Modern Games - Dark Grimey Cluttered Boring Crap

[prehensile]

Take doom 2, Space Quest, Alone in the dark... Loads of atmosphere and brooding. prince of persia, deus ex, HL, carmageddon, alice...

Nowadays we have ut3, doom3, quake4, witcher, gears of war, space merchant games with 65 keys for different fuctions. etc etc.

the only way to make games with masses of graphics evolve slowly enough around you, so that you can see the graphics at all, is by spacing them out so that when you run, it doesnt flick past you in a blur...you want giant citadels with overhanging cornices and huge archaic statues, volcanoes, valleys, canyons, that you have to treck through. clean cut bright magnificent ginormous sci fi and gothic sceneries. with weird critters about here and there but not running at you in hordes in every scene.

the massive detail abilities of gfx cards today makes the developers cram lots and lots of details into grey formless corridors with no overall lines or color contrast, the shader effects are gaudy and stuffed every nook and cranny so that games look fuzzy and akward, especially doom 3. theres so much detail that there is no big picture.

theres this obsession with silly graphics portraits having conversations with you, no one was ever very impressed with these silly face moments, so why do all games feel they have to make them the central cornerstone.
they should make caricatures more than reality.

i say look at good adventure film settings like star wars, indiana jones, dune, bill and ted, james bond, theres always plenty of really nice outdoors settings with massive colorful geometries and nice sounds...

its constant hack and slash gore today, never any searching for goals in really amazing levels, it's all about killing loads of monsters and having no time to take in an otherworldly artistic graphics creation of some kind.

not dinky advanced bitmapping corridors that look like ten gaudi creations on top of each other, silly expensive head moddeling with dodgy voiceovers that create a pathetic atmosphere...okay mass effect and far cry have got some nice atmosphere, but i want descent, serious sam, sacrifice, doom, something pretty to daydream in and to get lost in? what games can you really get carried away with nowadays????

[kalniel]

I don't agree.

Your post suggests to me you only ever play one genre of PC games and you're ignoring all the fantastic stuff out there

[gtech]

so you want big sunny games them??

You need to go through Condemned 2, i think that'll be right up your street *snigger*

[Salazaar]

Crysis, CoD4, Stalker, Oblivion.

you want giant citadels with overhanging cornices and huge archaic statues, volcanoes, valleys, canyons, that you have to treck through.

While that's nice the first time round, trekking through vast amounts of scenery (however nice) does get tedious and doesn't really add to the replayability of a game.

[prehensile]

doesnt add vast amounts, but some of it, it does if the scenery and gameplay is designed like a map...sacrifice or quake 3 had maps much more original, play oriented and fun than ut3, in fact q3 has years more durability that ut3 maps do. carmageddon and deus ex, sorry neither of thise were dark grimey nor had monster in your face the whole game but both were vastly popular.

quake 3 had color, form, bold lines, whereas bitmap heavy gorefest has bugger all color or shape. painkiller rocks though imho.

i suspect i am just accustomed to occasionally playing better games and simply cant lower my expectations to flawed gamepeplay of factory box games.

[gtech]

To me Q3 is one of the best games ever, but there are sunny games out there if thats what you want. It seems that your losing out because of your high bright colourful bold expectations

[Salazaar]

doesnt add vast amounts, but some of it, it does if the scenery and gameplay is designed like a map...sacrifice or quake 3 had maps much more original, play oriented and fun than ut3, in fact q3 has years more durability that ut3 maps do. carmageddon and deus ex, sorry neither of thise were dark grimey nor had monster in your face the whole game but both were vastly popular.

quake 3 had color, form, bold lines, whereas bitmap heavy gorefest has bugger all color or shape. painkiller rocks though imho.

i suspect i am just accustomed to occasionally playing better games and simply cant lower my expectations to flawed gamepeplay of factory box games.

While I do appreciate your point about having nice scenery in general, I think you're being hugely unfair about a large number of modern games out there that manage to convey their atmosphere very successfully. Have you tried Bioshock yet?

[directhex]

Game + Life Review (2/10): BLUE SKY IN GAMES CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED

[kalniel]

Which shade of brown does the OP prefer in Q2?

[Virtual Monkey]

To be honest I had a bit of trouble understanding your post, but are you lamenting the lack of atmosphere in games?

Half Life 2 and the susbsequent episodes all have bags of atmosphere: most of the story is told through minor details in the environment, which I think is brilliant. Conversely, Oblivion was pretty superflous in terms of scenery: it had loads of the "otherworldly graphics" you talk about with nice hills and forests and stuff, but very liitle to do in comparison with how much empty land there was to travel across. Sunrises were nice though.

I do sort of agree that there's a trend in gritty realism in modern games, especially RPGs and FPSs, which might be what you mean by the bump mapping. I'd like to see some more variation in term of art style, although I really liked the over-the-top chunky feel of the Gears of War universe.

I was playing the first Broken Sword yesterday and remembered how much I loved the 2D cartoon graphics. They create such a cool atmosphere and don't really age either.

[Virtual Monkey]

Also, buy a Wii.

[prehensile]

do you get my point about too much detail in a small space and no quest type games, save for hl2. doom had tons of hidden corridors and secrets, what game has endless hidden rooms nowadays? any action flying games that have arcade style?

HL1 the most popular fps of all time, stuffed with scientists, ordinary workers, color...have a look at mass effect, the level design is totally original for a dx9 game.

stalker is abit cluttered and full of ugly gfx shapes, it's stuck in autumn or something. and there isnt really an atmosphere of secrecy and clifhanging suspense. it's all GI i'm a marine stuff.

[prehensile]

I was playing the first Broken Sword yesterday and remembered how much I loved the 2D cartoon graphics. They create such a cool atmosphere and don't really age either.

cartoon games are really good, artwork has much more potential for humour and unreality and stylised worlds than trying to show off an engine without a plot, and cartoon games can be pretty dark like "another world"

the whole concept of cartoons is trying to capture and crystallyse atmosphere without getting caught up in formlessness and blandness...

games are at best a kind of caricature of a world with a sense of space and tension, silence and events, not necessarily all out combat and masses of shader effects and cream pie on every wall. i prefer clearingout a level of bad guys than besically being pray to lots of guly monsters jumping out of corners on top of me, at least for 50 percent of games.

[educatedfool]

Stalker.

Probably one of the best atmopsheres I have ever seen in a game

Edit: Although it does have a dark, creepy feeling. Give it a go though.

Serious Sam 1st and 2nd Encounter are 2 of the best games I've played

[Salazaar]

games are at best a kind of caricature of a world with a sense of space and tension, silence and events, not necessarily all out combat and masses of shader effects and cream pie on every wall. i prefer clearingout a level of bad guys than besically being pray to lots of guly monsters jumping out of corners on top of me, at least for 50 percent of games.

Sounds to me like you have a problem with the technical design of games rather than the artistic. Try playing through the first Prypiat/Chernobyl level of COD4, there's only about 6 bad guys to kill in the whole level but there's a hel of a lot of atmosphere!

[mediaboy]

Oblvion is brilliant for tourism... and instant travel cuts down on travel time for those that don't really like tourism.


I don't really play many other FP games though.. older strategy games are my friend!