Retro and minimalist games

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I'm not expecting much replies, but hey, it's life.

 

In regards to expectations, preferences and favorite games, how do you feel about retro or minimalist games?

 

By this I mean games which can be just as deep in gameplay as recent games (if not more) but have significantly older and more basic presentations, such as roguelikes and interactive fiction games. Do you feel the need to play more graphical games (in the sense that they must be extensively graphical), or can you abstract yourself from the presentation and just dive right into the gameplay?

 

An example of comparison would be something like Diablo and Rogue. Would you be able to take the ASCI characters of Rogue (or other roguelikes) and just let yourself be immersed in the gameworld and focus on the gameplay, or would you need to have more well devised graphics like those of Diablo to be able to play? Would you be able to play any roguelike regardless if it used ASCI or graphical elements to support itself visualy?

 

Another example would be an adventure game like Grim Fandango (graphical adventure) and A Mind Forever Voyaging (interactive fiction), or other IF titles. Do you feel like graphical adventures provide a better framework for their gameplay, or do you feel the opposite? Do you feel having to type directions and verbs to detract from the gameplay of a text-based adventure game when compared to the ease of use of a graphical adventure's interface, or do you feel interactive fiction does a better job (when the writing is good of course) of creating better mental imagery of its gameworld and characters?

 

 

Just curious as to people's points of view on this.

[Volourn]

Honestly, even thoguh I don't see myself as a graphics whore, at this stage; a 'retro' or 'less graphically inclined' game would have to do much impressing to get me interested. An example of this is VD's game. While the graphics are not 'awesome'; everything about the game seems fantatsic so I'm most definitely interested in it in spite of the graphics.

 

 

The thing is, it is the year 2005, and I'd rtahe rnot have to live in 1985 if I don't have to.

[Oerwinde]

Sometimes I wish there was a return to basics. For example when Quest for Glory 5 came out in 3d instead of using the VGA sprites of the previous games, I was very disappointed. I would have preferred higher resolution sprites to the 3d models, kinda like Monkey Island 3, only not as stylized.

 

When it comes to 3d graphics though, the bar keeps getting pushed higher and higher, which makes us not appreciate the older graphics anymore, and it just seems disappointing when the graphics of a new game looks 2-3 years old. Graphics that were amazing 2-3 years ago just look ugly.

 

I wish there were more adventure games, as the stories in those are just plain hard to beat. And adventure/RPGs like the Quest for Glory series are sorely missed.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

An example of this is VD's game. While the graphics are not 'awesome'; everything about the game seems fantatsic so I'm most definitely interested in it in spite of the graphics.

 

Agreed.

 

The thing is, it is the year 2005, and I'd rtahe rnot have to live in 1985 if I don't have to.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, that is the point, I guess. There are more realistic, credible and graphical ways of depicting gameworlds, but do they make the game necessarily better? Sometime ago I found myself contemplating the possibility of making an IF game, but the reception to that kind of game seems so small that I'm left wondering if it would ever get off the ground. I suppose lush 3D graphics (or even well drawn 2D) would be more effective in gaining people's attention, but would the gameplay change? Would the story, locales, NPCs? I don't think so.

 

Well I can't know for sure, since I've developed neither, but from the get go, the meat of the game would stay unchanged, but likely would be ignored if released as a graphical inferior game.

 

 

I wish there were more adventure games, as the stories in those are just plain hard to beat. And adventure/RPGs like the Quest for Glory series are sorely missed.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I also agree with this. Wheter IFs or graphical adventures/RPGs, I wish there'd be more of them currently.

[Volourn]

"but do they make the game necessarily better?"

 

No. Of course not; but graphics can be used to add to the gaming experience. It's only when graphics are used as an exuse to cut out other features that they hurt.

[angshuman]

No. Of course not; but graphics can be used to add to the gaming experience. It's only when graphics are used as an exuse to cut out other features that they hurt.

 

That about sums it up.

 

I also believe the converse is *somewhat* true: Good gameplay is no excuse for terrible graphics. I'm not talking Doom3 quality here, but there's a basic presentation quality that is to be expected of a good game. Gameplay comes first, but you've got to optimize all the other factors so that they enhance the overall experience as much as possible.

 

But that again, is my opinion. I prefer Diablo to ADOM, but I know several people who would call me an idiot. @ NPC's and & monsters roaming around in a world full of # trees just don't cut it for me

 

-- Angshuman

[Monte Carlo]

This is an interesting question. An obtuse but ingenious developer should try to make the best possible game he could with the ugliest graphics he or she could get away with. Just to see what would happen.

