"Sonic Adventure", ten years later. (December 23, 1998)

Are they? I'm not much of a tech guy either. I've always heard that the GC was underpowered compared to the XBox, but I haven't heard it compared to the PS2 one way or the other.

Perhaps I'm looking at it a bit too simplistically, but if the Dreamcast was supposed to be in the same league as the PS2/GameCube/XBox (roughly), why can so few of its games visually hold up to games from those competing consoles?

Perhaps a better comparison would be Shenmue (what I've seen in the clip above, anyway) to something like Shadow of the Colossus on the PS2. Or any of the GTA games (which don't look too much better than PSX games, IMO)

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Originally Posted by MrMatthews

Is there a Dreamcast game in particular that is a "graphical showcase?" Most of my GameCube/PS2 games look a lot better than any of my Dreamcast games . . . but I really only have the "cartoony" games for the DC.

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Shenmue II, Headhunter, Sonic Adventure 2, Floigan Bros., Heavy Metal: Geomatrix (seriously), Space Channel 5 Part 2, the 2K2 sports games, PSO, Outtrigger, Daytona 2001, etc. All of these later Dreamcast games were on par with anything on any other system circa 2001.

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Originally Posted by Iron Lizard

I am not much of tech guy but both the Gamecube and Xbox are supposed to be stronger then Ps2 and Dreamcast right?

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Yes. I would put Dreamcast slightly above PS2 and below Gamecube, with Xbox on top. Even then, the differences between all four aren't really vast.

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Originally Posted by MrMatthews

Perhaps I'm looking at it a bit too simplistically, but if the Dreamcast was supposed to be in the same league as the PS2/GameCube/XBox (roughly), why can so few of its games visually hold up to games from those competing consoles?

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I don't know about "so" few, but a big part of it is because Dreamcast games came out in 1999-2001, whereas Xbox and Gamecube games came out in 2001-2005. Plus, a large number of Dreamcast games were PS1 ports. And, specifically with regard to Xbox, I think developers making Xbox games put the biggest priority on graphics. In general, the vast majority of games released aren't aiming to have the best visuals, but Xbox had more of those efforts than most. Even so, it's only really a fraction of the Xbox library.

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Perhaps a better comparison would be Shenmue (what I've seen in the clip above, anyway) to something like Shadow of the Colossus on the PS2. Or any of the GTA games (which don't look too much better than PSX games, IMO)

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Compare Shenmue (the first one) to Shadow of Destiny on PS2. Shenmue looks a lot better. Or look at any game that was on both PS2 and Dreamcast... every single one (unless I'm forgetting something) is better on DC.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

Shenmue II, Headhunter, Sonic Adventure 2, Floigan Bros., Heavy Metal: Geomatrix (seriously), Space Channel 5 Part 2, the 2K2 sports games, PSO, Outtrigger, Daytona 2001, etc. All of these later Dreamcast games were on par with anything on any other system circa 2001.



Yes. I would put Dreamcast slightly above PS2 and below Gamecube, with Xbox on top. Even then, the differences between all four aren't really vast.



I don't know about "so" few, but a big part of it is because Dreamcast games came out in 1999-2001, whereas Xbox and Gamecube games came out in 2001-2005. Plus, a large number of Dreamcast games were PS1 ports. And, specifically with regard to Xbox, I think developers making Xbox games put the biggest priority on graphics. In general, the vast majority of games released aren't aiming to have the best visuals, but Xbox had more of those efforts than most. Even so, it's only really a fraction of the Xbox library.



Compare Shenmue (the first one) to Shadow of Destiny on PS2. Shenmue looks a lot better. Or look at any game that was on both PS2 and Dreamcast... every single one (unless I'm forgetting something) is better on DC.

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^ Good points and I may be repeating you here but

I noticed that DC was a quasi-next gen console combining games from the previous generation like Rush 2049, Tomb Raider: Last Revelation, Soul Reaver, ect and making them better. Mostly just rendering them appropriately. Like J-Factor said above all of the DC games around the 2000-2001 era not only preformed better but they looked and felt better. The biggest shame to the "official" demise the the DC is that right before they tried to forget about it they were coming out with some very amazing looking games. I would suggest people to check out the game Ooga Booga. It was one of the last games for DC and it is impressive how smooth they pushed the preformance and graphics. Also to concur with J-factor all of the games looked better on DC but I have to admit unless I have a defective DC some (not all) of the games on PS2 ran a lot smoother.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

Yes. I would put Dreamcast slightly above PS2 and below Gamecube,
with Xbox on top. Even then, the differences between all four aren't really vast.

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Actually its more like this, going by cpu speeds and date of release.
(the later the release the more advanced the technology)

1. Xbox (last one to be released, had a 733mhz cpu)
2. Gamecube (485mhz cpu)
3. PS2 (299mhz cpu)
4. Dreamcast (200mhz cpu)

This is why the Gamecube & Xbox games looked sharper then the PS2 games,
which is.. kinda weird to know since the PS2 won the sales war,
i mean.. isn't this supposed to be a time where everybody only looks at what games look like?

And even then i wonder why in my mind the DC games still looked "cleaner" then any ps2 game i have seen since then.
(my ps2 and dc are both hooked up via rgb)

^ True but someone once told me that even though the processor was 99mhz slower than the PS2's it was superior in other departments. Also the Dreamcast had a brighter look, I don't know if it had anything to do with its hardware but if you look at any PS2 game compared to a DC game the DC games are brighter and better looking while the PS2games are darker, more bland colored but better detailed.

