myself treasured games in the past, where the major focus was on gameplay, mechanics, and story. Graphics were taking the back seat, and it did very well in this way. But now we have people who say graphics equal immersion, but that's not entirely true. While yes, graphics are good things, they can sometimes be distractive. Its why we have so many horrible quality games in this generation. Gamers forget that if not for the first games, we would never have what we do have today. There are a few I can mention that did well with good graphics: - BF4 and CoD AW I have not played, but have seen the gameplay. This was enough for me to get a general idea of their playability, and appreciate them for what they are. Looking back, CoD WAW was a great game, despite not having the best graphics. But they made up for that with great gameplay, mechanics, and story(but then again, nobody really cared for that story). I remember Medal of Honor: Frontline, the best game experience of my life! The use of a comedic german bar with a funny hidden song and scene was gold. But now they seem to take the graphics way too seriously and it makes the game collapse. - Metal Gear Rising Revengeance & Deus Ex: Human Revolution These two games offered great re-playability, and great story to boot. DEHR gave us the ability to choose between using stealth or assault, which in my opinion was a life saver. I don't like having just one path to take, I like to be able to play through one and then play the other next time I played again. The hacking in this game was the closest at a hacking experience. MGRR gave you almost the same thing, but just a bigger battlefield. High frequency blades, and a vast variety of combos to pull off at any given time. The QTE and cutscenes were beautiful to look at. But the winner to me is DEHR because of the ability to play through the whole game in the way you wished. These are my fine examples of the good games we have now. Now for the Games back then: - Final Fantasy I've played almost all of them, all but FFVIII, which is harder to get because of its rarity. I have a copy of FFVII original 3-disc version. FFVII was a great game despite not having the graphics this generation has. It engaged you and kept you playing until the end, and left us with a bunch of questions. But for its time, it was fun as hell finding the hidden materia, and fighting many different enemies. You didn't have spells you could cast right off the bat, you needed the proper material and strategy to defeat your opponents. Feel free to correct me, but if i'm right, this game had about 60 hrs of gameplay in it. But the only problem with it was the final battle with sephiroth, it was too easy if you used the strongest sword in the game: Ultima Weapon. Which leads to a pretty empty feeling conclusion. FFVIII from what I've seen, was a small upgrade from chibi models to life size models. I just wish I could play it now, but finding it has been a pain in the butt. But if you ask me, "would you play it if you had it was the same model as FFVII?" Yes, I would play it. ________________ Now as I look on websites and forums, all I see is people who care not for the past, and only look what the future has to offer, not once thinking back to what it meant to be a gamer(imo). I've found a few who actually appreciate the games we used to play, and agree while some games today are sometimes sub par, its always the mechanics, gameplay, and story that matter the most, that is what immerses you, not the quality of the graphics. So what are your thoughts on this subject and what do you believe?
I think each to their own to be honest, if people find graphics immersive, then they can play games with good graphics, if people like retro games they can play retro games. For me personally I think all aspects of a game are important. Great story, Longevity, good voice acting and admittedly I love amazing graphics.