 

As has been pointed out, graphics is part of the process of immersion. Morrowind, for example, had me wandering around enjoying the scenery for about three hours. Then I realised I was playing a bizarre game with a thesaurus instead of NPC dialogue and gave up. Dungeon Siege was like a date with the hottest girl at college, but when you got back for coffee it turns out that she's actually a cleverly-constructed manequin.

 

Immersion without context is utterly meaningless. It's flotation tank gaming.

 

Compare and contrast with the original Diablo; ugly by today's standards but pure gaming crack. Or Jagged Alliance 2, which is still one of my all-time favourite games, lurks on my hard drive and gets played. This is now despite it's graphics because it's that good. I don't know if anyone's played Kings of Dragon Pass (I think that's the title) but that's a quasi-text based story-telling game. It's beautiful, and pretty addictive. It's such an unusual format that it drags you in, using mainly illustrations to show you what's going on.

 

So, personally, I'd play any game that had context. If somebody released a game tomorrow using a ripped version of the Diablo I engine or even Infinity with good plot, characters, depth, and gameplay then I'd pay good money for it and play it (viz. Jeff Vogel). I'm in a minority, but a minority that I suspect is growing.

 

I think a healthy cottage industry akin to the hardcore hex-based PC wargaming scene is there for the taking.

 

Cheers

MC

[Cantousent]

I'm not a graphics whore (who the hell thinks of these terms?) but I do expect a game to have good representation. I don't think it's a matter of making good games with bad graphics. It's a matter of making good games without sacrificing gameplay elements in order to improve the graphics. Let's face it, I find myself inclined to play Europa Universalis 2 every now and then. There's a game wanting in graphics, but it has better graphics than the first one and better game mechanics to boot.

 

How about the Heroes of Might and Magic series? I still play HoMM 2 from time to time, even with the ancient graphics. I prefer the campaign in the second game because it allows me to choose a side instead of forcing me to play every faction. In terms of graphics, HoMM 4 is the latest and has the highest resolution, but the "feel" of the graphics is superior in HoMM3. Overall, mechanicswise, 3 is superior. ...But it's silly to suggest that the graphics killed 4. Maybe concentrating on the graphics and not spending time on the game hurt it, I don't know.

 

The old gold box DnD games were great, 4 colors and all. Still, enhanced graphics didn't hurt Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale. Comparatively bad graphics didn't hurt Planescape: Torment.

 

All things considered, however, I don't see graphics as a problem as such. On the other hand, I think some companies want to sacrifice solid gameplay elements for the sake of better graphics or other gimicks that don't add to the experience... or even detract from it.

[Reveilled]

Graphics are important to me, but they need not be realistic, or 3D, as long as they look pretty. Most of my favourite games are SNES or Gameboy RPGs or Acion-Adventure games. Chrono Trigger hardly had realistic graphics, but they sure are quite cute to look at. If the graphics are ugly (be it bad 3D, bad lighting, no graphics at all), I find it hard to enjoy the game.

[roshan]

There was nothing "comparatively" bad about torments graphics when compared to the other ie games. The character models have some of the most fluid animations, the most amazing spell effects and a lot of great artwork in the areas.

[Darque]

Graphics mean very little to me, while I do appreciate them, gameplay and story depth are far more important.

[Squidget]

Playing the Hitchhiker's Guide Game recently had me thinking about this very thing.

 

The conclusion I came to after recognizing what I liked and disliked about the game was that graphics weren't a big issue, but the lack of gameplay depth that tends to come with the lack of graphics.

 

In the HHG example I found the text descriptions actually added to things, as they seemed in-keeping with the book, often made me laugh, and represented what I think of the HHG universe far better than modern graphics could have.

 

But this came at a price - and that price was spending long periods of time trying to figure out how to get my avatar to do what I wanted through the game's text parser, rather than actually experiencing the game. I had similar issues with the Zork series, and found myself longing for graphics so that I could just click buttons and objects in the world to preform basic actions on them. Of course, the text parser would still have been needed for unorthodox actions ("Shout 'Ulysses!'"), but if I could have done most things through an easier interface then I would have enjoyed the game a lot more.

 

Likewise with Rogue games, I don't prefer Diablo or Guild Wars to them because of the fancy graphics, I prefer them because the graphics of what the graphics contribute to the gameplay in tactical depth and fun factor. If you lowered the polys in all the Guild Wars models by half I think I'd still enjoy it just as much so long as everything was still recognizable at a glance.

