So they ran the Diablo 3 beta on hardware, which was nearly a decade old and the game ran without a hitch on maximum settings. Which is no surprise, really, as the game looks a decade old, as well. And whenever there's a Blizzard title in the making, which looks ancient long before you can even buy it, you will hear the legions of mindless fans, chanting their ever-repeating mantra: Gameplay is more important than nice graphics.
Sure. If awesome visuals were the deciding factor behind every successful game, then Final Fantasy XIV probably wouldn't be the rotten pile of garbage it had turned out to be. But just because a really enjoyable game doesn't require the most cutting edge graphics, do they all have to look like shit?
Yes, I'm beating on the proverbial dead horse, but when it comes to World of Warcraft, many gamers and critics alike must have been lobotomized. If you put WoW's ugly, hammer-fisted, blurry-faced human or dwarf models in some random Korean F2P grindfest, people would complain about how ugly they are. Same goes for many of the critters everywhere around Azeroth. I have never seen cats with so many corners in real life! But for some fucked up reason, it's okay for WoW to be ugly.
Until this very day, a heavy titansteel chest plate is nothing but a texture, a slap-on tattoo with no actual physical shape or form. They have introduced new pants in Wrath of the Lich King, which contain an actual polygon or two, but that's where the realism ends.
Some reviewers actually had the balls to call Starcraft 2 'dated' when describing its visuals and the fans went mad! Blasphemy! It doesn't matter, which Blizzard title you dare criticize - you'll always get a load of crap about how the game is 'optimized' to run on all kinds of hardware. Tell you what - using stone age technology, a whole lot of bitmap graphics and the lowest polygon count since the days of the original Sony Playstation in all your games has nothing to do with optimizing.
Of course none of this means the actual gameplay can't be fun. In fact, with the legions of raving fans, those games must be doing something right. But just because they're fun, does that mean it's alright for them to look like crap from day one? Would it hurt Diablo 3 if it actually looked better than Torchlight? Is Modern Warfare 3 getting any better when the same old engine makes it look like an expansion pack for Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops rather than a whole new game? Does Star Wars: The old Republic really have to look even worse than the shitty new animated tv show for kids? Hell, no! And don't get me started on oh-so realistic Fifa 12!
Of course lots of games look fairly unimpressive, simply because they are shoddy console ports. Thanks to the ever-growing amount of multi platform releases in this day and age, PC gamers have been forced to put up with shitty matchmaking where they used to have server browsers, 12 year olds spouting insults through ingame voice chat where they used to have type-kills and horrible, awkward gamepad-optimized HUDs and menus where they used to have intuitive point & click GUIs. And overpriced, worthless DLC where they used to have a complete game they'd only pay for once.
One has to wonder. What good are immeasurable amounts of memory, lightning-fast DX11 GPUs and multi-core CPUs, when the vast majority of today's games make absolutely zero use of all that fancy hardware? Am I supposed to play flight sims and a heavily-modified Crysis until they finally release a new generation of gaming consoles, which will almost be on-par with a modern PC?
Thank god it's not all Doom and Gloom. Skyrim looks incredibly promising. I doubt it's gonna look as awesome as it could do, because it's yet another multi platform release, but the modding community will fix it. And from what I've seen from Battlefield 3, there's a high chance it's gonna beat Modern Warfare 3 in every aspect - and rightfully so!
Show some balls and challenge today's hardware some more! Gameplay might be king, but great visuals will always enhance your gaming experience! Realistic graphics and stunning effects draw you in, add to the immersion, they can make you feel like you're really there, like you're part of the action. It's a shame they only seem to notice that when it comes to simulations and racing games. But don't we fire up role playing games, because we want to get away for a bit? Because we want to get lost in a virtual world for a while, become somebody else, do something slightly more heroic than housework or sitting on a desk all day? Then give me immersive visuals. Make it look and feel real. The cartoon bandwagon has been fun for a while, but it's getting too fucking crowded on here.
-Cat
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