Now that Kickstarter's no longer this Shiny New Thing, and is increasingly becoming a standard part of gaming culture, it's interesting to see how the crowdsourcing concept is progressing. The sheen hasn't dulled, if a couple of recent titles are anything to go by; Reaper Miniatures' Bones closed today and became the third highest grossing Kickstarter project ever (and achieved the highest ever funding percentage over its original target), while the much-hyped Oculus Rift is doing pretty well for itself - almost a week to go, and it's on target to make 1000% of its initial target. Neither of them were ever in danger of knocking off Pebble (which seems inherently superfluous to me, but I'm not a gadgety person, so what do I know?), but they're still both runaway successes.
Friends of mine, even skint ones, have pledged hundreds of dollars to Bones. A few have hyped it to me, too, despite the fact they know I'm not a wargamer. I suppose you could use the figures for D&D 4th Edition too; sadly, I know about two roleplayers within gaming distance of me currently, and neither would touch D&D with a ten foot bargepole. Also I still prefer 3.5 (I accept 4th is the better game, but 3.5 is geared more towards my personal preferences). All that aside, I know that for those who would make use of the miniatures, the deals Reaper are offering are outstanding value, and they seem to be good sculpts. And hey, one of the low-tier rewards is a naked succubus on a motorbike... they obviously know their audience.
Personally, I'm more interested in Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse. The first two Broken Swords were excellent, and the third was good. I never played the fourth, sadly. The new game will be returning to the 2D, hand-drawn style of the first two instalments; it's broken the halfway mark on its target after less than two days live, further proof - after the success of Double Fine Adventure - that traditional adventure gaming still has a commercial market.
Of course, like previous Kickstarter successes Shadowrun, Wasteland and Carmageddon, Broken Sword is a fondly remembered cult classic with legions of fans to this day. The Great Giana Sisters? That's, well, the videogame equivalent of pub quiz trivia. Oh, sure it has its fans (some of whom hilariously believe that it's better than Super Mario Bros.), and it had a fairly low-key DS remake, but do enough people care about a Giana comeback for it to hit its target? With just under a week to pull in $35,000, probably, but I bet a fair chunk of Project Giana's backers are in it more for irony value than for a genuine love of the original.
As for the new game, it too looks like a close, ahem, "homage" of a popular title, although not Mario this time. The visual design, the physics puzzles, and the instant switching between multiple characters with different skills - the whole thing screams, to me at least, 'Trine clone.' Now Trine was a fine game, and in its defence Project Giana looks like a mixture of Trine and the kind of traditional, old-school platformer which doesn't really get made anymore, so there may be something worthwhile there. I think I'm interested enough in Project Giana to get it when it comes out, but not enough to back it.
Perhaps I'm picky about the things I back - or perhaps more people than I thought see Kickstarter as way of pre-ordering a game for cheap. Carmageddon's campaign closed two months ago, and some fans are up in arms about what they perceive to be a lack of updates since then, never mind the fact the game was still in pre-alpha when the Kickstarter closed. They already released gameplay footage far earlier than almost any developer has ever done, and surprise surprise, a portion of the backers complained about it looking ugly. Um, it's pre-alpha build, so yeah. Every game looks ugly at that point in its development! That the modern gamer's sense of entitlement is present on Kickstarter is straightforward; that crowdsourcing feeds said sense of entitlement so strongly is both inevitable and sad. I still believe that crowdsourcing is a good thing overall, it's just that some people need learn to to STFU, for totes.
It's easy to forget that Kickstarter isn't all smashed targets and
commercial success. There's one project I saw which had only a single
backer after almost a week live. The pitch was awkward all round,
trading on the fame of a name I for one had never heard of, and poorly
written both syntactically and informationally. How many people are
going to back a creative project when the blurb is full of grammar and
punctuation errors? As an intersection of venture capitalism and web
2.0, it seems inevitable that Kickstarter would come with a significant
volume of projects which are nowhere near ready for presentation, and
it's surprising that said volume isn't much, much higher than it
currently stands at. I know there's a lot of legal tape involved in a
Kickstarter project, but that doesn't usually stop people.
And the blurb CAN make a difference. It's the main reason I didn't back the OUYA.
As interesting as the concept is, the pitch came off as condescending
and elitist. No indie creativity in the traditional console market?
XBLA's waving hello. If Braid, Limbo and Super Meat Boy aren't your idea of success stories, your standards must be bloody high.
Finally, I'm sure Planetary Annihilation is very good, for those weird people who care about real-time strategy. You know who you are... freaks. Nah, seriously, I dig what they're trying to do and if I was into the genre I'd probably be backing it. But I'm not, so I'm not.
Showing posts with label Carmageddon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carmageddon. Show all posts
Sunday, 26 August 2012
Sunday, 15 July 2012
Trailer trash
I wanted to say something about all the Hitman hubbub, but I ultimately had even less to add to that than I did to the Diablo DRM debate. My major issue with the Hitman: Absolution trailer was not one of morality or chivalry, but that it's that it's not Hitman. Hitman is a game about not killing people. That's a very important bit. The part about not drawing attention to yourself, and not turning things into a bloodbath? Being all, like, subtle and stuff, or at least as subtle as one can be for a man with a bardcode on his head? That's what Hitman's about. And an explosive shootout with the cast of Sister Candie Takes The Divine Sacrament* is not subtle. I have subsequently been assured that the Absolution devs disliked the trailer just as much as everyone else, and have promised that the game will stay true to the core of Hitman's heritage.
