Gaming GIWIH #8, Rayman Origins Demo Available NOW

[granville]

I have to ask you, did you really not notice any delay at all when platforming?
Sure Rayman Origins is known for having bad controls and physics but I played it on PC and felt that my jumps were much tighter than on the 3DS, and I play a lot of platformers on my 3DS so it's not the system itself.

About the compression, it could just be an older demo not released until now. But it's probably thanks to the lazy devs.
Look at the top left corner where the Rayman head is, the quality is just awful. It's like if they took the Icon and converted the image format twenty times before putting in the demo.

Nope, no delay at all. The game controls and plays exactly as it does on all the other systems. As I said, I compared it side by side to the PC version. Even performed some jumping, walking, and running while pressing both systems' buttons at the same time (in the same level and same positions even). Rayman reacted exactly the same in both. He'd jump exactly when I pushed the button in either version, and his airtime and time between jumping and landing were identical in either version. So whatever issues you'd have with the 3DS version are present in all the others as well.

And yes, the image quality is very poor. It was expected to look lower resolution, but this looks like it's running at an even lower resolution than the 3DS' screen. The entire thing looks blurry and somewhat dark. There's something else going on inside the game that isn't the fault of the 3DS' screen resolution. You can see how low resolution the assets are even during the parts where the game zooms in to the screen (so you can tell it's not just because the view is zoomed way out).

By the way, someone mentioned above that the framerate was worse than MGS3D. It's definitely not. Origins 3DS is running at half the framerate of the others, 30fps. But it stays there and doesn't seem to drop any from that rate. MGS3D literally hovered somewhere around 20-25fps during gameplay and dropped well into the teens and sometimes even single digits during stressful cutscenes. Rayman is nowhere near that bad. The worst thing about the framerate is simply that it's not as good as the other versions. That's bad (especially considering I see no reason why the 3DS can't handle 60fps in a game like this), but not MGS3D bad.

 

[McHaggis]

After playing the game, I think it's fun but I'm not sure it's worth £27.99. Same problems as everyone else ― the game feels too "zoomed out" and the visuals are blurry as well as the poor frame rate.

I doubt the game will change any from the demo to the final game. The framerate I can't see improving any (that's not a compression related thing). It's possible the visuals and sound are compressed, but i'm not sure why they'd do it in the first place. Rayman Origins is like 50MB or so in size and there are other demos that are much larger. The largest 3DS eshop demos or games have been over 200MB I believe. I don't think they were given much of a size limit there so I don't see why they'd go out of their way to compress anything if they didn't have to.

Unless it's one of Nintendo's requirements that elements are compressed for demos, an optimisation like that could save them a lot of data transfer money in the long run. Kind of like how Google used to use poor HTML to minimize data they had to transfer, the differences were only a few bytes but when serving millions of pages per day it soon adds up to terabytes of data.

 

[DiscostewSM]

Saw that the US had access to the demo, so I gave it a go with all 3 levels.

In all honesty, while I'm not too concerned about the frame rate being halved, I am concerned that the game itself seems to play slower than the other versions. If you've played any other version, you can see this, especially with the Electoon areas. I've played the Wii version, and I can truthfully say that this seems to be the case. The input lag and such people seem to be experiencing may be attributed to that notion. If this is how the game in retail will play, then count me out of that purchase.

Audio is obviously reduced in quality, but I imagine that is because it is compressed for demo usage. The last level had some rather poor implementation with audio. Some of the audio ended becoming really quiet for no reason. The jingle after getting a Lum King completely turned off all music, though some sound effects kept playing. Another thing I noticed on the last 2 levels is that the audio jingles at the end continue to just replay over and over when they shouldn't, overall making this feel rather unprofessional in the audio department.

Visual quality is also pretty bad. Blurry as others have said, and the details of the characters, backgrounds, etc are of lower quality. Could be in the same boat as with audio due to it being a demo, and I hope that is the case. The 3D effect isn't as strong as we were hoping it would be.


The game itself isn't really demanding, and the 3DS is meant to be on-par with the Wii in terms of capabilities with the exception of resolution (240p vs 480p), so I honestly don't see why we can't get a much more promising version at retail. If this demo is based on an unoptimized version and doesn't reflect the final version (since they did delay the game for some unknown reason), then I look forward to purchasing it. It is just unfortunate that there is an equal chance that we may end up with yet another crappy port by Ubisoft, to which I will pass.

 

[SpaceJump]

To sum it up it looks worse than most 2D games on the good old DS. Congrats Ubi, you earned a trophy for a new low...

 

[granville]

@[member='DiscostewSM']

I can assure you that while i'm not disagreeing with your other points, there is absolutely no input lag in the controls whatsoever. I compared the 3DS demo side by side with the PC version. I hit several of the buttons on both versions at the same time for walking, running, and jumping to see whether the 3DS version was at a disadvantage. It's not any different at all. Rayman responded exactly at the same time and carried those actions out in the same amount of time in both versions. He also didn't float in the air any longer in the 3DS port either. Several times I was able to time my jump at exactly the same time, exactly the same starting time on the jump, he hung in the air for an identical amount of time, and he landed at exactly the same time as well. I tested this extensively for myself due to people thinking the 3DS version was "floatier" or that the controls feel different. There are no differences between how the game plays or controls between versions.

