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"The evolution/revolution question..."

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Mon 05/08/02 at 09:02
Regular
Posts: 787
I think this is overused, and usually inconsistent. I was reading digitiser a while back, and I had to wonder if they were just doing it deliberately for a laugh. On page 2 they reviewed Warcraft 3. They gave it 5/5, despite saying that it doesn't do anything new and is only a nice prettier upgrade of it's predecessor. But it does it well. Then on Page 4, they had a special feature, about how the games industry was basically a great big steaming pile of unoriginal, recycled cack. Then in Edge magazine I read poo-faced previews of games like Zelda and Mario Sunshine. They aren't making any major leaps forward apparently. They're just evolutions of two of the best games ever. Well, doesn't that sound awful! If Nintendo released a sequel to Mario 64 using the same graphics engine, but with new plot/levels, I'd go out and buy it tomorrow.

Anyway, I think the need for huge revolutions in even the best games is overstated. What do people think? Shouldn't creating titles that still haven't been bettered 6 years later take some of the pressure off? I think it goes both ways. Games like Mario and Zelda can be just remade without going through a lot of changes but they had to go through a change at one point. Zelda changed from the top down perspective and Mario was side scrolling. They went through the major change to what they are today and everyone was so impressed that they want it to happen again. Maybe some people feel they do not need to change. Down the road a game might come along that does make a major step forward in gameplay and then Mario and Zelda will change.

Tricky one. It depends how you define revolutionary. I would say that Halo is an evolution of Doom, but Edge obviously don't see it that way as they have marked it as revolutionary. Evolution is just as important as revolution as long as it does what it says and develops the genre. I would describe the first game in a genre as being revolutionary ie. the first 2d platformer, 2d shoot-em-up etc. and every other game that falls into that genre being an evolution of the base game. Therefore both revolution and evolution are dependant on each other. I would use the term recycled to describe a game that doesn't evolve the genre at all and just uses existing ideas.

Mario 64 was truly a revolutionary game. So revolutionary in fact, that no other developer has, as-of-yet, come close to even matching it. Nintendo threw the gauntlet down in 1996, and for 5 years developers have come absolutely nowhere near. The question is: do Nintendo need to better Mario 64 yet? It is painfully obvious that they have no competition in this genre. They are the only ones capable of bettering themselves, and frankly, after the garbage everyone has put up with since Mario 64, a gaming experience on par with the original would be a relief.

If a revolution is something new, then almost all games have 'revolutions' in them. For example, Rogue Leader, which included few new ideas, was the first game to include a computer targetting feature (as far as I'm aware), and also included the most polygons for one object (the star destroyer). Great reveloutionary ideas are ones which are copied for years to come, for example the use of stealth in Goldeneye, the idea of collecting 'stars' in 3D platormers, or the idea of letting monkeys beat each other up with boxing gloves (ok they one hasn't been copied it yet, but I hear EA are going to release 'Monkey Fite 2002' later this year). Anyway, to conclude, there will be plenty of revolutions in the future, and there are probably ideas in games at the moment that we don't see as being revolutionary, but when we look back we will see them as really improtant in gaming history (monkeys with boxing gloves.....trust me).

We won't see major revolutions until someone comes up with a ridiculous term for '4D', and none of that 'playing with time' Blinx crap qualifies for 4D either. The involvement of more senses is the key to a greater quality of play. Voice recognition etc. In big ways. And as the world would have it, the fourth dimension will never be acheived in video games, our brains only think in 3 dimensions. Imagine a 2 dimensional world, I'll call it 'flatland' (there is only length and width in flatland or 2 dimensions). Mr Flat is sitting on flat beach staring at the flat sea when all of a sudden a 3 dimensional sphere travels through his world, it rises up through the sea, but Mr Flat doesn't see a sphere as his brain can only think in 2 dimensions. What he sees is a point appear at the surface of the water, this point quickly becomes a circular hole in the water, which grows and grows until the sphere has passed exactly half-way through his 2 dimensional world, then the circular hole begins to shrink and shrink until it becomes a point again and then the point disappears as quickly as it appeared. As Mr Flat's brain couldn't perceive the 3rd dimension (otherwise he would have seen a sphere and not just the disturbance it made) ours cannot perceive the 4th dimension.

Thanks for reading,
LF.
Mon 05/08/02 at 14:08
Regular
"no longer El Blokey"
Posts: 4,471
Good post man.

I have twelve PS2 games, and I out of my first eight games, six were sequels...but why are people worried about this?

Sure, games like Tony Hawks and Smackdown have sequels that are just more of the same...but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I for one hope that Vice City is not a revolution in the GTA series, but rather a refined version of GTA3.

