Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’ve enjoyed brilliant games with rubbish graphics, like for instance Pleurghburg: Dark Ages. That was lots more fun than for instance Paradise. I agree that graphics can enhance a game but if the story or the characters don’t appeal to you graphics don’t help. They always come last IMO, even after sound.

adipocere - 02 August 2012 03:22 PM

What does everyone think of the explosion of these retro type games that keep coming out?
  Do they appeal to you? 
More to the point, do you feel that these types of games(with the deliberate use of poor graphics) that get glowing reviews are gaining an unfair advantage over games with quality graphics…keeping in consideration that the graphics technology (which frequently leads to interface issues etc) typically figures into reviews? 

Personally they hold no appeal for me. I don’t require fancy graphics, but I do think that art quality (effort) is half of the appeal of video games anyway, and visual immersion is really important. I also feel like the retro game fad is going to, at least for awhile, cause the adventure game genera to stagnate (imagine that!)just when it seemed to be gaining momentum again. I also think the easy street retro game fad will only discourage developers from putting in the effort of making high quality games.

I really am curious what everyone else thinks on the subject. 

You do have a point. Any game that attempts to look modern can expect to be judged very harshly if it has small faults (jerky animation, say) whereas games that wilfully employ a graphics style outdated by two decades (and in resolutions not really compatible with modern monitors no less(!), meaning they look gritty and out of focus) will be desribed as having ‘beautiful pixel art’. Nostalgia is the sole reason.

Personally, I am sick of these games and won’t play anymore of them. They really are an eyesore, in the most literal way: looking at them for any length of time really hurts my eyes. They look distorted (because they are). No-one without the bias of nostalgia could say they look attractive.

Do graphics matter in Adventure games? Damn right, they do. Without the beautiful artwork Syberia goes from being a 5 star game to a 3 star game. Can you imagine Riven with pixel graphics? No no. I want to explore attractive, exciting environments, not ones that look like they’re made from Lego.

People endlessly speculate as to why the adventure genre is not more popular - well, here’s one obvious reason: perhaps because so many of them look like crap? Perhaps because too many of them don’t even make the effort to keep up with technology?

I’m not saying games have to be 3D or anything like that, but it would help their commercial prospects if they didn’t look like they were made in the 1980s.

The genre will continue to be a niche, unsupported by big developers, until it stops behaving like the videogame equivalent of the Amish.

I don’t get the hate towards pixel graphics. I much prefer a well-made pixel game than a somewhat shitty 3D game, which there’s no lack of when it comes to the adventure genre. For example, who could honestly say Simon the Sorcerer got better once it moved to 3D?

It’s a stylistic choice really, and pixel graphics can be done in a bad way as well, but they can also look great. Just look at the platformer Fez, I love the pixel artwork there. The same applies to more regular drawn 2D and 3D, there are good and bad ways of doing it.

But hey, it sure is easier making good looking pixel-art, but why is that bad? Some lower budget games can either choose to look stylish in 8- or 16-bit, or with the same low budget end up looking horrible with rushed and bad 3D design. I much prefer the first in that case.

I might be stuck in the 80’s and be the gamer equivalent of the Amish, but I’ll keep on enjoying well-made games with pixel graphics, even if their existence angers cbman greatly :-)

The thing that bugs me isn’t the pixel art itself, it’s that these games usually look the same to me. The artistic style is harder to distinguish itself in a low-res game than a high res one, so games tend to look much the same. It doesn’t help when they are made with the same engine. No doubt someone will come along and mention Gemini Rue’s brilliant and unique style, but I don’t see it. It’s not that it looks ugly, just bland.

When you think about it, the graphic adventure is just a crippled text adventure, at least in terms of gameplay. It doesn’t have the detailed descriptions, range of actions and interactivity of text adventure, but the graphics look pretty so if you’re going to have them there you might as well make them the best they can look.

Iznogood - 02 August 2012 06:37 PM

I dont agree that retro style games with poor graphics have an unfair advantage, in fact i belive it is the other way around, that they have to prove they are great games despite the poor graphics…....

I guess that if you as a developer aren’t focused on the graphics, then you are free to focus more on the story and the actual gameplay, not to mention that these types of AG are useally made on a low budget, so if you spend half the budget on graphics, then there aren’t that much left for the actual game.

Now i would hate if all games used this retro style, but as long as it is the exception and not the rule, then it is ok with me.

I love to see state of the art graphics in a game but in a climate where developers who can give us more stunningly visual games are looking to kickstarter for funding to make them it’s not surprising that more ‘retro’ games are turning up. I agree Iznogood, there’s no way that games with poor graphics could possibly have an unfair advantage - who wants to play them over more realitic looking environments & characters! But at the same time - yes! developers working on limited budgets have to work a lot harder & actually draw you in at the beginning of a game to entice you to play more. Many of them particularly from developers like Wadget Eye games have done a great job of compensating for lesser graphics with wonderful story-telling, great voice acting & witty sharp dialogue. I’m not sure that there really is is a fad for retro games - just a needs must?

