[JimKurth]

Look at games today like F.E.A.R. or World of Warcraft and compare it to older games like Doom 2 or Wolfenstein 3-D, or NBA Jam. You could fit those games on floppy disks. Doom 2 was only 2MB's I believe because I had it on 2 disks. Games nowadays are stored on separate CDs, even DVDs for some games.

Some of the best games don't eat up disk space as games today do. I'd take gameplay over graphics/realism any day. Although, back then Doom 2 was PRETTY REAL! There was nothing more fun than Doom 2 multiplayer played on a serial network and walking up behind your opponent with the chainsaw and killing him. Or "fragging" your enemies (haven't used that term in a LOOOONG TIME).

What do you guys think about 21st century games vs. games of the 20th century? Do you want more graphics/realism, eye-candy or do you think games should make it a more enjoyable to play? Killing people back and forth is fun but there's always things to make the game better and not just adding in FMVs. Speaking of FMV, don't you hate it when you see a commercial for an upcoming game and all you see is FMV? There are no scenes of the game being played at all. I can't stand that (*cough* medal of honor *cough*). Actually, all games nowadays just show fmv in commercials.

[Ninkazu]

I think that the problem with this way of looking at games is that it's all hindsight. "Look at that game from way back when. Wasn't it awesome? Didn't need the fancy graphics of today." Right? Not really.

NES was marketed for its great graphics at the time. Same with SNES, or even the Atari. The problem here is that in our current generation of crazy nice graphics, we're bombarded with games. A lot of them suck, so we form these opinions about graphics and game quality. Once a game has been well-established as a classic, it's just that, classic - old, i.e. not as good graphics as current generation.

There will always be more shitty games than good ones, and only with a large passage of time will we really be able to decide which are the most fun.

[MDS-MU]

[Rainer Deyke]

There are really three issues here:

• gameplay
• graphics
• realism

Obviously good gameplay is necessary for any game. Were old games really more fun than new games? Probably not on average. There were always a lot of crappy games, and there probably always will be. However, on the whole, I think significant progress has been made in the area of gameplay. Certainly a modern RTS is more playable than a 10 year old RTS. Classics will remain classics, but new classics are still being developed.

I like good graphics. I want the games I play to look good. However, I don't think modern games look particularly good for the most part. Sure, 3D technology has come a long way, but 3D games still look like ass for the most part. At their best, they look like photographs - not art photographs, but the kind of crappy photographs you get by randomly pointing a camera at a subject. How realistic and utterly boring! There isn't a 3D game in the world that looks as good as Seiken Densetsu 3 on the SNES.

As for realism, it stinks. It rarely looks good, and it can ruin good gameplay. If I want realism, I'll go outside.

[js71]

[JimKurth]

I agree with Rainer; a game is a game. It can be realistic or it can be a fantasy. It's all just a choice of what the gamer enjoys most. I think I'm hooked on 2d games just because that's what I grew up with. Actually, I grew up with the Commodore 64 and ATARI 2600 before the NES came out. I do have one argument. If we tend to like games that we grew up with (which is normal), how come there are children today who have XBox 360's and Playstation 3's and Wii's and yet they play classic Pac-Man, or Super Mario Bros., or Zaxxon (where has this game gone? I can't find any more arcade machines of it)?

I do agree about 3d games. It doesn't look real. It's too detailed to look real, I think. The distance in a 3d game should blend pixels and not scale the textures. I can't say that games today don't do that because my computer is too slow to run games today and I don't feel like upgrading my video card. When you look at a wall from an angle and look towards the end of it, you're not seeing the wall's texture being scaled; you're eyes can't process that fine-detail, so your eyes blend colors together and you get something that looks far away. Not to mention everything in the air between you and what you're looking at to factor in your visibility. It's a logarithmic calculation of sight and not a linear formula. Though games use linear formulas I think just because it's fast and they need fast graphics routines.


I'll have to check out that Doom 2 battlenet site. Gosh, now I want to play it and I don't even have Doom 2 anymore.

In my opinion, SNES RPGs are what I feel an RPG should look like. FF7 was pushing my limits, but it was great and fun. FF8 is a different story.

[Locrian]

Both are good. The problem with new new games is I'm cheap and don't want to buy a new computer. And video cards are ridiculous. Huge, power hungry, hot. Intel and AMD's new, more 'green' cpus were most welcome. The last gen was getting plain stupid. Unfortunately the improvement doesn't matter cause the video cards just get more stupid. Supposedly the next gen will be smaller and cooler. Sometimes I wish they'd stop 'pushing the boundaries', and learn to make more with what they already have.

[Rainer Deyke]

[Captain Vimes]

In response to the first post - the part about "fragging":

The term "fragging" has been replaced by "lagging". You see, any action that would cause "fragging" generally causes great lag on the parts of all players who happen to be looking in that direction at the time. One of the best ways to kill your opponents in Counter-Strike (at least over my school network) is to throw a smoke bomb at your opponents, and while they lag, open up with a machine gun around a corner.

^Not true, at least the parts not about my school games.
_________________
"Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness."
- Terry Pratchett

[JimKurth]

[js71]

[BadMrBox]

[JimKurth]