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Mini review of the beta (which was on beta PS4 demo kits):I have about 15 TPA tables, and really enjoyed the Williams Collection, so I was eager to check this out. I headed out to one of the local Sony stores that had three demo units. I took my time examining the controller first, and it is indeed an amazing little unit as the write-ups have said. I then selected TPA out of the six demos on the machine.Cirqus Voltaire is the only machine option. I never liked the machine and rarely played it before. It looks fantastic, especially for a launch title. The new lighting engine is absolutely beautiful. The vast majority of gamers will be pleased by this release.I let the fly-over demo go for a bit, appreciating the new look, but was disappointed at the closeup of the stored pinballs in the top area - they were textured (poorly) instead of wrapped in a chrome texture. During the action it isn't an issue at all, and the balls rolling around are very reflective of the playfield.Before launching the ball, I played around with the left analog stick a bit for tilt control. The new analog design removed the old PS3 controller's dead zone, and I could tell immediately. You can BAAAARELY touch the stick and the table will barely nudge. The harder you hit it, the harder the nudge. Up, down, left, right, and diagonal nudges were all working well. I can't comment on input lag or not because I don't know the settings of the 55" machine I played, but the game felt really, really good. The sounds were off, so no comment there, but as I played the game I appreciated the overall quality work that obviously went into it. Even the playfield texture, commented by others early, looked really good as the event camera zoomed in and out. The physics seemed to be on point, with no weird trajectory angles affecting the ball that I could tell (PS3 Attack From Mars, I'm looking at you!). I was able to easily control my shots, do post passes, etc. with little effort in the one, 100 million+ game that I played.Now for the bad news. Whenever the lights start going crazy during multiball (and this table can have at least four balls on the field at once), the frame rate can drop. How bad? Most times when it happened, it slipped from 60 fps to the 30s. At its worst it literally dropped down into the low teens!Now, before we attack Farsight with torches and pitchforks, keep in mind that this is a beta game on a beta console - nothing is final. It takes a minute to exit a game to go back to the limited PS4 main menu. Also, during development of any game, optimizations is the last step. No doubt Farsight is cleaning things up now. We'll have to wait for the final results though, but I'll stay encouraged since we know how much they love pinball to settle for iPhone2 frame rates on the PS4.
Mini review of the beta (which was on beta PS4 demo kits):
I have about 15 TPA tables, and really enjoyed the Williams Collection, so I was eager to check this out. I headed out to one of the local Sony stores that had three demo units. I took my time examining the controller first, and it is indeed an amazing little unit as the write-ups have said. I then selected TPA out of the six demos on the machine.
Cirqus Voltaire is the only machine option. I never liked the machine and rarely played it before. It looks fantastic, especially for a launch title. The new lighting engine is absolutely beautiful. The vast majority of gamers will be pleased by this release.
I let the fly-over demo go for a bit, appreciating the new look, but was disappointed at the closeup of the stored pinballs in the top area - they were textured (poorly) instead of wrapped in a chrome texture. During the action it isn't an issue at all, and the balls rolling around are very reflective of the playfield.
Before launching the ball, I played around with the left analog stick a bit for tilt control. The new analog design removed the old PS3 controller's dead zone, and I could tell immediately. You can BAAAARELY touch the stick and the table will barely nudge. The harder you hit it, the harder the nudge. Up, down, left, right, and diagonal nudges were all working well.
I can't comment on input lag or not because I don't know the settings of the 55" machine I played, but the game felt really, really good. The sounds were off, so no comment there, but as I played the game I appreciated the overall quality work that obviously went into it. Even the playfield texture, commented by others early, looked really good as the event camera zoomed in and out. The physics seemed to be on point, with no weird trajectory angles affecting the ball that I could tell (PS3 Attack From Mars, I'm looking at you!). I was able to easily control my shots, do post passes, etc. with little effort in the one, 100 million+ game that I played.
Now for the bad news. Whenever the lights start going crazy during multiball (and this table can have at least four balls on the field at once), the frame rate can drop. How bad? Most times when it happened, it slipped from 60 fps to the 30s. At its worst it literally dropped down into the low teens!
Now, before we attack Farsight with torches and pitchforks, keep in mind that this is a beta game on a beta console - nothing is final. It takes a minute to exit a game to go back to the limited PS4 main menu. Also, during development of any game, optimizations is the last step. No doubt Farsight is cleaning things up now. We'll have to wait for the final results though, but I'll stay encouraged since we know how much they love pinball to settle for iPhone2 frame rates on the PS4.
