Late Night Consoling

It it just me, or does anyone else want a (GOOD) game based off Avatar: The Last Airbender? Sure I'm 19 and I watch a kids show, but its better than almost any anime japan puts out.

The guys at PC Gamer have talked about graphics over the last couple of weeks, and it set me thinking about graphics and classic games.

I think that the longevity of a game has to do more with art direction and genre than the actual graphics technology. Adventure games, RPGs, side-scrollers, and most top-down games work. Shooters, and other first-person games that strive for photorealism don't hold up well at all. I'll give some examples of what I'm talking about.

Side scrollers: The early SMB games are undoubtedly classics, but the very monotonous gameplay of SMB1 renders it a little tedious for me now. All the levels are put together differently, but there's very little variety, and the challenges require faster reflexes rather than a different approach. As a gamer, I've grown beyond that kind of gameplay.

On the other hand, SMB3 and Super Mario World (and to a lesser extent, SMB2) are super varied, and require both better reflexes and different approaches to puzzles to succeed. I still play both on my DS regularly, 15 years after my first exposure to those games.

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The Zelda example: I think that A Link to the Past is the best Zelda game. However, Minish Cap is my favorite. Both games have brilliant art direction and art that will hold up for a long time. However, I don't have the patience to play ALttP to completion now because of some technical limitations with the way the games save system works. Remember clearing an entire dungeon, then dying when the boss was one hit from death? Remember having to reclear the dungeon over and over again, just because the game didn't allow you to save right before the boss monster? That kind of shit flew when I was 13, but I don't have that kind of time anymore.

Minish Cap's dungeons are both more challenging and less frustrating, because there are two save points in each one, one half-way through the dungeon, and one right before the boss. I'm not going to play ALttP again because of gameplay frustrations.

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On to the polygon era, where I'll talk about N64 games. Many games from the mid to late 90s strived for photorealism, but the hardware wasn't close to capable of it. Super Mario 64 has a unique, exciting, fun visual style that will stand up to the test of time. Its brightly colored polygons don't make you squint to kinda-sorta see that those 80 pixels are someone's face. Everything's over-exaggerated, and very pronounced.

To contrast, take a look at Goldeneye and Perfect Dark for the N64. Both tried to create the real world, but the low polycounts force the gamer to really look to actually see characters, real-world objects, and locations. They did a great job for the time, and they worked because we weren't used to, or expecting anything better. All three of these games used the same hardware, but our kids are going to look at the bunch of pixels on-screen that makes up Goldeneye and wonder wtf they're looking at.

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Other genres hold up better. 2D adventure games will continue to work, if the gameplay and story are good. Tempest and Ms. PacMan are every bit as fun and challenging now as they were 20 years ago. As an audience, we've become more sophisticated, but good ideas are still good ideas, and fun games will remain fun games.

TLDR: Games that use graphics as a crutch will suffer over time. Good art direction can make up for technological limitations. It's difficult to take anyone seriously that judges a game based on graphics, rather than its entertainment value.

I grew up seeing things like CGA (4 color) monitors turn into EGA, VGA, SVGA

consoles going from intellivision, nes, snes/genesis, playstation/n64, riva 128/ 3dfx...

so for me graphics are an evolutionary part of it all. when the graphics aren't breaking ground I start to feel like something's not right, because one big constant has been their evolution in games. when that's not happening I just feel like the developers have lost their love for what they're doing... there should be no dumbing down at any point, because that's regressive isn't it? I especially don't like companies that target a low hardware standard to not have to make a good enough game to convince people to upgrade. cheap trick and easy money imo.

You know what I'm sick and tired of hearing: The Graphics whores and the gameplay whores arguing with each other over what is more important. Jesus christ this crap has been going on since before the 16bit era and the genesis vs Nintendo fan boy brawl. If you prefer the same gameplay with better graphics, fine. You want something new coded onto an ancient engine, fine. Just keep it to yourself and spare me and anyone else who happens to be mature enough not to want to deal with this s**t.... Don't jump on this bandwagon Remo, your better than that.

I'll never understand graphics whores. Just the other day I was discussing the Silent Hill franchise with someone, and he refered to the first game, saying "Even for a PS1 game, the graphics were so bad, it made the game unplayable"

Man what?