This is a common debate when criticing these consoles. I don't know what the answer is some people say DC is better some say PS2 is better either way we can't really tell because the final games that came out for the DC were only the tip of the iceberg. Some say it could of handled a lot more.

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Originally Posted by NeoVamp

Actually its more like this, going by cpu speeds and date of release.
(the later the release the more advanced the technology)

1. Xbox (last one to be released, had a 733mhz cpu)
2. Gamecube (485mhz cpu)
3. PS2 (299mhz cpu)
4. Dreamcast (200mhz cpu)

This is why the Gamecube & Xbox games looked sharper then the PS2 games,
which is.. kinda weird to know since the PS2 won the sales war,
i mean.. isn't this supposed to be a time where everybody only looks at what games look like?

And even then i wonder why in my mind the DC games still looked "cleaner" then any ps2 game i have seen since then.
(my ps2 and dc are both hooked up via rgb)

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Although the Dreamcast has a slower CPU, I would put its overall graphics performance above PS2. It had twice the VRAM, and its GPU supports things like anti-aliasing and bump mapping which are absent from the PS2 hardware. Additionally, Dreamcast is the only system to have used deferred rendering, which effectively lets it do more with less. A game that has 5 million polygons per second on Gamecube might only need to be 3 million to look exactly the same on Dreamcast.

^ Yea, it was the polygon thing. Now I remember. Everyone always throws that in in the PS2 vs DC debate.

Wish on 9/9/09 Sega put out a new DC game that really pushed it to its limits. That would be great but I know its not realistic.

Coincidentally, I only just played this game for the first time last week (Gamecube DX version). It's not terribly bad, but ike SA2 (which I played first) it isn't Sonic.

One of the biggest issues I have with SA - why hell he have to get on a train to go everywhere? Modern conveniences & transportation made him lazy??

That *is* a bit confusing, since he can run faster than the damn train...

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Originally Posted by Aarzak

I was disappointed that SA was running at 30FPS, and not 60 like I heard.

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So this explains why on the Dreamcast, the game seems to run rougher than on the GameCube. And here I was thinking the Dreamcast was just unable to keep up with the game(kind of like Sega Rally 2, where most of the time, the game's running at 30FPS, except there are framerate spikes(up to 60FPS) and drops(down to 15FPS or so) here and there; but that's a game running on Windows CE, so it doesn't really compare).

But for me, Sonic Adventure is not my favorite 3D Sonic game. That would be Sonic Adventure 2 for me. Don't get me wrong, the game's good, but these things keep it from being my favorite 3D Sonic game:

-The free-roaming parts(I can't stand those)
-Controls are oversensitive(this only affects the GameCube version, from what I experienced - it doesn't make the game unplayable, however)
-THE CAMERA! That piece of crap camera, at a certain point in the game, starts to rotate around Sonic's head(I haven't played as anyone else just yet), forcing me to move him around in circles just to keep the camera focused on what's ahead. Not sure if the Dreamcast version is affected by this(I presume it is), but it's a quite big pain on the GameCube.

^ GameCubes hardware is far superior to Dreamcast by a few years so the preformance is of course better on GC.

All of your gripes though are justified though except the control one. The DC in my opinion had OK controls.

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Originally Posted by TheEdge

^ GameCubes hardware is far superior to Dreamcast by a few years so the preformance is of course better on GC.

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Duh.

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Originally Posted by TheEdge

All of your gripes though are justified though except the control one. The DC in my opinion had OK controls.

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The Dreamcast is fine control-wise. It's the GameCube version that I think is a little bit oversensitive, making for sometimes rough movement because of:

A) the quite big deadzone before controls are registered.
B) how little you have to move the analog stick before whoever you're controlling starts to run. It's almost like the game has digital controls.

The GC controller was very strange. I never got used to it other than when I was playing RE4 at my friends house.

For Sonic Adventure 2, the GameCube controller works much better, but still more sensitive than on the Dreamcast.

As for the GameCube controller in general, being as I was used to a Nintendo 64 controller for almost 4 years(I bought my Nintendo 64 in 1997), I had a hard time getting accustomed to the GameCube's analog stick, not to mention I've had reliability problems with Nintendo's own controller. First, the C-Stick starting giving me problems(I think I might have accidentally spilled something over it), and now, the analog stick keeps on registering full up/down movement EVEN WHEN CENTERED! So I got a MadCatz GameCube controller and have not had a single problem with it(except that the rubber coating on the C-Stick wore out). It works well for driving games and games like Star Wars Rogue Squadron II and III, but other than that, it's pretty awkward.

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Originally Posted by Smii

One of the biggest issues I have with SA - why hell he have to get on a train to go everywhere? Modern conveniences & transportation made him lazy??

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Because the game engine can't handle massive open spaces, and closing the train station is a convenient way to gently push the player towards a goal.

Perhaps if Big's English voice actor didn't use the 'DUUUR' voice, and instead played him as the chilled-out, laid-back guy he's described as to this day, the character would get more respect. Big is cool; I can't not like a guy who just wants to go fishing with his frog friend.

Oh, and Sonic the Comic Online is a turd. Just throwing that out there.