Someone please kill Cliffy B

[Squirly]

Oh God, please shut up you walking turd.

On the subject of next-gen consoles:

They need to damn near render Avatar in real time, because I want it and gamers want it-even if they don't know they want it.

Because as we all know, better graphics = better game. Right?

Guys?

....

I really can't stand this idiot. Am I alone in this? Why are people like him pushing graphics over everything while also claiming to be speaking for us. You're not, Cliffy. You're just right up there with the idiot that claims that games can't have an emotional impact like movies because they can't render human faces 100% correctly yet. **** THAT. There are a ton of games out there that got a mountain of emotions out of people with things like story and plot and by being generally just fun. None of those had anything to do with graphics. Your awesome graphics make up about 10 minutes of "wow, that looks cool" in a 10 hour stretch of gaming. After that it's business as usual and if your game only has shiny shiny pixels going for it we are going to ignore it and probably forget about it in less than a year. Crysis 2 is pretty and it has some great things going for it, but no one is going to talk about it in 5 or 10 years time other than how it pushed the graphical envelope. A bit. Are they going to look back at it with tears in their eyes like people today still think about Fallout 1? Final Fantasy 7? Will Unreal be re-released in 10 years time with awesome graphics because people give a ****? No, it won't, you dumb, retarded, mountain of steaming ****. Because, as a game, it wasn't all that great. It was just pretty.

I hate you Cliffy B. You make up a large chunk of what is wrong with this industry. Die in a fire.

[/rant]

[Zoop]

Heh, I lost all respect for this guy the day he said Mirror's Edge is bad for not having enough pew-pew bits.

I'm not really sure why anyone puts any stock in anything he says.

[echo]

I don't really care what he says even if he is a decent developer. I lost most of the respect for him after the 8/10 Gears 3 fiasco.

But I loved Unreal . Mostly for the guns and the atmosphere though.

[Zoop]

I don't really care what he says even if he is a decent developer. I lost most of the respect for him after the 8/10 Gears 3 fiasco.

Oh my. I wasn't even aware of that. Complaining about an 8/10? Strange world we live in. :P

But I loved Unreal . Mostly for the guns and the atmosphere though.

Unreal was pretty awesome. Despite what some people might say, I actually really liked the story and the setting. I don't know if it's just my nostalgia speaking, but some of the levels were simply awesome. I'm actually a bit disappointed that I didn't snag the Unreal bundle in the Steam Summer Sale.

[Squirly]

I'll give props to Unreal, especially for it's levels. Never liked the engine though, despite the fact that it ended up used in some of the best games ever (like Deus Ex). And will we look back on it the same way we look back at the real classics? Or rather, do we? As I see it, it's biggest legacy is birthing a monster.

[blesner]

Oh God, please shut up you walking turd.

On the subject of next-gen consoles:



Because as we all know, better graphics = better game. Right?

Guys?

....

I really can't stand this idiot. Am I alone in this? Why are people like him pushing graphics over everything while also claiming to be speaking for us. You're not, Cliffy. You're just right up there with the idiot that claims that games can't have an emotional impact like movies because they can't render human faces 100% correctly yet. **** THAT. There are a ton of games out there that got a mountain of emotions out of people with things like story and plot and by being generally just fun. None of those had anything to do with graphics. Your awesome graphics make up about 10 minutes of "wow, that looks cool" in a 10 hour stretch of gaming. After that it's business as usual and if your game only has shiny shiny pixels going for it we are going to ignore it and probably forget about it in less than a year. Crysis 2 is pretty and it has some great things going for it, but no one is going to talk about it in 5 or 10 years time other than how it pushed the graphical envelope. A bit. Are they going to look back at it with tears in their eyes like people today still think about Fallout 1? Final Fantasy 7? Will Unreal be re-released in 10 years time with awesome graphics because people give a ****? No, it won't, you dumb, retarded, mountain of steaming ****. Because, as a game, it wasn't all that great. It was just pretty.

I hate you Cliffy B. You make up a large chunk of what is wrong with this industry. Die in a fire.

[/rant]

I will torture him happily but you will have to finish him off :D.