Would fetish nuns with rocket launchers have caused half as much flap in a trailer for a new Wet or Bayonetta? Well, maybe. Probably. Bayonetta saw a fair amount of controversy surrounding its perceived sexism. But y'know, gender stereotyping aside, that's the sort of thing those games are about. And I salute them for it! That sort of hypersexualised, tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top, crazy-and-deranged-just-for-the-sake-of-it Thing certainly has its place. It's even had its place in Hitman over the years, at least in terms of aesthetic, if perhaps not action. I suppose, in that light, that the rocket launchers bother me more than the fetish nuns.
I've finally gotten round to Saints Row: The Third, and it's practically some kind of golden, penis-shaped temple to debauched lunacy. Yes, all the ladies have pneumatic boobies, and all the men have abs you could bounce rocks off, but that doesn't have to translate to sexist portrayals in terms of personality or societal role. For the most part, SR3 seems to do pretty well there. I'm about as pro gender quality as it's possible to be, but gender equality doesn't mean pretending that sex isn't fun, or that sexuality can't be addressed with a nod and a wink.
And then, there were Duke Nukem Forever's trailers. There's a line between fun, over the top cheese and actual sexism - a wide, blurry line, but some sort of line nonetheless - and DNF smeared rancid, blood-flecked semen all over that line. DNF's trailer made it seem like the game equivalent of the guy who's absolutely convinced that all women are gold-digging whores who need a strong man to keep them in line. That might be part of the same continuum as Bayonetta, but then so is puritanically censoring anything even remotely sexual, and it could be worse than tongue-in-cheek, knowing, over-sexuality.
Assassins attacking 47 in his hotel room, and him having to fight his way out? Sure, I can dig that. Said assassins being an all-female group dressed in latex nuns' habits? Okay then - so far so Tarantino, I guess. Blowing the shit out of the motel in huge explosions? Urgh... I suppose so. The really problematic bit is the fact that Square Enix have decided that this is what they want people's first impression of the new game to be.
Well, the pre-order going up six months ahead of release is also slightly daunting.
A trailer is many people's first window into a game. It's very much a first impression. A preview should get you excited, and displaying that a new installment will be completely different to the previous titles is very risky and rather questionable. The Absolution trailer tells us it will be centred around outlandish action and hyper-stylised sexuality, and that 47 will be an active agent in that this time; longtime fans understand that 47 is an outsider to this sort of thing, and that through his eyes things like fetish nuns with rocket launchers are distasteful. The OTT sexuality and violence of the previous Hitman games weren't presented as something to be celebrated. And of course there's the fact that a game about stealthy assassinations shouldn't need to be marketed on tits and explosions.
In light of the Hitman trailer, there's been a slight resurgence of talk concerning the Tomb Raider reboot's trailers. One of the big problems I've always had with the Tomb Raider series is the fact that Lara Croft is such a monumentally objectionable person. She's blessed with beauty, brains, brawn and fabulous wealth, yet how does she put her good fortune to use? By breaking into sites of historical importance and hoovering up anything valuable while killing the natives and endangered animals residing there. She's basically using her privilege to do whatever she likes, and screw anyone else it might affect. Granted, she finds herself in danger a lot, but she willingly put herself in that position in pursuit of stolen riches. Why, exactly, are we supposed to be sympathetic when she's in trouble? Why do you think 'killing Lara' was such a popular hobby among the PSX generation?
Some games tried to humanise her, or explain her motivations, but it always felt like an awkward retcon to me. Angel of Darkness tried to play up the nasty side of Lara, but it was more like a teenager's concept of 'badass' that true emotional darkness. Lara was always just a fundamentally unlikeable person. The reboot's trailer might not create a likeable protagonist - time will tell - but it's exploring why she is the way she is in a deep, potentially uncomfortable fashion (and I'm not talking about the gratuitous near-rape scene, nor the depressing fact that it's there to make male gamers want to protect Lara).
Most of us have to sympathise, psychologically, with someone who's been through a traumatic experience. But we don't have to like them. That creates an emotional and narrative tension. It's a simple trick, but it works. It was a key element of Analogue: A Hate Story; The Pale Bride went through unspeakable things, but as much as we might feel sorry for her, she's still pretty awful. James Bond went through unspeakable things in the Casino Royale remake, but they don't alter the fact he's an arsehole.
So it is with Lara in the new Tomb Raider trailer. She's beaten, subjected to appalling cicrumstances, and watches her friends get killed. Is that why she becomes the emotionless monster she is in later life? I may very well dislike the new Lara - time will tell - but I feel that there's a good chance I'll dislike her in an interesting way, and not just despise her for being a pantomime murderer. Then again, a lot of gamers have said good things about the old Lara, praising the fact she's a stone cold, unflappable badass. Ick.
