Digital Foundry is the only one listed there that I’d consider a real source even if I find their knowledge lacking. The only things DF are guilty of are stretching 5 mins of content into 20 or splitting analysis videos into several part stretching each topic to fill a YouTube quota and talking out of their ass with explaining tech or performance issues, they should really learn how game dev works before shooting from the hip with criticisms. The last thing is their FPS snobbery they make wild claims about what’s right and wrong and when 30fps with drops is disaster or randomly ok. But biased I don’t think so the only bias is to themselves being the leading source of gaming tech breakdowns. NXGamer and the rest fall into the “anyone with a frame counter” category and talk even more nonsense. If I want no bs framerate and pixel counts I go to VG Tech
How could we forgot IGNorant.
The team at Digital Foundry is by far the best when it comes to tech analysis. A bunch of really knowledgable guys with a passion for this stuff. DF Retro is one of my favourite series on YouTube.
NX Gamer is ok. I found his recent Halo videos a little weird. I understand the disappointment with the game’s visuals, but his commentary 343’s management and the game’s development issues rubbed me the wrong way. Speculation is fine, but speaking so matter-of-fact about something he would have no way of knowing is off-putting to me.
LOL
I use to like Review Tech but his 2020 content has been complete garbage. He’s basically delving way into click bait territory and his cop out is that he’s “speculating” so he can say whatever he wants without any accountability.
There is still a little bias with Digital Foundry and some of John comments have the look and feel of pandering to audience. Like how he had issues over making room for a Series X in his setup, but none of the PS5? Or how they were tons of pop-in with Halo Infinite when there wasn’t.
But the trouble is when making money off youtube you can’t upset a massive core audience like that of SONY fanbase. All that said DF is still the best.
Review Tech is a joke just like his so-called insider LOL
Have you listened to MLD? His personal bias is play station.
He has made significant effort to both make his personal biases public and give a fair hearing to Xbox which he should be given kudos for.
NGX is a senior programmer for a big corporate tech company (not sure which one, but his description makes me think IBM, HP etc. doing big government projects). His lessons there do provide him with insight into large programmng projects, of which games are.
Check the foliage directly in front of the warthog when it’s moving. I saw it instantly and it was very disconcerting.
That’s pretty common place and it wasn’t tons. More of an issue for me was the pop in of the fog/cloud in the mountain
The only very slight bias ive seen from DF is John liddleman in the reaction video to the ps5 specs. He was giddy with hype, and said that the different hardwares may even each other out because of the PS5s higher clocks, but that is not true at all, and the kind of thing a fan boy would say.
However apart from that John is inpartial and I think he genuinely enjoys cool hardware and games regardless of who makes them.
The people who manage large SW projects at big companies will all tell you that a programmer (no matter what the seniority) is the last person you would ask about that kind of thing. Engineers tend to have a rather narrow perspective and tend to miss the big picture.
John just loves games and whether they are doing anything interesting or enjoyable. On the last DF Direct he is almost begging 343i to drop Xbox One support from Halo Infinite as he believes it will allow the game to look as good as it can be.
I don’t see that as bias, he’s just excited about new consoles. It does kind of balance things out, how much will matter to how often devs can keep those higher clocks.
I can see his thinking there, but I think its to late to drop the x1 version at this point. The whole game is made for x1
I honestly don’t know how RGT is lumped in with the likes of DF and NX Gamer. He and channels like his are Switch centric so I don’t really take his opinions as gospel for anything. He doesn’t have the credentials of DF and not even in the same league.
I’ll give him props when he criticizes Nintendo, kinda feel that’s something that’s rarely done because of their fandom, which would mean bias.
As for John, I like the guy. He does amazing retro videos and his overall thing is technology, no matter from which company. He just likes tech, nothing wrong with that.
It is too late to radically change the look of the game, you are right. Unless Halo Infinite is delayed for more than a year there will be signs of its last gen origins.
The pop in was weird and only a glitch for me. When you are on top of the elevator the pop in on the mountains happens, but if you move around it pops out, and pops in again. This isn’t coming from a bandwidth or GPU performance strain. Its a bug.
I think DF is a good eye into the differences between Sony and MS fans. Most here think they are pretty balanced, and they actually are that. If those guy came on this forum and posted something like a comparison video, and for some reason it showed better frame rate, or better resolution etc on the PS5 version, 99% of people would accept it as fact and then turn their attention onto why it was so. If that same post was done on SonyGAF or ResetSony, those guy would be attacked outright and most likely harrassed into never posting again for fear of the retaliation they would get. Cries of shills, money hats, secret discord groups etc would fly left and right. That does make me wonder if Xbox gamers might be older on average than Sony? I definitely see a difference between the two fan groups, and that is seen on how they react to things like YouTube gaming channels like DF and NX etc. Now while I have said I think RGT and to a lesser extent NX, do have a Sony bias, I am not calling them out as shills or paid off hacks.
It does not need a radical change. It just needed some technical polish on the pop ins and to ship with Ray Tracing and it will look great.