I just looked at the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R demo 5 mins ago. Hmmm... Also looked
at FAR CRY 2 demos earlier today. I see a pattern here. All i see is showcasing
for graphics and... well that's about it. I've not seen actual gameplay footage.
All I see it what happnes when you shoot a tree. And how realtime lighting & shadows
are cast, and all the occulsions,and volumetric lighting, dynamic sun shadows,
dynamic wet surfaces, and the new smoke, and the character skins, etc, etc, etc.
Cool, so now i know that wen I get the final release, I'll just go shoot some trees,
and watch night change to day

Come on! It's a tad boring - no sorry I mean it's f**king boring seeing all this pish
for every single new game that's comin out. I know that when I finally get to play
those new games, I'll be bored within hours, cos the devs has focused all their time
with all the fancy s**t. The element of strategy/survival, etc has been pushed to the
side. Don't get me wrong, I love gorgeous graphics, but I'm bored with all the
cheesy dynamic this and that.

prime example of this is Crysis :S

Personally, I wish no one bought Crysis. It was all about the graphics and it sold like hot cakes. As a result, the industry is stressing graphics and not much else. This is why I bought a Wii. XD

Well yea. That's the point of my thread. But if they can bind perfect gameplay & gorgeous
graphics together then they'll get the perfect niche in the market and keep it there.
I keep goin back to FarCry and gonna reinstall it again. I love that game. Who knows,
maybe FC2 will be the same as FarCry or maybe better??. But when it comes to
showcasing a game, I'd rather see some action in the game, and what I can expect when
i play, rather than focusing too much on trees swaying in the wind lol

Um, no they can't. Graphics take a crapload of work and so does gameplay. If they spend time on one, the other is going to suffer. Time is money and money is in short supply.

The problem is that over the last decade, the industry has learned that they can sell pretty pictures easily (kinda like the film industry) but it is much more difficult to sell a good plot. They therefore have pretty much given up on the latter in favor for the former. They have effectively followed the money and now there is a major and growing artistic void in the gaming industry.


FarCry was all about selling the Crytek engine and little else--kind of like Unreal Tournament.

I did say "but if they can..." i didn't say "they should combine graphics & gameplay".
Nothing's impossible. Have more dedicated teams then to get your objective goals.
I dunno?? I don't know how those industries work and how they gel it all together?
When I played FarCry, I was just getting into PC gaming (leaping over
from console to PC).
That to me, was like what the PS1 was when that first launched, so that game had me in
awe.Graphically and gameplay.

Tam the Bam said:
And my answer is they can't. It is one or the other. Very few publishers allow enough time and money to master both. I haven't played Grand Theft Auto IV yet but from what I have heard, it may be the only title to get damn close in recent memory.

thats why i love Blizzard games, they dont looks that great (see Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2) they aren't the most impressive but the gameplay is amazing, thats why people still play Starcraft 1 and Diablo 2.

Call of Duty 4 was a good example of utilizing both.

The ONLY problem with that game, it was too short, but so was Crysis.

"Shortness" is a product of spending too much time on other matters (graphics, audio, multiplayer, or plain ran out of money and development on the story got lopped off). Compare the length of gameplay of most modern games to that of like Mafia (2002) or the Earth 2150 trilogy (2000-2002). I still haven't beat the entire trilogy and Mafia takes days. Games prior to 2000 are obscenely long to today's standards like 7th Guest (1992), Doom (1993), Doom II (1994), SimIsle (1995), Streets of SimCity (1998), and Warzone 2100 (1999). I think, simply, priorities shifted.

Doom was made by four people back in 1992 and took about a year to make. Today, it's rare to see less than a dozen people staffed full time on a game and working for no less than two years on it. Not just programmers either; most staff these days are artists (level, graphic, model). The "game" has changed probably irreversibly. People now expect to be visually awed and few would welcome a return of the Duke Nukem and Commander Keen days. XD

FordGT90Concept reminisces.

This is why I like my 360. It's primarily focused on the gameplay (highlight: consoles). I don't have to update my system every 8 months, I just need to buy the game and I'm good to go. The developers like to make a good looking game, they like to give it plot. They try to sell it obviously, but they do so through what's the most fun for the gamer, not, "oo, look at me, I make pretty colors." There are some like that, but they're clearly not played as much. Yes I like good looking graphics, but really, I'm looking to play a game that doesn't leave my eyes sore, not trying to play my way through a movie production.

Just my two cents.

Ken's Labyrinth....that was fun, and long. Dangerous Dave 3 was also so damn good. I miss those days.

*Google's for download*

I found Dangerous Dave 3, but not gonna work on Vista...any ideas?