[Noceur]

I wish there were more adventure games, as the stories in those are just plain hard to beat. And adventure/RPGs like the Quest for Glory series are sorely missed.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I highly agree. I just thought I'd chime in and plug dreamfall.com, which is the sequel to The Longest Journey... It'll be some kinda Action/Adventure game. Just in case you hadn't heard of it

 

On-topic: My buddy is building an arcade cabinette, so he's purchased an arcarde stick (2-player) and stuff and we've spent a few weekends now playing old arcade games and drinking some beer. Dungeons and Dragons is just awesome, hehe. (Not to mention Metal Slug)

 

While many of the old arcade games don't have much of a story depth, the gameplay is still very entertaining, and the animations are often tip-top-notch. Actually, the latest Metal Slug game isn't old at all (2004-2005 or something) so there's still a market for 2D sprites. Not to mention all the cell-phone games.

 

I think that gameplay may have gone forward however, as when I play through old abandonware games and such - I sometimes get fed up faster than I did back in the early 90's. Then again, there were bad games back then too.

 

If someone released a 2D sprite windows compatible refurbished Master of Magic, I'd be very interested. I replayed the old game recently, and boy... talk about joy

 

EDIT: Actually, the characters in Morrowind were shallow and cold, and the textures on their faces wasn't much to look at. I often found myself mentally anthropomorphize them... you know, to give 'em more character. I wonder if we've done that with the old games as well. You know, with less details it's easier to fill in the gaps.

[Yst]

Speaking as someone who owns all the major Adventure games of the past decade (favourites, unsurprisingly, being Grim Fandango and The Longest Journey) and most of history's major Text Adventures, I nevertheless have concluded, over the past year...

 

...that the Adventure Game is indeed largely dead to the mass market (smaller releases continue), while Adventure's virtues are alive and well there, moreso than ever: they just go under different names now. The Text Adventure and its style of gameplay has been dead for a while. Its last major incarnation (i.e., of a text parsing engine in a major release) was in Starship Titanic, and it wasn't particularly successful either in sales or reviews, though I enjoyed it well enough. The virtues of Graphical Adventures, however, are all to be found still, and the best part is, they're mostly to be found outside the "Graphical Adventure" genre itself.

 

The reason the adventure game genre is dead is that all its finest virtues are now represented elsewhere and are not restricted to an oversimplified classic graphical adventure interface anymore. The distinctive characterics of the classic graphical adventures were quality of dialogue, story-telling and puzzle solving and character interaction, but those characteristics have slowly begun to represent themselves beautifully in other genres and most especially in a few high quality RPGs. In the era of Tunnels of Doom, Adventure, the early Roguelikes and Garriot's early games, it made sense to distinguish Adventures, with their humour, their intelligent story-telling and their immersive worlds from RPGs with their statistics and monotonous dungeon crawls, but games like Jade Empire and the KotORs have eliminated Adventure's monopoly on quality writing, gratifying puzzles, dialogue, humour, intuitive interface and immersivity.

 

I look forward to Dreamfall, but even Dreamfall is billed as a hybrid. The classic Adventure game is dead, and we're the better for it, I'd say. My only regret is the death of Graphical Adventures with text parsing interfaces, which truly represented a unique interface not represented elsewhere (a la Leisure Suit Larry and Starship Titanic). But I can live with it, because plot, story, character and immersivity are now the domain of story-based games in general, and not just adventures. So be it.

[GhostofAnakin]

Honestly, even thoguh I don't see myself as a graphics whore, at this stage; a 'retro' or 'less graphically inclined' game would have to do much impressing to get me interested.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I agree Volourn. On a list of what's important to me, graphics isn't very high. However, it is still ON that list for me to enjoy it unless the rest of the features can absolutely blow me away. A perfect example of this for me is the KOTOR series. The graphics aren't top notch in comparison to other current games, but they're good enough to allow me to overlook the graphics aspect of the game.

[Yst]

Indeed, I'll agree on the ridiculousness of the popular "graphics don't matter to me" contention which seems so stylish these days.

 

Graphics do matter to me. My personal favourite game of all time, Planescape: Torment, offers a plot and a character cast superior to that of, say, BG1 (which I also loved), but the fact that its graphics are so much better than BG1's is also very important to me. And as much as I like its graphics, I'd love it if they were updated to the level made possible by current technology (impossible - merely hypothetical), even so.

 

Even playing an older game like Chrono Trigger or FFVI - yeah, it matters to me that Chrono Trigger has really great pixel art graphics and I consider the ending sequence in FFVI to be some pretty cool eye-candy. That's right - SNES eye candy. If either game had the graphics of FF1 or DQ1/DW1 throughout, I would enjoy the game less. If it had VGA or SVGA graphics produced with skill equal to that of its original SNES pixel art, I would enjoy it the more for it. As soon as a world tries to portray immersive scenery, graphics start to matter. So for the classic RPGs I mentioned in my above post which largely use symbolic graphics (static 'avatar' and 'mob' icons, etc.), yeah, it really matters little as long as one can comprehend the nature of the character's strategic situation, but for anything past 1985, I think any argument for the irrelevance of immersive graphical technology is silly.

