I was amazed at how shoddy the intro looked. Yeah, it's not a gameplay secttion, but still, any "good looks" get negated by the ridiculously low framerate and the shimmering on the bridge. It was borderline painful.
Sure, but I would rather have great art direction with technical flaws than the other way around. Of course, I have to draw the line when frame rate wrecks gameplay but I didn't find that to be the case with SotC unlike a lot of other games.Originally Posted by bVork
Last edited by NeoZeedeater; 30 Dec 2006 at 02:31 PM.
I'll choose none of the above. There are plenty of games that aren't ruined by either one to waste time on the ones that are.
I enjoyed SoTC, yah, it was pretty ugly but the game was fun and there isn't too many games (that I know of) plays like it. So I will live with some of its shortcomings and just have fun with the game.
I'm a lot more tolerant of art direction than framerate. "Bad art" doesn't bother me. I don't even know what it ("good art") is. It seems like a catch all phrase describing "low-end graphics that look different".A lot like the "Nintendo game X is in its own genre".
I'm not going to front, I think Gears' art is amazing. I'd rather look at it than all these games that supposedly have "good art". You never hear "It's amazing technically AND artistically". It's always "Yeah, it's not technically amazing, but it has great art".
Last edited by Joust Williams; 30 Dec 2006 at 02:44 PM.
Agreed. I don't think the humans in it are great designs but the environments are amazing. I'm liking the faded, dream-like look games have been using lately (SotC, Half-Life 2, Twilight Princess, etc.).
Just look at the ceilings. For a game that you'd look at ceilings less than 10 seconds (well, except the obvious parts), they look amazing. They have tons of layers, not just a polygon with a nice texture. The ones in the cramped spaces look even better.
Donkey Kong
You absolutely need good art direction in a game. A game can look "technically" incredible, but that doesn't make it interesting and engaging to look at. Of course its best to have a balance, but when you have a game like SotC, which is pretty weak from a technical standpoint, but is still able to hold together due to great artistic design, its pretty obvious how important the art is to the game. I've always thought it was a huge shame that SotC was on the PS2 and not Xbox, or even GC. It easily could have been one of, if not the most beautiful game of last generation.
Drive By
With the humans in Gears, the best part is their armor. They all have a similar theme, but they're all vastly different. Then again, I'm not sure what anyone would be looking for in human designs, I mean it's a person. Although, not being a Final Fantasy "is that a..." character is a plus in my book. And the environment/architecture is amazing. Every level is different (Act 3 is an excellent example).
Last edited by Rumpy; 30 Dec 2006 at 03:19 PM.
Donkey Kong
Usually when you're doing character design you want to capture some element of the person's personality in the way they look. You exagerate certain parts of the body and underplay others in order to try to capture their attitude from a visual standpoint. In a more realistic game like GoW, its more of a challenge since you have to convey that without the characters looking overly-cartoony or just plain unbelievable. I haven't seen enough of the game to see if they succeeded with that...
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