I agree with you. I hate the Wii and their games. They need to stop now. Bring back the Gamecube!
The Conduit
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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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.
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.
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.
Where I come from, being elite is not a bad thing, in fact. It's something you strive for.quack35 said:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.