Parrot of doom
Newbie
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2004
- Messages
- 1,172
- Reaction score
- 0
I'm 32. That means I was leaving school just as many of the people posting here were being born. Or even conceived!
Anyhow, I see many threads arguing about the graphics in HL2, and for the life of me I can't understand why so many people get obsessed with this. I remember playing Space Invaders in my local arcade machine, when I needed a box to see the screen. I remember being flabbergasted by the coloured aliens, and not being bothered that much when I realised it was just coloured sellophane strips glued to the back of the plastic shield that protected the screen. What was important was that shooting aliens was fun.
I went right through the ranks, Commodore PET, Vic-20, Tandy TRS-80, C64, Amiga, 486, Pentium, Pentium2, AMD K5, etc etc. Anyone here remember playing Ultima Underworlds 1 and 2? Remember the tiny little screen you moved around in, the rest of the view being taken up by icons and chat windows?
Those who think that graphics matter, please, take it from somebody who has been playing games a great deal longer than you. They don't. What matters is playability. Thats the essence of a game. Football matches would look great if naked page-3 models were playing, but the game itself would be crap, and after a while nobody would pay to see it. Computer games are just the same. You can have as much bling on the screen as you like, but if it doesn't play well, it will very quickly become forgotten.
From the look of the Binks I've seen, it seems that Valve also realise this, and have provided HL2 with graphics that look 'great', not 'ground-breaking'. From the reviews garnered, it also seems that HL2 plays better than anything that has preceded it, hence the high scores.
When you're in a firefight with several combine, and a huge strider, with explosions going off all around you, and your npc mates dying, trust me, if you're looking at shadows or clipping errors, you're not really playing the game for fun.
Anyhow, I see many threads arguing about the graphics in HL2, and for the life of me I can't understand why so many people get obsessed with this. I remember playing Space Invaders in my local arcade machine, when I needed a box to see the screen. I remember being flabbergasted by the coloured aliens, and not being bothered that much when I realised it was just coloured sellophane strips glued to the back of the plastic shield that protected the screen. What was important was that shooting aliens was fun.
I went right through the ranks, Commodore PET, Vic-20, Tandy TRS-80, C64, Amiga, 486, Pentium, Pentium2, AMD K5, etc etc. Anyone here remember playing Ultima Underworlds 1 and 2? Remember the tiny little screen you moved around in, the rest of the view being taken up by icons and chat windows?
Those who think that graphics matter, please, take it from somebody who has been playing games a great deal longer than you. They don't. What matters is playability. Thats the essence of a game. Football matches would look great if naked page-3 models were playing, but the game itself would be crap, and after a while nobody would pay to see it. Computer games are just the same. You can have as much bling on the screen as you like, but if it doesn't play well, it will very quickly become forgotten.
From the look of the Binks I've seen, it seems that Valve also realise this, and have provided HL2 with graphics that look 'great', not 'ground-breaking'. From the reviews garnered, it also seems that HL2 plays better than anything that has preceded it, hence the high scores.
When you're in a firefight with several combine, and a huge strider, with explosions going off all around you, and your npc mates dying, trust me, if you're looking at shadows or clipping errors, you're not really playing the game for fun.