Graphics is not a key for a great game, but as the trend of ever increasing graphical capabilities goes, newer games need to meet a certain par level otherwise they'll get thrown under radar. There are exceptions to this, like minecraft, where the gameplay just doesn't really allow the game to look ultra realistic, or they go for an artistic gimic like the intentional retro look. In my opinion the thing hurting gaming is story. Now when I'm playing an rpg or a point and click adventure, yes I expect quite a bit of story, but the gameplay goes along with that. It only ever gives you one thing at a time to deal with, story is never overriding the gameplay experience, however with a lot of the games we are seeing today, gameplay is expected move over when the game wants to story us, or even worse yet mix with it. The best two examples I can give is "Tomb raider" and "the last of us". The issue I found with "tomb raider" was that it offered different tools and ways to approach situations, but the narrative would always run the way it expected you to play through. A great example was when you are given a grenade launcher. You are in a vast temple currently set ablaze, the enemies are shouting in fear that you now have a grenade launcher, and lara is proudly declaring she is now the bringer of their destruction with her newly acquired asset. All this is going on while I was slowly crawling through the level still sticking with my bow and arrow. I know the game has still given me the option to continue how I wanted to play, but the lack of the stories ability to match that really breaks the experience. The other issue it has is it's constant use of melding story cut scenes with actual gameplay. Better built games usually give you some indication that control has been given back to you while the story still plays out, but "tomb raider" is not one of them, and left much confusion as to what parts you were actually playing. "The last of us" also suffers same issue as a explained in the former but to a far worse degree from what I could tell. It still gave you all the variations of how to proceed through a level, and would very much gladly let you proceed that way, but in the end would not let you move on unless you followed through how the story wished you had. It happened once to often for me, where I proceed through a decent chunk of a level before realizing the story was still waiting for me at the start of the level. "The Last of Us" for myself was also the game that showed the biggest flaw of a game that is narrative focused. If in the end you don't like the narrative, it's hard to redeem the experience. Other issues you have with games like these is story still tries to continue as other events are going on and you find yourself missing important information because plot just had to continue while in the middle of a fire fight, or sound levels aren't balanced so the natural sound of the level or the music is playing over dialogue. Many games do feature settings to fix this, but the game launched with these defaults believing everything was adequate for a standard experience. Either way you are in situation where the events going on around you cause too much of a distraction from what the game thinks is really important to the whole experience. Now for the one example game you gave of the past, I do have to note that FFVII was a straight up rpg, which in the genre as a whole, has typical still met the expectations of what we got in the past, many hours of gameplay that required work to build skills and find all the little secrets hidden across the land. Even non traditional rpgs like borderlands totes many hours and a plethora of hidden gear and challenges you must find. What we had in the past was not lost and graphics hasn't hurt it.
Yes, but its only a cosmetic makeup for the game, which works well. But to completely ignore the past tech that made it possible for us to have these games now. Most games are just rushed and never truly checked completely. Take Destiny for example, the game was cut short and many complained about it. Its all promises but all talk lately by the game companies these days. You never get what they said in trailers, they pay reviewers to give good feedback, shows just how corrupt this industry has become. Then there's EA(the money grabbing pigs), promised us a new feature in madden, but when we bought it, we saw they had lied to us. We were promised the sideline reaction to every play, or if you tackled a player next to the bench. But in the end, it was an empty promise. The past has taught us to appreciate everything we have experienced, and never forget about it. Every mistake was taken into consideration, and if you rushed a product, it flopped in the market.
In my humble opinion, graphics don't make a game. Yes, they are needed for the game to look good, but if the game doesn't play well, then what's the point? You may as well have a screensaver at that point. Take Minecraft, for example. Sure, its graphics may have been impressive for 1991 (although it came out in 2009), but the gameplay is incredibly diverse and enjoyable. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have Sonic 2006. It looks pretty good graphically for an early title for the 360 and PS3, but the gameplay is atrocious.
I think part of your problem is the expectation that a game be open-world. It just sort of seems like you don't like linear games. That doesn't make linear games bad, and it certainly doesn't mean story is bad or holding games back. The Last of Us is like a book that you play through. It has a beginning and end, and everything connects those two parts. That same trait is present in a large number of games and has been around for a very long time. What you're essentially implying in that example is that linear games are worse than open-world games, and I think that's a pretty poor blanket statement.
It's been said a thousand times. Graphics are not everything, even gameplay to some extent isn't what a game is about. What is important in the game is the type of experience through the atmosphere. While overrated, Silent Hill 2 is a excellent example of what I mean. The controls were a bit wacky and graphics were impressive for their time, but what held it together and still holds it together. What does it is the story and atmosphere of the game. Atmosphere is a huge part of that game and it's series. While a lot of games are hit and miss in many areas, the ones that reach longevity in a general basis are ones that provide that unforgettable atmosphere and story experience. You may not remember the controls fondly, or the graphics for that matter. But if you remember a game for it's story and atmosphere, it most likely is doing something right. You make a good point there, Dilly. Whether linear or open world, there are things that are good on both spectrums. The Last of Us is also a good example of what I was talking about. It maybe linear and that maybe a turn off for some folks, but what holds the game together is it's Story and Atmosphere. You can tell that the characters are human and the situations were organic, or as organic as you can get in a zombie game. The graphics maybe nice and maybe the controls were decent, but what will be remembered is the experience of a story you want to see unfold. You, at some point, will start to connect with the characters and almost feel the dire situation in front of you. A fight for survival. Like a book, as Dilly said. This is just one opinion in a million on the matter though.