Personally, what's gotten me most excited is perhaps the most minimalist preview around. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Audiosurf Air! Fun fact: Audiosurf is my joint third-most played game on Steam, tied with Psychonauts at 35.6 hours (yeah, it took me that long to complete Psychonauts. Don't... don't ask. I'm ashamed). All that's been revealed of Audiosurf Air is the name and three screenshots, and as the website dryly notes, the graphics are not final and "other things are also not final." But it's enough - there will be a new Audiosurf, and it will not be about fetish nuns with rocket launchers. Score!
I've also been enjoying the videos Stainless put out during their successful Carmageddon Kickstarter campaign. Even compared to Double Fine's videos, the Carmageddon videos are amateurish as hell (one of them features one of the developers dancing around to Trololo for about four minutes, for fuck sake) but I for one actually like that. Nobby and Simista come off as people you could go down the pub with. They're the kind of people I trust with a game like Carmageddon, which was - in essence - a fun pisstake. An accomplished, boundary-rewriting pisstake, but even so.
I wanted to close with something on the previews from Nintendo's new spy-catching game for the 3DS, but... rather embarrassingly.... I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. And this is looking very long and meandering as it is, so I'd better sign off. Bai bai.
*Just be thankful that I couldn't think of a good transubstantiation joke.
Would fetish nuns with rocket launchers have caused half as much flap in a trailer for a new Wet or Bayonetta? Well, maybe. Probably. Bayonetta saw a fair amount of controversy surrounding its perceived sexism. But y'know, gender stereotyping aside, that's the sort of thing those games are about. And I salute them for it! That sort of hypersexualised, tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top, crazy-and-deranged-just-for-the-sake-of-it Thing certainly has its place. It's even had its place in Hitman over the years, at least in terms of aesthetic, if perhaps not action. I suppose, in that light, that the rocket launchers bother me more than the fetish nuns.
I've finally gotten round to Saints Row: The Third, and it's practically some kind of golden, penis-shaped temple to debauched lunacy. Yes, all the ladies have pneumatic boobies, and all the men have abs you could bounce rocks off, but that doesn't have to translate to sexist portrayals in terms of personality or societal role. For the most part, SR3 seems to do pretty well there. I'm about as pro gender quality as it's possible to be, but gender equality doesn't mean pretending that sex isn't fun, or that sexuality can't be addressed with a nod and a wink.
And then, there were Duke Nukem Forever's trailers. There's a line between fun, over the top cheese and actual sexism - a wide, blurry line, but some sort of line nonetheless - and DNF smeared rancid, blood-flecked semen all over that line. DNF's trailer made it seem like the game equivalent of the guy who's absolutely convinced that all women are gold-digging whores who need a strong man to keep them in line. That might be part of the same continuum as Bayonetta, but then so is puritanically censoring anything even remotely sexual, and it could be worse than tongue-in-cheek, knowing, over-sexuality.
Assassins attacking 47 in his hotel room, and him having to fight his way out? Sure, I can dig that. Said assassins being an all-female group dressed in latex nuns' habits? Okay then - so far so Tarantino, I guess. Blowing the shit out of the motel in huge explosions? Urgh... I suppose so. The really problematic bit is the fact that Square Enix have decided that this is what they want people's first impression of the new game to be.
Well, the pre-order going up six months ahead of release is also slightly daunting.
A trailer is many people's first window into a game. It's very much a first impression. A preview should get you excited, and displaying that a new installment will be completely different to the previous titles is very risky and rather questionable. The Absolution trailer tells us it will be centred around outlandish action and hyper-stylised sexuality, and that 47 will be an active agent in that this time; longtime fans understand that 47 is an outsider to this sort of thing, and that through his eyes things like fetish nuns with rocket launchers are distasteful. The OTT sexuality and violence of the previous Hitman games weren't presented as something to be celebrated. And of course there's the fact that a game about stealthy assassinations shouldn't need to be marketed on tits and explosions.
In light of the Hitman trailer, there's been a slight resurgence of talk concerning the Tomb Raider reboot's trailers. One of the big problems I've always had with the Tomb Raider series is the fact that Lara Croft is such a monumentally objectionable person. She's blessed with beauty, brains, brawn and fabulous wealth, yet how does she put her good fortune to use? By breaking into sites of historical importance and hoovering up anything valuable while killing the natives and endangered animals residing there. She's basically using her privilege to do whatever she likes, and screw anyone else it might affect. Granted, she finds herself in danger a lot, but she willingly put herself in that position in pursuit of stolen riches. Why, exactly, are we supposed to be sympathetic when she's in trouble? Why do you think 'killing Lara' was such a popular hobby among the PSX generation?
Some games tried to humanise her, or explain her motivations, but it always felt like an awkward retcon to me. Angel of Darkness tried to play up the nasty side of Lara, but it was more like a teenager's concept of 'badass' that true emotional darkness. Lara was always just a fundamentally unlikeable person. The reboot's trailer might not create a likeable protagonist - time will tell - but it's exploring why she is the way she is in a deep, potentially uncomfortable fashion (and I'm not talking about the gratuitous near-rape scene, nor the depressing fact that it's there to make male gamers want to protect Lara).
Most of us have to sympathise, psychologically, with someone who's been through a traumatic experience. But we don't have to like them. That creates an emotional and narrative tension. It's a simple trick, but it works. It was a key element of Analogue: A Hate Story; The Pale Bride went through unspeakable things, but as much as we might feel sorry for her, she's still pretty awful. James Bond went through unspeakable things in the Casino Royale remake, but they don't alter the fact he's an arsehole.
