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- Thread starter Yung Dramps
- Start date
Not only is the photo realistic art style boring to look at, it’s also super expensive to make. That means companies will either have to start charging way more for the game outright, or riddle it with more micro transactions in order to break even.
And the real tragedy is it’s not even needed. Persona 5 didn’t have a realistic art style, and that got critical acclaim and sold over 10 million copies (across all versions). Astro Bot too, is getting lots of praise (don’t know about sales). So clearly, non Nintendo players will buy games that don’t look like that.
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Okay so Mega Evolutions were fun, but I'm tired of seeing people say, "Mega Evolutions should come back in the next gen," or "Maybe we will get Mega Evolutions in the DLC." Please, just give it a rest already. We haven't had Megas since gen 7, and it's been 2 gens and almost 10 years since we last had it. I also believe the pseudo-legendaries didn't need Megas because they were already strong enough with a high base stat total, which defeats the point of Mega Evolution to begin with. Mega evolutions should have been exclusively for Pokemon who were really underperforming.
Honestly I’d prefer just regular evolutions for underperforming mons like Pinsir and Kangaskhan. For stuff like Charizard, they could just give it Drought as a Hidden Ability.
I really hate the mindset of games only being played as a form of escapism
Why would I play something like Silent Hill or Visage then? If I just wanted an escape, I wouldn't engage something that scares me
I like playing games for fun, to be challenged, to have something though-provoking from time to time, for vibes, and sometimes yes, I play them for escapism, but that's only one of the reasons why I engage with video games or any kind of art for that matter
So yeah I just don't like it when people only see art as a way to escape
I think this both an extremely reductive way to talk about game graphics and also demonstrably false. Graphics and game feel are so tightly intertwined that you can't neatly separate them like this post suggests that you can. Even stupid little things like the way that the menu items animate when you mouse over them are the difference between a game feeling good to play and a game feeling like utter shit. I assume you're talking about shit like the number of pores visible on character's faces, but also like... if the game is selling itself as hyper-realistic and setting that expectation up front, then not meeting that expectation well is going to have a direct impact on the game feel. It's the difference between something like Red Dead Redemption 2 and almost all of the other AAA slop games from around that point in time.
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Also, when people complain about PS3/XBOX 360 era games looking ugly, it is because they do look ugly by the standards of their own hardware. Just look at all of the piss-coloured FPS games from 2008 and compare them to something like Little Big Planet or GTA IV (granted the latter suffered from frame rate issues on PS3 iirc) and it's like night and day.
Art direction and appropriate use of hardware/good awareness of its limitations (because I'll tell you what, almost all of those games didn't need dynamic lighting but use it anyway; and they almost all used bad implementations of it because the hardware often couldn't handle it well while also running the game at a consistent frame rate) really make such a difference.
Art direction and appropriate use of hardware/good awareness of its limitations (because I'll tell you what, almost all of those games didn't need dynamic lighting but use it anyway; and they almost all used bad implementations of it because the hardware often couldn't handle it well while also running the game at a consistent frame rate) really make such a difference.
I cant speak for everyone, but these things have never mattered to me
What are you talking about when you say "they don't matter to you" (to make sure I'm on the same page)? The RDR thing was just an example to pigoenhole it down the masturbatory hyperrealism route (I really don't give a fuck about open world/realistic AAA games for the most part), but setting realism aside, there are realistically a bunch of things going on visually that make 50%+ of the difference between whether doing/achieving a given thing in a video game is fun/engaging or not that have nothing to do with the actual gameplay itself that you might not be actively picking up on.
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I've never cared about graphics. ever.
I don't think video games are only a way to escape but nearly every video game, including the ones you mentioned, are examples of escapism. Yes, playing a horror game where you take on the role of a badass hero(ine) who fights terrifying Lovecraftian monstrosities without ever being in any actual danger is a form of 'escaping' the mundanity of the real world. Not every form of escapism has to be sunshine and rainbows and happiness.
If there are any video games that aren't examples of escapism, it's job simulators like Trucking/Farming Simulator or whatever, but even then how many people who play those games actually do those jobs in real life? If your real job is a boring 9-5 desk job, playing a truck simulator is still a form of escapism. I imagine not many people who actually do these things for a living spend their free time playing a simulated version of them. I'm sure as hell not about to play a game where I spend all my time cleaning a coal mine's worth of dust from PCs, reseating loose memory sticks, and explaining to customers that they broke 6 pins mashing their CPU into place and their motherboard is now basically unsalvageable and would be cheaper to replace.
A tangent on this I've been thinking of: despite being heavily inspired by the Alien series, I don't think Metroid is actually good horror movie material. Samus is too much of a superhero for her enemies to feel unstoppable.
Not true, actually. Stylized games are way more effort to make than hyper-realistic games. For most hyper-realistic games you can really just pay some guy to have his body mapped out/use pre-existing assets and have that be 3d animated (which most game engines have worked to make much easier). Stylized 3d models require a designated artist to make and spriting is even harder to do since you need to draw tons of positions for every character to make the motion fluid (not to mention everything needs to look cohesive outside of character sprites like foregrounds and backgrounds).