His constant insults at PC gamers really offends me, especially since I have bought(Day 1 buy) every single one of his PC titles

I am going to happily make his next cross platform title the first ever game that I pirate/download(But like an ass I will probably end up buy it).

[.exe]

Squirly, you're clearly upset so I don't want to **** you off even more, but may I try and provide a counter-point?

Firstly, I fully agree with anyone and everyone who maintains that gameplay rules all. It does, no question. But at the same time, this is a technology-driven industry. It's natural to want and to expect progress in a palpable way, and one of those palpable ways is to push the envelope visually.

Even Avatar's big selling point was how incredible the technology was driving the movie. It allowed for a fantasy world that was more likelife than anything that had been done before. Can it be argued that Avatar would not have been nearly as successful at the box office without those incredible visuals? I think so.
It was a good movie anyway, but the reason it became the largest grossing movie of all time was because all that incredible rendering glory.

I don't see what's so wrong with liking incredible looking games. I can't help but marvel at games like Crysis, Metro or Rage from a visual standpoint. It's amazing to me. Maybe it's just me, but I take screenshots all the way through games, so that I can go back and marvel at their prettiness later. It takes immense resources to achieve these levels of visual fidelity, and an amazing amount of manhours. I can appreciate that. Hey, I'm an unashamed graphics whore.*

Maybe it's just me, but I think there is a bit of a stereotype that has come about, in the sense that if a game looks amazing, it somehow translates to it having shoddy gameplay, or that the gameplay wasn't among the list of priorities.

A classic example of this is Crysis, where the accusation levelled at the game by many was that it looked great, but was a bog-standard shooter, or worse, a glorified tech demo.
I have always vehementy disagreed on both counts, and I think anyone who played the game with a bit of imagination would agree. Granted, the visuals did become the big talking point, but it was a damn fine video game besides the prettiness.

Incredible visuals allow for more immersive experiences, by and large. Metro pulled me right into that dimly-lit, gloomy world with it's incredible light sourcing, it's amazing realisation of the monsters, the people living in the metro and the world in general. I felt like I was there. There are moments that are literally breathtaking in that game and that's because the visuals allowed me to experience what the artist's impression of that particular scene may be. They were actually able to render exactly what was in the artist's mind. I hope that makes sense.
Rage is another game that had amazing visuals, and it complemented the art direction beautifully. Unfortunately the game was flawed on many levels, and it will rightly not be talked about in years to come as a great game. But who knows? Maybe Rage II will rectify the flaws, and we'll have a great game that is also a technical masterpiece.

Whether we like to admit it or not, ever more advanced technology allows for more freedom, more immersion and more realism. It's not purely about the graphics, but about the realisation of the world in general. Look at how stiffly characters walked and moved in old games, for instance. I love Half-Life, but I had to stifle a laugh playing HL I again, watching the characters all walking around like they had carrots stuck up firmly up their bums.
They moved (and looked) like some badly drawn cartoon. It was an immersion breaker, sorry to say. It's still a great game mind you, but that level of visual fidelity would be scorned today. Can you imagine the outrage if that were a modern game?

So far, each new generation has brought about an increase in rendering power. How much fun would games be today if they still all looked like they did on the Atari 2600? The 48K Spectrum? Even if there was an interest, how long would that interest last before people would be bored out of their skulls?
I know it's all about the gameplay, but I'm trying to illustrate a point.

Does that mean that PS3 games are automatically better than PS1 games simply because they look better? Hell no. But increased rendering power has brought about a widening of ideas. An Oblivion, a Skyrim, a GTA (in it's 3D guise) simply would not be possible on much older hardware. As much as I love 2D platformers or top-down shooters, the added power brought about a new dimension and hence a new way of experiencing games.

Again, it's only natural for people to continually wonder what's over the horizon, to explore new possibilities. To want more and better of what we've already got, or had.
One quantifiable and measurable way of doing so is to increase rendering power, to make worlds where hidious jaggies no longer exist, where trees popping up in front of my nose no longer exist, where awkward character movement and purposefully exaggerrated facial expressions no longer exist, where pipes and tyres are not octagonal but are actually round, where writing on a sign is clear and crisp, and not a blur or a smudge, and that sort of thing.
To many that may seem frivolous, petty. But incremental improvements to all of these shortcomings which still exist in many modern games, help bring us closer to that point where there are no longer immersion breakers, or where a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is no longer required.

