God of War: Origins Collection – Out Now! Demo Available

[Septimus Prime]

Originally Posted by Prof. Farnsworth

Being that these games were originally for the PSP my question is level wise are they as long as their PS2/PS3 counterparts?

I never played either one.

They're a bit shorter, but they do introduce some nice gameplay elements. Ghost of Sparta, in particular, as a really cool replacement for Rage of the Gods/Titans/Sparta that I actually like more than what is available in its non-handheld brethren.

[Galactus]

Originally Posted by Septimus Prime

They're a bit shorter, but they do introduce some nice gameplay elements. Ghost of Sparta, in particular, as a really cool replacement for Rage of the Gods/Titans/Sparta that I actually like more than what is available in its non-handheld brethren.

All I needed to hear, thanks!

[Shin-Ra]

Nice to see RAD kept the FMV assets so they were able to re-render them in HD.

Herculean Task: Remastering God of War: Origins Collection for PS3
+ Posted by Nathan Phail-Liff // Art Director, Ready At Dawn Studios

[ PSP / PS3 Comparison Video ]

Re-mastering both of the God of War PSP games in full HD for the PS3 God of War: Origins Collection definitely had its share of challenges for us. The first goal we had was simply the daunting task of up-rezing the engine and content authored on a PSP running at 480 x 272 resolution and 30 frames per second to 1920 x 1080p at a steady 60 fps on the PS3. This required a custom PS3 version of our engine, coded in-house exclusively for the Origins Collection, as well as a painstaking process by art team. We ended up going through every single character in the game and doubling or tripling polygon count by hand, as well as up-rezing and re-painting every texture across both games at 4x resolution on both characters and environments.

Being gluttons for punishment, we also decided from the beginning of the project that just re-mastering content from PSP resolution to 1080p wasn’t necessarily challenging enough (as a quick aside…we were wrong), so we also wanted to take advantage of our custom PS3 engine and try to implement full stereoscopic 3D support. After a first pass of 3D implementation and careful playthroughs of both games in 3D, we identified certain trouble areas with and addressed them with techniques such as near-screen fading on certain particles and camera focal plane compensation for a smooth and enjoyable 3D experience. The quality of the final result of the 3D on the Origins Collection so surprised us that it actually sold myself and a number of others on the team 3D TVs in general. Personally I wouldn’t want to play the games any other way after being able to experience it firsthand.

Besides adding upscaling in-game content and 3S support, there was one other challenge that is worth noting (and elicited groans of despair from both artists and programmers alike). Between Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta we had over an hour of pre-rendered cinematics, and the gap in video resolution between our PSP source footage and full HD was so extreme that no matter how many custom video up-scale solutions we tried, there was just a glaring quality difference between the 1080P real-time gameplay and the video. It was pretty demoralizing for us to play the game in beautiful HD and hit a cinematic trigger where Kratos looked like he was rendered through a dirty sock, so we realized we would just have to bite the bullet and properly re-render all cinematics in full 1080p. To do this we ported all of our cinematic scenes to the PS3 and, months and terabytes of data later, had every single frame re-rendered in HD through the new Origin Collection’s engine. From there we had to up-rez all of the post production effects and re-composite every single cinematic again in HD, giving us a final result that blended seamlessly with the in-game quality.

Needless to say, all of the above made for quite a laborious process for us, but we were set on doing justice to the original games that we put so much blood, sweat, and tears into. We hope this effort really pays off for God of War fans able to experience both PSP games in glorious 1080p!

[Grim Reaper]

God Of War HD vs SD - YouTube

[Groo The Perverted]

Great read about the transfer to HD.

That video, though, maybe it's just me but I don't see much of a difference, aside from a few spots here and there (the greenish/blue sky was clearly better on the PS3).

[richieb1971]

You would notice a difference if you blew up a PSP game to a 40" TV straight away.