Games like Jet Set Radio are great, but so are the successors, like Jet Set Radio Future. They may not bring a whole new concept to the table, but they bring a better game.
Mon 05/08/02 at 12:22
"`·.¸¸.·´´¯`··._.·`·"
Posts: 463
Great post Lawless Fever.
Mon 05/08/02 at 11:38
Regular
Posts: 11,597
Great post Lawwie...umm, this is probably gunna take forever to post, downloading you see...so, I never read all of it (shame on me). Anyway, what I read was classy...:P
Mon 05/08/02 at 09:02
Posts: 0
I think this is overused, and usually inconsistent. I was reading digitiser a while back, and I had to wonder if they were just doing it deliberately for a laugh. On page 2 they reviewed Warcraft 3. They gave it 5/5, despite saying that it doesn't do anything new and is only a nice prettier upgrade of it's predecessor. But it does it well. Then on Page 4, they had a special feature, about how the games industry was basically a great big steaming pile of unoriginal, recycled cack. Then in Edge magazine I read poo-faced previews of games like Zelda and Mario Sunshine. They aren't making any major leaps forward apparently. They're just evolutions of two of the best games ever. Well, doesn't that sound awful! If Nintendo released a sequel to Mario 64 using the same graphics engine, but with new plot/levels, I'd go out and buy it tomorrow.

Anyway, I think the need for huge revolutions in even the best games is overstated. What do people think? Shouldn't creating titles that still haven't been bettered 6 years later take some of the pressure off? I think it goes both ways. Games like Mario and Zelda can be just remade without going through a lot of changes but they had to go through a change at one point. Zelda changed from the top down perspective and Mario was side scrolling. They went through the major change to what they are today and everyone was so impressed that they want it to happen again. Maybe some people feel they do not need to change. Down the road a game might come along that does make a major step forward in gameplay and then Mario and Zelda will change.

Tricky one. It depends how you define revolutionary. I would say that Halo is an evolution of Doom, but Edge obviously don't see it that way as they have marked it as revolutionary. Evolution is just as important as revolution as long as it does what it says and develops the genre. I would describe the first game in a genre as being revolutionary ie. the first 2d platformer, 2d shoot-em-up etc. and every other game that falls into that genre being an evolution of the base game. Therefore both revolution and evolution are dependant on each other. I would use the term recycled to describe a game that doesn't evolve the genre at all and just uses existing ideas.

Mario 64 was truly a revolutionary game. So revolutionary in fact, that no other developer has, as-of-yet, come close to even matching it. Nintendo threw the gauntlet down in 1996, and for 5 years developers have come absolutely nowhere near. The question is: do Nintendo need to better Mario 64 yet? It is painfully obvious that they have no competition in this genre. They are the only ones capable of bettering themselves, and frankly, after the garbage everyone has put up with since Mario 64, a gaming experience on par with the original would be a relief.

If a revolution is something new, then almost all games have 'revolutions' in them. For example, Rogue Leader, which included few new ideas, was the first game to include a computer targetting feature (as far as I'm aware), and also included the most polygons for one object (the star destroyer). Great reveloutionary ideas are ones which are copied for years to come, for example the use of stealth in Goldeneye, the idea of collecting 'stars' in 3D platormers, or the idea of letting monkeys beat each other up with boxing gloves (ok they one hasn't been copied it yet, but I hear EA are going to release 'Monkey Fite 2002' later this year). Anyway, to conclude, there will be plenty of revolutions in the future, and there are probably ideas in games at the moment that we don't see as being revolutionary, but when we look back we will see them as really improtant in gaming history (monkeys with boxing gloves.....trust me).

We won't see major revolutions until someone comes up with a ridiculous term for '4D', and none of that 'playing with time' Blinx crap qualifies for 4D either. The involvement of more senses is the key to a greater quality of play. Voice recognition etc. In big ways. And as the world would have it, the fourth dimension will never be acheived in video games, our brains only think in 3 dimensions. Imagine a 2 dimensional world, I'll call it 'flatland' (there is only length and width in flatland or 2 dimensions). Mr Flat is sitting on flat beach staring at the flat sea when all of a sudden a 3 dimensional sphere travels through his world, it rises up through the sea, but Mr Flat doesn't see a sphere as his brain can only think in 2 dimensions. What he sees is a point appear at the surface of the water, this point quickly becomes a circular hole in the water, which grows and grows until the sphere has passed exactly half-way through his 2 dimensional world, then the circular hole begins to shrink and shrink until it becomes a point again and then the point disappears as quickly as it appeared. As Mr Flat's brain couldn't perceive the 3rd dimension (otherwise he would have seen a sphere and not just the disturbance it made) ours cannot perceive the 4th dimension.

Thanks for reading,
LF.

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