The lag as you call it is actually the game's momentum at play. Unlike other Rayman games where you press a button and Rayman immediately starts moving at full speed, there's sort of a "warm up" where he'll start moving very slowly and work his way up to a brisk walk for about a second or two. It's kind of like the New Super Mario Bros games in that respect. The movement I'd say feels almost more realistic to life or whatnot. But as for the button response, Rayman begins to move immediately as soon as I press the button. There's no lag there. On all versions of the game he'll build up momentum to his full walking or run speed, but that's just the friction and momentum at play in the core game itself.

 

[DiscostewSM]

@[member='DiscostewSM']

I can assure you that while i'm not disagreeing with your other points, there is absolutely no input lag in the controls whatsoever. I compared the 3DS demo side by side with the PC version. I hit several of the buttons on both versions at the same time for walking, running, and jumping to see whether the 3DS version was at a disadvantage. It's not any different at all. Rayman responded exactly at the same time and carried those actions out in the same amount of time in both versions. He also didn't float in the air any longer in the 3DS port either. Several times I was able to time my jump at exactly the same time, exactly the same starting time on the jump, he hung in the air for an identical amount of time, and he landed at exactly the same time as well. I tested this extensively for myself due to people thinking the 3DS version was "floatier" or that the controls feel different. There are no differences between how the game plays or controls between versions.

The lag as you call it is actually the game's momentum at play. Unlike other Rayman games where you press a button and Rayman immediately starts moving at full speed, there's sort of a "warm up" where he'll start moving very slowly and work his way up to a brisk walk for about a second or two. It's kind of like the New Super Mario Bros games in that respect. The movement I'd say feels almost more realistic to life or whatnot. But as for the button response, Rayman begins to move immediately as soon as I press the button. There's no lag there. On all versions of the game he'll build up momentum to his full walking or run speed, but that's just the friction and momentum at play in the core game itself.

You're right. I had a check with the PC demo and the 3DS demo, and the gameplay speed is more or less the same. Action for action resulting in a sequence of motions that ended at the same time. However, there are some parts that do run slower, though not affiliated with actual gameplay/interaction.

I did notice how the PC and 3DS demos are different, such as the 2nd and 3rd levels being completely different. The first level on the 3DS doesn't contain as many bad guys. The animation when fading in/out between scenes not present on the 3DS. Some other stuff I'm sure. Is the XBox Live and PSN demos the same as the PC version or the 3DS version? Maybe the 3DS demo is an old version.

 

[granville]

@DiscostewSM
I'm not sure about the demos for the consoles or even PC. I'm just comparing the 3DS demo with the full PC release. Went to the same level in both of them (Swinging Caves).

On closer inspection, you appear to be correct about the enemies. I'm not sure if this an edit done of the demo specifically or what's going on. But you're definitely right. My observations-

As you begin the Swinging Caves level and make your way to the first couple of vine platforms, there's an enemy missing in the 3DS version. There are two in the PC version, one on a platform and another below him on the ground. On the 3DS version, only the one on the platform is present. A little past this to the right there's another enemy missing, but the one past him on another vine platform is present.

Next area you swing across a small bit of water. There should be 3 enemies right after this on the ground, there's only one in the 3DS version though. Make your way up and to the left and you'll get to the cage area where several enemies are guarding it. PC version contains 6 enemies guarding it that you have to kill. 3DS version only has two. It should also be noted that when you free the electoons from the cage (the pink creatures), not as many appear onscreen in the 3DS version. PC version shows about 10 of them or so, 3DS shows only 4. Anyways though, after you get back to the area the enemy counts from that area onward appear the same, two more enemies past there and they both appear in the 3DS and PC versions.

Onward to the next area you just ride some of the water currents. There's only one enemy here in both versions as far as I can tell, so no losses there. In the cage area there are 4 enemies in the PC version and 3 in the 3DS version. Next area you ascent up some water currents using vines. I counted the same amount of enemies in both as far as I can tell

Last area is the final cage. 6 enemies in the PC version, 3 in the 3DS version.

So yeah it looks like there were some other visual cutbacks besides just the framerate. I doubt this will change in the final game either, or anything for that matter. It's slightly possible but i wouldn't bet on it. It looks like the sprites were reduced by about 1/2-2/3 of their intended amount depending on the situation. I'm not going to buy this version when it releases, but i'll keep an eye on videos to see if there are any improvements.

It should also be noted that the 3DS version appears to be the only version of the game with any enemy or sprite reductions. Even the Wii version retains all the same amounts of enemies as the PC version, at 60fps no less. Disgraceful.

 

[McHaggis]

Hopefully the full version of the game will be more on par with the other platform releases. However, I've been somewhat put off by the game and all the other comments here, so I'm not willing to buy it when it's released.

 

[Vampire Lied]

I've only played the mgs demo. I did notice a framerate drop here and there, but didn't seem as bad as ppl made it out to be. Maybe it was just me, but I could swear tsunami demo had a few framerate hiccups. Any at all is totally unacceptable for this type of game imho.
Also loading screens were way longer than necessary. Something that looks that bad should have no problem loading.