Originally posted by: ja1484
Originally posted by: Zenoth
Voila, well said.
Also, people saying "screw graphics, animations", etc... well, those are part of the so called game-play. It always makes me laugh when I read things like that, "give me good game-play, screw the rest!", sheesh... what's the "rest" exactly is you can play the game without the good "graphics" and "animations" and "music" and whatever else you can throw at the waste basket, or better asked, what exactly for those persons IS "game-play"? Item names? Voice acting? And what else? Textures? Nah that'd be part of the graphics, sorry I forgot.
But, yeah, I realize it, "game-play" is subjective, I guess then that "game-play" for instance in a "casual" game like Fallout 3 CAN be just activating switches, or "having just game-play" in a game like Crysis CAN be as simple as browsing the in-game settings, because the "rest" is good graphics and animations and sounds and music, so obviously it's a casual game because... what... because it does NOT look like Planescape: Torment anymore? I don't get it, and quite frankly, I don't want to.
You and I? We could also get along.
I remember CliffyB doing a speaking bit a few years back at something, GDC, E3 or something talking about how graphics DO matter because visuals can be used to affect the player's experience. What they see, and their reaction to it, DOES have an impact.
If you think back on your gaming history, most people can probably find de facto examples of this. One of my most enduring gaming memories was exiting your crashed ship in the original Unreal. In fact, several portions of that game are burned into my brain because of what I saw and it's unique aesthetic.
Half-Life 2 had some similar instances with character animation and physics interactions. "whoa" moments.
No doubt this post will incite a bunch of ranting as to the merits (or lack thereof) of CliffyB, the Unreal series, the Half-Life series, and a bunch of other tangential bullshit, but that just proves that people never fail to be adept at missing the point.
It's always been there, the appreciation of graphics (and animations, and everything, but mostly graphics). I've been playing games since the original Mario Brothers on the NES, people in the same boat have seen all the advances of graphics technologies to this day, we lived through the wow's of the Super FX chip of the SNES, we were all amazed by the extra details given by the memory pack of the N64 and Perfect Dark, we almost universally acclaimed the evolution AND revolution that was Half-Life, we saw what FarCry, Half-Life 2 and DOOM 3 managed to do. But within all that period, within all those advances we NEVER (and yes I do speak for the majority of the gamers like me who played Mario and Duck Hunt) turned our head nor attention away from "graphics", we freaking DEMANDED it, and the better it was, the better the game was, generally speaking. I still remember going "to the Arcades" when at home I only had an SNES (for those who lived that period you will remember that Arcade games always had advanced graphics that back then seemed impossible to ever see happen at home, unless you were extremely rich) and thinking how amazing the graphics were in those games and how much I wanted a console at home capable of having games "like that", exactly due to the amazing graphics, popularity of "good graphics" is NOTHING new.
Now, of course there ARE exceptions, there's always exceptions, but that's probably also subjective I guess. I mean, look, I DO still play the original Mario Brothers on a used NES I bought from eBay a few years ago, I don't play it regularly, it's VERY rare, but when I do plug in my NES and play some games I don't stop playing them all of a sudden because the graphics are old, nor do I feel the urge to leave that and start up Crysis to cleanse my mind of all those obvious pixels, but I do NOT ignore the graphics for what they are either, what they are is an integral part of the game-play, it's just that simple. I mean, hey, anyone remembers the Nintendo VS. Sega war back then? What kind of arguments you guys think were on the table huh? Story lines? Sound effects? No, not at all, it WAS graphics VS. graphics and animations VS. animations debates.
And, also, there's the 2D and 3D differential to consider. A 2D game, platformers or not, just as long as it's in 2D CAN have pretty much all the "old'ish" graphics and animations you can think of and it WILL be fun as long as the "game-play is there", yes. But with a 3D game, it's a whole different story. As I mentioned earlier, and now speaking for me entirely, I for one do play many 2D games from the NES and SNES era, or new ones like World of Good for instance amongst many others, I have heaps of fun (and not just due to nostalgia, I actually play them because I feel like I want to like any others like Crysis or TF2, it really makes no difference for me, it's damn game, I play games to have fun, and not just to remember how it was when I was ten years-old). But when I TRY to play old 3D games it IS very difficult to have fun BECAUSE of the old graphics and animations and whatever else impacts on the visuals and the overall experience.
I mean ask me to play Mario All-Stars OR... I don't know... say a game like Jedi Academy, and I WILL pick up Mario All-Stars even though I AM a fan of Star Wars and science-fiction in general, why? Because of the graphics, or ELSE I WOULD play Jedi Academy if you gave me graphics and animations from a period like... say 2004 or so at the least (that's about the time period for Half-Life 2 and DOOM 3 and so on). Anyways... in the end I guess that it's all relative, right? So, whatever, those of you out there content with "old graphics" in a 2009 game, fine, maybe you ARE content with them, that's good, but PLEASE oh please don't also deny the fact (for me, it IS a fact) that graphics, good or not ARE part of game-play in ANY video game out there, you can't just say something like "well, screw graphics, give me game-play", alright, well then what if BioWare would all of a sudden and just for the heck of it give you Dragon Age with graphics from 1998? Would you still honestly be content with that? Think sharp edges and no illusions of curves anywhere you look at, think blurry textures, no physics whatsoever, and VERY blocky and awkward (by today's standards) animations, would you then STILL honestly say something like "well, at least I still have my game-play", I would be very surprised if that was the case and I would be the first one to offer you my humble and perhaps useless thumbs up.