8 Games So Powerful They Pushed Consoles to their Limits - Or So They said

There's always a lot of talk in games about developers pushing things to the limit. About forcing every last drop of amazing from processors and engines and other things. Several not-yet-released games are promising that the pushing of limits will be taken to their very limits. And possibly beyond into a hitherto unexplored dimension of limits.

But what about games that promised much limit pushing that have been released? These are 8 games that all modestly claimed to be spanking consoles to breaking point. Was the big talk justified? Let's find out.

[Kingdom Come]

Fracture? Bull Much?

[qface64]

or so they said is right i can't see how some if not most of those games push anything to their limits

[N4BmpS]

The list was cool, he's mostly referring to the games that didn't actually push the said consoles to their limits like the developers claimed. Obviously Uncharted 2 and KZ2 are top dogs so they don't need to be on this list.

Woops I posted this in the wrong place

[ShinMaster]

[They said: "We pushed the 360 to its limits."

Justified?: Hang on. Isn't Gears of War 3 also pushing Xbox 360 limits to ensure that it is even better than Gears of War 2, which itself pushed limits to ensure that it was better than the original Gears of War?]

It all was PR bull. Same with Fracture, SC:Conviction and even the Echochrome statement was silly.

[Lou-Cipher]

The only one that MIGHT have pushed the 360 to its limit is Gears of War. The reason I say that is because we still haven't seen a game on the 360 that looks better than the first Gears game.

They said Gears 2 would look better, they said Alan Wake would look better, they said Splinter Cell Conviction would look better, but nobody has made a game that looks better than Gears 1 on the 360.

There is absolutely more power to be revealed from the PS3/Wii/PC, but since we haven't seen a game improve visually on the 360 in nearly 4 years, I think it is fair to say we probably wont see Gears 1 visuals topped on the 360.

[mikepmcc]

THANK YOU for explaining the article, for those that don't even take the time to read. Some of these commenters shouldn't even be allowed access to the internet...Christ.

[El Botto]

But lol @ splinter cell and fracture making the list but not Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2.

What a joke.

[RatFuker]

agreed, killzone 2 and uncharted 2 are untouchable console games this whole gen, be it in the graphics department, gameplay department or storytelling.

[Wrathman]

i dont doubt SCC pushed the xbox.if you fanboys played the game you would know that they gave up a lot of the features the first couple had.and with that i can only assume it was because they were limited by the 360 power.

[Sm0k3y_Bac0n]

Storytelling wise Killzone and Uncharted are definately not top. MGS4 and Bioschock have much better stories

[mikepmcc]

Did you even read the article? I'm not going to waste my time explaining it to you, just refer to N4BmpS's comment above.

[RememberThe357]

lol Hey someone figured it out! Have a cookie :)

[Kleptic]

smokey bacon...Uncharted 1 and 2 have some of the best story telling, voice acting, and scripts of any game to date...I agree that killzone 2 fails in this area though...

I also agree MSG4 is the best, but Uncharted 1 and 2 definitely hold their own against everything else...

[Inside_out]

Funny list...Where is UC?...GOW?...5 year in the making KZ2...not WORTH mentioning...I guess their not pushing ANYTHING except cut scenes...lol...

Sony recently said NOBODY had maxed out the ps3...REALLY...BUT ND said that UC 1 used 30%...then they said that UC2 used 100%...ND...are you LYING...must be exclusive to Sony...It's on the special features in UC2 kids...Sony...we lie about everything...

Sony's super computer has been embarrassed over and over...lil 360 keeps getting it done...Where's the 1080p, 60fps, 100 AI and 50 hr long games Sony...This gen is coming to an end....nothing???

[ShinMaster]

Cool story bro!

But in all seriousness now. When was the last time your 360 pushed 1080p @ 60fps? Exactly, so stfu and stop being a hypocrite.
Last time I checked, the PS3 has been pushing higher quality graphics than 360 on exclusive games.

So what do you care what the PS3 does or doesn't do? It's still doing more and better than you know what.

[Leio]

Some of the games said to be using everything a console have but yet looks average is pushing the limit ?
Im programming world we call it bad coding.

[kwicksandz]

Sub-HD MGS4... Really?

the only limits it pushed was your patience on the frequent install screens

[BiggCMan]

^ignorance....

[Enigma_2099]

I understand.

[BeaArthur]

I doubt any of those titles pushed the PS3 to its limits.

[-Alpha]

Yeah most of its hype and cleverly worded language structure. Games will continue to push the consoles in their own ways.

[BeaArthur]

On a side note, are you definitely picking up Reach and how do you like it compared to 3? Haven't seen you on lately (on either one).

Back on topic, I don't even know if there is away to figure out if a game has pushed the PS3 to its limits.