I also recall around 6 or so months before Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alligence came out, a screenshot was released showing Scorpion kicking Shang Tsung. I recall several shackers writing the entire game off as crap because of one shadow on Scorpion's foot. ...Buh?

Army of Two sounds like a Splinter Cell rip off to me :/

Now they're offering the rumble pack? Dammit and here I am looking for a cheap Metroid Pinball game. :(

Uno! Yes! If this is a 400-point game and supports offline play with some decent AI (I'm sure online play is a given), then this will be a no-brainer purchase for me.

You know something, my friend was playing Oblivion today, I was watching him. And after about a week of playing Guild Wars:Factions, Oblivion looks like crap. Utter crap.

I'm telling all you people right now, one week before E3. It's ALL going to be about Post Processing Effects. You're not going to care one bit about how many polygones a game can push, or how high the AA can go. All you're going to care about is how good the filters are that are applied to the game.

And if a next-gen system can include the filters into say..a custom graphics chip..well...

If a game came out that had the same level of graphics as Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64), I would pay $50 for it so long as it had gameplay that was just as good. No, I'm not a Zelda fan. I'm not a fan of anything. I just feel that gameplay is vastly more important than graphics in determining whether or not the game is fun. Graphics are vitally important for immersion into simulations.

I have had the same thoughts about graphics for a long while and completely agree. It is definitely how the technology is used that matters, not how good the tech is, or how fancy the effects are. I find that games from the late ninties tend to look worst because they were all trying to outdo each other with new effects rather than concentrating on making things look good with the tech they had. It took a while for the art directors to realise that coloured lighting and lens flare needed to be kept on a leash.

As many people have already said, there are many games that are timeless graphically - they will look great 20 years from now just because of the graphics style and direction. Another World is a frequently cited example, and is especially relevant thanks to the recent re-release. Other more recent games have aged very quickly because the graphical sheen they once had has faded in comparison to new technology, and so the lack of artistic vision shows through.

Actually though, I really hate when a company shows of a game that tries to be realistic by having fancy graphics, but doesn't bother to back it up with all the small details that make the real world seem real - the things most people don't even bother to think about.

The previous company I worked at was making a game set in WW2 Berlin, and the bosses would always tell the press how realistic it was (despite having shit graphics and art direction) and how the recreation of Berlin was so good it would be possible for someone who lived their during the end of WW2 to find their way around the game. This was a huge load of bullshit, as the maps were created from scratch using only basic reference, and the street layouts were based on modern day streetmap.de and modified to suit gameplay/technical limitations set by the producer/designer. There werea handful of modelled buildings with interiors that were cloned around the levels, and most of the others were facades with textures which were common to levels throughout the whole game. It was a total joke, yet people bought into this shit and many reviews claimed it to be a highly realistic Sniping simulation. It was a highly effective marketting mirage - as is so often the case these days - especially with WW2 games it seems.

That was a good LC chris. It got me thinking about how I personally percieve games, graphics wise. I like you bounce all over the map. I look at level design and architectual integrity. I seem to value different things on the graphics scale. So I could not personally give a 1-10 point single graphics score. I would have to do a score for level design, level fluidity. texturing, modeling, setting, mood. Those would have to be each of the factors in my equation just for graphics. I can't seem to lump them all into one numerical value. There are far to many instances with an older graphics engine looking superior artistically to a newer one and so forth, because of either level design or the art team or the relevant setting done so well. That just having all the bells and whistles you can throw at a game doesn't make it a good graphical experiance or representation of the gameplay.

Damn I could go on and on. Your ramblings are starting to make me ramble =/

Give this man a raise steve

Great LNC Chris, thanks. Looking forward to your E3 coverage.

Dont worry about it man. I have a hard time to, if you want to compare, you look at Quake, then look at Quake 4. Then you go "Oohhh". But realy I still play older games too. I don't realy think it matters how technically brilliant a game looks, so long as it doesn't look ugly. I remember Official X-box Mag critizising Fable for "slightly blocky and outdated" graphics. Quite frankly I still think the game looks (if not plays) fantastic.