There's a reason most games are either 3d or use very simple sprites. As an example, fighting games have more or less completely switched to 2.5d (guilty gear uses cell-shading tricks) and the only fighting games that use 2d spritework are fast-paced sakuga games like uni/melty since they're faster paced and have less frames to draw out. Stylized 2d games were standard early on since there was no way to render 3d graphics efficiently on any device, let alone a video game console. Once 3d games were possible they immediately started becoming more realistic and peaked around 2025.
That's exactly what Silent Hill isn't. You play as a regular person at best, as a sad sack of shit at worst. You are largely helpless, uncomfortable and weak. There is some tranquility and beauty, but it's soaked in melancholy. Themes of depression, abuse, grief are all pillars of the franchise
So, if I just wanted to escape reality, why would I seek out something that's worse than my real life?
Other than being an Apple product, what's wrong with it? I've only ever used Windows devices because it seems like kind of a dice roll if video games will work on the Mac or not, and I don't really pay attention to tech product discourse, so I'm out of the loop here.
Mac is super expensive is really my big issue with it.
They're very expensive and very high-powered but for no actual reason. Imagine using a Chromebook with high specs but it costs $1400, would that be a good buy?
I have an $800 Gaming PC that can play just about any game, do any task quickly, the system boots up in 30 seconds, everything is clean, I can run anything I want on it. Why should anyone buy something that costs $600 more for something that can do less?
One could say it appeals more to people who are less familiar with computers but I don't see that vision. For one, because MacOS isn't actually that simple and the fact that a bajillion programs support Windows that don't support Mac means I think it'd be more complicated. Two, because a desktop computer shouldn't try to be extremely simple.
Unlike a phone, a computer is more particular in how you use it and I think more tech literacy is needed in general. iPhone didn't let people see their files for like 8 years, but you can't get away with that on a computer.
I just don't see what makes Mac a good purchase for just about anyone
The macs themselves are a huge waste of money but the reason macbooks are popular is because there really aren't a ton of good options for laptops in general. Pretty much any new laptop has glaring issues out of the box that reveal themselves after about a year. In that space macbooks are to some extent a good option as mac is a much lighter OS than windows is (especially compared to win11) and the specs aren't terrible for the price.
MacOS does have it's fair share of flaws, primarily regarding incompatibility with both software and hardware, but there are legitimate reasons to get their laptop. Obviously the best way to get laptops today is to get them refurbished, but even then macbooks (pretty much anything that doesn't use the proprietary apple chip which is before 2014 or 2015 iirc) are a solid option in that market too. There's also always the option of putting a linux distro on your macbook which helps get rid of the very clear downsides of macOS.
I have my own fair share of issues with the laptop market today (primarily regarding the whole anti-repair movement all the corporations have been doing) but apple is about equal to every other manufacturer there all things considered.
I've been using a laptop with Windows on it for years, and it has yet to reveal any major issues besides the usual Microsoft blues (fuck OneDrive). Granted, my machine was specifically advertised as a #gamer device, so I'd accept that it's more dire for people who aren't interested in that kind of thing.
I think the laptop is mostly p good (if a bit overpriced), I think the desktops are a bad buy 100% tho
yeah theres really no reason to get a mac when you can get a whole setup that costs 5-600 less and has better specs AND a graphics card
most poptarts are disgusting
i dont know how to describe it other than the "tart" doesn't taste like it's made of wheat; its more like it was glue mixed with wheat and pressed into little panels of mystery substance x tarts. not enough filling, and even when it is enough, most of the time it just tastes fake or just outright nasty. in particular, blueberry poptarts go in the bin
the WORST offense though? the frosting. i can even excuse the crumbling of the "x tart" from the back packaging; but when the frosting looks horrendous thats where I draw the line buddy. it just makes it all look more ingenuine than it already was; completely and utterly fake; rushed out to make money rather than make a quality product
ive found that offbrand toaster tarts are infinitely better albeit with their own issues, but I dont feel like I'm eating completely processed crap when I'm eating something that isnt "poptart". all you get from eating a poptart is the chemicals that those smart people scream down your throat not to eat, and disappointment when you open up the sleeve to find a crumbly mess of what once was a solid piece of poptart
i dont know how to describe it other than the "tart" doesn't taste like it's made of wheat; its more like it was glue mixed with wheat and pressed into little panels of mystery substance x tarts. not enough filling, and even when it is enough, most of the time it just tastes fake or just outright nasty. in particular, blueberry poptarts go in the bin
the WORST offense though? the frosting. i can even excuse the crumbling of the "x tart" from the back packaging; but when the frosting looks horrendous thats where I draw the line buddy. it just makes it all look more ingenuine than it already was; completely and utterly fake; rushed out to make money rather than make a quality product
ive found that offbrand toaster tarts are infinitely better albeit with their own issues, but I dont feel like I'm eating completely processed crap when I'm eating something that isnt "poptart". all you get from eating a poptart is the chemicals that those smart people scream down your throat not to eat, and disappointment when you open up the sleeve to find a crumbly mess of what once was a solid piece of poptart
Every so often, I get the inexplicable urge to eat one, and I am quickly reminded that it is a horrible mistake. I don't know why the urge keeps coming back.