[-Alpha]

My XBL ran out June 1st, and I've been playing UC2 and a lot of the PS3 lately. I want to get back on Halo 3, I loved Reach, but I need to buy Gold -_-

Will be back eventually though, perhaps by this week.

[BeaArthur]

Sounds good, I've been playing a lot of RDR on PS3.

[BakedGoods]

I agree. It's impossible to imagine a multi-platform game maxing the PS3 out. MGS4 was done early in the PS3's life, so I'm willing to bet that didn't take advantage of all the PS3 architecture either.

[nycredude]

MGS4 didn't take advantage of good streaming tech but even by today's standards the games looks really really good and the tech was impressive.

[MikeTyson]

MGS4 still looks damn good.

[bangoskank]

If GOWIII or UCII didn't push the the PS3 MGS4 definitely did not.

[knight626]

its not that MGS4 push the ps3 to its limits but it did push the blu-ray to its limits

[kancerkid]

A multiplat can't max out the PS3? Oh really? Well some multiplaat devs would have to disagree.

From a very recent interview on Digital Foundary:
"Digital Foundry: Conversely, where does this leave 360? Is it a literally a case - as many have said - that the advantages of the SPUs are matched by the more advanced GPU you have available in the Microsoft console?

Steven Tovey: The GPU in the 360 packs more punch than the RSX; this is well-documented, on the other hand though the SPUs in the PS3 are astoundingly powerful. I think there are certain techniques, such as God of War 3's MLAA that are just unfeasible on 360, but it works both ways, the 10MB of EDRAM in 360 makes 4x MSAA feasible.

For a cross-platform title like Blur it's really just a balancing act, we need to be mindful of the strengths of both platforms and play to them in order produce the same final frame on both platforms.

The really fun thing for us as a cross-platform developer is that the underlying techniques used to synthesise that image can be worlds apart depending on the platform, but look exactly the same to the player. For example, the 360 version of Blur performs the lighting on the GPU in a much more "standard" way, whereas the PS3 uses the SPUs.

In practice this means the PS3 version of Blur could push more lights than the 360, but it loses out in other areas such as the prohibitive memory footprint required for 4x MSAA. Basically any rendering tasks that are not implicitly tied to the rasterizer such as lighting and post-processing are going to benefit from the SPUs, but there are trade-offs to be made in other areas to get those benefits."

Hence, Blur quite easily maxed out the GPU of PS3 whereas the GPU could handle a little more. And where the PS3 has the RSX, the Xbox has that extra 10 MB of EDRAM.

Hmmm. Fanboys can learn?
link: http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

[PaLaK-]

I think MGS5 will push PS3 to its limits, MGS4 in 2008 was mindblowing enough, if MGS5 turns out to be one of the last releases before PS4 then it would be fitting and most of us know Kojima would do as good a job as anyone maxing it out!

[Sevir04]

and you kinda dont want to pay for it but you still poney up and do it anyway.... I feel the same way about Game Informer sometimes.

[Fishy Fingers]

If it hit 100% CPU/GPU then its was technically using 100% of the console.

Although with some s*** programming you could do that with Pac Man.

[Kleptic]

thats the point...Any title that has frame rate hiccups is technically exceeding the max available rendering bandwidth of either console...and those are EVERYWHERE...its optimization that makes the difference between what the games look and run like...

Rainbow Six Vegas stuttered on both machines using UE3 back in the day...and it looked like dump...but it very much was using all the power it could...it was just a poorly implemented rendering engine at the time (at that point the only company that could get it right was Epic...and they built it in the first place)...

[Double Toasted]

An engine can be tweaked(optimized), console hardware...not so much.

[waterboy]

then maybe this article would have revelence

[SOAD]

Facepalm.

[nunley33]

totally agree, bubbles up buddy. MGS4 still looks better than most 360 games

[waterboy]

these pc fans are everywhere today, never mind they are always everywhere on the internet

[Pumbli]

Yup, PC fans are everywhere on the internet, is that a surprise to you?

The PC is an easy system to like if you can afford it and know how to upgrade and take care of it.

[iamgoatman]

Maybe they disagreed with you because you're statement was false?

And you seem to have missed the point of the article. Gamesradar aren't saying the games listed push the systems to their limits, quite the opposite. They're calling out developers, who themselves claimed they were pushing the hardware to the limit, which in these cases may not have been accurate.

But of course, blame the PC fans if you must.

Edit: That's it, hit that disagree button, hit it as fast as you can if it makes you feel better.

[asdr3wsfas]

I hit disagree a bunch but it stopped working.

JK, you're absolutely right.

[Moac]

You can´t argue with Logic!

[spektical]

@ pumbli? afford? yea right lol. try expensive.

[asdr3wsfas]

For the past several years a 150 dollar graphics card inserted into any relatively recent CPU is the only investment you need, repeat every two years. If you consider the lower prices of pc games that brings it down much farther. Compared to launch console prices this is a steal.

