Modern graphics a turn off for anyone else?

[TSTR]

Do we ultimately have a relationship with a game console?

What kind of relationship we talking here? Cause I've reflowed a few consoles in my time, if you know what I mean.

[jvalentine98]

Do we ultimately have a relationship with a game console?

What kind of relationship we talking here? Cause I've reflowed a few consoles in my time, if you know what I mean.

I dunno maybe you wake up and it tells you "Good morning, what would you like to watch or play this morning?"

I think what I would like to have happen is someone ELSE make a game console, but take it back to the basics. Make it almost entirely about the games. It can play other media that's fine, but I don't see why we can't have a new system outside of Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft. There's other talented and creative people out there. I understand the business part of it, but everyone starts somewhere. We've had 13 years now of just the big 3 . There's not even been an attempt to see if it would fail or not.

[Jmustang1968]

Do we ultimately have a relationship with a game console?

What kind of relationship we talking here? Cause I've reflowed a few consoles in my time, if you know what I mean.

I dunno maybe you wake up and it tells you "Good morning, what would you like to watch or play this morning?"

I think what I would like to have happen is someone ELSE make a game console, but take it back to the basics. Make it almost entirely about the games. It can play other media that's fine, but I don't see why we can't have a new system outside of Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft. There's other talented and creative people out there. I understand the business part of it, but everyone starts somewhere. We've had 13 years now of just the big 3 . There's not even been an attempt to see if it would fail or not.

Ouya tried...

Whats the problem if a system plays other media? I can ignore those features often when I just want to play a game. The issue is many of these things have added conveniences to games and many gamers are supportive of the online and social connectivity.

[jp1]

I think what I would like to have happen is someone ELSE make a game console, but take it back to the basics. Make it almost entirely about the games. It can play other media that's fine, but I don't see why we can't have a new system outside of Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft. There's other talented and creative people out there. I understand the business part of it, but everyone starts somewhere. We've had 13 years now of just the big 3 . There's not even been an attempt to see if it would fail or not.

That is a tremendous undertaking with an almost inevitable fate to fail. Who could possibly compete in that arena, let alone want to?

[jp1]

Do we ultimately have a relationship with a game console?

What kind of relationship we talking here? Cause I've reflowed a few consoles in my time, if you know what I mean.

It puts the lotion on, it does this whenever it is told!

[TSTR]

Yeah, but I can't turn a hose on my consoles cuz then they wouldn't work. I like to play them when I'm not playing with them.

[Key-Glyph]

^^ Here, here! A company can pour millions into a game to make it the "next best thing, cutting edge" and I'll just roll my eyes. All that money spent and it still isn't going to play as good as something simple, like Link to the Past or the original Silent Hill. The craftmanship of making a good game is pretty much gone, replaced by framerates and CGI cutscenes and all that jazz. It bores me to death.

I understand your opinion, but I do want to emphasize that my post's point was in recognizing how my biases (many of which I understand are based on flawed logic) are responsible for my general neutrality (note: not averstion) toward the hyper-realistic games I see in advertisements.

Game design is not dead any more than Resident Evil or A Link to the Past is the epitome of gaming, no matter how much you prefer those games. I know there are modern military shooters I would have a blast playing -- and there are some out there for you, too. But the simple fact is that there are more games to get to than any one person can possibly play (possible exception to this rule: dsh ), and we all need hooks to motivate our gaming decisions. For some people it's brand recognition (e.g. buying every Zelda game because it's a Zelda game), for others it's aesthetic (e.g. pixel graphics), for others it's gameplay (e.g. multiplayer), and so on and so on. For me, my hooks almost never align in such a way that I go on and discover the shooter I didn't know I was missing all my life.

Except that they did once. Mass Effect was one of the most enjoyable and significant gaming experiences I've ever had. And after all my talk of 8-bit and 16-bit preferences, I can honestly say that if I were limited to playing just one game for the rest of my life, it would be the original Mass Effect. Never saw that one coming, and never would have even touched the game if I hadn't fallen into owning an XBox 360 and watched gameplay over someone's shoulder. But there it is, and I wouldn't want things to have worked out any other way.

Do we ultimately have a relationship with a game console?

Actually, yes. I wrote about this somewhere else, but I did realize at some point that -- at least in my case -- my gaming decisions are subconsciously more motivated by console than anything else. I rarely think, "What video game do I want to play?" It's always platform-specific, as in, "What Genesis game do I want to play?" The thought always starts with the hardware.

I mentioned how much I love pixelated graphics in my post, but I own two -- TWO -- SNES games, in contrast to three dozen Genesis games. Why? Because I love that console and I'm enthusiastic about exploring its collection in a way that I've never been about the SNES. Again, that's not to say that I avoid SNES games, think the system is inferior, or anything like that. It's just when it's time to buy a game, it's never a SNES title I'm getting psyched for. There's always something else that I prefer first, for whatever mysterious reasons.

[Anayo]

I like modern graphics except for one thing:

The characters in games these days are so realistic and lifelike that when they get shot in vital organs or stabbed, then they just shrug it off and keep moving like nothing happened, it really messes with my suspension of disbelief.

I noticed this in Far Cry 3, CoD Modern Warfare 3, and it was downright terrible in Resident Evil 5 (probably cause I was bad at it and got stabbed a lot). To quote Kyle reese, " The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human... sweat, bad breath, everything."

In a 16 or 32 bit game my brain knows shooting someone really just subtracts from a 'health bar' computed by the CPU, so I don't expect them to behave like a real injured person, but in these more realistic modern ones I feel like I'm fighting a terminator or something. It may help if games either took themselves less seriously and went for a more light-hearted tone (like Team Fortress 2). Or perhaps it would help if they provided some explanation for why the characters were so powerful (like Crysis, where the enemies included cyborg aliens or humans wearing performance enhancing nano-suits).

[jp1]

My biggest issue, as contradicting as it may sound, is that I am no longer impressed with graphics. I think the Dreamcast was the last time I was thinking "wow". Even though graphics is the last thing on my list of importance, it was nice to see some creative genius on older hardware. I am a fan of the "Pushed the limits of X" articles for this reason.

Other than that a game can have great modern graphics or shitty pixel art as long as it is fun.

[Snatch1414]

My biggest issue, as contradicting as it may sound, is that I am no longer impressed with graphics. I think the Dreamcast was the last time I was thinking "wow". Even though graphics is the last thing on my list of importance, it was nice to see some creative genius on older hardware. I am a fan of the "Pushed the limits of X" articles for this reason.

Other than that a game can have great modern graphics or shitty pixel art as long as it is fun.

A friend and I used to talk about when that point would arrive when the graphics actually become TOO good. Not so much uncanny valley type stuff, but at some point the graphics will look too close to real life. I don't want a game to look like I'm controlling a movie, I want it to look like a game.