Can Games Be Better With Worse Graphics?
Aug. 19
With Mega Man 9 on the horizon, the idea of intentionally retro games was on my mind. I got to thinking about old RPGs I liked and now this is up at omgRPG, and now I'm curious to see what you guys have to say on the subject. Have you ever played a game that you liked better because of gameplay elements that relied on visual limitations like a 2D playfield or pixel art graphics? Have you downloaded an old game from VC you never played before and found yourself blown away? If so, drop in the comments and talk about it.
I'll start with an easy example (tangential to Nintendo, but whatever): I pulled out my old PS1 copy of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night over the weekend to show someone who'd never played it. I popped it in to my PS3 and was utterly amazed at how good all of the 2D bits still looked, while the 3D... well, that was impressive ten years ago, wasn't it? This just made me realize I'd never liked any of the 3D Castlevanias as much as any of the 2D games I'd played, since the castle's look and physics just stop working right in three dimensions.
Dack (11)
Dave Rudden (1)
KouAidou (10)
Comments
I definitely think games can be better with more limitations on graphics. The developers are forced to make the game fun instead of relying on the allure of fancy graphics. I think the wii has a lot of potential for this kind of creativity (when not getting dumped with shovelware)...
One of the ideas I've heard in regards to Mega Man 9, and I don't know if I agree with this, is that the simpler means that you can't rely as much on feature bloat and shiny graphics. To make a game like Mega Man 9 work at all, you're going to have to rely on pure fun, since you won't have the gimmicks to take away from the actual design.
I'm not sure if I agree with that, but it really is an interesting idea.
The only game to have ever gotten better transitioning from 2-D to 3-D is Mario.
I'm glad Sonic Unleashed is going back to it's 2-D roots (sorta) but some games should never have gone to the third dimension.
I'll just say what I've said a million times before: I'll take colorful and intricate background art that someone actually designed over a 3D billion-poly gray-and-brown-fest any day.
It's certainly possible to maintain artistry within a more realistic 3D setting, but it certainly occurs more rarely. I think it's like CGI effects in movies, creators just assume everyone will be so impressed by the technology that they won't care, or else the rendering process in and of itself is so time-consuming that they just don't have time to really think about it from the consumer end.
Of course, the latter hinders gameplay tweaks, too.
God yes. I don't hate 3D graphics at all, but I certainly hate how "realistic" brown-brown-brown is all that developers seem to think they need to make a good-looking game. You can certainly make beautiful and colorful 3D games, but it really shouldn't be so few and far between.
No. I will say that an inspired and creative designer working in any graphical is better than mediocrity, but I don't think 2D is any better than 3D, or that limited graphics somehow make a game better. And I think less of people who do, because it's being foolish and a luddite.
So really, I'm agreeing with the anti-brown brigade, because it is just uninspired design. That's a which would be bad in 2D as well though. We need more Okamis and Killer7s and games with cool and different approaches to graphics and >
Honestly, I've never cared about graphics. I still play my NES on a regular basis, and it's not for the graphics. In fact, I'm of the opinion that developers who have to rely on the artistic aspects over the gameplay aspects of gaming are weak developers. I personally don't care if a game has good graphics, or terrible graphics, it's the gameplay that truly matters.
For all the graphics whores out there, go back and play a game from 10 years ago that for it's time was a graphical marvel, the real question isn't, are the graphics good, because they're dated, and look like crap compared to the games of today. The real question is, is it still fun to play?
As someone who has 20+ systems, and over 800 games, I just can't bring myself to care about graphics, because I'm still addicted to the gameplay of the classics. Who cares about the graphics.
The only graphical issues that matter to me are the ones that effect the gameplay like slowdown, and heavy fog, and whatnot. Heavy slowdown, and heavy fog, can distract from the gameplay, so that's the only graphical issues I care about.
I think Bionic Commando: Rearmed is one of the best translations of 2D gameplay to 3D art that I've played. The movement feels solid, and quick motions are generally snappy without having that usual bloated 2.5D feel. I hear they slowed down the grappling a bit, but I never played much of the original, so it still feels responsive to me. And I'm right with those harshing on brown-and-gray art--BC: Rearmed keeps things nice and colorful, including some bright green interiors that look straight off of the NES cart at first glance.
That said, I also look at a game like Braid, that uses honest-to-goodness 2D graphics, and even though the physics actually are floaty, mushy, and imprecise, the gameplay feels snappier and more exacting. Maybe it's just me, but I feel more in control of the action and environment on a 2D plane with bold outlines than with 3D models smashed into 2 axes of movement.
Working with fewer pixels necessitates the bold, cartoony outlines, but using sprites reminiscent of 8-bit or 16-bit days is walking the line between charming and gimmicky. For example, I'm glad that they're keeping the original art from Chrono Trigger, but I'd personally rather Mega Man 9 looked more like Mega Man X, or even Mega Man 8.
