Interactive Environments

I have a confession to make. Don't hate me for it. I know that this is specifically a PC Games column and all, but we have got to talk about it. I recently bought a Sega Dreamcast console. I decided to revisit my gaming history and play the new Sonic Adventure game. And it is good. Very good. But it is missing something that PC games seem to be getting better at. Interactive gaming environments. Consoles just do not seem to be able to handle these. And just as I was discussing last week, this is one of the things that I see as a lynchpin in the quest to make games better. And that is one area in which consoles, at least at the moment, just do not seem able to compete with PC's.

On the surface of it, there is no reason why the Dreamcast shouldn't handle this. It has a fast processor and graphics card, each of its special GD-ROM discs can handle a gigabyte of game information. Yet it's game environments seem to be as complicated as "Me and my house" by Millie Stokes, age 4. This also seems to be true for all the other consoles. The best (or worst, depending on which way you look at this) example of this was Wipeout for the Playstation. If you were driving "Lightweight futuristic carbon racing craft" with "hugely powerful engines" and ran into "a complex metal racing structure" at "break-neck speeds of mote than 300kp/h", I am sure that you would not just bounce off at a crazy angle and slow down a bit. Yet low and behold, next time that you drive past that same spot and hit the wall again, the track is undamaged and your transport is perfect.

There appear to be no obvious weak links in the console specifications that prevent the utilisation of dynamic environments. And it really makes a difference too. A favorite console game trick to make the adventure seem longer is to let the player revisit areas that they have already been to in order to find objects that they "unlock". But when the areas look as new, and thus slightly boring as they did the first time that you went through there, it rapidly becomes repetitive. But if the environment show signs that you have been there, it gives you a whole new rush.

So if the consoles need more dedicated texture memory, just put it in there. It immeasurably improves games, as PC developers are just discovering.

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