Opinion rant: Why modern games just don't feel right to classic gamers
jt august
about so many PS3 games and 360 games that drives me to prefer Wii on
the current generation (and Gamecube over PS2 and XB on the previous).
On these two platforms, the games look so photorealistic that they just
don't look like games. And to hear their sounds, a lot of these games
have realistic sound effects that were clearly sampled and remixed.
Gone are the days when sprites were preanimated on paper, translated
into defined color dots, and then translated into hexadecimal bit maps,
as data tables read into place on the display processors memory. Today,
it is so terribly often that games are rendered models with texture maps
and variant forms of light ray tracing bent on providing an image so
believable that it could easily be construed as actual photos and video.
Gone are the days when sound generators had a few select waveforms, and
the effects challenge was to manipulate those waveforms through timed
sequences to create memorable sounds. Sounds today are recorded to make
you think that they are just that, recorded; believable and realistic.
The problem for me is that I cut my teeth on games that had a feeling of
pure imagination about them because the technology of the time couldn't
do better. It was a time when the picture on the box was better than
anything on the screen. In today's market, if that were the case, the
game would be a guaranteed flop.
And that brings me to why I lean towards the Wii. Although graphics are
so meticulasly detailed, and yes, they are 3D rendered, they still have
that look about them that says, "I'm not real, I'm just a game image."
And many games have sounds that have that synthetic quality about them
that is artificial but fun.
So, that's my opinion. What do others here feel, agreed or not (and no,
I don't expect everyone to agree with me, that would be arrogant).
jt
Nathan
Agreed, totally. I like to get away from realism when I play, not get
more of it. My favorites are the cartoony and as un-realistic as they
can get. I don't mind all the odd sounds that come from my speakers,
that's part of the experience.
Something I also miss from vintage consoles are the "put game in, turn
on, play" routines. The current gen all have to be navigated to. If I
wanted to navigate I'd use the internet. iirc the GameCube was the
last console to do this. The only options I really want to set are the
date and time.
Of the current gen I much prefer the Wii because of the classic
releases, the high octane graphics do nothing for me with the 360 and
PS3.
Nathan
enough
problems in 3d games, where one object is merged into another. Its
slightly creepy with todays graphics, but wait until we get graphics
10 years down when graphics look nearly indistinguishable from reality.
math_guy
Say what? If we're talking solely about the PlayStation 3 and Xbox
360, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger and The King of Fighters XII both use
hand-drawn animation, as do many downloadable titles such as Braid and
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Also, games that don't
contain preanimated sprites needn't be photorealistic; consider Prince
of Persia, Raiden IV, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time, and
Street Fighter 4.
Not that there is anything wrong with realism; it's part of the charm
of Little Big Planet!
Sean
jt august
<e85221cd-0f80-436e...@a32g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
math_guy <sean_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 12:50 pm, jt august <starsa...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >
> > Gone are the days when sprites were preanimated...
>
> Say what? If we're talking solely about the PlayStation 3 and Xbox
> 360, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger and The King of Fighters XII both use
> hand-drawn animation, as do many downloadable titles such as Braid and
> Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Also, games that don't
> contain preanimated sprites needn't be photorealistic; consider Prince
> of Persia, Raiden IV, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time, and
> Street Fighter 4.
But in hte old days, the pre-animation I refer to was a hand coded
conversion from concept drawing to digital sprite. Today's games are
hand drawn and scanned in with no color loss, anti-aliased smooth,
infinitely scalable, and mapped onto a 3d object defined flat, and then
distortable to allow computer tweening effects on the fly.
The old days, those objects were drawn on grid paper, and converted to
digital values that had limited colors, and were locked in as to how
they were presented on screen; jaggies, limited colors and all. Even
the Wii, with many games of a cartoonish nature, still uses 3D texture
mappings on screen, so their games just don't compare.
> Not that there is anything wrong with realism; it's part of the charm
> of Little Big Planet!
It's absolute wrong that all these games have too much realism. To old
school gamers, they look too good, not imaginative.
jt
math_guy
>
> The old days, those objects were drawn on grid paper, and converted
> to digital values that had limited colors, and were locked in as to how
> they were presented on screen; jaggies, limited colors and all.
Read the last paragraph regarding the development of King of Fighters
XII:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_Fighters_XII#Development
> It's absolute[ly] wrong that all these games have too much realism.
That's just silly. There are more classic games than you will ever be
able to play in your lifetime, so why complain if current developers
try to push gaming where it's never been before? Personally, I love
living in a time when I can play BOTH the titles that I grew up with
AND the ones that I could only have imagined as a kid.
Sean