The Conduit

[Jenx]

Good gods almighty - Finally someone people listen to came out and said it. I've been stuck in this place for years now, trying to explain to people that a well drawn and sprited 2D game looks better and will continue to look better than your amazingly astounding 3D cutting edge graphics...that will be cutting edge for about a month at best. I hate people who snort and go "you're kidding right?" when I talk about 2D games today.

 

[Razhem]

I agree wholeheartedly, I see games from my PS1 nostalgia era and they look like knives to my eyes, on the other hand, I can still look at the old SNES and have a smile of glee on me.

Right now, the biggest offender in all od this is the TMNT Reshelled thing, it looks horrible in 3D, horrible, horrible, horrible. It lacks the charm and bright colouring of old (say what you want, but bright colours look horrible in textures) and in every sense is a step back for the port. So it basically kills itself in one single move by looking meh and alienating the nostalgic crowd and failing to garner the interest as a brawler in today's world of gaming.

 

[SFR]

Old 3d graphics don't bother me much (nor do the old 2d graphics), but I don't think you should use Grand Theft Auto 4 as a "looking back on the previous generations graphics" example. It's far from the best looking game. I'm actually confused on how they'll make graphics look better than they do now. You know, without your computer forming a black hole due to it's density. The only way they can look better that I can think of is ALL lights being per pixel lights, and having the ability to cast penumbra shadows. One of the primary reasons games look so good now is the lighting. I suppose even more polygons on models and even higher resolution textures would help, but lighting is almost everything. A block is 12 triangles, there's no changing that (pretty much), so why doesn't it always look realistic? Lighting!

And there you have it. 2d games don't really rely on lighting. Sure you can make a shadow and lighting engine, but it really comes down to the sprites. That's why 2d games have looked so good, even really old ones now. The makers just had really good spriters. Now I'll have to spend 10 million dollars to compete with mainstream games.

 

[geldonyetich]

I know I sound like a ridiculous suck-up to say it, but I have to say that Yahtzee and I see eye-to-eye about a lot of things, and it's because we've one mutual tangent: we're oldschool gamers.

So, this whole "I'm beginning to wonder if 3D was a mistake" thing? Totally a thought that occurred to me before.

3D is a good dressing - you can do some pretty impressive things with 3D - but if the core game mechanic takes second chair to showcasing what you can do in Maya, then the only people you're really making the game for are those who hoot and clap at flashing lights. Those of us who are real gamers can only be confused that they're trying to serve us tinfoil when we asked for a banquet.

There's a lot of would-be game developers out there who should probably experiment with developing 2D Nintendo DS, cell phone/iPhone, or Indy PC titles until they actually know enough about game design to really make good use of 3D. I mean that in the best possible way.

 

[beckett360]

I agree with you. I hate the Wii and their games. They need to stop now. Bring back the Gamecube!

 

[WaderiAAA]

Yes,2D games can pull off awesome graphics. I have been playing NyxQuest lately, and it looks just amazing.

 

[TheScarecrow]

I'm just glad he likes Metal Slug.

 

[Deacon Cole]

I fully agree that 3D is not all it's cracked up to be. In most cases, it's a bother as you have to fiddle with the camera or get lost in relatively small areas because of the full 3D layout.

With 3D, like everything else in a game, the developers have to ask themselves, what does this bring to the table. At this point for most games, I think it brings very little. Graphics stopped impressing me after the Nintendo Entertainment System came out. Better graphics do not mean better gameplay. Full 3D is more than just graphics, it's a whole other dimension for gameplay possibilities which needs to be properly handled. But it's liable to be more difficult to design since it does have that pesky third dimension.

I think ultimately it make a game that tries to do too much that it does not need to do. I played a board game last week, Betrayal at House on the Hill and I thought it was garbage. It tried to do too much and was much too complicated for it's own good. It tried to do too much with to many fiddly pieces and was no fun at all. That it won the gamers choice award at the 2004 Origins just shows what kind of idiots attend Origins, I guess.

Video games are the same way. 3D is just one way for a game to have a sense of being "real." All well and good, but the 3D needs to be integral to the gameplay and the gameplay needs to be tight and engaging. But it acts like a loose thread more often than not.

 

[VinLAURiA]

Wow.

The words "heel face turn" pop into my mind.

