Bayonetta

[Geen]

I got the US demo yesterday and I must say I like the gameplay more than DMC. More combos, more craziness, it's a must have. I'm going in to preorder today.

I played through the US demo too and, although I haven't touched Devil May Cry since the first one (and really didn't like it), I loved Bayonetta! Can't wait for this game's release - day one.

[Rumpy]

360 Demo is up.

[Dyne]

I think I saw the PS3 demo up last night as well.

[Rocca]

Yeah, it's up. Strangely 500 and something megs larger than the Japanese PS3 demo. Haven't played it yet, but its likely the same.

[Yoshi]

Supposedly, Sony had been working with Sega to improve the American port so that it was in line with the 360 version. I guess it's possible that this affected the size of the demo.

[Geen]

Supposedly, Sony had been working with Sega to improve the American port so that it was in line with the 360 version. I guess it's possible that this affected the size of the demo.

That's what I was thinking as well. Tempted to download the PS3 demo to see if it stacks up or not.

[Rumpy]

This game is a riot, controls feel really good.

[epmode]

That's what I was thinking as well. Tempted to download the PS3 demo to see if it stacks up or not.

I haven't played any of the demos but I saw a Eurogamer comparison that blamed much of the poor performance on BluRay access speeds. They said that the demo played noticably better than the full game for this reason and they were surprised that the full game didn't have an install option.

[Geen]

I haven't played any of the demos but I saw a Eurogamer comparison that blamed much of the poor performance on BluRay access speeds. They said that the demo played noticably better than the full game for this reason and they were surprised that the full game didn't have an install option.

That's interesting.
I was curious about the US PS3 demo since, as Yoshi said, it is larger in file size and Sony is working with Sega to improve it.

Either way, I'm 99% sure I'll actually buy this on 360 since that was the lead platform for this game.

[epmode]

That's interesting.
I was curious about the US PS3 demo since, as Yoshi said, it is larger in file size and Sony is working with Sega to improve it.

If you're interested, here's the ridiculously detailed comparison: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...onetta-faceoff

So, bearing in mind the enormity of the task in bringing the PS3 version up to par with the Xbox 360 game, what - realistically - can we expect post-release? Well, according to this thread over on the PlatinumGames forum, SEGA has been asked to produce a patch to alleviate the "overwhelming load times" in Bayonetta. Given that the game shows all the signs of having big memory-management issues, it's a bit of a head-scratcher as to how SEGA will achieve this, although since loading times were not an issue on the demo the obvious answer would be to implement an optional HDD installation.

With the game delayed until 2010 for Western markets, there have been rumblings that the PS3 game may see various improvements, but it's difficult to see where the developers can go from here. A lot of the accepted tricks in lowering the bandwidth overhead have already been used. For example, SEGA's developers have implemented lower-resolution alpha buffers: transparency effects are less defined, saving tons of bandwidth, but the reduction in quality is barely noticeable during gameplay. (It's a popular trick, even used by the most mighty of first-party PS3 developers.)

The crux of the matter is that the PlatinumGames team has created a game engine that targets all the things that the Xbox 360 architecture does well, to the point where it's almost as if the core development was on similar lines to a first-party exclusive. Indeed, Bayonetta is technically more ambitious than many of Microsoft's own titles this year.

As it is, the layering of transparencies, the sheer amount of them all over the screen, plus the added overhead of post-processing - it's the sort of thing that you shouldn't really be making central to the game experience in a multi-platform release, because the PS3 hardware just doesn't compete in this regard. Short of completely rewriting the game in the way that Tecmo did for the PS3 rendition of Ninja Gaiden 2, Bayonetta is always going to have problems. Even if the overdraw (transparency upon transparency) levels were reduced, the sheer amount of effects on-screen at any given point is never going to favour the RSX.