I think everybody has known for a while that gameplay is more important than graphics ... obviously a good combination is always nice though.

Games with nice graphics and s**t gameplay get played through maybe once, then never again. Games with average graphics and outstanding gameplay get played over and over again.

Hey does anyone remember Return Fire?

THAT GAME WAS AWESOME!!!!

FordGT90Concept said:

I don't know what's up with some people always stomping Crysis but I on the other hand couldn't wait to buy the game when it first came out. I had a 7600gt when I first bought it and it ran like crap but it soon changed when I bought the 8800gt and I absolutely loved Crysis from the first level all the way to the last one, just doing everything I could imagine is enough for me to have a great experience. The visuals also helped. They were jaw dropping.

Tam the Bam said: [quote] I just looked at the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R demo 5 mins ago. Hmmm... Also looked
at FAR CRY 2 demos earlier today. I see a pattern here. All i see is showcasing
for graphics and... well that's about it. I've not seen actual gameplay footage.

Well most of the time they intent to show the engine capabilities, showing too much gameplay will ruin the game for anyone wanting to be surprised. But if you wish to see some then look for the videos with gameplay in the title

I saw a demo showing the gameplay of Far Cry 2 in a website that showed the gameplay being very intense and fun. The guy has malaria If I could recall and you have to find sedatives to control from time to time, instead of jungles in the pacific you get to play the deserts in Africa which I saw to be very impressive. The combat is just like in farcry, the enemies will be alerted if they hear a gunshot and will run to get some weapons and mount their jeeps searching for you and they interact with each other just like in Farcry. What I found very cool was that when you get hurt by a bullet badly you can find a place to use your knife and carve out the bullet from the spot where is at. In the video they showed him carving the bullet out of his leg but that was the only animation they had at the time since it was in very early development when I saw it. Other things they showed was of course the engine capabilities which were the night and day cycles, volummetrics etc. They also have the fauna of the designated area and you could see rhinos and some giraffes running when they heard a gunshot. But what I found to be very awesome was the fact that you could burn down a very large area with just a little fire, since the wind would spread the fire across trees it would burn until it has nothing. I think they showed an example but I don't know how far you can go with burning things.

I'll try to find it and post it here as soon as I can.

*EDIT*
I found a couple of videos with some gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU7lyFmgeFg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-A8mEgWNcg

I'm not sayin Farcry2 or STALKER's gonna be crap or anything. All I'm saying is
showcasing is a bit mediocre now - to me anyways.

Well, I have to say, I thought FarCry gameplay was crap. Seriously crap. Run around a corner, shoot a bad guy. That was it.

Crysis, I actually liked, not the best game ever, and really only a GFX showcase, but I liked it

However, there have been a fair few good games released in recent [enough] times that have both GFX & gameplay, but I havent seen them mentioned yet.

Prey
FEAR
BF2 (thrown in as at the time, those GFX on such a large MP game were fantastic - and gameplay is great - without the hackers at least)
BF2142 - as above IMO
BioShock
World in Conflict
Supreme Commander
Team Fortress
HL2 - Episodes (although a bit monolithic styled gameplay, but still fun)
Portal - GFX not great, but good enough with the gameplay added to be included on the list.
Oblivion

And I'm sure there's lots more I'm leaving out.

They were all AAA titles, sold millions, and continue to be popular.

So to answer what has become of games - quite a lot I'd say.

I'll agree to those games you mentioned Dublin. I have all those games, and that's
games from the past.But I'm on about how devs just want to showcase the new titles in
development. And like I said, I moved over from consoles to PC and Farcry was the first
proper game I played, well that and HL. So it was a new experience for me maybe
not for you. And I liked it

I am so p**sed off with the PC at the minute, I can bearly get myself to turn it on. The whole PC games industry is in such slow down and dev's are not giving 100% and the reason...Piracy...yep that old chestnut.

You see statistics show that the sale of GPU's are up on a massive scale...but sales of PC titles are dropping fast...so if xtreme gamers like you and me are buying 300/400 dollar/euro GPUs why are we not spending money on PC games to show off the hardware. WE DONT HAVE TOO.!!!

Because we are ripping the games off instead of buying them....so devs are focusing more on consoles and are not staying true to the PC anymore...they are multiporting titles and if we are lucky we get a bad port of a good console game.

Even the most anticipated game ever GTA IV suffers from the very argument TAM has made UBER graphics and realism but the gameplay is so old and boring at this stage...levels are so old same old missions. It is no where near as good as VICE CITY.

I am playing MASS EFFECT at the minute and it is a very good title...it has everything a game needs.

Oh yea I just started playing Mass Effect. Have to say that is quite an extrordinary
game. I'm enjoying it and also struggling at it!