Gadgets and Gaming

It’s no secret that video games now look good. Of course they do. It’s 2010, right? We’re officially in the future now. I’m actually a little bit surprised that we don’t have 3D holo-games in our living room by now. Somebody must be asleep at the wheel, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that graphical technology is now a mere stone’s throw away from being photorealistic.

 

But the thing is, we’re wasting this amazing technology. We now have televisions capable of producing resolutions that would’ve made people twenty years ago wet themselves, and what are we doing with it?

We’re making our games look, literally, like crap.

Look at games that have been produced in the last three or four years. If you take any title that sold at least moderately well on the PS3, 360 or PC (the three platforms most capable of graphical beefiness), odds are the game features one or more burly Space Marine meatheads in big suits of power armour going around with ridiculously disproportionate weaponry capable of doing very nasty things, and commiting genocide on legions of baddies, human or otherwise. Plot cliché aside, there is potential for some amazing design to come to the fore with this sort of thing.  And what do we end up with?

 

Now, here’s a little test. How many colours can you name in this screenshot that aren’t named in the title of this article? “Moss green”? “Rust”? “Dirt”? OK, that’s fine. But where’s the actual colour? Where’s the vibrancy, the delicious jaw-dropping visuals? This is supposed to be one of the pinnacles of graphical achievement on console platforms, and instead it looks like we’re playing with something that was dredged up from a riverbed. And any one of the poor scrubs like myself that’s ever played Gears of War on a standard definition TV can tell you that from more than ten feet away, the varying shades of mud on display just smudge together into something indistinct and uninteresting.

Then there’s the flipside – the games that try to be visually impressive by having too much graphical technowizardry on display. The kind of games that vomit bloom and dynamic lighting in our faces and dangle various other shiny bells and whistles in front of us to try and detract from the fact that the gameplay, plot and overall game performance is pretty subpar.

 

You would think, then, that despite our monolithic achievements in the areas of graphical excellence that making a game that looks good to play as well as feels good is a bit of a Holy Grail; something that gets lost in between the channels of designers and programmers; the kind of thing every developer dreams of creating but is sadly nothing more than a theory, a dream. I mean, if the the brawniest consoles and computers on the market push themselves to the extreme and still can’t come out with a gaming gem, who can? Who?

 

Yep, that’s right. If you want to see what games are still going forward in terms of design, you most often have to look at the ones that are taking a step back from the cutting edge. I’m sure you’re well aware by now that the sames of the Wii since its release put its big-brother consoles to shame, and that its handheld older brother (the DS), dwarfs even those of Nintendo’s living room make-yourself-look-like-a-twat machine.

“But why,” I hear you cry, “why do these things sell so well? I’m a hardcore gamer, and I know that Wii and DS games look like something that was developed ten years ago! How can something with such outdated visuals be dominating the market the way they are?!  It doesn’t make any sense! I want my mommy!” Well calm yourself, gentle reader, and I shall explain. You see, the reason that Wii and DS games are as successful as they are is because, despite not pushing any boundaries, they still look good. And they feel great. And more than anything, they’re fun. And it’s not just Nintendo games, games from other platforms that take a step back from graphical excellence in favour of good design are also doing great.

Don’t believe me? Here, have a look at some of the more successful games of last year or two:

 

 

 

Have you seen what all these games have in common? They’re all amazingly simple, yet amazingly good-looking. And amazingly fun, which is what it’s about. These are games, after all, not tech demos. These are the things you can lose yourself in for hours just because of how simplistically appealing they are. If the graphical big-hitters are the ‘roid-munching jocks that are overcompensating for something, these games are the quiet, friendly guy that sits in the corner that everyone likes. These are what games were meant to be.