 

[PsychicKid]

I registered just to post this. Great read, Mr. Croshaw. I could not agree more with the points you made. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a nasty alien chap named Giygas to kill.

 

[Treize_Knight]

I'm pretty sure he knew already, buddy, no need for that elitism.

Where I come from, being elite is not a bad thing, in fact. It's something you strive for.

 

[Finch5ter]

Even though I enjoy the Conduit, I still agreed with everything Yahtzee said.
DAMN HE'S GOOD.

 

[Tequila Shot]

I kinda agree on what Yahtzee states. You can see a hand drawn cartoon made in the 1940's and see they were more detailed and looked much better than hand drawn animation today(American anyway, Japanese anime like Cowboy Bebop keep up great tradition),but all CGI progressively evolve. Drawing doesn't have a shelf live (De Vinci,Francis Bacon,Bob Clampett) compared to CGI (Zelda Ocarina to Twilight).
But I disagree about the quality of story and gameplay being intertwined with graphics. Halo 3 and Killzone 2 make Ocarina of Time look like a 2nd art project but I believe everyone would agree(albeit your a sony or xbox fanboy)that Ocarina has a wonderful story, complex puzzles, orginal game mechanics and will still remembered forever in the gaming community while everyone would've forgotten the latter two cause there too busy playing Halo 6 and Killzone 4.

 

[Hollock]

please tell me one of you is working on the idea yahtzee had with the taiwaineese chef and the lizard

 

[beema]

Great thoughts, really. I've always felt the same way. I've recently attempted going back and playing older "classic" games that I missed out on due to "poverty," but I'm always frustrated by the terrible graphics. The first few generations of 3D games just should not have existed. They should have stuck to 2D until 3D technology was more perfected.
The classic example for me is between Final Fantasy 6 and 7. With 6, the SNES was pretty much used to its full potential, and the result was an incredible game with great (for the time) graphics. FF7, on the initial cusp of 3D games, just looked like complete crap on the other hand. The characters were just big marshmallow puffs that, stuck into a serious plotline, I could not take seriously.

 

[lozfoe444]

Wind Waker still looks awesome thanks to the cel-shading.
And on the 100th vid thing, are you counting the 2 youtube videos?

 

[baba44713]

I can completely relate with Yahtzee on the 2D-3D issue, it's one of the things that constantly bothers me.

Remember Worms? That lovely 2D cute-wiggly-creatures-shooting-the-shit-out-of-everyone game? That game rocked. It was pretty, the gameplay was fantastic but what was best about it the learning curve was non-existant. Get some friends over, fire up Worms 2:Armaggeddon and hillarity ensues in the space of 15 seconds.

Than Worms 3D comes along and it all goes to hell. You can't aim worth shit, the collision detection is all over the place, the timer keeps running out since you constantly fuck with the camera but what's the worse now you cannot find anyone who wants to play it with you. It's not a party game anymore, it's a shitty FPS pretending to be a Worms game. The series never recovered from the 3D fiasco, as far as I'm concerned.

Or let's take another example. There's a game that's been on my radar for a loong time yet I've never got time to actually play it - "The Suffering". I installed it and...WTF? This is considered...a GOOD game? Faces that seem made of two polygons tops, jerky movements, immersion factor zero? This game was actually PRAISED for its graphics? Of course, I was spoiler by Crysis, Bioshock and Batman:AA I had a chance to play in the meantime, so this award-winning game looked like utterly unplayable crap. And it's only 5 years old! Metal Slug is three times older and it looks great as ever!

It's true. 3D ages like crap, 2D preserveres.

 

[MonstersInMyCloset]

i was just playing sam and max: on the road

a game of my childhood days of lore

and thinking about 2-D game design

and how characters moving in a completely 2-D environment convey the abstract ILLUSION of a 3d world

but its hard to explain to people who haven't played old adventure games.

but graphics never got in the way when the game was so detailed in story and character that it was enjoyable even if a blob of pixels represented a poster on the wall

 

[Timothy Vancrey]

So true about the graphics. Not the best example but first in my mind is Smash Bros. After having played Smash brothers for a year or 2 at my cousin's house I got a game cube and played melee for a while. Then I went to my cousins house and was surprised that I actually thought the original had good graphics. I still like FF7 as best of the series though I have not played 6.