Playing Next Gen Video Games on Last-Gen Game Consoles isn’t Pretty

Next Gen (abbreviation for Generation) or the latest gaming consoles came out last year and of course a slew of  Next Gen games came out.  I’m still playing on my Xbox 360, Playstation 3, 3DS and my 3-year old  home/gaming laptop computer but I’m getting the Xbox One this April because I need it Smart Homes Now (and for personal reasons, hehehe). But I couldn’t wait playing some of the Next Gen games already out so I decided to stick with the Xbox 360 version of Dragon Age: Inquisition (DAI).

So how does this next gen title fare on the Xbox 360?   It isn’t the greatest. In fact it’s only good. The gameplay is pretty awesome but the graphics,  the audio, the loading  times are middling at best.

First off, DAI is a beautiful game on the PC and it’s pretty great on the Xbox One.  Environments are lush and you can actually  see grass and trees sway to the wind. On the Xbox 360, well, it isn’t that great. It’s passable and that’s saying a lot.  Some environment details that are the next gen version like little pebbles on the road and small  rocks, and other glorious graphics details  aren’t present on the Xbox 360.    And sometimes, when the game’s loading an environment, you can actually see the surroundings  being built; first stick items,  muted colors, then the rest of the details.  And the “redraws” happen often, even on the character screens or when it’s loading the in-game cinematics.  It detracts from the overall experience.  Bioware did say that some of the  graphics detail were compromised when they ported the game to Xbox 360.

The loading time, to move from one part of the map to the next, sometimes takes minutes. The game froze a number of times on me so I had to restart the game. The audio suffers terribly as well. There were a number of times while playing that the audio couldn’t keep up with the gameplay so I would get delayed sound effects. Several times  when battles were already over and my party was already walking towards the next objective, the audio from the fight was just finishing up.  Sometimes, there wasn’t any audio at all.  It’s exasperating I tell you.

I’ve also read from a number of gaming sites that these graphics and audio problems  happen on the Sony PS3 and it’s not just for Dragon Age Inquisition.   Problems surface as well with Shadow of Mordor, an action adventure game set in the world of the Lord of the Rings.   It’s a problem for most Next Gen titles running on the older game consoles.

But in spite of the graphics and audio hiccups, the long load times, I’m still enjoying my romp in Dragon Age Inquisition.  I’m sort of a completionist and I’ve already spent 138 hours playing the game.   The only reason I’m playing  this Next Gen game  is that I love the series and I just have to know what’s going to happen next.

But if you want to enjoy great graphics with great gameplay,  get yourself a Next Gen console.  You won’t have to slog through long load times,   or experience graphics and audio problems that much.

So come April, I’ll have my Xbox One and I’ll probably get Dragon Age Inquisition again. Because I love to see it in all its great Next Gen graphics splendor.