So it is with Lara in the new Tomb Raider trailer. She's beaten, subjected to appalling cicrumstances, and watches her friends get killed. Is that why she becomes the emotionless monster she is in later life? I may very well dislike the new Lara - time will tell - but I feel that there's a good chance I'll dislike her in an interesting way, and not just despise her for being a pantomime murderer. Then again, a lot of gamers have said good things about the old Lara, praising the fact she's a stone cold, unflappable badass. Ick.
Personally, what's gotten me most excited is perhaps the most minimalist preview around. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Audiosurf Air! Fun fact: Audiosurf is my joint third-most played game on Steam, tied with Psychonauts at 35.6 hours (yeah, it took me that long to complete Psychonauts. Don't... don't ask. I'm ashamed). All that's been revealed of Audiosurf Air is the name and three screenshots, and as the website dryly notes, the graphics are not final and "other things are also not final." But it's enough - there will be a new Audiosurf, and it will not be about fetish nuns with rocket launchers. Score!
I've also been enjoying the videos Stainless put out during their successful Carmageddon Kickstarter campaign. Even compared to Double Fine's videos, the Carmageddon videos are amateurish as hell (one of them features one of the developers dancing around to Trololo for about four minutes, for fuck sake) but I for one actually like that. Nobby and Simista come off as people you could go down the pub with. They're the kind of people I trust with a game like Carmageddon, which was - in essence - a fun pisstake. An accomplished, boundary-rewriting pisstake, but even so.
I wanted to close with something on the previews from Nintendo's new spy-catching game for the 3DS, but... rather embarrassingly.... I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. And this is looking very long and meandering as it is, so I'd better sign off. Bai bai.
*Just be thankful that I couldn't think of a good transubstantiation joke.
Friday, 18 May 2012
Obligatory Diablo III nonsense
I wasn't going to get Diablo III anyway, but if I was, Blizzard would have lost a sale.
Courtesy of Penny Arcade, I was under the impression, initially, that the program was already sitting on people's computers awaiting activation on release day. To be honest, I was shocked that companies still do that, despite the huge fan outcry that's occurred whenever it's been tried. I mean, it's understandable why a development company might do things that way; it's more understandable why the fans would be pissed off about it, and the customer is always right, even if said customer is a loud, obnoxious jerk who smells slightly of boiled cabbage and turpentine.
Evis T informs me that actually, it's the rendering engine and such that people have on their PCs, and the content is streamed from Blizzard's servers during play.
Wut?
I live in a neighbourhood with a poor net connection. Evis T lives in a residential complex abutting his workplace, with a poor net connection. Our pals Arron and Andy seem to just have flat out bad net no matter what they do. Playing online games can already be a chore for us, as people drop out randomly or freeze up with lag. Now we can't even play single-player games without worrying about that? Or that things might go tits-up Blizzard-side? Amazing. And this is supposed to be an anti-piracy measure... seriously? If anything this sort of draconian countermeasure, a cure worse than the disease if you will, would make me turn to piracy.
I haven't looked, but I would put money on cracked copes of Diablo III being pretty easily available already.
I don't care about Diablo III - the original Diablo underwhelmed me enough that I never bothered with Diablo II, and to be honest, I'm just not a fan of Blizzard's games in general. But Blizzard are a 'big deal' company, with the power to set precedent for other companies. If BioShock Infinite, or Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, or my beloved Carmageddon: Reincarnation were to use the same system, I would not be impressed. There's already been some backlash against Stainless in some fan quarters for the fact that Carmageddon: Reincarnation will likely require Steam upon its initial release, even though Steam is pretty unobtrusive if you want it to be, and you can play Steam games offline.
Although it might not be how I'd do things, I can - if pressed - reason in favour of Steam-only gaming (especially as Stainless have said that, pending the success of that release, they'd love to be able to port the game to other platforms). Similarly, I'm sure somebody out there can reason in favour of Blizzard's Diablo III model. I'd love to see it justified. But most of my pro-Steam arguments boil down to the fact that all the potentially annoying things about Steam don't get in the way of letting you play your game. Even games which really, really want you to be online, like The Sims 3, still grudgingly allow you to play offline. Blizzard's latest trick, however, effectively restricts access to something people have already paid for a licence to use.
I'm waiting for the day when a company uses the same system as Diablo III, then five months in announces that the game will no longer be playable without a DLC pack. Although maybe that would be a good thing, ultimately, if the resulting backlash would kill off the idea once and for all.
The face of gaming is changing. More and more gamers are putting their money where their mouth is, or more accurately, not putting their money down for practices they dislike. The fan reception to the endings of Fallout 3, and more recently Mass Effect 3, prompted the developers to rectify things in an expansion pack and patch respectively. GFWL is apparently losing steam quicker than a sumo wrestler in a long-distance limbo race. And so a business model which restricts access to single-player, ostensibly 'offline' content is surely doomed to fail.
At least I hope so.
Courtesy of Penny Arcade, I was under the impression, initially, that the program was already sitting on people's computers awaiting activation on release day. To be honest, I was shocked that companies still do that, despite the huge fan outcry that's occurred whenever it's been tried. I mean, it's understandable why a development company might do things that way; it's more understandable why the fans would be pissed off about it, and the customer is always right, even if said customer is a loud, obnoxious jerk who smells slightly of boiled cabbage and turpentine.
