Tuesday, May 29, 2007

No excuses

Six and a half years. The PS2 has been around for more than six and a half years. Pretty amazing when you really think about it. By now, every developer knows exactly how to squeeze every last drop of power out of the machine. Slowdown is a thing of the past, especially in 2-D games. At least it should be, right?

I really wanted my next post to be about something other than Odin Sphere, since this blog is coming dangerously close to "Odin Sphere fanboy" status. Everyone knows that God hates fanboys, so I wanted to avoid that if I could, but alas, I succumbed.

You may have a hard time believing it, but a game that was released in the US more than 2300 days after the American debut of the PS2 is still a victim of slowdown: and it's the kind of slowdown that you can't ignore. While it's not as bad as something along the lines of Dynasty Warriors 3 (but to be fair, DW 3 is over 5 years old), but it's still bad enough to cause your death. In game, of course.

If this happened four or five years ago, I never would have paid it a second thought. Now, though, I can't see any reason why a 2-D game should have any slowdown, noticeable or otherwise, regardless of how fancy the sprites look. 2-D is still 2-D, and after all this time, there is no excuse for a game like this not to run as smooth as silk.

If you're counting, that's 9 straight Odin Sphere-related posts. We are such dorks.

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