I agree with Chris totally, some old games still look good just because the art was fitting.

Day of the tentacle still looks great (no, I'm not being a fanboy - sure it's low res but it LOOKS GOOD)
Half life 1 still looks good - it's the way textures line up, the floor texture - the way it looks like a REAL ROOM you could be in, albeit a lower res version.

It's the art direction, not the wanky features.

Another World looks quite good still, things kind of blend in.
To be honest after recently playing Chrono trigger (first time) I felt that had good graphics (obviously I cut it some slack) but overall the direction was good.

Most hand drawn adventure games have aged quite well, I'd bet KQ5 still looks relatively good as would some of the newer Larry's (6 perhaps)

Oh, space quest 4 - gorgeous shit and even space quest 2 - the forest, pixelly and 16 colour is still fairly lucious (for it's day)
I just give some of these games a pass I spose.

I guess this may be (one of) the reasons I gave Quake 2/3 shit for so many years - sure the engines are nice but the art direction just seemed off to me.

Everyone goes bunkers about "I'll push the poly limit to new heights!" and shit. Bump that!

I remember when EGM did a report about "What would kids think about old school games". They basically gathered a bunch of brats from the ages 6-13 I think, male and female, to play old games on there original format (actual consoles and controllers).

It was going OK, until a kid said "What the hell is this? What are you suppost to do? This isn't as fun as Halo!" and another said "Damn, they used to play this boring stuff back there?! :(

wasnt Perfect Dark Zero gonna get a demo soon? i really would like to try it out but dont want to buy it yet since everyone says it's not a good play.

Project Assassin Assassin's Creed is the only PS3 related game I'm looking forward to hearing more about from E3.

This preview really piqued my interest...
http://ps2.gamespy.com/playstation-3/project-assassins/698888p1.html

I think Chris (in relation to your opener for LNC) that it's been the graphic accelerator companies that has created this deman for "better trees" and more "r3aLizTik" hair on a character model...when in all reality, these features are rarely ever used and whole depends on the capabilities and features of the renderer itself (dx10, etc).

Without these renderer's we wouldnt need faster and faster gpu's, and the best way to market a faster more expensive gpu is to tell you how cool it is, and how much better it is than the competitor when it runs on a 4ghz machine with 4 gigs of ram.

I can see the attraction to "shiny and prettier" things...but as I'm sure you, me, and millions have other said...

It's the gameplay that really matters.

Wow, that Alone in the Dark going the route of episodes got me inspired to write an about it on my site.

http://reid.rbkdesign.com/?p=35

Who thinks I am smoking crack? and do you want some?

BRING ON CULDCEPT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Card Fighters is so great.

So many people have this adversarial relationship between graphics and gameplay. I understand some games go extreme and do pretty, yet shallow games. For the most part, graphics accentuate gameplay.

There are many times during development that something just doesn't feel right when it turns out that it really just needed better visuals to help communicate the gameplay moment. Nothing on the gameplay side was tweaked, it just had a better looking effect or better texture to help give it that kick.

Graphics are there to communicate the gameplay. You need a balance of both.

Army of Two sounds like a cool idea and one that offers a ton of possibilities. I mean, EA will probably fuck it up, but if it sells well someone like Ubi will eventually make a imitation that doesn't suck.

If you've read my reviews, you know my stance on Graphics. I could care less if it looks good or super good - only terribly bad graphics will really knock a game down.

To me, it's 90% gameplay - it may be the best looking game this side of the milky way, but if the gameplay is meh, the game is meh (*cough*doom3*cough*). I'm more excited about Physical processing units as opposed to the latest videocard any more. Unfortunately, at least PC wise, the focus seems to be more and more on pushing the pixels instead of really focusing on gameplay, which is why right now, I'm mostly in console game mode because they are just that more enjoyable.

delivering 30-40 minute chunks of gameplay distributed over a season.

Have to admit, hearing stuff like this makes me nervous. I know it's compared to a television episode's length, but really, the length of a TV episode compared to a video game's desirable length... not a good comparison (this isn't anything against you, Chris).