I didn't disagree with ya btw.

[Gawdl3y]

Actually, you can get a fairly decent NVIDIA card for about $90 at some retailers.
http://www.microcenter.com/...

[crapgamer]

MGS4 wasn't anything brilliant to be honest. I was more impressed with the differences between MGS2 and MGS3 to be honest. All this "Max out" garbage is just hype and BS for the most part.

[SOAD]

Am I the only one who's getting tired of hearing the phrase, "to be honest"?

Anyway, MGS4 was very brilliant.

[thebudgetgamer]

in my honest oppinion.

[iamgoatman]

To be fair you're not the only one, if I'm entirely honest, but that's just my opinion.

[Spydr07]

Indeed. Instead, N4G users should try one of the "to be honest" replacement phrases below:

"I'm not lying..."
"It is no lie that..."
"To tell the truth..."
"Truthfully speaking..."

Phrases indicative of truth--part of our lives forever. :(

[Keltik82]

To be honest that was a stupid thing to say and in my opinion your name fits you. So in my honest opinion you're a douche.

[nunley33]

I get tired of hearing people say "to be honest" and then say a bunch of lies and garbage after that. That allows them to say anything they want at all,or so they think

[jacksonsgames]

The game still looks amazing, and if they "pushed" it to the limits then it may have lagged.

[TheMutator]

another stupid post, here we go again

[xg-ei8ht]

Maxing out is a silly term tbh.

Once you got PS3 cell in full effect, parallel wise and rsx. You are pushing, no doubt.

But it all really depends on the engine.

MGS4 maybe maxed out what their engine could do at the time, same goes for other titles.

Then you got wasted code, over bloated code. Things that are in view, that don't need to be, you can waste alot. And that is the difference between PC and Consoles.

PC'S Need raw power, because alot of the time they are not optimized.

In truth with todays PC Specs, Should be alot better then crysis by now.

But nobody seems to grab the bull by the horns so to speak.

I really hope valve has updated their engine for HL2 ep3.

[iamgoatman]

The problem with PC development is with such a wide variety of hardware, it's almost impossible to fully optimise an engine so it runs at it's maximum potential. Instead some developers cater to the lowest common denominator, and the raw power of some PCs is wasted. Consoles are a closed platform, so don't suffer from this, everyone uses the same thing.

But when a developer pushes current hardware, like Crytek did with Crysis, some people moan because they can't run it. Most games are still primarily DX9, because consoles can't properly run DX10 and a lot of people still use XP.

We do need more developers who "push the limits" of hardware so to speak, and with the emergence of DX11 it looks like we're getting there slowly.

[Kleptic]

Crysis was very poorly optimized for the hardware available at the time, and Crytek fully admitted that...stating it would be at least a year before proper hardware was 'affordable' to run the game at max settings...at Crysis's release, an 8800GT card was nearly as much as a PS3 20gb...and that was one of the first DX10 cards available iirc...and without it, Crysis wasn't nearly the show stopper that it was in max glory...

most PC developers don't do that anymore, even though it used to be the norm...big tech heavy titles like Doom 3 and half life 2 also scaled to 'current' hardware pretty well...current meaning at the time the games released...but did their best with much more expensive hardware relevant to the time of arrival...

thats how it goes with PC gaming...developers are focusing their optimization on a moving target...and they try to make everything scalable to all kinds of different hardware options...where as console gaming is fixed, and optimizations are much more important given that resources are relatively low already compared to PC...but this is always why on paper specs between a PC and a gaming console are nearly meaningless...a PC running even windows XP (saying that for a lower footprint) with 512mb of Ram, and a 7800 gpu will NOT touch a PS3 or 360 visually...because developers would never optimize code for such limited resources...yet console developers manage to squeeze them to the point of still creating impressive games several times a year...so its very true that PC's are much more powerful, but few developers ring them out like they do for consoles...

[DoucheVader]

Does GamesRadar actually do any news anymore? They are quickly becoming irrelevant to me.

[cmrbe]

The day that happens Skynet will be online.

[troll]

Little more than a decade too late for that.

[ll_UNDERSCORE_ll]

Skynet! LOL good one +

[dizzleK]

push it to the limit

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[ll_UNDERSCORE_ll]

Lol , classic . wonder if its on blu-ray haven't been at the blockbuster movie section in 2yrs.

[Amplitude]

I lol'd at the Echochrome part. "Its just white lines!" Rofl.

What a dumbass. xD

[X-Frame]

What a random bunch of games.

