Warriors Orochi: PS2 vs 360

[turdburgler.livejournal.com]

Amusingly enough, the big debate over whether or not to get an xbox 360 hinged largely on Warriors Orochi (we already have a PS2, but the Warriors games seem to have lag-issues on the PS2 so I was hoping that the 360 version would play smoother).

My S.O. wanted to play DiRT, which is only available on the 360 and PC, and it turned out that the PC version was horribly ported, and only worked on 4 or 5 different video cards (out of the THOUSANDS available? yeesh...). So, to play DiRT, essentially, you need an xbox 360. But obviously a single game [especially one of dubious quality] is [usually] not worth the drop of so much cash.

All of this meant essentially that we needed to find some other games that were available for the xbox 360 only, or at least that could be played on the 360 at all, that we both wanted (or at least one of us REALLY wanted) to make it worth the purchase. (We've had a Wii since early this year and the only game purchased for and played on it was Zelda: Twilight Princess -- almost a waste of money for just one game, even if it is an awesome game)

Between the Warriors series (DW/SW/WO) being available for the xbox and Beautiful Katamari being xbox-only now, that pretty much sealed the deal.

(Katamari note: The section transitions are so smooth now! And there isn't any lag once you cross the 30sec mark on any of the stages anymore. The only lag is on the two largest stages when you're still "in the world" and not yet "on the world". On the bad side: the game is really short, we bought it Friday and are already 89% complete and barely played it at all this weekend :/)

*cough* Anyway.


So, for Warriors Orochi, was it worth it?

Differences noticed so far:
- two more images ("movie stills") in the image gallery for each officer. taken from DW5, SW2, and WO intros, endings, and cut-scenes.
- even on the non-HD plug (RCA), the graphics on the 360 version are insanely better.
- 360 version seems to lag on a couple stages that have lots of peons (Chi Bi), and possibly only in 2-player mode, but the PS2 version doesn't seem to have this issue any more.

I'm not normally a video-phile, but when geebs came over last weekend with his memory card and the PS2 version of the game, it was really REALLY shocking how crappy the graphics on the PS2 version are. It was immediately noticable on the TITLE SCREEN! It was horribly, horribly *blurry*. And remember, this was using the non-HD connectors, RCA, which is the same thing the PS2 is hooked up with!

Playing as Player 2 on Chi Bi to get Lu Bu's personal item was terrible. I couldn't see anything but the pants of other people near me because all the yapping covers up the top half of player 2's screen (this may be an issue on both versions of the game, though). So you can't tell whether or not you're wagging on your own men or the opposing side's peons (well, obviously if they start crying out you know they're baddies).

But zomg, the BLURRY! Was so blurry! I guess they stepped down the PS2's graphics A LOT so they could smooth out the gameplay some. I didn't notice any lag on that stage on the PS2 version, when it is definitely noticable on the 360 version for the first 3min or so (then it goes away).

The pic 5 and pic 6 in the gallery I find to be much better suited for setting as your background than any of the 1-4. Lu Bu has an especially nice pic 5.

For me, I think it was worth it. The extra gallery pics by themselves just weren't enough to justify the 360 version. But the graphics difference I noticed this weekend was the truly solidifying factor in my mind. Looking back on it, I can't imagine having spent the those 50 hours I've already spent on the game playing the incredibly blurry PS2 version. That 10 min worth of Chi Bi on the PS2 was more than enough for my poor eyes. Augh!

(as for the lag on the 360 -- It's not like I'm not used to that from all the previous PS2 version Warriors games; I guess I should be glad it only happens on only one or two of the stages now *grin*)