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!