Evis T informs me that actually, it's the rendering engine and such that people have on their PCs, and the content is streamed from Blizzard's servers during play.
Wut?
I live in a neighbourhood with a poor net connection. Evis T lives in a residential complex abutting his workplace, with a poor net connection. Our pals Arron and Andy seem to just have flat out bad net no matter what they do. Playing online games can already be a chore for us, as people drop out randomly or freeze up with lag. Now we can't even play single-player games without worrying about that? Or that things might go tits-up Blizzard-side? Amazing. And this is supposed to be an anti-piracy measure... seriously? If anything this sort of draconian countermeasure, a cure worse than the disease if you will, would make me turn to piracy.
I haven't looked, but I would put money on cracked copes of Diablo III being pretty easily available already.
I don't care about Diablo III - the original Diablo underwhelmed me enough that I never bothered with Diablo II, and to be honest, I'm just not a fan of Blizzard's games in general. But Blizzard are a 'big deal' company, with the power to set precedent for other companies. If BioShock Infinite, or Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, or my beloved Carmageddon: Reincarnation were to use the same system, I would not be impressed. There's already been some backlash against Stainless in some fan quarters for the fact that Carmageddon: Reincarnation will likely require Steam upon its initial release, even though Steam is pretty unobtrusive if you want it to be, and you can play Steam games offline.
Although it might not be how I'd do things, I can - if pressed - reason in favour of Steam-only gaming (especially as Stainless have said that, pending the success of that release, they'd love to be able to port the game to other platforms). Similarly, I'm sure somebody out there can reason in favour of Blizzard's Diablo III model. I'd love to see it justified. But most of my pro-Steam arguments boil down to the fact that all the potentially annoying things about Steam don't get in the way of letting you play your game. Even games which really, really want you to be online, like The Sims 3, still grudgingly allow you to play offline. Blizzard's latest trick, however, effectively restricts access to something people have already paid for a licence to use.
I'm waiting for the day when a company uses the same system as Diablo III, then five months in announces that the game will no longer be playable without a DLC pack. Although maybe that would be a good thing, ultimately, if the resulting backlash would kill off the idea once and for all.
The face of gaming is changing. More and more gamers are putting their money where their mouth is, or more accurately, not putting their money down for practices they dislike. The fan reception to the endings of Fallout 3, and more recently Mass Effect 3, prompted the developers to rectify things in an expansion pack and patch respectively. GFWL is apparently losing steam quicker than a sumo wrestler in a long-distance limbo race. And so a business model which restricts access to single-player, ostensibly 'offline' content is surely doomed to fail.
At least I hope so.
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
More on graphics: mere technicalities
Several months with no internet meant I looked to the retro world even more than usual for my gaming. Or at least, as far as the PC goes, to the older games which would actually run on my new computer - which unfortunately did not include Grim Fandango. Booo! Retuning older games for modern systems is a bandwagon more devs should hop onto. God bless GOG.com and the various console home arcades. But it does mean that, without the web, I've been kinda limited in options.
On the subject of retro: I know I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say it again, but damn is that word irritating. Gamers of the world, I implore you to stop describing old games as retro! Around Christmas time I rewatched It's a Wonderful Life and it's not a 'retro' film. It's just a film. A film which, despite technical limitations in its production compared to modern releases, and the subsequent years' advancement of cinematic techniques and a shifting of the preconceptions of good storytelling, is still every bit as enjoyable as anything you'll see at the pictures this year.
Similarly, despite their technical ineptitude by modern standards, I've been thoroughly enjoying the Micro Machines, Donkey Kong Country and Sonic the Hedgehog series, and the original Grand Theft Auto has lost barely anything despite the advances of its successors. Even ancient Disney tie-in Aladdin was as playable today as it was in 1993. The original Donkey Kong Country is the most revealing game from a technological standpoint - can you believe it was once considered the cutting edge of photorealism? I wonder if the kids of today could even see the difference in quality between its graphics and those of Sonic 3, a difference which seemed so vast to us at the time. Nonetheless, the visuals do everything they need to do to make the game playable, while still looking charmingly pretty in a - sigh - 'retro' sort of way. Maybe the ice cave levels don't make me feel physically cold anymore, but the big Rareware eyes on all the enemies are still lovely.
Moving ahead a few years, the GameCube remake of Resident Evil is still stunningly beautiful, and not just in consideration of when it was released. It's both confirmed and countered my arguments against the pursuit of graphic fidelity - rendered stills are obviously a lot easier to make realistic than moving images are, and the near-realism of the backgrounds is a big part of the atmosphere. But at the same time, so much attention has been paid to the architecture, the furnishings, and even the drapery that the enhanced visuals are clearly not just a sales point - it's Shinji Mikami finally getting to make this world look the way it always did in his head. The Spencer Mansion and Arklay Laboratory feel like real places, places I know as well as any house I've actually, personally lived in.