To reiterate, gameplay is king. But what I find quite ironic about it is that if anything, it's the gameplay in most games that has remained static for a long, long time now. Way too long. There haven't been any groundbreaking advancements that I can tell, in the gameplay arena, for absolute ages.
In some cases, and this is just my opinion, modern gameplay elements like quicktime events and regenerating health have ruined gameplay. I don't know if quicktime events can technically even be called gameplay. Regenerating health is just a way of making bad players seem better than they are. It's cheap, and inhibits the development of real skill.
I miss healthpacks. :(
It's not so much about actually being good, but making players look good.

But the basic point is that gameplay, while king, has probably evolved slower than any other element comprising a game. Perhaps because it's quite an abstract concept in many ways, hard to nail down.
But still, AI remains -at best - rudimentary in most titles. To this day, HL has better AI than most modern games. The level of interaction with the game world remains minimal in most titles. To this day, HL2 has better and more immersive world interaction than most modern games. That game is 8 years old!
Puzzles that used to abound in games like Soul Reaver, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil are all but forgotten in today's games. (One of the reasons I'm getting Darksiders II)
These games are old...where is the progression in the gameplay if you look at modern titles?
These days, 'gameplay' is all about shooting or hitting the absolute crap out of anything that moves. It's mindless and brainless. Yet, it's what seems to make up the majority of the gaming world these days. Gameplay? Where? Hiding behind this mysteriously immovable, indestructible cardboard box until health magically regenerates is not gameplay in my book. Neither is following visual prompts like a trained monkey.
(For the record, I'm expecting the new Tomb Raider to be more about shooting or fighting, with some exploration bits thrown in, and less about what the original game emphasised - exploring tombs. A big fat 'meh' to that game then, if my hunch proves correct.)

So yeah, I don't think the enemy is great, awesome, amazing visuals. Bring it on. Let the tech wizards like Carmack weave their magic. At least there is a progression there.
The real problem lies in the fact that my 'next-gen' 720 game will play exactly like my last-gen 360 game. Ad nauseum.
(Come to think of it Squirly, I think you and I have said more or less the same thing, albeit in very different ways.)

PS-One of the things most commented about when FF7 made it's debut was how pretty it looked. Just saying. ;)

*Being a graphics whore doesn't prevent me from appreciating games that look crap though. I adore Plants v Zombies...amazing little title that. I've recently gone back and played Quake, Quake II and Hexen again. Loved 'em all.

[Squirly]

I don't see what's so wrong with liking incredible looking games.

Nothing. But touting it to the extent where it hurts gameplay is. I'll get to that just now.

Maybe it's just me, but I think there is a bit of a stereotype that has come about, in the sense that if a game looks amazing, it somehow translates to it having shoddy gameplay, or that the gameplay wasn't among the list of priorities.

A classic example of this is Crysis, where the accusation levelled at the game by many was that it looked great, but was a bog-standard shooter, or worse, a glorified tech demo.
I have always vehementy disagreed on both counts, and I think anyone who played the game with a bit of imagination would agree. Granted, the visuals did become the big talking point, but it was a damn fine video game besides the prettiness.

And you will actually find me on your side. I still play the first Crysis occasionally, because it did a lot of things right, visuals included. For me it's mostly the awesome physics though.

Whether we like to admit it or not, ever more advanced technology allows for more freedom, more immersion and more realism. It's not purely about the graphics, but about the realisation of the world in general. Look at how stiffly characters walked and moved in old games, for instance. I love Half-Life, but I had to stifle a laugh playing HL I again, watching the characters all walking around like they had carrots stuck up firmly up their bums.

The irony behind this is that Half-Life's skeletal animation system was hailed as pretty damn awesome at that time. It's one of those leaps in progress that help with immersion because before then it looked even worse. But even then, nobody talks about Half-Life today because of the graphics. It doesn't have a cult following because it still looks good. Will Modern Warfare 4, or whatever the hell number we are at now? (Man, I'm sounding old!)

