too many 3D games

[slothman]

How come all people talk about anymore are 3D games? Does anyone even make 2D games now. All the fighting games, Final Fantasy games, and car games seem to be 3D. I saw a few seconds of MTVs best games of the millenium and it's like they didn't mention it if it was too "simple" Even if they meant this millenium the are many good games that aren't first person. Arg.

[Paradox]

3d doesn't necessarily mean first person - besides, the future of games is getting more realistic, so the higher the quality of images, the better (supposedly. I'd still go for gameplay, but when you can have both... all the better)

Sure, classic 2d games are still fun, but 3d is what's cooler looking.

[Fiyerstorm]

GBA has 2D games!!!

And low-res choppy 3D games.

*coughssx3cough*

[Dracula]

I've been trying to get some people into Viewtiful Joe... Classic old-school ass-kicking action with a lot of new twists... 2D is still far more enjoyable than almost anything 3D.

[Master Ghaleon]

Originally posted by Dracula
2D is still far more enjoyable than almost anything 3D.


I second that one. I miss the old school 2d graphics with games

[Cloral]

You can still have a 3d looking game with 2d gameplay. Take the kirby game for the n64. So even if you're trying for good looking 3d graphics, it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice gameplay.

And yes, I know this is a bit ironic seeing as how I have a 3d game in my signature. :p

[Pablo]

I don't care what a game is as long as it's fun. 2d or 3d, ancient or brand-new, fugly or artistic, revolutionary or same-old. Doesn't matter as long as I enjoy myself.

[*b*]

Originally posted by Pablo
I don't care what a game is as long as it's fun. 2d or 3d, ancient or brand-new, fugly or artistic, revolutionary or same-old. Doesn't matter as long as I enjoy myself.

right on. *gives pablo a biscut* ;)

though, I do tend to like 2D cartoony graphics better than 3D cartoony. 3D just dosen't do it justice

[vegeta1215]

Originally posted by Cloral
You can still have a 3d looking game with 2d gameplay. Take the kirby game for the n64. So even if you're trying for good looking 3d graphics, it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice gameplay.

Definitely.Two games that I've played recently that are like this are Super Smash Bros Melee and Luigi's Mansion. They are 3D games, but they feel like 2D games! I love it! There's just something about them, I think it's the camera.

I returned Luigi's Mansion to Blockbuster Video and picked up Resident Evil. I plan to rent Viewtiful Joe before my Game's Freedom Pass that I got for christmas runs up.

[DarkDragoonX]

RPGs have suffered the most from the 3D revolution. It used to be that in RPGs, you had an entire world map to explore. Not anymore, though. With all the new emphasis on realistic graphics, and voiceovers, ( FFX, Suikoden 3, and Xenosaga), there isn't any space on the disc for a world map, and you're reduced to picking destinations from a list (and frequently you don't really have a choice of destinations, anyway). Remember Dragon Warrior? You could go to any town, in any order if you felt like it.

The freedom of moving around on a world map is important to me in a console RPG, and I miss it.

EDIT: Incidentally, why do all RPGs have to have voiceovers now, anyway? Whatever happened to reading?

[vegeta1215]

Originally posted by DarkDragoonX
RPGs have suffered the most from the 3D revolution. It used to be that in RPGs, you had an entire world map to explore. Not anymore, though. With all the new emphasis on realistic graphics, and voiceovers, ( FFX, Suikoden 3, and Xenosaga), there isn't any space on the disc for a world map, and you're reduced to picking destinations from a list (and frequently you don't really have a choice of destinations, anyway). Remember Dragon Warrior? You could go to any town, in any order if you felt like it.

The freedom of moving around on a world map is important to me in a console RPG, and I miss it.

EDIT: Incidentally, why do all RPGs have to have voiceovers now, anyway? Whatever happened to reading?

I feel exactly the same way about RPGs, and most newer games for that matter. Graphics are looked upon as being so important when it's really gameplay, music, and story that are the important things.

