Advice on pre-rendered graphic games

[Terramax]

Yo!

I really like videogames with pre-rendered graphics. The PSX era has the best of them. You had the Resident Evils, Blood Omen, Grim Fandango, Sanitarium, Planescape Torment, Kouldalka, Diablo but to name a few of the many great videogames with pre-rendered drawings.

Even more recently games like Still Life and Resident Evil Remake blow me away.

What I'd like to know is, what is everyone's favourite and most recommended pre-rendered games? Any time period, any genre.

 

[plastic_window]

Abe's Exodus/Oddysee, which was on the PSone. Oddysee (spelled correctly) was the prequel, which also had the pre-rendered backgrounds, but Exodus was the better game imo.

 

[7thRain]

Dreamfall: The longest Journey. Can get them on steam for about £14 at the moment and thats about 35-40 hours of spankingly good play time.

 

[mjhhiv]

Grim Fandango. One of the best games ever made.

 

[Shade Jackrabbit]

I'd say Legend of the Dragoon. I know IGN thrashed it and a lot of people don't know it, but that game was brilliant.

 

[The Wooster]

Dreamfall: The longest Journey. Can get them on steam for about £14 at the moment and thats about 35-40 hours of spankingly good play time.

Dreamfall was full 3d and it was piss poor compared to the original.

 

[Aries_Split]

I'd say Legend of the Dragoon. I know IGN thrashed it and a lot of people don't know it, but that game was brilliant.

Let me love you. Let us runaway together to the hills, and live a life full of love and video games.

No seriously, this guy is the greatest person on the escapist.

 

[Anarchemitis]

I could consider any game that has animation based upon baked properties as pre-rendered, although to be precise, that's a conflicting sentence. Animation and Rendering are not the same thing.

'Baked' properties are things that are already set up that normally would be calculated or made on the fly by the game engine, such as object paths that would normally interact as physics objects, or shadows that are made into textures.
(This is how the bridge collapse in HL2:E2 doesn't suck up a crapload of memory by not having to calculate a billion chunks of wood, all of them travel along preset animation paths.)

 

[Shade Jackrabbit]

I'd say Legend of the Dragoon. I know IGN thrashed it and a lot of people don't know it, but that game was brilliant.

Let me love you. Let us runaway together to the hills, and live a life full of love and video games.

No seriously, this guy is the greatest person on the escapist.

I'll take that as a complement. =D Though the running away to the hills part wouldn't work out too well. I only have a desktop PC so I would need some sort of portable power or something... D=

I could consider any game that has animation based upon baked properties as pre-rendered, although to be precise, that's a conflicting sentence. Animation and Rendering are not the same thing.

'Baked' properties are things that are already set up that normally would be calculated or made on the fly by the game engine, such as object paths that would normally interact as physics objects, or shadows that are made into textures.
(This is how the bridge collapse in HL2:E2 doesn't suck up a crapload of memory by not having to calculate a billion chunks of wood, all of them travel along preset animation paths.)

Just to get a better picture of what you mean, you would consider Demos (Demoscene, not game trials) prerendered in that case?

 

[Terramax]

Dreamfall was full 3d and it was piss poor compared to the original.

Perhaps he was referring to the original, but named Dreamfall by accident(?).

I wouldn't hold any in that high regard anyhow. In fact, Dreamfall was probably better than the original, considering you weren't having to play as the biggest whining protagonist in gaming history.

Indeed, graphically, Legend of Dragoon was wonderful. Shame you just didn't get that much experience for non-bosses. The levelling system for that game was seriously unbalanced.

Abe's Exodus/Oddysee, which was on the PSone. Oddysee (spelled correctly) was the prequel, which also had the pre-rendered backgrounds, but Exodus was the better game imo.

Yes, Exodus was just fantastic. The game just looks so different to anything before or since (although Psychonauts is a lil' like Abe's Exodus).