Does that mean that PS3 games are automatically better than PS1 games simply because they look better? Hell no. But increased rendering power has brought about a widening of ideas. An Oblivion, a Skyrim, a GTA (in it's 3D guise) simply would not be possible on much older hardware. As much as I love 2D platformers or top-down shooters, the added power brought about a new dimension and hence a new way of experiencing games.

This I'm going to have to disagree with outright. And it's also part of my 'focusing on graphics and hurting the gameplay' argument, because ... Oblivion. Bethesda wanted to up the polygon count for pretty much everything so that we could get more detailed characters and the like. More bump-mapping. Throw in some Bloom (oh ****!). But that comes at a cost, because consoles can only handle that much. So they had to section off the game and make it less open than it's predecessor (Morrowind). Instead of getting rid of loading when entering caves and houses like, say, Gothic 3 at the time, they added another loading screen when you enter cities. This also meant that you couldn't let players fly because they wouldn't be forced to use the gate. There goes both 'fly' and 'jump' from your spell roster. This is a great case-study in graphics hurting gameplay because we ultimately got less, even though at first it looked like more.

To reiterate, gameplay is king. But what I find quite ironic about it is that if anything, it's the gameplay in most games that has remained static for a long, long time now. Way too long. There haven't been any groundbreaking advancements that I can tell, in the gameplay arena, for absolute ages.

Yeah. That's sort of my p....

(Come to think of it Squirly, I think you and I have said more or less the same thing, albeit in very different ways.)

Dammit man! I just wrote out this whole reply and I'll be damned if I'm going to delete it now.

PS-One of the things most commented about when FF7 made it's debut was how pretty it looked. Just saying. ;)

... and they're releasing it with shiny new HD graphics because...... :P ... but yeah, FF was at that point starting it's 'holy crap that looks amazing' thing. And look where that got it. In the words of Yahtzee: "Square Enix: Why don't you lot get it? We just want to make movies instead of games, but you keep buying the damn things!"

[Zoop]

The problem with CliffyB isn't that I have an issue with great graphics. It's that CliffyB is pretty much the living embodiment of everything that is wrong with the gaming industry; the mindless shooter fad (most of the games he heads are nothing more than mindless corridor-shooters, often painted brown and grey), the belief that nothing can sell well if it isn't a shooter (Mirror's Edge) and now more recently, the belief that a score of 8/10 is somehow bad (and mind you, this is for a game that is part of a series that is basically just a bunch of mindless corridor shooters).

So when CliffyB starts talking graphics, I start worrying, because CliffyB doesn't care for innovation. Everything has to be a shooter. If he talks graphics, you can bet your ass it's not going to be there to complement the gameplay, it's going to be there has the main selling point with gameplay coming in a close second.

That's not to say their games are bad, they're just not anything especially good.

[.exe]

Dammit man! I just wrote out this whole reply and I'll be damned if I'm going to delete it now.

Nah, I enjoyed reading it. We're on the same page, pretty much. Sorry for my waffling effort. :)

[echo]

But hold on, when Gears of War came out was there anything like it? The shoot from cover mechanic, full game co-op, active reloading? As far as I know Gears innovated a whole lot of ****, and has been (both successfully and horribly) copied ad nauseam this generation. Say what you will about his other ****, but his games do innovate somewhat.

Like .exe said, graphics (for all it's horribleness) does sometimes drive innovation. I would say that the successful implementation of physics and physics puzzles are a direct descendant from better graphics. Those awesome physics puzzles in Half-life 2 was possible just because we moved to the Source engine.

But otherwise, I totally agree with everything the three of you have said. Guys like id and Epic may drive the graphics engines, but it's the responsibility of our favorite developers to use those engines smartly.

[Drone]

^What about Metal Gear Solid... And I'm pretty sure the first Splinter Cell had the cover system as well. Not to sure if I agree that GOW innovated much... :|

Unfortunately we live in an era where graphic engines are pushed to their limits and all the young lings want crisp visuals, don't get me wrong, I also love looking at good looking games... But without good game play it's just eye candy. When a game has really good graphics and you don't even realize it because the game play is so awesome, it just helps suck you into the game...

I don't know who this Cliffy B is(and I don't care), but he just sounds like a good business man...