[keysy420]

i was all for you till you said that racist sh1t about new york lingo. no one is writing articles about how fcking hick pittsburgh is or saying that the white people in west virgina cant fcking understand english becuase they keep marring there cousins

[Nicaragua]

So you complain about "that racist sh1t about new york lingo" by making several other derogatory slurs against other cliched american stereotypes? - wow, thats genius

[Proxy]

"Yeah, we’ve got it to the point where we can’t even put an extra vehicle into a world, because it’ll blow the memory. Every little change we make we have to be hyper-critical about it because it could just bring the whole system down. We evaluate every little change in the game, and then we run our tools on it to make sure it isn’t going to break the game and then we move forward, so it really is about pushing the engine as far as we can, and pushing the hardware as far as we can, and then looking at what is the next set of hardware that’s going to come out. Where can we take it then? You know we’re already thinking about if we had XYZ X number of years from now, what would we do with our engine?"

As we all learned in our first 10 minutes of programming tutorials, if you put 11 items into a 10 element array, it will blow up. That doesn't mean I've pushed the limit of the computer by having a 10 element array.

[C L O U D]

Some games on that list, should never of been quoted to be pushed to the limit.

[erivera1994]

yup, treyarch is sayin that they are working on there best COD game, but isnt that what they said about WaW? Lets see if treyarch really pushes Black ops to its limits.

[XactGamer]

Consoles were pushed to the limits 2 years ago.

[KimoNoir]

aha cmon now, the consoles were already at it's limits since the first game that locked the frame rate at 30fps or lowered the resolution.

[asgharagha]

ps3 hasnt reached its limits its so obvious and gow3 only uses 60percent of ps3 power and its best looking game on ps3 but xbox...?i cant waint for e3 to see the gt5 and kz3 gameplay and im sure they will show us new graphical level on ps3

[Meryl]

lol the ps3 is powered by a black hole:):)
anyway on topic i can't with to see more awesome things on ps3, they are still tapping into that cell architecture, there is plenty of room for improvements left, wheras x360 peaked with gears 2

[prettyboy1]

fracture yea fkin rite

[mittwaffen]

Its all about optimization, and getting better effects with less.

[Moac]

I heard that the PS3 is not using all of its Cell process power. That some of it is "locked off" for now.

Kinda what they did with PSP and I think Ps2?

I think that is what Sony means its Future proof. They just unlock the full power when time is right and Boom 10 year life span =)

I hope to get a PS3 soon, it seems to be a great System.
Sick of my 360 freezing and saying Game CD is not clean, when it is :(
Also the 360 sounds quite a bit, although it is not bothering me much.

Also I dislike the fact that I have to waste so Much money on batteries for the darn controller. why not a rechargeable controller :( Guess you get what you Pay for, Ps3 is more off a Premium Console.

[Nicaragua]

The cell isnt locked off "for now", its 8th spu is permanently locked off to increase manufacturing yeilds.

They do this so that they dont have to bin all the cells that come off the production line with one faulty SPU - so millions of PS3's out there have one faulty SPU but they will never know about it because that one is locked.

This means it will NEVER be unlocked because to do so would mean that a massive percentage of PS3 users would never see the benefit of it making it pointless.

[TheNocturnus]

@Moac
They do make a rechargable battery pack called the " Play and charge kit " for the 360 controller, it's $20. And as for your disc is not clean error, your disc drive is on it's way out, sorry my friend.

[N4PS3G]

good list

[WitWolfy]

i knew this 3 years ago really, i remember every second developer coming out every second week claiming his game "pushed the limits" is topped believing them by the 3 game i bought

[saimcheeda]

but section Xbox 360, why is almost every article nowadays in that section?

[SimpleSlave]

*Stealth Edit*
Good graphics won't make a game good. Good gameplay WILL make a game good. Simple right? Apparently not, so in that case I give you the soundtrack for these developers:

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Push it to the limit
Walk along the razor's edge
but don't look down, just keep your head
and you'll be finished

Open up the limit
past the point of no return
You've reached the top but still you gotta learn
how to keep it

Hit the wheel and double the stakes
throttle wide open like a bat out of hell
and you crash the gates
(crash the gates)

Going for the back of beyond
Nothing gonna stop you
there's nothing that strong
So close now you're nearly at the brink
so, push it

(Ooo yeah)

Welcome to the limit
(The limit)
Take it maybe one step more
The power game's still playing so
you better win it

Push it to the limit
(The limit)
With no one left to stand in your way
you might get careless, but you'll never be safe
while you still feel it

Welcome to the limit
(The limit)
Standing on the razor's edge
don't look down just keep your head
and you'll be finished

Welcome to the limit

Push it to the limit

[edgeofblade]

*facepalm*

Pushing a console to it's "limits" is entirely meaningless when it comes to a good game. Games like Metal Gear Solid, Killzone, Gears of War, Halo... they would be nothing if they didn't have SOLID GAMEPLAY. If you want a game I think pushed it's system in ways that actually mattered, look no further than LittleBigPlanet...