No one said graphics were everything, we were giving something called an opinion, and everyone is welcome to one.
As many have said when I asked: Graphics only work if the first three elements work well together; Gameplay, mechanics, and story. If those aren't well put together, the game will fail.
You were giving an opinion? Great, but so was she. Her opinion was different and she wasn't shy about it. There's no need to go randomly defending your freedom of speech just because somebody disagrees with you.
I have no issue with a story in a game, it's merely when they present it in a manner that disrupts the entire experience. Better way to put what I was trying to say, there was poor execution for combining the narrative with gameplay. Both games offered various ways to play, which allows you to give your interpretation of what you think the character would do. However in both games the narrative was locked in a set path and created bad experiences whether breaking the immersion or halting progress all together. In both games what we should have seen was either a more fluid narrative that would adapt with how we played or restrict our abilities if the narrative wanted us to experience something in a certain way.
[IMAGE REMOVED] That's ironic coming from somebody who just posted, "we were giving something called an opinion, and everyone is welcome to one." Like, really? I'm kind of perplexed. Do you not see how what you were saying applies just as much to her comment as it does to yours? Your criticism of her rebuttal seemed to involve little consideration for what the actual focus in her post was, and yeah, I called you out on it. Does that make me a crusader all of a sudden? Sure, if you like. Whatever. Me being a white knight or some other ill-fitting cliche in this situation doesn't make your comment any less inane or irrelevant. Okay, I think I understand you better now. Thanks for the clarification. EDIT: Whoops, that's my bad. I can be done now. DOUBLE EDIT: If it's any consolation, Candy, I woke up sick this morning. So, I'm not burning with the ragefire of a thousand wifi-producing suns, I'm just cranky because every part of my body hates me right now... not that watching other people post ridiculous stuff on the internet isn't annoying to me on a regular basis, but I thought maybe it would help to throw some perspective out there.
How you reacted here just proves my point entirely. Also if someone replies specificly to your post then it usually means it's directed at you, I said I really liked graphics, I was then quoted and in that post was told that graphics are not everything, sure I was a little snappy, but again, doesn't mean you have to write paragraphs of off topic rubbish just because of that fact. And yes, a White knight cliche is someone who rushes to the defence of someone who didn't need / ask for it, especially females, but I suppose that doesn't count here since both of us are. Anyway, I am done derailing this thread with you and it wasn't my intention in the first place, if you have any more issues feel free to PM me
@Skyborne Dilly simply saw a point that he disagreed with and gave a comment on it. This is the serious discussion section, not the sit around and say nothing if you disagree area. You really shouldn't have called out Poisonous Nightmare for having an opinion as well, as that basically defeats the purpose of the thread. It's a discussion thread, where people discuss things. Dilly responded to you because you snapped at Poisonous for making a post. Call it what you want, you were in the wrong there. @Dilly Star I'm not entirely sure anything Dave Chappelle does is appropriate, especially not that. >_> I'm just going to remove that gif kthx.
Okay, I can understand that. The line might be fuzzy about how appropriate that was, but for that same reason judging it to be inappropriate seems fair to me. I apologize if it offended or upset anybody and will be more conscious of that sort of thing in the future.
Okay, I can grant you that. The gameplay still has to have some enjoyable value to apply to the mechanics which will make the story more compelling in lesser aspects. My point though is were the more memorable things will lay. Gameplay and other elements that make the game good do apply but in way that don't exactly stick to the memory as good as much as story and atmosphere will. You may remember how to play it and that is a spectrum of memory all it's own involving hand eye coordination and muscle reflex. Heh, and parents say we learn nothing from videogames~
As a person who plays games on a crappy 8 year old laptop, I am forced to not take graphics into account because I know every game I play will be on lowest graphics settings. So.