The thing is, the lengths that people find acceptable for games, movies, books, television shows... these are all too varied to try to use one to measure another. It's kind of like, unless it's a specific genre, (I love horror movies, but anything over 90 minutes is overkill... haha!) less than hours for a movie is too short. Just like it's gotten to the point where, and this may just be me, anything less than 8-10 hours for a game is kind of too short. I don't mind investing 15-20+ hours in a game.

And that isn't to say that I need my games to be "long." But if a game is going to be less than 10 hours, it better be damn good, because with video games officially hitting the $60 mark... well, c'mon, we deserve more than 10 hours of gameplay. It's just like Blu-Ray movies costing $30-$40: bullshit. Movies better start becoming 3-4 hours long.

To me, downloading a game that will only last 30-40 minutes, even though it's only 1 episode, is not worth the time. I'd rather have it all at once, and since I'm a AitD fan, I think I'll be waiting until all the episodes are out to play the game. Spending 30 minutes on a demo is acceptable, but a full game? I dunno, I may be in the minority here, but I would rather have at least 4-5 hours.

I'm just not a fan of this new episodic content fad. HL2: E1 better be 3-5 hours.

So Assassins Creed is PS3 only even though project assassin has been mentioned as a 360 game only, and according to a shacker who works at Ubisoft said that if the company could they would port frycry to the GBA. Did they scrap the 360 version or will it just maybe coming out at a later date?

Haha, nice AL9000 reference. Although I think Platinum was the PC port.

And about the graphics thing, I find myself feeling the same way, depending on the circumstance. For instance, I find a lot of early PS1 games to be pretty unattractive simply from a technical standpoint. Either the hardware couldn't do what they wanted it to, or they pushed the hardware too hard in one place and it pushed back in another. In that case it does bother me. Likewise, next-gen games that push the graphics threshold are usually nitpicked because their main focus is on the graphics to begin with. They're bringing it on themselves.

One interesting aspect of graphical progression to me is the move to real-time rendering. Again, taking PS1 games for example, some of the games featuring pre-rendered backgrounds looked great from an artistic standpoint. Then there was a huge push to do real-time graphics, and consequently, we got some pretty horrid looking games that were praised simply for making the move into "real time". Depending on the project, just because you can technically progress doesn't mean you should. So in that way, I suppose I tend to judge games on a technical basis when they are making it part of the focus, and taking my attention away from the game itself, either in a good or bad way.

Of course, a lot of this probably has to do with the nature of screenshots and pre-release hype. If nobody's played the game, most of your expectations are based off of looks. I think eventually gameplay does triumph over graphics most of the time.

lol @ Console Game of the Evening

Reading comments about games going off people's radar because they aren't as graphically awesome makes me :(

Sure, the screenshot comment threads are usually filled with idiots, but the criticism continues far beyond release and I can't imagine missing out on a great game because it's missing a few shader effects - or skipping a great game from the previous console generation. I'm not saying I don't notice lackluster technical visuals (Capcom and SNK you sons of bitches, update your 10 year old sprites, ffs) but holy shit some of the next-gen forums make me want to take shovels to faces. IT'S THE SAME SHITTY GAME YOU PLAYED TWO YEARS AGO YOU DOUCHEBAGS!

Maybe it's because I'm so cheap that I played UT2K4 at 320x240 for the first 3 months that I had it. That actually made the game look better because at that resolution you couldn't see the gaudy art style.

He called the comments 'forums'. Do we eat his brains now or give him a second chance?

I just watched FF7: advent childern. Now i want to replay FF7 but the ps is in storage. :(

Woah mega big LNC tonight. Guess E3 must be close or something!

If a game is good and has replayability than I'll play it over and over. Graphics aren't everthing in a game. Take the first Neverwinter Nights as example. It takes a shit on Oblivion(which still is a great game). Why? Because the gameplay is so great and the replay value is there. I still play Doom 2 ocasionally. Chris, just to add to your comment on people bitching about 1999 games looking like shit, I think it's because they are 5-10 years younger than us in that they didn't grow up with an Atari 2600, 8-bit NES, and 8-bit Sega Master System. People bitched that Doom 3 was too dark and enclosed. Yeah, well those douchebags wheren't old enough to expirence Doom and Doom 2.