[BladeMaster]

^ Yip. I don't see how GOW innovated with anything. If I really made an effort, I'm sure I could find several games that have done the same thing before GOW came out. In all honesty, I don't even know why GOW was ever made such a fuss out of (for the multiplayer?).

Anyway, if Drone means that Cliffy B just wants to make lots of money by selling games with pretty graphics and die-hard gaming mechanics...then he's right. That's not a good thing. I agree that Cliffy B is being an ass. Screw him. I hate id even more though. Always busy with their "ground breaking" graphics engines...supposedly. I've always thought their newer games suck. John Carmack is worse than Cliffy B.

The ironic thing is...if Valve are making Half Life 3 and it gets released sometime in the near future, it will probably blow our socks off in terms of graphics and gameplay. Some gaming companies have actual talent and passion and aren't just out to milk the public for their hard earned cash with their "all new" and "flashy" gaming engines and stock standard game play.

Look at RAGE. What a fvck up. Examples of companies that released games with great graphics and/or unique visuals that also had great/decent game play include games like BioShock, Resident Evil 4, LA Noire and Heavy Rain. Why can't you get it right id? Graphics aren't everything, but if you do decide to make a game with killer graphics, please try to make the game play match the end product. Pretty please?

I recently saw the trailers for FarCry 3! Holy sh1t! That's a game whos' great graphics I didn't notice at first due to the awesome looking gameplay (Drone's comment relates here). Looks really good!

[Squirly]

The first game to use the cover system as well as blind-fire was Kill Switch. Average game overall, but it "pioneered" the cover system. Gears of War just made better use of it and made an overall better game with it.

[echo]

But so successfully that almost a whole genre was born out of it? Gears was that pioneer IMHO. May not have thought it out but perfected it none the less.

And Far Cry 3 has shown me nothing in terms of new gameplay. Looks bog standard.

[Squirly]

Can I just say that I don't really like the cover-mechanic? I think it's a cheap way to let the player know the lay of the land without having to risk his neck by actually looking. Works for some games, like GoW for example, but I think shoe-horning it in does more damage. Despite the fact that it was handled actually pretty well in Deus Ex: HR, I would have preferred it without the cover mechanic for two reasons:

1) Cover-based shooting is not what Deus Ex is about. It's a first-person game for a reason.
2) Letting the player check the lay of the land without having to peek himself meant less reason to get X-Ray vision for your character. Why get an implant for seeing characters through walls when you can just stick to that wall and rotate your camera until you can see what's behind it anyway? It was a meta-game mechanic in the end and it doesn't really help with immersion in that regard.

Stupid decision if you ask me.

[echo]

I loved it in GOW though. It also gave patient players (not really me) a chance to plan their attack. The same way it worked in stuff like Mass Effect and Rainbow Six: Vegas, making those games more tactical just because you could see the lay of the land.

Also agree with your DX:HR opinion. If only to be as close to the original as possible.

[BladeMaster]

And Far Cry 3 has shown me nothing in terms of new gameplay. Looks bog standard.

Never said it showed new gameplay. I said that the graphics took a back seat to the gameplay (well for me it did). When a gameplay trailer only shows off awesome graphics, I don't find it so impressive. For example, all that I gathered from the Crysis 3 trailers were: "Wow, that's some awesome visuals right there". Other than that... the trailers aren't very memorable.

What I took from the FarCry 3 clips though, showed me that they've added a one hit kill move similar to Battlefield. The graphics weren't the first thing that I noticed, even though they are good. Even the main villain dude caught my attention more than the graphics. Step in the right direction for Ubisoft.

The shoot from cover mechanic, full game co-op, active reloading? As far as I know Gears innovated a whole lot of ****

Nope. I originally thought Gears of War was a Resident Evil 4 clone TBH. Then I saw the cover system though.

[.exe]

I like the cover system all in all, but so many games have adopted it now that I'm growing a little bored of it. I'd like the good old lean mechanic brought back in shooters, or at least incorporated into the cover system. Seems to have disappeared from modern games, or at least the ones I've played.
Edit: I think Crysis 2 did employ the lean mechanic, now that I think of it. Worked nicely.