8 games so powerful they pushed consoles to their limits. Or so they said

If a game isn't pushing the limits, it obviously isn't trying hard enough

Words: Matt Cundy on June 2, 2010

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 that I do not pretend to fully understand. 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.

Examples: Killzone 3 is pushing the limit of PS3's power. Crysis 2 has already pushed the needle to the limit. Gears of War 3 is absolutely going to take it to the limit. And Halo: Reach is applying so much force to the limit that the Xbox 360 is actually bending.

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.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

They said: "We always push to the upper limits. It's just a matter of working around them at this point." [source]

Justified?: Doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. Are the upper limits pushed and then worked around? Or must they be worked around before they can be pushed? Either way, I love the two Modern Warfare games and have complete faith that Infinity Ward pushed the limits to their uppermost apex and any preceding or subsequent working around of the limits was done to the highest possible standard. So well done to them for doing that.

Echochrome

They said: "Again, at first, Echochrome may not appear to be such a CPU-intensive game. However, in the background, the title is pushing the processing power of the PSP to its limits. It’s like a swan swimming on a lake. It looks graceful to our eyes, but beneath the surface of the water that swan is actually kicking its feet pretty hard to just to move around." [source]

Justified?: My instinct says absolutely no way. It's just lines and whiteness. To my brain it's very basic. But the swan analogy is so beautiful, I think it should be believed. So let's believe it.

Final Fantasy XIII

They said: "The retail version will make use of nearly 100 percent [of PS3's power]." [source]

Justified?: Yes. Although I'm not even sure what it means. But maximising POWER usage indicates that a thing is STRONG. And by definition that means the thing cannot at the same time be WEAK. And nobody wants to play a game that is WEAK. So more POWER obviously means more better.

Final Fantasy XIII is many hours in length, has very pretty graphics and lots and lots of cut-scenes. All of that must have taken a lot of POWER. In fact, it's so full of POWER the game needs three times the normal amount of Xbox 360 discs to hold it all.

Fracture

They said: "We are really pushing the limits of what the Xbox 360 and PS3 can do with Fracture... To put it simply, Fracture is one of the few games that really takes advantage of all of the processing power of the new consoles." [source]

Justified?: No. Unless, of course, your definition of 'pushing the limits' is making bits of the ground go up and down. Because that was pretty much Fracture's gimmick. And it wasn't very exciting. Maybe they forgot to remove the limitation restraining bolt from their console development kits. Or maybe they were just talking complete bullshit. I'd probably say it was the latter.

Platforms:

Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, Wii, PSP

Topics:

Console Wars , Kojima , List articles , Microsoft , Sony , Square-Enix

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zoestone20 - June 4, 2010 3:04 p.m.

Who cares!!! My boyfriend thinks the same with me. He- is eight years older than me, lol. We met online at an age gap dating site[_www. A G E R O M A N C E com_]---a nice and free place for Younger- Women and Older Men, or Older Women and Younger Men, to interact with each other. Maybe you wanna check out or- tell your friends
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presc1ence - June 4, 2010 2:35 p.m.

Well gears may not have pushed all the limits, but why is it that a new gears game inevitably means my xbox dies? we are 2 for 2 now!Anything on unreal engine seems to have the ability to fry my bloody graphics card! I think red factions about as close as we'll get to using all the power, da fysiks be good!
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JohanLiebert - June 4, 2010 1:23 p.m.

I'm gonna go ahead and point out that what Fracture does (fucking with the ground) is done freely, and more rapidly, on a grander scale, and with more finesse in the Far Cry 2 map editor (with which I've spent considerable time on the 360) and that entire game looks better than Fracture.
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HardNoks - June 4, 2010 4:19 a.m.

no Killzone 2?
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Lilrockerdude - June 4, 2010 4:13 a.m.

Ok what I believe is happening here is developers are able to "push the limits" on the current firmware and hardware. Like my PC which is a POS compared to current gamer rig standards, I was running an Nvidia 8800GS and an AMD 4400+ then the beast Crysis came in. My rig was able to play the game at a slow 12fps...yeah it sucked and that wasn't maxed out. A few days later Nvidia updated the firmware and behold Crysis in 24fps(movie fps) on high. So what I believe happens is that firmware gets updated on the console and they are able to flex the consoles power with better working engines. Again going back to Crysis(since it still is a power house beast of a game to run) when Crysis Warhead came out the engine got a few minor updates and ran better on than the original because Crytek was able to work to get the engine to work better on what the current hardware was. So in plain english with every new game comes a better looking game engine that is able to work better than older games due to develops being able to use every bit of power they can getting better results because they get their engine to work better with the hardware and updates on firmware help push the hardware. For those who have a computer run the firmware disk your gpu came with and run some crazy game like Crysis or TotalWar Empire, for a couple examples and then write down the benchmark(s) then update it to the current firmware and see the game get a major boost. Also for better results on console cool it down with an out-take fan(s), or as I have done with my PS3 run the AC in your house and get in the "cold room of the house" then I put a laptop cooler that intakes cool air and pushes it up to the console. I may not be able to see results right away but I do know I can play longer without the fear of burning up the house(works for 360 and trust me look online for better methods than this). You may be surprised how hot a console can get and what the fan can do to keep you gaming longer.
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ihitthedrum - June 4, 2010 1:54 a.m.

