Am I The Only Sucker For An HD Remake?

[TSTR]

Going from blurry textures in 480i to HD is a lot more of an improvement than going from HD to HD with more bells and whistles.

[casterofdreams]

Going from blurry textures in 480i to HD is a lot more of an improvement than going from HD to HD with more bells and whistles.

I definitely agree there is more work involved when dealing with the former over the ladder. So do you, or anyone for that matter, feel it's more of a cash-in than anything else? Should those resources be better utilized on a new project?

[TSTR]

Yes and yes, but far be it from me to tell these companies how to spend money. I suppose if someone's only getting into the game with the newest systems, then having these HD-to-HD rereleases can be nice. But for those of us who already have the earlier versions of the game, it seems like way less incentive to rebuy than say remaking a PS2 game on PS3.

[lisalover1]

I love seeing game remakes in HD, but I often find that HD remasters end up as lazy ports with a bumped-up resolution. Still, there can be good exceptions, like if it's ported to a portable platform as with the Jak & Daxter Trilogy HD port to the Vita.

[Xeogred]

Just to bring this thread back to life a month later: how do you guys feel about HD remakes of HD games?

With The Last of Us Remastered, GTA V (being billed as a huge refinement in the graphical department even for the traditional PC port), and Tomb Raider Definitive Edition, you do see it being a long term plan or a short term fad because of the close proximity of the games original release to the release of the new consoles?

I feel that the original releases were fine the way they were. Other than minor graphical improvements it wouldn't add a significant amount of content. Patches downloaded to the console would fix any bugs as compared to a game from 10 years ago where slip streaming bug fixes were not possible or not widespread. "HD-ing" said game from 10+ years ago with high res textures and upping output from SD to HD on top of bug fixes would be more beneficial I think.

I'd rather view these as ports, not remakes in any sense.

It's kind of like comparing PS2 era games that were on the PC too. On PC you could always have far higher resolutions, better framerate, and with some games like Deus Ex, the game could handle far larger maps so 10x less loading screens. The better version technically was on the PC. Technically, the superior versions of these newer games will be on the PS4/Xbone.