has great atmosphere and animation, but it's kind of a drag to play (the combat is bad and tedious, the puzzles aren't signposted very well, the escort aspect is stressful in a bad way, and the fixed camera is not good). It started development as a PS1 game, and the PS3 version is about as good as the graphics are going to get without completely rebuilding it from the ground up. I think the PS3 version of Shadow of the Colossus still has a lot of room for improvement without completely changing the feel and look of the game. ICO is a cool little thing, but I don't have much interest in revisiting it.

@nicksmi56: At E3, Yoshida hinted that there would be multiple control schemes: https://www.polygon.com/e3/2017/6/14/15800206/shadow-of-the-colossus-ps4-remake-e3

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but from the sounds of it, the IGN writer only played with the old control scheme. We probably won't know for sure until the game comes out.

After the latest trailer, I am actually excited for this. The PS2 version was kind of a technical mess (it regularly ran at 15-20fps during boss fights), and while the PS3 version was a very nice enhancement, the console still wasn't quite powerful enough to run the game smoothly at full HD. The PS3 version didn't support true 1080p (you could run it 720p natively, or stretch a 960x1080 horizontally). The game did run at a stable 30fps, which was a big improvement, but all the weird controls from the PS2 era were lovingly ported over.

According to Polygon, Bluepoint is aiming for 60FPS at 1080p on the PS4 pro (or 30fps a 4K if you'd prefer), or 30FPS on the base PS4. An upgrade to 60FPS is huge. It's too bad 60 FPS isn't coming to base PS4; hopefully the devs include a 60FPS 720p mode like Nioh, but I haven't heard anything along those lines.

Bluepoint has done fantastic work remastering / remaking games in the past, and I have to imagine they'll do a great job with this.

It's going to be budget-priced ($40), which seems fair to me. Replaying one of my favorite games at a higher res, with a better frame-rate, completely remade assets, and modernized controls sounds pretty good to me. Assuming they hit their target of 60FPS on the pro, this might actually drive me to upgrade consoles.

@djmoo: I'm actually glad they're mixing up the combat a bit, because in the base game it got a little tedious. Fodder enemies went down without much effort, Metroids just required you to spam rockets, and there were maybe 1-2 bosses that actually required a mix of skills.

I hadn't seen the ability that reveals secrets. Ideally, they would use good design and subtle signposted to lead players to that stuff, so hopefully that doesn't spoil anything. When Nintendo has got Metroid right, they have trusted their players to be intelligent and nudged them in the right direction (see Super Metroid and Zero mission). When they've messed it up, they have held their players hands and freaked out over the idea that someone might get stuck (Fusion, and Prime to a certain extent). Hopefully they take a page from BOTW and trust their players a bit.

I've been playing through Super Metroid over the last day or so. It's been a while since I've played through it, but damn, it's still a great game. The level design and secrets feel organically placed, and the designers do a great job with the nonlinear elements; the game feels much more nonlinear than it actually is. Metroid 2, on the other hand, feels like it could have been 8 discrete levels with the way the earthquakes break up the progression. It's not a bad game, but Super Metroid feels like it's on a whole different level. Fusion was just kind of bleh. The game holds your hand all the way through it.

I am curious to see how they change Metroid 2, because there is room for improvement, particularly in level design.

@boozak: I finally took the plunge and bought a New 3DS XL a couple weeks ago. Between the impressive library and some select virtual console titles, I've been happy with the decision this far. It's irritating that Nintendo doesn't put GBA games on the 3ds virtual console, though. I'd love to pick up Zero Mission on the cheap, because used copies that are cart only cost $40.

I just happened to finish AM2R a week prior to this announcement, and I'm super interested to see how this turns out. AM2R is a beautiful remake and it addresses the problems inherent to the original Gameboy's hardware, but the base game felt a little lacking to me. It was too easy, there weren't enough bosses, and the Metroid fights got tedious after a while (particularly since you can defeat most of them by spamming rockets). I'm super curious to see what a dev team with some cash and creative license does to reimagine this.

I'm glad to see Nintendo give Metroid fans some love, because they haven't known what to do with the series for a good while now. Hopefully Nintendo applies what they learned from Zelda: BOTW to Prime 4 and goes back to the roots of what made the original games great--exploration, getting lost in an alien environment, snappy controls, enjoyable combat.

@darth_navster:

Oh I realize it's not an ideal solution, but DF is doing a series on that very issue (using a 970 for 4K). They overclock it (though not by a ridiculous amount) and need to tweak the individual game settings a bit, but the generally do get the job done with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0nl0Pdn3is&t=16s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rGNfveTD4Q

It's not entirely fair to consider the cost of a monitor when you're considering the price of a PC, because you'll need to buy an expensive 4K TV to fully take advantage of the XOX, as well. If you already have a monitor or TV you're planning on using for either setup, then it's a moot point.

Also, you don't need a $500 graphics card to enjoy super high resolutions on PC. Even a 970 GTX, which can be had for pretty cheap nowadays, can function as a 4K 30FPS card. I agree that the PC cost of entry is higher, but you are also getting a much more versatile machine. And once you make the plunge, you can upgrade piecemeal as certain components age.

Teraflops only takes into account the GPU power, not the CPU power. The XOX has greatly increased GPU power over the standard XO, but the CPU power was only bumped up a small amount. Destiny 2 will only run at 30FPS on XOX. Here's what Digital Foundry says about it:

"On the face of it, there's nothing here that we couldn't have guessed already: when you look at the balance of the PS4 Pro and indeed Project Scorpio, both consoles have been specifically designed to run current-gen game engines at higher resolutions and smoother frame-rates. Both Scorpio and PS4 Pro only offer a 31 per cent uplift in CPU power, while GPU sees a 2.3x boost over base hardware with PS4 Pro, rising to a 4.6x uplift on Scorpio vs Xbox One. The core hardware design of both machines is all about scaling up graphics, not the game simulation." (Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-why-cant-destiny-run-at-60fps-on-ps4-pro)

Check out the DF video on Destiny 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smn_ZUGK7ZQ While it will ultimately vary from game to game, the XOX was generally designed to run 900p XO games at 4K. It was not designed to bump those same 30FPS games to 60FPS. Certainly games like Forza will be running at 60FPS, but the XOX is going to end up in the same ballpark as the PS4 Pro, I think, and essentially only makes sense if you have a 4K TV.