Unrealistic games are more fun than Realistic ones

[AmishSamurai]

Izzy, you're comparing Apples and Trout here. Not every Western game is a brown-and-bloom iron sight generic shooter. The Assassin's Creed games are Western, and absolutely beautiful.

The graphics are great but it looks very ugly, realistic and boring to me. I'd much prefer a fantasy world where you play as a cute anime girl and kill monsters with over the top magic spells and giant swords.



This game on the PSP has shitty graphics but it manages to look way better to me. It makes Assassin's Creed look brown and gray in comparison.

Video games can be anything, so why not go overboard and make them really crazy and fun, instead of realistic and boring?

matter of mood. Sometimes I feel like being a huge-eyed pink haired anime girl wielding a giant Freudian Complex of a sword tearing apart hordes of enemies, and other times I feel like fist-fighting the pope in an accurate replica of St. Peter's Basilica.

[RCBH928]

Just to send a better idea of what I am talking about is that I rather play:
Halo over COD and Need For Speed over GT5

It doesnt have to mimic life 1:1 but it can get to a certain place where the fun is sucked out of the game. I think it doesn't have to do much with graphics as much as it does with gameplay. Its much more fun to go shooting bullets on Gears of War than get hit by one bullet and its game over in some other game. I am sure realistic game's existed back in the SNES days even though the hardware was not as capable but i can't think of any examples. Maybe some of you can.

[Erik_Twice]

Video games can be anything, so why not go overboard and make them really crazy and fun, instead of realistic and boring?

Because each conveys different emotions and has different goals in mind. It's not only what you say but how you say it.

[isiolia]

Just to send a better idea of what I am talking about is that I rather play:
Halo over COD and Need For Speed over GT5

It doesnt have to mimic life 1:1 but it can get to a certain place where the fun is sucked out of the game. I think it doesn't have to do much with graphics as much as it does with gameplay. Its much more fun to go shooting bullets on Gears of War than get hit by one bullet and its game over in some other game. I am sure realistic game's existed back in the SNES days even though the hardware was not as capable but i can't think of any examples. Maybe some of you can.

You could possibly draw comparisons between things like Sonic, Metroid, Castlevania, etc to Prince of Persia, Another World, Flashback, Blackthorne... I'd hardly call the latter "realistic", but neither would I call CoD realistic.

Actual simulation games are still a lot more of a PC thing.

[lisalover1]

I've been playing some modern Western RPGs lately, like Risen and Dragon Age II. The characters are so realistic that they look fake (if that made sense). They end up looking like mannequins and the way they move their faces and bodies is incredibly awkward to look at.

So yeah, I don't like "realistic" graphics either. The best modern day graphics belong to really colorful 2D shooters or cell-shaded anime games.

I'm firm believer that technologically advanced graphics don't usually equal "good" graphics. My favorite visuals are found on the SNES and Saturn.

That's an interesting point; what will happen to gaming when graphical fidelity reaches the far side of the uncanny valley?

Going back to the topic, I personally enjoy unrealistic games significantly more than the alternative, simply because there is only so much you can do with reality/simulation. Games can allow us to experience new and fantastic worlds that we could never see otherwise. I'm not saying that realistic games don't have their place (they absolutely do), but I think a lot more can be accomplished with fantasy.

[ujnhunter]

Considering that God Hand is my favorite game... I must agree. Then again... I play so much God Hand that bitch slapping people to the moon seems pretty realistic to me these days.

[Yancakes]

Probably just retreading things already mentioned, but there is a place for realism and a place for fantasy.

Personally? I don't play games for things I can do in real life. Sure, I might not be in an elite hit-squad, but if I join the military and train my hardest it is a feasible goal to join a swat team or whatever. I will never be in the NHL, but I can join a local league and place ice hockey till my face bleeds.

One of the biggest hits that "realistic" graphics come across, too, is that they tend to age TERRIBLY. Goldeneye got panned by parents and censors because there were pictures of human faces on the 3d models and it "looked more realistic"...I don't know if you guys have checked lately, but graphics-wise, that game aged like crap. Mario 64, on the other hand, was cartoony and just looks fantastic.

I play games for things that aren't possible in reality, because, to me, that's just more fun.

[3DSStrider]

If games are escapism, doesn't realism go against the entire point of gaming?
So I like unrealistic games better. Realistic games also tend to fall into the uncanny valley.

[MrPopo]

If games are escapism, doesn't realism go against the entire point of gaming?
So I like unrealistic games better. Realistic games also tend to fall into the uncanny valley.

Not necessarily. For example, the airsoft or paintball people who really get in to their conflit reenactment use it as escapism. Escapism is taking oneself away from their current lifestyle into something else.

[Erik_Twice]

If games are escapism, doesn't realism go against the entire point of gaming?

I don't see videogames to be any more escapist than any other medium and I doubt that realism and escapism are at odds with each other. Mr Popo's example is good.