Of course improvements could be made - physics-based elements like water, particle effects and shadows are unimpressive by today's standards, ditto the resolution. But aside from such processing updates, and the plastic look to character faces which current games still suffer from anyway, it's hard to see where the graphics could be improved. It's a harmonious case of technological wizardry being applied by talented visual designers who maximise the artistic opportunities said wizardry affords, and the result means that a decade on it remains one of the best-looking games in existence. The most advanced thing I got to play during my fallow months was the PC demo of Arkham Asylum - no longer cutting edge, admittedly, but I will state without hyperbole that GameCube Resident Evil is the better looking game for all the jagged, pixelly edges and blocky shadows. That said, some areas of Arkham Asylum are moderately impressive in aesthetic design terms too, and it'll be interesting to see how it holds up in years to come. By the by, I was pleasantly surprised by how fluidly Arkham Asylum plays on PC - control-wise, it's just as smooth as the 360 version, perhaps even moreso. Having subsequently completed the game on PC, there were only a handful of places where I'd have preferred a pad.
Sadly, onetime kingpin Far Cry's graphics simply don't excite me anymore. The aesthetic design was interesting enough, but leaned heavily on technical splendour for its lighting effects, draw distances and lush vegetation. These days, such things have all been bettered many times, and now it's hard not to notice how often plant models are repeated, or how the sunlight lancing through cracked walls just doesn't seem as bright as it once did (I've gained a new appreciation for High Dynamic Range since replaying Far Cry, that's for sure). Far Cry is certainly not ugly - but the bits which interest me most now are the bombed-out husks and concrete bunkers, which for a game so heavily based around creeping through dense jungles, and hopping between paradise islands, seems like something of a failure. I happily acknowledge that we have Far Cry to thank for the quality of modern graphics, but ultimately it remains tied to its era much more than any other game I've discussed so far.
I now know I'm not alone in my stance that the rabid pursuit of better graphics is as much a curse as a boon; I signed up to the official Carmageddon: Reincarnation fan forum before losing my net, and when the developers asked what we wanted to see in the game, the majority view was that physics and content - rather than cutting edge visuals - need to be the primary foci during development. I'll refine that here. Graphics are important, as the most immediate and visceral connection we get with a game, and as a sales-driving element, but more than overall fidelity what graphics need is to suit the game. For example, Carmageddon doesn't need to be too concerned with peds having perfect musculature and swaying fabric, but it would benefit greatly from per-pixel lighting, neon signs reflecting realistically off grime, oil and twisted metal - a moody atmosphere is key to Carmageddon. Fabric and musculature are of great importance to The Sims on the other hand, but lighting isn't so important there. And in FIFA, I don't care about every line on Coloccini's face being perfectly modelled half as much as I care about his passes and strikes being as fluidly realistic as possible. Every blade of grass on the pitch being individually rendered is excellent if it means the ball bounces more believably, but if it's purely for show, I don't think it's a productive use of development time.
Of course, on top of all that, graphics need to be creatively engaging; the problem with Far Cry is that its aesthetic interest was too dependent on technical advancements alone. If Carmageddon: Reincarnation is evocatively dirty and worn, nails that near-present dystopia without becoming Blade Runner cyberpunk, and features at least a few cars that look like real machines which have been customised rather than pure fantasy creations, then I'm happy. Graphical genius is a bonus, not a requirement. And judging by the Carmageddon concept art released so far, I'm going to be very happy indeed.
Some games were plain ugly first time round, of couse. A couple of titles I've come back to recently are Heroes of Might & Magic III and Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magic Obscura. Each of those, on release, was widely decried for looking like a big pile of pixellated puke. Arcanum's spartan environments couldn't compete with Baldur's Gate 2, its closest contemporary - and yet today, I find something charming in Arcanum's stiff appearance. Its muddy grey scrubland, gleaming brass and starched petticoats may lack warmth, but that's in keeping with the cruel, repressed world in which it's set, and the faceless, rigidly mannequin-like character models are almost as appropriate as the old-fashioned maps and wood panel HUD. Heroes III takes the opposite tack, and tries to pack every screen with as many bright colours, outlandish creatures and incidental details as possible. It's a game bursting with life and humanity despite poor visuals - if anything, it's too cluttered, but then that was always the case, really. It remains a weird contrast to see stiff, jerky movements in sprites with such colourful, fantastical design, and these days they look rather like puppets or automatons. But even in development, 3DO must have known the game would not be breaking any technical barriers, and the upshot is that they designed a game which is functional enough to be as playable today as it was in 1999, and while not conventionally pretty, is at least interesting looking - call it the Agyness Deyn of strategy games.
Syndicate, by contrast, has been a struggle to play nowadays. The graphics weren't terribly clear or engaging at the time, and now, it's difficult to know what's going on, and to distinguish your own squad from both the enemy and from civilians. It's still a good game, but requires a lot more perseverance than any other title I've mentioned. Not being able to see inside buildings when you enter them was a minor frustration back then; today, it's painfully out of step with how we expect to play games, and that's just one example of many issues it has. Syndicate's graphics are still fairly crisp, I'll give it that, and it was obviously made with a strong aesthetic in mind, but not enough thought was given to the necessities of gameplay. It stands a reminder that the balance between the technical and artistic is not the only one which must be struck.
