Graphics: How important is it in a game?

[Westlo]

I'll take better graphics most of the time, its hard to play any of the older SF II's and Alpha/Zero series after seeing the gorgeous animation in 3rd Strike.

[Blackbeard D. Kuma]

Gameplay is paramount in a video game. Everything else is secondary to it.

[Xion Valkyrie]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Style and atmosphere are much more important than bleeding-edge graphics that make a Radeon 5870 1GB GDDR5 video card cry tears of blood.

Already this thread has practically invalidated itself, since many posters have mentioned old games as having "good graphics." They did, for their time, but they don't anymore. So obviously graphics aren't an issue, because style, atmosphere, story and gameplay overcome the fifteen-year-old graphics engine.

Note I'm currently playing Fallout 2 for the umpteenth time, and it has pretty dated graphics even for its time of release. It's still one of my favorite CRPGs of all time.

2D Graphics age really well, but 3D doesn't. Tried replaying FF7 a couple years back, and really couldn't get in to it again, whereas I'm fine with SNES games and sprite based graphics.

[chikorita157]

Take Audiosurf for example... It have simple graphics (despite what graphics mode you have it on, although the premium graphics mode looks nice), the game is mostly successful because of it's gameplay and Audiosurf isn't a intensive game.

I don't have any problems with the older graphics from the old games... but bad controls are a problem and it seems that most of the Wii games are at fault with bad controls and gameplay from the large number of shovelware.

[Von Himmel]

There's some game that while you hate the gameplay, the graphic is so gorgeous that made you want to play it more and more. So yeah, I think it's quite important for a game. It may give us some boost so that we would play it more and more.

[kk2extreme]

tetris is still my all time favorite , and the graphic is nothing to be proud of...

but anyways, good graphic does not mean anything if the gameplay is trash. nowadays many people will look at graphic first for the decision for buying a new game. This includes me as well , sad to say

[pk116]

Graphics that were realistic were always novel when they weren't. When they started to be no one wanted to turn back--now they really are, but there's less to look forward to and they cost too much to make. I'd rathe retrain myself to enjoy something like Solitaire and progress from there. Unreal looks pretty impressive after Duck Hunt.

[NorthernFallout]

As long as the graphics are enough to immerse me into the gameworld, it doesn't have to be top-end. Stability and performance comes first, although I don't mind some glorious lightning or shadows.

For example, STALKER has never run on my PC with dynamic lightning, hence I can only play with static. Yet, while it loses some atmosphere, the game does it so good anyway it almost doesn't matter. Same with Bad Company 2, where Low settings are fine enough, even though at a distance things look ugly. I can have it at medium, but certain situations makes it hack badly. Both of these games requires higher performance for being FPS, too.

And while consoles are certain to fit the GFX criteria, they are often, through my experience, at their limits. Having a game optimized for PC is always better than the same on console.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by Xion Valkyrie

2D Graphics age really well, but 3D doesn't. Tried replaying FF7 a couple years back, and really couldn't get in to it again, whereas I'm fine with SNES games and sprite based graphics.

I'm not going to agree with this completely. I do agree that sprite-based games age much better than their poly-model counterparts, but Final Fantasy 7 is a really bad example.

Yes, Final Fantasy VII looks fucking horrible. That's because--guess what--it looked horrible even when it was released. It wasn't the limitations of the graphics engine, it was poor art design decisions (the Popeye-armed SD figures when out of combat, for one) that made the game ugly. Square-Enix wasn't ready for 3D, even if the technology was.

Freespace 2, a 3D space sim from nine years ago, still looks amazingly impressive, even without the fan-made high-res texture pack.

There are a lot of older 3D games that still look really good, even on the Playstation. For a Square Enix example, I still think the original Parasite Eve looks quite pretty. But Front Mission 3 looks pretty awful compared to its only-a-few-years-newer sequel, Front Mission 4. That's largely because FM3 had shitty graphics even at its time and FM4 had much improved graphics, even for its time.

Originally Posted by Flyvedelta

There's some game that while you hate the gameplay, the graphic is so gorgeous that made you want to play it more and more. So yeah, I think it's quite important for a game. It may give us some boost so that we would play it more and more.

Yeah, except the amazing graphics of Crysis don't make up for the fact that it's barely even a game, barely more than a tech demo. I'd rather play Half-Life 2 than bother with Crysis.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by chikorita157

Take Audiosurf for example... It have simple graphics (despite what graphics mode you have it on, although the premium graphics mode looks nice), the game is mostly successful because of it's gameplay and Audiosurf isn't a intensive game.

I'm not sure if the friend who showed me audiosurf was running any graphics packs at the time, but I distinctly remember thinking the art motif seemed like it wouldn't have been out of place in the later episode of Gurren Lagann.

