Our fav. Videogames

[TurtleFu]

HD is all about realism.

I think it's good, it's progress. Film has always been about imitating life (yes, even fantasy or sci-fi or art films).

But I also think, with new film technology, film can go overboard and become too busy and cluttered or venture into the uncanny valley too easily.

It's sort of like graphics for game consoles. Yes, things like atmosphere and story and game play are more important, but if a game looks like shit it can seriously detract from the experience.

[deadgrandma]

Originally Posted by TurtleFu

HD is all about realism.

I think it's good, it's progress. Film has always been about imitating life (yes, even fantasy or sci-fi or art films).

But I also think, with new film technology, film can go overboard and become too busy and cluttered or venture into the uncanny valley too easily.

It's sort of like graphics for game consoles. Yes, things like atmosphere and story and game play are more important, but if a game looks like shit it can seriously detract from the experience.

I disagree.

Minecraft.

[TurtleFu]

Minecraft's gameplay is based around building blocks. Having complicated graphics would actually negatively affect the gameplay.
That doesn't contradict what I said, that actually supports it. Graphics need to work for the game. Minecraft doesn't look like shit because it's lazy, it is blocky because that's what the gameplay requires.

[W3iHong]

Yeah minecraft. Could you imagine calculating the amount of dirt coming off a cave wall and than to quantify how much you have digged out? If they used particles instead of blocks.

Jagged Alliance 2 is a boss game too.

[karateexplosion]

I disagree (with someone?), there're a lot of games that are lacking in visual quality that more than make up for it in concept/gameplay. It's more about tailoring the graphics to the aesthetic and mechanics of the game (a la Minecraft). Sure, if you're making a gritty, realistic FPS, by all means pump the framerate, pixel count and render speed as high as they'll go. Do I play games like that? No, not really. Personal preference, substance over style.

As for the HD debate, it definitely has it's purposes, I just feel that it's being shoved down our throats at every possible juncture. This is an age-old debate, granted. There's a charm in the abstract though - the closer we move towards realism in media, the closer we get to, yes, the uncanny valley, but more importantly, we lose a lot of the substance and art in what we're seeing. Honestly, I think stuff shot in (native) HD looks like trash. Sure, it's great for sports and other media that requires that realism, but anything else looks very hollow, devoid of any sort of cinematic flare and depth that, yes, we've been used to for the past 70-or-so years. Now, video converted from film to a 1080p standard is an entirely different story. Remember, Taxi Driver was shot in the mid-'70s at 24 frames per second (or actually 23.98, if I remember correctly) on film. So yeah, I'm all for conversion from film to 1080p, squeeze every detail possible outta that sucker. But framerate doesn't really factor into the equation, because 24fps is still what you're physically viewing it at - it's not like they can magically create more images of a 20-something year old DeNiro with his shirt off. So it still has that cinematic quality. And yeah, it looks hella good.

Regarding SotC, my main point is that the game is more like a playable film than pretty much every other game out there. So keeping that film look would have made perfect sense to me, and I bet it would have looked phenomenal. C'est la vie. Still good shit.


@Curious: Yeah, that's the story of a film student. I actually had plans to move to LA/Hollywood right out of school and a couple things lined up, but they fell through and I've stagnated ever since. I'd love to get back into it, but it's ridiculously hard to get your foot in the door with a real studio or the like unless you have the luxury of interning for a couple of years while living off of some other source of income. Or just getting stupid lucky by knowing the right people.

[karateexplosion]

Been playing a heavy amount of Phantasy Star Online lately. Can't wait for PSO2 to drop next year. Looking forward to it, so hard.

[W3iHong]

Deus Ex: Human revolution is looking great. I just "oh, you so silly" at the amount of memes in the game.

[golem09]

I'm eagerly waiting for Dead Island, but just now I rediscovered Borderlands with a friend of mine. We never played through the DLC and yesterday when we started the first, "Dr. Ned's Zombie Island", we were very surprised of the amount of content and the quality. Now we have a perfect substitue until Dead Island.

[kuro_neko]

anybody in here have a 3DS and wanna exchange friend codes? :-D

[karateexplosion]

Hey neko, what's your take on the 3DS? I was initially really interested in it (like, really really), but I've become rather skeptical of its merits since release. The price drop has made it certainly more tempting though.




Just got into competitive Pokemon battling the other day. It's wholeheartedly depressing how bad I am at it.