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Will we be left looking back at games like MGS3 and laughing at the graphics, saying "Those graphics were brilliant at the time"? Alternatively, has technology reached a stage where computer game graphics have peaked and cannot get that much better?
Every time a new console is released we marvel at how far graphics have come. This happened with the Snes and Megadrive, the PS1 and N64, the Dreamcast, then the PS2. Now the recently released Xbox seems to have, once again, taken graphics to a new level. One of the main pioneers of graphics was Sega's Virtua Racing on the MegaDrive, which was ahead of its time and paved the way for 3D games.
Surely the ultimate game will have graphics which are indistinguishable from a TV picture. Pretty cool. Imagine that if you walk into a room and look at the TV you cant tell whether there is a match on TV or if its someone playing FIFA 2012 on the Playstation 5 or Xbox 3. Or perhaps F1 2012 will look identical to the in-car camera views shown on ITV. Even better, you won't be able to tell the difference between GTA7 and one of those 'World's Scariest Police Chases' programmes.
No matter how brilliant we think the graphics are on the games of today, there is no doubting whatsoever than in years to come, those graphics will look outdated. I've only had a PS2 for a matter of months and everytime i play an old PS1 game, i can't believe that when i bought that game 4 or 5 years ago I thought the graphics were the best ever!
I believe that true-to-life, TV quality graphics will be with us in the not too distant future and i cant wait.
Don't get me wrong, the most important aspect of any video game IS the gameplay. However, many of us insist on having brilliant graphics as well.
Thanks for Reading.
Over time, we're are doubtless going to see superior, possibly even true to life graphics, and possible, as technology continues to exceed itself, new gaming genres.
But what are we losing? What is it that we don't have now that we have these amazing visuals?
Well, in my opinion, it hasn't been an especially even trade off. Long gone are the days when a game could be put together in a short space of time, at a low cost, and high playability quality. Today, a game takes 6 months to 2 years to be put together, at almost Hollywood movie budgets. The graphics, as a result, are often stunning, but the gameplay of many of these visual feasts, although acceptable, just isn't up to the par of what we used to get. How many times in the 80s did you play a game, complete it after however long, and then a week or so later, be found playing it all the way through again, and again, and again. Doing this with a dozen or so games who's lastability just lasted and lasted, never got boring. And these games had what we would class now as appalling graphics.
Yes, graphics are good anough now to make you skip a heartbeat, and catch your breath, perhaps even bring a tear to your eye. What brings a tear to my eye is that these days we wait longer for fewer games, which have inherently less lastability and originality, which we then have to pay more for.
There is of course, an exception to some of these trnds. A genre of games, recent to the gaming world, which has the lastability of the The Ages, and playable to the point of bad health - The MultiPlayer Online Game.
Hundreds of thousands of gamers flock to play these together for endless hours of enjoyment. Yes these games cost the same as your average game these days, and yes, they probably take just as long to put together, but they ARE more playable and they DO last longer. What else do we note about these games that hold attention better than any other in this day and age?
THEY ARE GRAPHICALLY INFERIOR
Yes, graphics are improving, but we should all know now that graphics a game does not make, and as we look to the future, perhaps we would be well advised to encourage developers not to just dazzle our visual senses with greater numbers of polygons, stretching our 3d accelerators and RAM defficient consoles to the limit, but instead perhaps stun us with their own imaginations, with their level designs and puzzles, their ability to create playability from simple concepts.
Without playability, the future of gaming is bleak. Pretty, but bleak.
IB
Super Monkey Ball is absolutely hilarious. Luigis mansion is ok. (but a bit overrated if you ask me)
> Thats a good post. What console you got?
Thanks Jimmy, i've got a PS2, but i play on my friends Xbox a lot too.
What about you?
Will we be left looking back at games like MGS3 and laughing at the graphics, saying "Those graphics were brilliant at the time"? Alternatively, has technology reached a stage where computer game graphics have peaked and cannot get that much better?
Every time a new console is released we marvel at how far graphics have come. This happened with the Snes and Megadrive, the PS1 and N64, the Dreamcast, then the PS2. Now the recently released Xbox seems to have, once again, taken graphics to a new level. One of the main pioneers of graphics was Sega's Virtua Racing on the MegaDrive, which was ahead of its time and paved the way for 3D games.
Surely the ultimate game will have graphics which are indistinguishable from a TV picture. Pretty cool. Imagine that if you walk into a room and look at the TV you cant tell whether there is a match on TV or if its someone playing FIFA 2012 on the Playstation 5 or Xbox 3. Or perhaps F1 2012 will look identical to the in-car camera views shown on ITV. Even better, you won't be able to tell the difference between GTA7 and one of those 'World's Scariest Police Chases' programmes.
No matter how brilliant we think the graphics are on the games of today, there is no doubting whatsoever than in years to come, those graphics will look outdated. I've only had a PS2 for a matter of months and everytime i play an old PS1 game, i can't believe that when i bought that game 4 or 5 years ago I thought the graphics were the best ever!
I believe that true-to-life, TV quality graphics will be with us in the not too distant future and i cant wait.
Don't get me wrong, the most important aspect of any video game IS the gameplay. However, many of us insist on having brilliant graphics as well.
Thanks for Reading.