The one vaguely recent PC game I got a chance to play in the winter months was the indie physics platformer NightSky, which is suprisingly entertaining. Much like Braid, NightSky hits a great equilibrium of visual elements. Technical proficiency means it runs smoothly while handling the physics puzzles, the aesthetic design is strikingly beautiful, and it's always clear and readable from a gameplay perspective. Compare that to Super Meat Boy which suffered from occasional lag or camera overshoot, to Alien Hominid and Viewtiful Joe, in which the gameplay elements weren't always distinguishable from the background, or to Limbo in which the main character was intentionally designed to look like part of the background.
Courtesy of Evis T and his portable gadgetry, I also had fun with the wonderful Android games Cut The Rope and Dragon, Fly!, which similarly match the visuals to the game effectively - both are a lot crisper than, say, Fruit Ninja or Burn The City, but Fruit Ninja's bright colours suit it more than cartoonish line drawings would, while Burn The City doesn't need to be especially clear because it's a bit more sedentary. It's not a new trend, of course; I've revistited a couple of indie games from a few years back like Ocular Ink, which is quite ugly but appropriately uncluttered for a fast paced game of drawing, and The White Chamber, which I'll talk about in more detail soon - for now, one thing I love about it is how subtly different the useable elements of the game world look from the non-useable. There's no need for tedious pixel sweeping. but at the same time, they don't stick out like a sore thumb, so you still have to pay attention, and for a point and click adventure that's one of the magic elements which can make a good game into a great game.
A cautionary tale to close this post, regarding picking up old games: I came back to Chrono Trigger after almost a year and had no idea how far through I was or what I was supposed to be doing. I left off my Secret of Mana playthrough even longer ago than that, and I expect I'll probably just need to start again.
On the subject of retro: I know I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say it again, but damn is that word irritating. Gamers of the world, I implore you to stop describing old games as retro! Around Christmas time I rewatched It's a Wonderful Life and it's not a 'retro' film. It's just a film. A film which, despite technical limitations in its production compared to modern releases, and the subsequent years' advancement of cinematic techniques and a shifting of the preconceptions of good storytelling, is still every bit as enjoyable as anything you'll see at the pictures this year.
Similarly, despite their technical ineptitude by modern standards, I've been thoroughly enjoying the Micro Machines, Donkey Kong Country and Sonic the Hedgehog series, and the original Grand Theft Auto has lost barely anything despite the advances of its successors. Even ancient Disney tie-in Aladdin was as playable today as it was in 1993. The original Donkey Kong Country is the most revealing game from a technological standpoint - can you believe it was once considered the cutting edge of photorealism? I wonder if the kids of today could even see the difference in quality between its graphics and those of Sonic 3, a difference which seemed so vast to us at the time. Nonetheless, the visuals do everything they need to do to make the game playable, while still looking charmingly pretty in a - sigh - 'retro' sort of way. Maybe the ice cave levels don't make me feel physically cold anymore, but the big Rareware eyes on all the enemies are still lovely.
Moving ahead a few years, the GameCube remake of Resident Evil is still stunningly beautiful, and not just in consideration of when it was released. It's both confirmed and countered my arguments against the pursuit of graphic fidelity - rendered stills are obviously a lot easier to make realistic than moving images are, and the near-realism of the backgrounds is a big part of the atmosphere. But at the same time, so much attention has been paid to the architecture, the furnishings, and even the drapery that the enhanced visuals are clearly not just a sales point - it's Shinji Mikami finally getting to make this world look the way it always did in his head. The Spencer Mansion and Arklay Laboratory feel like real places, places I know as well as any house I've actually, personally lived in.
Of course improvements could be made - physics-based elements like water, particle effects and shadows are unimpressive by today's standards, ditto the resolution. But aside from such processing updates, and the plastic look to character faces which current games still suffer from anyway, it's hard to see where the graphics could be improved. It's a harmonious case of technological wizardry being applied by talented visual designers who maximise the artistic opportunities said wizardry affords, and the result means that a decade on it remains one of the best-looking games in existence. The most advanced thing I got to play during my fallow months was the PC demo of Arkham Asylum - no longer cutting edge, admittedly, but I will state without hyperbole that GameCube Resident Evil is the better looking game for all the jagged, pixelly edges and blocky shadows. That said, some areas of Arkham Asylum are moderately impressive in aesthetic design terms too, and it'll be interesting to see how it holds up in years to come. By the by, I was pleasantly surprised by how fluidly Arkham Asylum plays on PC - control-wise, it's just as smooth as the 360 version, perhaps even moreso. Having subsequently completed the game on PC, there were only a handful of places where I'd have preferred a pad.
Sadly, onetime kingpin Far Cry's graphics simply don't excite me anymore. The aesthetic design was interesting enough, but leaned heavily on technical splendour for its lighting effects, draw distances and lush vegetation. These days, such things have all been bettered many times, and now it's hard not to notice how often plant models are repeated, or how the sunlight lancing through cracked walls just doesn't seem as bright as it once did (I've gained a new appreciation for High Dynamic Range since replaying Far Cry, that's for sure). Far Cry is certainly not ugly - but the bits which interest me most now are the bombed-out husks and concrete bunkers, which for a game so heavily based around creeping through dense jungles, and hopping between paradise islands, seems like something of a failure. I happily acknowledge that we have Far Cry to thank for the quality of modern graphics, but ultimately it remains tied to its era much more than any other game I've discussed so far.