I guess what I'm saying is that you don't need to go pixel art to have the requisite retro feel--it's really more about the high-contrast sprites and snappy, responsive control. Here's hoping we see more games that look like Braid or even Odin Sphere in the future (though let's hope they play more like SotN).
teh2d: I have a challenge for you, actually. When you're playing an NES game, ask yourself if the graphics are contributing to your enjoyment. You might fool yourself into thinking they don't, but they do, and not always in ways you expect. The NES Mega Man games, for example, have good graphics in the technical sense - you can see where you're going, what you're doing, and what you should be shooting or avoiding quite well - but they've also got fantastic cartoon-y enemies and a distinctive - and wholly charming - I posit that the Mega Man games would not be as good if the graphics were changed to a more realistic
And how many games have used their graphics to create an interesting gameplay mechanic? Take Mario 3, where you could run behind the background layer. That was a cool visual effect and useful. Yoshi's Island made the screen go all strange and trippy if you hit a certain enemy on one level, which made it both harder and an incentive to avoid that enemy. That wouldn't have worked if the graphics were bad. And consider Castlevania IV's innovative spinning rooms. I could go on for ages. There are a ton of graphical touches that make a game more fun, and if you deny they exist, you're just being stubborn.
I think people, for whatever reason, equate technical superiority to good graphics, and that's wrong. You're doing it yourself, bringing up NES games. The NES games people still talk about - Mega Man, Mario, Konami's entire oeuvre and so on - all had fantastic graphics. They all had a distinctive look which complemented the feel they wanted the game to have.
Great graphics do two things. One, they make the game playable, by making it clear what you need to do, where you need to go, and so on. A game with bad graphics wouldn't be playable at all, since you would have a hard time seeing stuff you have to avoid and where you have to go. Two, they make the game look interesting enough to draw you in. If a game looks interesting, you're going to be more interested in trying it, and discovering whether or not it plays worthy of its looks.
The "gameplay over graphics" argument is either hopelessly naive or foolishly elitist. Maybe it's a bit of both.
First of all, I never called for a wall of longwinded idiocy on the subject. Since you seem so intent on overkilling it, I'll fire back once with a wall of text of my own.
I said the only graphical issues that matter are the ones that effect the gameplay. Yes improved processing power has opened the door to allow developers to do more, but only the improvements in the gameplay department matter. You use Mario 3 and Castlevania 4 as an example, but let me ask you, would the pretty effects even matter if the games didn't have great gameplay first? I don't care if they put all the flashy crap in after they perfect the gameplay elements, but once again, gameplay comes first. Think of it as them relying on special effects over substance. There have been games that have been masterpieces in the special effects, but pretty shallow beyond that. Both of the games you used in your example had supurb gameplay design first.
You say that graphics can create an interesting gameplay mechanic, and all I see is a gimmick that means nothing if the game isn't fun to play in the first place. It's not about me being stubborn, it's about knowing that nothing else matters in a game if it's gameplay sucks. Not the effects, or the graphics. You can polish up a turd, but it's still a turd. Take for example The Matrix Reloaded. That game was filled with cool special graphical effects, but it was still horrid. The effects couldn't cover up the developer's bad design. Effect are effect, and at first you might think it enhances the game, but after the initial "that's cool" factor wears off, you will only keep playing if the game is designed well enough to keep you hooked beyond it's special effects.
But once again, those games had the most important basic first, and that was good gameplay. Every thing you've mentioned doesn't matter if the game just isn't fun to play. There were plenty of NES games that had just as distinctive a look which complimented the feel they wanted the game to have that just quite frankly sucked ass. Your argument is weak and can go both ways, but saying that great gameplay is more important than any graphical effects really isn't debatable to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. You're confusing graphics with design anyways.
Give Miyamoto an Atari 2600, and he'll come up with a revolutionary idea that's ten times more fun to play than most modern games. Even without the flashy effects to "enhance" the gameplay. A game's special effects don't do anything if they're added to a weak gameplay concept to begin with. Face it, Gameplay comes first, and by comparison, the graphics don't matter that much.
Right, so you not only decided to try and overkill it with a long winded rant that had very little substance beyond you calling me naive in an "I'm better than you" tone that comes off as more elitist than anything I said in my previous post, but you're right, I just must be being an elitist ***hole.
Go ahead and reply if you must, I know you're probably bursting to, but I'm done with this conversation. Go ahead and believe what you want if it makes you feel better about yourself, but in the end gameplay has and will always be the true deciding factor in a game. Not effects, or graphics. Spin it however you want, but you're wrong.
Wow, thanks for writing that huge block of text so I didn't have to :P Now I need to go lie down and let my eyes recover from that tiny text.
I said great games require great graphics, and gave examples to back myself up, drawing mostly from old games which had great design over technical superiority. Would they have lived on their graphics alone? No, of course not. But my point is, they wouldn't have lived this long if the graphics weren't there. It is a partnership, not a case of one element dominating the other. All of the games I mentioned had fantastic graphics and fantastic gameplay, designed to compliment and elevate each other. None of them wouldn't have been as good if the graphics weren't there.
And you're right, there are plenty of fantastic looking games which are also terrible. And that doesn't really refute anything I've actually said. That doesn't mean graphics are irrelevant, not even close, it just means that you have to focus on the entire package instead of one element over the other.
Maybe I should have been more clear. I was focusing on the importance of good graphics because I'm sick of people saying they don't matter. I know a game that plays poorly won't be good no matter how pretty it is, and I was working under the assumption that everyone knew that. But to deny that graphics are important in making a game great, that's just being, yes, foolish or naive.
And, given your name and stated preference for 2D, I find it odd that you can even pretend to care little about graphics. Your love of 2D is in your name! It's clearly very important to you! Why can't you admit that and just embrace good graphics for the force of good that they are?
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