Also, my friend demoed it by hooking his PC up to my 42 inch HDTV... and I actually found the result somewhat disorienting if I sat too close. Bit of a strange experience for me since I played a lot of Descent as a kid and therefore thought I wasn't prone to that kind of thing.

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Yeah, except the amazing graphics of Crysis don't make up for the fact that it's barely even a game, barely more than a tech demo. I'd rather play Half-Life 2 than bother with Crysis.

I would never consider Crysis in the same league as Half Life 2, I'm have trouble seeing the game as "barely more than a tech demo". I don't just like Crytek games because the graphics and huge levels immerse me in the game, I like them because those huge levels give me a lot more freedom in terms of how I want to approach my objectives and what tactics I use to complete them than typical FPSes do. Granted, FPS/RPG crosses also often grant this sort of freedom, but they often are paced slower as well, and sometimes I actually want a fast paced game

That said, I consider Far Cry a better game than Crysis because it had a longer, more challenging campaign. I would also consider it more technically impressive than Crysis after compensating for the fact it came out three and a half years earlier. Crysis felt a lot like Far Cry and Oblivion in terms of how immersive the graphics were, but Far Cry was a big step up from other games I had seen at the time.

[synaesthetic]

Descent... now that title brings back some fond memories.

[stpehen]

Only important in terms of how well it is integrated into the gameplay and how well it represents the aesthetic of the overall package. I generally don't have a problem with less realistic or detailed graphics as long as they fit with the game and serve its ends. You don't have to look far to see examples of the triumph of style over "quality" (whatever that may be to the one defining it: resolution, # of textures, polygon count, effects)... Braid, Okami, Little King's Story, Odin Sphere, Katamari, and so on. The technical ability of the team to execute things properly will always be a factor in the success of the presentation, but I think now more than ever the quality of the design and ideas is paramount.

With the release of games like Uncharted 2 the industry is starting to reach an area of diminished returns wherein attempting to improve even further on the highest-quality graphics and processing involves astronomical costs for only modest or even unnoticeable improvements.

[HayashiTakara]

It all depends on the game and whether the style fits or not.

A lot of realistic styled games use way too much specular lighting for my tastes. But overall, I don't really care much if the graphics are epically awesome so as long as it isn't PS1 / N64 era bad.

[Bassoonicmayhem]

I'd say it's important but at the same time not. A game can be good without fabulous graphics, but I'm not going to lie, if a game looks pretty (and I don't know much about it to begin with) I may be tempted to rent it. At the same time, if I have been wanting to play a game for a while and know that the graphics aren't top notch, I'll still play it with as much or even more intensity and enthusiasm than a game with above average graphics.

Still, if the gameplay is wonderful I don't care about the graphics. I hook up my Nintendo 64/Super Nintendo and plug in a Gameboy game just as much as I play something like Fallout 3 (which I love ) or Soul Calibur 4. Playing the Nintendo 64 and Gameboy games never gets old for me. That doesn't mean that games nowadays should revert back to these ways, but should get the hierarchy of game design right.

I think that the story should come first, then gameplay and finally graphics or at least try to have a happy cohesion of all of those qualities (which some games have done wonderfully.) I don't think you need graphics so realistic that you feel you could actually walk into your television; I believe that there needs to be boundaries. I think company's are too worried about graphics than overall gameplay/story. Sometimes, it feels that there's this lack of cohesion or really seems like they didn't try to make everything just right.

What I've noticed lately is that games are more graphic oriented and concerned with having smooth controls than having a really good story, but I'm not saying that for all games. Bioshock (1 and hopefully2), Uncharted 1 and 2, (for the fans) Modern Warfare 2 (I know it's short but apparently in depth; I'd only know from what my brother has told me), Fable 1 and 2, ext. are examples of really good games that have done pretty well in all three categories. Some aren't supposed to have in depth stories like Soul Calibur 4 and Street Fighter 4 so I find that it's okay for them to stick to what they already know, but beef up the graphics and make it more aesthetically pleasing. I mean, why screw up what's already good?

Okay, sorry for the wall of text, but this is how I felt when I came across this topic and had only planned to put the first paragraph. I got too excited.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Descent... now that title brings back some fond memories.

Yes, the world needs more 6DOF (six degrees of freedom) shooters. Now that Interplay is actually running again, there's the occasional rumour that they'll revive a few old IPs - including Descent.

I'd be up for it, especially to see whether playing the game on a nice widescreen LCD makes the game more disorienting than playing it on a 15 inch CRT. Would need to get a new stick though... current PC doesn't have a gameport for my Gravis Blackhawk.

(Descent on a 90mhz Pentium might have been my first encounter with a 3D game. Would have been around eight at the time. Although it's possible that it might have been Tie Fighter instead.)