We then moved to another room, where there was a PS2 sitting in the corner. The load screen came on and stayed on. I asked Viljar if that was always that long and he said they hadn't optimised the load screen on the PS2 yet.
He then loaded up a mission for me to play - the "Not Abydos/Tombs" mission again. Let's compare between the PC version and the PS2 version of the same thing he said.
Now, I should preface this with a disclaimer, I had up to that point never played a PS2 before. The control pad was not natural for me. I'm a PC gamer. A little bit of adjusting and I was away. Then I was dead. I forgot where the fire button was!
Reload. Running through the hall again I managed to take out one then two Jaffa then I found I was looking at the roof … a lot. Then the ground. Okay these controls are frustrating. A little practice time and I was good to go.
A little further down the hall Jack was taken out and I didn't get to him in time to heal him. Game over. Reload. This time however I handed the controls to Viljar, show me how it's done! He was as smooth on that thing as I was on the PC!
While he was playing I was taking mental notes. One of the biggest complaints from JoWood was the frame rate of the PS2 version. I was watching the game being played by someone who knew how to play a PS2, even before that I was in there running, sprinting, aiming and firing - not always well mind you, but doing it none-the-less. As for the frame rate? It was as good on the PS2 as it was on the PC! Plain and simple there is no problem with frame rate on this game, that I could see. The one problem I could see was, when it comes time to the game being released, how much more experience Viljar has than I do, so how on earth am I going to take him on in Multi-player?
I had another go at it with the same mission loaded, substantially further on than I was before thanks to Viljar. I had improved greatly … okay it only took me a minute to get one of my team members killed. But before I died, Viljar had managed to put a staff weapon in my hands. Pressing fire, the controls vibrated. Whoa! I had never experienced that before. Viljar said "charge the staff". As the staff weapon charges the vibrations in the controller become more and more intense. NICE!
Loading up a new mission, we were on Langara! Outdoors, big blue sky, ships passing over head, and Jaffa appearing. On the PS2, one of the front buttons cloaks you. Pressing that the whole team cloaked. Running towards the assembled Jaffa, I thought I'd be cool and take them out while cloaked. Unfortunately I pressed the de-cloak button rather than the fire button, as a consequence it wasn't pretty for me or the rest of SG1.
Handing the controls back to Viljar once more, he managed to fight his way through a large proportion of them, before once again we ended up talking about the various options during game play.
Some things about game play on the PS2 versus the PC I have to point out.
- The graphics quality on the PS2 is lower than the PC. That's to be expected though. The PS2 can do a maximum resolution of 640x480 where the PC can do substantially more than that
- If I was a PS2 player, I would be more than happy with both the frame rate during play and the image quality on screen
- I had gone from the PC version to the PS2 version. At first, my thoughts were - wow difference in image resolution. However, as I played some and watched Viljar play some, I didn't notice the lower resolution. Game play and game flow is such that you are drawn in. Even in the PS2 version you are part of SG1, not simply an outsider playing a game.
It was after the chance to play the game that I conducted the interview with both Ben and Viljar
The following goes on from where the interview left off. Including details on machine specs.
If you remember the ending question on the interview was when Viljar asked me what I thought of the game.
Viljar Sommerbakk:
So what did you think?
Stargate Game:
Fantastic, its absolutely fantastic. I want a copy of it now.
Ben Lenzo:
Ah its not quite ready yet.
SGG:
Approximately when can we expect it to be sitting on shelves?
Ben Lenzo:
27 days
Stargate Game:
really?
Ben Lenzo:
No
Stargate Game:
Okay you haven't got a publisher so
Stargate Game:
Speaking of PC, I'll be getting it on PC, at this stage can you say what the minimum specs are?
Ben Lenzo:
Again that going to come down to, I could have before and we were aiming previously for about a 1.5Ghz machine. Not sure whether that will change or not.
Viljar Sommerbakk:
We're aiming for a wide range of configurations
Stargate Game:
Well you want it out to as many people as you can.
Ben Lenzo:
Right and we might get a lot of Stargate fans that aren't necessarily gamers so we want to have those guys that don't have the $3000 machine they can still pick it enjoy it and play the game we meant them to play. So yes if you have a fairly basic machine hopefully you'll be able to run it and run it well but if you've got the maxed out PC.
Stargate Game:
That one I played on, is that a maxed out PC?
Viljar Sommerbakk:
It's a 3.0 or something so its not top of the line but it's close to it
Stargate Game:
what sort of graphics card does it have to get that level of detail? That hand is amazing!
Ben Lenzo:
Radeon 9800
Viljar Sommerbakk:
Yeah so its not top of the line either there's a couple of steps up you can go definitely
Stargate Game:
There is a screen shot of Daniel's hand you sent out that was amazing in the detail, then to actually see it on screen and see it move and function and it's that good was just incredible
Ben Lenzo:
This is the thing. The game is coming along very nicely. We still have work to do but we're happy with where we're getting at.
Stargate Game:
I appreciate the chance to take a peak behind the curtain. All I can say is it is definitely Stargate!
Ben Lenzo:
I'm biased because I was involved, [but] on the story line thing Stargate fans are going to go nuts I reckon. It was funny because when we did the voice over sessions Michael Shanks was in there and was reading it and he was [saying] "oh who wrote this" and Peter told him and he said "oh man" and Peter was like "what?" [Then] he says "its just depressing that after 8 years I've become a caricature because someone has written some dialogue and they know how I'm going to say it and I actually say it that way as well". So to have those guys who see these scripts week in and week out, to say yeah the guys here have put together something that is true to Stargate is great, the fans are going to love it.
I agree completely. You wanted a Stargate game, you are going to get a Stargate experience!