Well I don’t think there is a person that approves poor graphic. But how do you define “poor graphic”? I don’t think it has anything to do with the graphic style. The same goes about the time and effort that has been given.

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I’m sure it’s not only me who prefers the old visual style of this game, and it’s not only because of it’s gameplay. Now, I haven’t played lot of modern retro games so I don’t have a certain opinion about the whole “genre”. I just don’t mind it. I’ve only played the wadjet eye games, and so far i’m quite satisfied with the games both in their gameplay and visual presentation. I’m not nostalgic about the whole retro thing, but these games really look beautiful in their way. And I’m way more frustrated when I ran into a game with the claim of a very beautiful game and it turns out that everything else hardly passes as an adventure.

Interesting point about the focus of a game. little offtopic but I really find it distracting to concentrate on a certain thing (puzzle, dialogue, part of the story) if there is a huge variety of stuff appearing on the screen. I’ve noticed that in some games when there is an important dialogue for example there aren’t many animations happening and the whole scene is kind of still. And some other really gorgeous scenes are there mainly for the joy of the eye. It’s really about focus and balance

I don’t have a problem with retro game graphical style, but I don’t feel like it is somehow desirable in its own right, either.

A lot of people seem to be saying they’d rather have old-style graphics and a good game than snazzy, new graphics and a crappy game. Well, I think pretty much ANYBODY would agree to that. However, gameplay being equal, I prefer more polished graphics (read: higher resolution). For instance, I prefer the lower screen here:

More polished, though, does NOT, to me at least, mean photorealistic, or 3D. I VASTLY prefer the art style of Curse of Monkey Island to the 3D that infested later outings. Certain types of graphics work better with certain types of games. I just don’t see any special virtue in rendering whatever style of artwork you use in pixelated fashion. The resolution is, to me, a separate issue from the artistic style, in most cases.

@adipocere: Wow, what an ignorant position to take! I’m not sure why you imply that making low-res games requires little effort. Resonance, for example, was in development for many years. I was astounded by the amounts and quality of its animations. The reason it’s low resolution in the first place, I think, is mainly because of budget, not because of nostalgia. See it this way: it could have featured high-res graphics, with the same amounts of animations, but then it would have needed to be much shorter and feature far fewer locations.
If it were a nostalgia piece, it wouldn’t even be close to being an authentic one. For one, the graphics are 32-bit. They feature transparency. If it were going for retro, it would keep itself limited to an 8-bit palette, without transpareny. Also, the mass of animations and layers it uses would have been to much too handle for a computer back in the days, also probably too much to store. Apart from the low resolution, I think there’s little about Resonance I would call authentically retro.
But maybe you weren’t specifically thinking about Resonance. Maybe you thought about Sword & Sworcery instead, which also employs big pixels. Yet the game runs at an actually high resolution, and some elements, like the interface, gradients and background elements, like the lightning, are in this high resolution. So…it’s not very retro either! I think its creators just saw big pixels as a type of art they could make use of. You know, like mosaics?

If you think that recent low-res games were produced with little effort, then do you think this also of older games? Was Monkey Island just a work of little effort, too? If that’s the case then I’m sure you’ll be able to whip up some nice background screens in MSPaint just over the weekend, right?

Personally, I don’t think I’m nostalgic for the old days where all we had where those pixels you could count one by one. But it’s nice to have the choice today and to employ pixel art, just because or because of budgetary restraints. What’s the alternative, anyway? We wouldn’t have the Blackwell games, nor Gemini Rue or Resonance, if it weren’t for those chunky big blocky pixels. What a shame this would be!

I dare you to post your, at best, uninformed post on the AGS forums, with all your accusations that pixel art is low quality, ugly, and requires little effort. I’m sure they would be quite happy to hear that!

Was that in reply to me? I’m hoping not, and the timestamp makes it unlikely, but just thought I’d check to make sure…

Nah, it wasn’t. Made it clear now.

ozzie - 02 August 2012 07:39 PM

Resonance, for example, was in development for many years. I was astounded by the amounts and quality of its animations. The reason it’s low resolution in the first place, I think, is mainly because of budget, not because of nostalgia.

I re-played some of Resonance today with the commentary on. Just wanted to say that originally parts of the game were in a higher resolution in an older version of the AGS engine - the developers upgraded to a later version of the AGS engine at the expense of the higher resolution in order to be compatible with Steam one of their distribution outlets. Doesn’t make sense to me that an older version can give you better resolution than a newer version - some technical detail! Anyone who has the game can listen to what I heard!

I love retro-styled games. That’s not to say I don’t like other graphical styles, but using Wadjet Eye’s case I think the retro graphics suit the gameplay and atmosphere.

I honestly can’t imagine something like Gemini Rue being depicted any other way graphically. The older style allows artists to create detailed works while not spending exorbitant time and energy on more “modern” graphical styles.

Bottom line - gameplay and story matter most for adventure games. The graphical style can influence those, but often it should also serve those two components in the best way possible (which doesn’t necessarily mean the most technologically advanced way possible).