There's no such thing as "pushing the limits." Yeah, you can push it with hardware (when I go into task manager and find that I'm using 100% of my processor and all of my RAM is being used, that's PHYSICALLY pushing the limits). Software, however, can't be pushed to the limits. No matter how good of a programmer you are.
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NightCrawler_358 - June 3, 2010 10:57 p.m.

If FFXIII needed 3 xbox discs, and one PS3 disc, then it proves that games like MW2 aren't pushing the PS3 to the max, because they need 1 xbox dic as well.
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Javv - June 3, 2010 10:19 p.m.

its not like they push the console to its limit but more like they push the current programing software to the limit.
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cindylei96 - June 3, 2010 3:27 p.m.

Who cares!!! My boyfriend thinks the same with me. He- is eight years older than me, lol. We met online at an age gap dating site[_www. A G E R O M A N C E com_]---a nice and free place for Younger- Women and Older Men, or Older Women and Younger Men, to interact with each other. Maybe you wanna check out or- tell your friends
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xXzamarXx - June 3, 2010 3:11 p.m.

Lets be honest, these games pushed the dev's to the limit not the devs pushing the game to the limit.
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Clovin64 - June 3, 2010 11:53 a.m.

I've just been playing FFXIII on 1080p HD for the first time, and that game just screams POWER. Before that, Gears of War was probably the most graphicly impressive game I'd played, or Assassins Creed. The developers probably arent really "pushing the consoles power to the limit", but its most likely that the they get better games developing technology inbetween releasing games, or else the Gears games would look identical. By the way, for PS2, God of War II and FF12 pushed the limits of the old console. Seriously, those games werent far from next gen graphics.
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NormanD - June 3, 2010 6:22 a.m.

It's funny because at this point if a developer ever says that their game is pushing the limits on the ps3 then I take a look at it and there's a very good chance that it's not, because at this point there is nothing more technically impressive out there than Uncharted 2, Not even FFXIII. Just considering the amount of stuff on screen, the pitch perfect frame rate, the physics engine, the amazing special effects, particle effects, stellar animation, humungous set-pieces, comepletely load free (after the game is started up), absolutely no pop-in or LOD problems....etc. etc. there really is nothing out there more technically impressive than that game...(maybe God Of War 3 in some ways) but I'm guessing though that the only contenders for that crown at this point would be games like The Last Guardian or Killzone 3, but then again, it depends on when Uncharted 3 is released because it'll probably just raise the bar again
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Cadavra41 - June 3, 2010 3:59 a.m.

About red faction guerrilla I believe it wholeheartedly because that game actually did blow up and brick my ps3 and I am now afraid to put that game in another system.
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SpEcTaCuLaR - June 3, 2010 2:16 a.m.

I think a console has reached it's limit when it spits a disk out and displays "This game is the shizzle" A console is like my fitness level. I get on the treadmill and the first time my limit is reached after 10mins but I pushed on....next day I get on again and my limit is reach in 15mins but I push on...etc So now lets put a console on the treadmill...
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philipshaw - June 3, 2010 1:36 a.m.

Sometimes it's true but when in your gears of war example where the developers start saying their first game on the system to the limits, it's stupid because you know the next game is going to look better
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theBlackKnight - June 3, 2010 12:58 a.m.

@TheVoid agreed
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GoodGuyWithACrappyJob - June 3, 2010 12:39 a.m.

Limits are meant to be exceeded. If one cannot accomplish this, they had better prove it some other way. Boasting about it may also prove true, but falsehoods lie by those who try to disprove the prover.
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cart00n - June 2, 2010 10:41 p.m.

Yeah, it's all pretty subjective when you think about it, since it all comes down to efficiency, really. If I just throw a pile of socks into a drawer, no doubt I could fill the space pretty easily. However, if I take the time to put the socks in neatly, I can pack in a few more. Actually, I sometimes get concerned when I hear that a game is pushing the console as hard as it can, because there's usually something that has to suffer; like frame rates, glitches, invisible walls, story, acting, etc. The only thing I'm ever really impressed with is how fantastic a game like Borderlands can be while taking up so little space on my HDD! Sure, it gave up all the RPG "frills" (like story, voice overs, engaging characters, variety of palette swaps) to do it, but it's an incredibly addicting game regardless; filled with oodles of fun and large, gorgeous expanses, and it doesn't even fill a single-layered DVD. That's impressive to me. Other things that impress me? Great writing, good production values, an immersive universe, and great controls. Don't get me wrong, I love great graphics just as much as the next guy, but they're simply the gravy - everybody knows a well-cooked bird can survive lumpy gravy, but even the finest sauce in the world can't save an overcooked turkey.
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MitsuharuSan - June 2, 2010 8:59 p.m.

Matt Cundy said: "Justified?: My instinct says absolutely no way. It's just lines and whiteness. To my brain it's very basic. But the swan analogy is so beautiful, I think it should be believed. So let's believe it." So, basically, you have no doubt that Call of Duty is pushing limits just because you love it, but you don't believe Echochrome is doing it (without the analogy) just because it's lines and whiteness? Ok...
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