[Cantousent]

It's difficult to claim that PS:T's graphics were superior to BG1's. That gets into an issue beyond resolution or processing into a shady area of taste. Technically speaking, PS:T might have sported better graphics, especially in spell effects, but the feel of the graphics is precisely the thing that alienated some of the players.

 

For my part, PS:T is the best game in the world. It's certainly my favorite. I, like you, have been playing these games from the days Pong. ...But the question regarding graphics can't be answered along strictly technological lines.

 

I never look at a game and say, "the graphics are great." I often look at a game and say, "that looks beautiful." Whatever the technology, it's not a technical decision. It's a matter of taste.

 

In that regard, great graphics well used have a definite edge. It is clearly silly to argue from the standpoint of irrelevance. Nevertheless, superior graphics do not always translate to something aesthetically pleasing.

[Volourn]

I hated PST's spelle ffects. They were too over the top, too FFish, and for the most part felt blaiise. Did like the Hammer one; though. The character models were awesome though, and definbitely better than the other IE games. Background wise, BG2/TOB/IWD2 are tied with PST right behind...

[Darque]

Indeed, I'll agree on the ridiculousness of the popular "graphics don't matter to me" contention which seems so stylish these days.

 

Of course, because everyone should shallowly ooow and aaaah over eyecandy.

 

Graphics do matter to me.

 

Good for you.

 

My personal favourite game of all time, Planescape: Torment, offers a plot and a character cast superior to that of, say, BG1 (which I also loved), but the fact that its graphics are so much better than BG1's is also very important to me.  And as much as I like its graphics, I'd love it if they were updated to the level made possible by current technology (impossible - merely hypothetical), even so. 

 

Not everyone is you.

 

Even playing an older game like Chrono Trigger or FFVI - yeah, it matters to me that Chrono Trigger has really great pixel art graphics and I consider the ending sequence in FFVI to be some pretty cool eye-candy.  That's right - SNES eye candy.  If either game had the graphics of FF1 or DQ1/DW1 throughout, I would enjoy the game less.  If it had VGA or SVGA graphics produced with skill equal to that of its original SNES pixel art, I would enjoy it the more for it.  As soon as a world tries to portray immersive scenery, graphics start to matter.  So for the classic RPGs I mentioned in my above post which largely use symbolic graphics (static 'avatar' and 'mob' icons, etc.), yeah, it really matters little as long as one can comprehend the nature of the character's strategic situation, but for anything past 1985, I think any argument for the irrelevance of immersive graphical technology is silly.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Again, not everyone is "wowed" by pretty colors.

 

Some of my favorite games need to be played on a Dos emulator so

[Squidget]

Of course, because everyone should shallowly ooow and aaaah over eyecandy.

 

Yes, because it's obviously shallow for a game to be portrayed well visually.

 

He wasn't saying that a game with good graphics is a good game (worth ooing and aahing over), but simply that the graphics help him enjoy the game.

 

The idea of anyone who likes good graphics in their game being shallow is a silly one.

 

And if you disagree - I challenge you to post how the Resident Evil series could be played, in its current form, with NES-style graphics (2d 8-bit sprites).

[Darque]

Of course, because everyone should shallowly ooow and aaaah over eyecandy.

 

Yes, because it's obviously shallow for a game to be portrayed well visually.

 

He wasn't saying that a game with good graphics is a good game (worth ooing and aahing over), but simply that the graphics help him enjoy the game.

 

The idea of anyone who likes good graphics in their game being shallow is a silly one.

 

And if you disagree - I challenge you to post how the Resident Evil series could be played, in its current form, with NES-style graphics (2d 8-bit sprites).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I misunderstood him then, I thought he meant affectively that "graphics make the game".

 

Graphics, music and voiceacting enhance the game... but nothing more.

 

And Resident Evil could be played NES style... for a good example... go find a copy of Sweet Home

[Darth Barth]

By this I mean games which can be just as deep in gameplay as recent games (if not more) but have significantly older and more basic presentations, such as roguelikes and interactive fiction games. Do you feel the need to play more graphical games (in the sense that they must be extensively graphical), or can you abstract yourself from the presentation and just dive right into the gameplay?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Not necessarily. All I require in a game presentation is that the graphics (and sound/music) are not offensive or grating. Now if a game has no graphics or sound, like IF, thats fine.

 

In a way, your question can apply to movies and novels.

[Sarjahurmaaja.]

"I hated PST's spelle ffects. They were too over the top, too FFish, and for the most part felt blaiise. Did like the Hammer one; though."

 

That's true.

 

"Background wise, BG2/TOB/IWD2 are tied with PST right behind..."

 

That's filthy lies.