I like a nice balance. I can't play Dwarf Fortress because it looks like ass, but I can't play FF13 because it plays like ass.
Would you rather have a deep game or a pretty game?
- Thread starter impeccable
- Start date
Recommended Videos
i don't think they are in any way linked, and wonder why people keep drawing a comparison between them or act as if they are the opposite ends of some kind of fidelity / depth slider in the development processimpeccable said:
it's a fact if you are 'perfect' in any one area it blinds people to your rough edges elsewhere
if you have 'average everything' people will tend to ignore you because they see rough edges everywhere
for example, good old cod used to look like total arse, but it had good shooting mechanics and was very simple
to my mind that game had neither depth, or graphics on its side purely an addictive gameplay style and was still good purely for that reason
take minecraft, that has 0 story, 0 graphics i mean, really cubes with textures? the only way you could plausibly downgrade that is to make just pure triangles, and all grey which may end up looking better if they were small enough...
and that is also rediculusly popular
so, back to topic, cause im veering off a bit here i dont think any one aspect of a game is the opposite of another there are plenty of games that do not fit within your 'slider' of gpu/story usage
and that makes it just a tad broken as a metric
however if it were a literal choice between one and the other all the time i'd have to go with story
i recently replayed vampire the masquerade and realized how much a semi decent plot can boost a graphically challenged game and i honestly believe it was a better experience than the recent crysis 2 because you just acclimate to graphical fidelity, you just miss it when it's gone.
you cant acclimate to a story ( well, not to the same extent anyhow )
so it's more entertaining
neither of these things alone is what i buy a game for though, for me it has to have a bit of everything, and focus on whatever 'works' within the game,
there would be no good making a shooter or rpg where all the devs did was make THE BEST mountains in the backdrop. that would be stupid. ( Bethesda, i hate you )
anyway..
you need to have good gun physics and mechanics in shooters, great racing feel for racing games, awesome combat, exploration and npc interactions for rpg's ect if the actual 'game' is bad then what good is a book full of lore and enough pixels to watch your game fail in panoramic giga-juice vision?
i don't really buy a game of either of those things, it's just not top of my list of priority's for me it's
game-play > story/lore > visuals > re-playability > multi-player > hats, un-lockables, baubles, achievements.
that's not to say i've 'never' bought a game purely because it looks good
crysis series is on my shelf entirely for that reason.
but it's not one of my favourite games for gameplay / fun.
ea, i would TOTALLY pay £5 for a tophat for my nanosuit. just sayi'n.
funny random stuff > all.
You're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying Crysis was EASY. I'm saying Crysis was INTOLERABLY STUPID.TestECull said:
This is the right answer. If I'm playing a 4X game, I want depth. Make it in ASCII if you have to, so long as the actual mechanics are what shine through. If I'm playing, say, a 2D platformer, on the other hand, there really isn't much room for depth, but given the incredible power of modern gaming equipment, there's absolutely no reason it can't be both solid mechanically, and absolutely Beautiful. Unfortunately, I'm kind of drawing a blank on a modern platformer that fits those criteria; Braid is pretty, but mechanically unimpressive, while VVVVVV is solid and the aesthetics are well designed, but as an homage to Jet Set Willy, the graphics were left intentionally lo-fi. I don't see why we can't have a platformer with graphics on par with, say Guilty Gear XX or Street Fighter III in this day and age.evilneko said:
Oh, a bit off-topic, but Doom was gorgeous for its day. For comparison, it would be like if, when Crysis was released, it looked just as good as it does, but it was scaleable enough that you could run it on hardware that was already several years old at the time, and hadn't been up to gaming spec to begin with. And this is ignoring the fact that Doom wasn't just a polished version of what had been done before -- it did a lot of things (particularly with lighting and textures) that literally had not been done before. There's a reason FPS's used to be called "Doom clones."
Deep games I suppose but then I like a good mixture of both?
I like Deus Ex for its multiple routes, Fallout for its branching and useful skills (speech) the entirity of Planescape Torment and Demons Souls. To elaborate on Demons Souls some more, I like how you have to think about combat, charging in swinging rarely works in that game, you have to pick your moment to strike and if invaded by another player you quickly have to find the best place to commit to the fight.
But then consider all the games listed...RPG's.
Meanwhile I love playing classic Sonic and Mario games and more recently Super Meat Boy, none are really that deep, have very simple mechanics but are visually pleasing and very stylized and great fun to play.
It's a mood and genre thing really. Some games I expect to be deep because they're an RPG, others I expect to be pretty one way or another because they're a platformer etc
I like Deus Ex for its multiple routes, Fallout for its branching and useful skills (speech) the entirity of Planescape Torment and Demons Souls. To elaborate on Demons Souls some more, I like how you have to think about combat, charging in swinging rarely works in that game, you have to pick your moment to strike and if invaded by another player you quickly have to find the best place to commit to the fight.
But then consider all the games listed...RPG's.
Meanwhile I love playing classic Sonic and Mario games and more recently Super Meat Boy, none are really that deep, have very simple mechanics but are visually pleasing and very stylized and great fun to play.
It's a mood and genre thing really. Some games I expect to be deep because they're an RPG, others I expect to be pretty one way or another because they're a platformer etc
Imo there's 2 types of depth in a game
1) Fallout 3 type of depth, where there is a massive open world and lots of visual content. Many ppl tend to think of this kind of game when talking about depth. Imo many of these games especially the modern examples arnt deep at all, they just have a lot of content.
2) Then there's games that while looking simple on the surface have a great deal of depth and complexity for those willing to scratch below the surface. For example Japanese arcade games like Street Fighter or a CAVE shmup or any other arcade game that has high score at its heart.
Think of it like traditional boardgames like chess or go where they are easy on a superficial level but can take a lifetime to master.
There are games that mix the 2 types, like Eve online, and many older crpgs like baulders gate
1) Fallout 3 type of depth, where there is a massive open world and lots of visual content. Many ppl tend to think of this kind of game when talking about depth. Imo many of these games especially the modern examples arnt deep at all, they just have a lot of content.
2) Then there's games that while looking simple on the surface have a great deal of depth and complexity for those willing to scratch below the surface. For example Japanese arcade games like Street Fighter or a CAVE shmup or any other arcade game that has high score at its heart.
Think of it like traditional boardgames like chess or go where they are easy on a superficial level but can take a lifetime to master.
There are games that mix the 2 types, like Eve online, and many older crpgs like baulders gate