[Dave_6]

The demo for this is up for PS+ subscribers. I DL'd it last night and I can't believe how good it looks. I played thru both of these games on the PSP and I never thought they would look this great redone in HD. Even the cutscenes look great!

[Shin-Ra]

From what I've seen and read, Ghost of Sparta (the more recent game) holds up really nicely while Chains of Olympus' much more bare. The re-rendered HD FMV cutscenes look far better than the God of War Collection's but there's no stereoscopic 3D depth in the video to go with the realtime 3D. Rolling can now be pulled off with the right stick or the original shoulder button+left stick technique.

Reviews so far: 11/19 90%+, 7/19 80%+, 1/19 60%

http://www.metacritic.com/game/plays...critic-reviews

Game Informer 95
PlayStation Universe 95
ZTGameDomain 93
1UP 91
PSX Extreme 91
Machinima 90
GamesRadar (in-house) 90
TheSixthAxis 90
PlayStation LifeStyle 90
IGN 90
PlayStation: The Official Magazine (US) 90
GameTrailers 88
Vandal Online 85
Game Revolution 83
Worth Playing 80
Cheat Code Central 80
GamePro 80
EuroGamer 80
Gameblog.fr 60

[Dave_6]

Yeah you're right as the demo only consists of Chains of Olympus, but it looks great. The 3D is no big deal for me as I don't have a 3D TV.

[Xerios]

Originally Posted by Shin-Ra

From what I've seen and read, Chains of Olympus (the more recent game) holds up really nicely while Ghost of Sparta's much more bare. The re-rendered HD FMV cutscenes look far better than the God of War Collection's but there's no stereoscopic 3D depth in the video to go with the realtime 3D. Rolling can now be pulled off with the right stick or the original shoulder button+left stick technique.

Reviews so far: 11/19 90%+, 7/19 80%+, 1/19 60%

http://www.metacritic.com/game/plays...critic-reviews

Game Informer 95
PlayStation Universe 95
ZTGameDomain 93
1UP 91
PSX Extreme 91
Machinima 90
GamesRadar (in-house) 90
TheSixthAxis 90
PlayStation LifeStyle 90
IGN 90
PlayStation: The Official Magazine (US) 90
GameTrailers 88
Vandal Online 85
Game Revolution 83
Worth Playing 80
Cheat Code Central 80
GamePro 80
EuroGamer 80
Gameblog.fr 60

thats backwards... ghost of sparta was released in 2010, chains of olympus is 2008

[Shin-Ra]

Yep, got them the wrong way round.

[Dave_6]

Yeah so did I.

[Septimus Prime]

Wow. The default image on Gameblog.fr is a massive spoiler. I went over there to see what the hell is up with their 60 rating, but then I got

[Show spoiler]a big picture of Deimos from the end of Ghost of Sparta

right in my face.

If you've not played these games, I would suggest not reading that site.

[cheaitsjustin]

I haven't played Ghost of Sparta, but I noticed that the trailer that plays after you finish the demo is pretty spoiler-heavy (IMO). I didn't really mind that much, but I know some people definitely won't like it.

[Shin-Ra]

When you don't know something's a spoiler, usually it's much easier to forget by the time you start playing. Even if it's something that looks important.

[vidjunkie]

So who is picking this up tomorrow? I know I am

[Dave_6]

Originally Posted by vidjunkie

So who is picking this up tomorrow? I know I am

I want to but I'm buying so many Blu's this week I need to save some money!

[Blu-Benny]

this comes out 2morrow????

DAMN IT!!!!

[Lucy Diamond]

Throw one copy on for the Diamond camp.

I might even take an early lunch tomorrow.

It'll probably be THIS, Thor and Spartacus tomorrow at BestBuy.

I'm excited because I loved chains of olympus and I never played Ghost of sparta...plus....trophies. And it has been well over a year since I played chains, so it's like...win win win!!!

Definitely count me in for tomorrow folks.

[Kirk Out]

i cant wait to pick this up , thanks for the heads up on that site i don't own a psp so i never played these games love god of war