I now know I'm not alone in my stance that the rabid pursuit of better graphics is as much a curse as a boon; I signed up to the official Carmageddon: Reincarnation fan forum before losing my net, and when the developers asked what we wanted to see in the game, the majority view was that physics and content - rather than cutting edge visuals - need to be the primary foci during development. I'll refine that here. Graphics are important, as the most immediate and visceral connection we get with a game, and as a sales-driving element, but more than overall fidelity what graphics need is to suit the game. For example, Carmageddon doesn't need to be too concerned with peds having perfect musculature and swaying fabric, but it would benefit greatly from per-pixel lighting, neon signs reflecting realistically off grime, oil and twisted metal - a moody atmosphere is key to Carmageddon. Fabric and musculature are of great importance to The Sims on the other hand, but lighting isn't so important there. And in FIFA, I don't care about every line on Coloccini's face being perfectly modelled half as much as I care about his passes and strikes being as fluidly realistic as possible. Every blade of grass on the pitch being individually rendered is excellent if it means the ball bounces more believably, but if it's purely for show, I don't think it's a productive use of development time.
Of course, on top of all that, graphics need to be creatively engaging; the problem with Far Cry is that its aesthetic interest was too dependent on technical advancements alone. If Carmageddon: Reincarnation is evocatively dirty and worn, nails that near-present dystopia without becoming Blade Runner cyberpunk, and features at least a few cars that look like real machines which have been customised rather than pure fantasy creations, then I'm happy. Graphical genius is a bonus, not a requirement. And judging by the Carmageddon concept art released so far, I'm going to be very happy indeed.
Some games were plain ugly first time round, of couse. A couple of titles I've come back to recently are Heroes of Might & Magic III and Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magic Obscura. Each of those, on release, was widely decried for looking like a big pile of pixellated puke. Arcanum's spartan environments couldn't compete with Baldur's Gate 2, its closest contemporary - and yet today, I find something charming in Arcanum's stiff appearance. Its muddy grey scrubland, gleaming brass and starched petticoats may lack warmth, but that's in keeping with the cruel, repressed world in which it's set, and the faceless, rigidly mannequin-like character models are almost as appropriate as the old-fashioned maps and wood panel HUD. Heroes III takes the opposite tack, and tries to pack every screen with as many bright colours, outlandish creatures and incidental details as possible. It's a game bursting with life and humanity despite poor visuals - if anything, it's too cluttered, but then that was always the case, really. It remains a weird contrast to see stiff, jerky movements in sprites with such colourful, fantastical design, and these days they look rather like puppets or automatons. But even in development, 3DO must have known the game would not be breaking any technical barriers, and the upshot is that they designed a game which is functional enough to be as playable today as it was in 1999, and while not conventionally pretty, is at least interesting looking - call it the Agyness Deyn of strategy games.
Syndicate, by contrast, has been a struggle to play nowadays. The graphics weren't terribly clear or engaging at the time, and now, it's difficult to know what's going on, and to distinguish your own squad from both the enemy and from civilians. It's still a good game, but requires a lot more perseverance than any other title I've mentioned. Not being able to see inside buildings when you enter them was a minor frustration back then; today, it's painfully out of step with how we expect to play games, and that's just one example of many issues it has. Syndicate's graphics are still fairly crisp, I'll give it that, and it was obviously made with a strong aesthetic in mind, but not enough thought was given to the necessities of gameplay. It stands a reminder that the balance between the technical and artistic is not the only one which must be struck.
The one vaguely recent PC game I got a chance to play in the winter months was the indie physics platformer NightSky, which is suprisingly entertaining. Much like Braid, NightSky hits a great equilibrium of visual elements. Technical proficiency means it runs smoothly while handling the physics puzzles, the aesthetic design is strikingly beautiful, and it's always clear and readable from a gameplay perspective. Compare that to Super Meat Boy which suffered from occasional lag or camera overshoot, to Alien Hominid and Viewtiful Joe, in which the gameplay elements weren't always distinguishable from the background, or to Limbo in which the main character was intentionally designed to look like part of the background.
Courtesy of Evis T and his portable gadgetry, I also had fun with the wonderful Android games Cut The Rope and Dragon, Fly!, which similarly match the visuals to the game effectively - both are a lot crisper than, say, Fruit Ninja or Burn The City, but Fruit Ninja's bright colours suit it more than cartoonish line drawings would, while Burn The City doesn't need to be especially clear because it's a bit more sedentary. It's not a new trend, of course; I've revistited a couple of indie games from a few years back like Ocular Ink, which is quite ugly but appropriately uncluttered for a fast paced game of drawing, and The White Chamber, which I'll talk about in more detail soon - for now, one thing I love about it is how subtly different the useable elements of the game world look from the non-useable. There's no need for tedious pixel sweeping. but at the same time, they don't stick out like a sore thumb, so you still have to pay attention, and for a point and click adventure that's one of the magic elements which can make a good game into a great game.
A cautionary tale to close this post, regarding picking up old games: I came back to Chrono Trigger after almost a year and had no idea how far through I was or what I was supposed to be doing. I left off my Secret of Mana playthrough even longer ago than that, and I expect I'll probably just need to start again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)