Games today with better graphics take longer to make, yet game publishers still hope to push a game out in the same amount of time they always have. This is why so many games now a days are a lot shorter and often lacking in many areas. I'd rather wait longer and have a better game.

I'm not too fond of voice acting. Without voice acting, a gamer can imagine what the characters sound like, and everyone will imagine things differently. That is one reason why Nintendo refuses to give Link a voice in the Zelda series (thankfully)

[*b*]

Originally posted by vegeta1215
I feel exactly the same way about RPGs, and most newer games for that matter. Graphics are looked upon as being so important when it's really gameplay, music, and story that are the important things.

ah, but would you really like to play a game with stick figues and textures that look like a 2-year-old used paint to create? even if the game is perfect otherwise?

[DarkDragoonX]

Originally posted by *b*
ah, but would you really like to play a game with stick figues and textures that look like a 2-year-old used paint to create? even if the game is perfect otherwise?


One word: Nethack.

[Mak-X]

With all the new emphasis on realistic graphics, and voiceovers, ( FFX, Suikoden 3, and Xenosaga), there isn't any space on the disc for a world map, and you're reduced to picking destinations from a list (and frequently you don't really have a choice of destinations, anyway). Remember Dragon Warrior? You could go to any town, in any order if you felt like it.

The freedom of moving around on a world map is important to me in a console RPG, and I miss it.

EDIT: Incidentally, why do all RPGs have to have voiceovers now, anyway? Whatever happened to reading? [/B]

From playing through most of Final Fantasy X and from what I remember reading, I don't think not having a world map has anything to do with disc space. I thought the point of not having an overworld in FFX, from what I remember reading, was instead of having a little character walk around a zoomed out map, you instead traveled from area to area all over the world, so you felt more immersed in the world. Similar to this, although Zelda games aren't real RPGs, instead of moving around a zoomed out map, except for Zelda II, you actually explore the world and travel from place to place.

Although I haven't had any experience with any other recent RPGs with voice overs, the voice acting in Final Fantasy X was very good, and I thought it added a lot to the game and telling its story that text simply wouldn't do, or something so little as chatter between characters in battle. It makes me wonder if Zelda would benefit from (good) voice acting in the future.


On the topic of 2D and 3D games and FFX, the 3D graphics of FFX really help immurse the player in the world, and just adds a lot of flare and action to the battles with the animations and camera angles that are possible with 3D. Playing FFVI briefly on Anthologies really shows how far games have come with its still image enemies and simple 2-D sprite attacks with not much animation.


Btw, I don't know what the choices were exactly, but all of the games/series on MTV's and EGM's Ultimate Videogame Countdown were voted by players on EGM's site, and I think they really only went as far back as 2000 as EGM's article noted. The Legend of Zelda series took 1st, and the Super Mario series were in there somewhere. They have the list on MTV's site http://www.mtv.com/onair/ultimate_countdown/


I think with 3D, there's just a lot more you can do than with 2D, and its easier to do animations since you don't have to draw hundreds of frames. Talking about 3-D games with 2-D gameplay, there were 2 games like that for N64 that might be worth checking out. Mischief Makers by Treasure starred heroine that could grab anything, then shake it and throw it back for varying effects. Goemon's Great Adventure by Konami was kind of like a wacky Castlevania, but also went back to the 2-D roots of the Goemon/Mystical Ninja series, except stages use 3-D graphics to have things like twists and turns on the road when sidescrolling. There's also of course the Game Boy Advance that probably saved 2-D in a way, lot's of remakes, but some new stuff like Metroid Fusion, 3 Castlevania installments, and a new Seiken Densetsu game. There's also the upcoming Four Swords + for Gamecube that uses A Link to the Past graphics as a base, but uses the power of the hardware of the Gamecube for effects like scroll/zooming out, and having loads of enemies on the screen at one time.

[Paradox]

Originally posted by DarkDragoonX
RPGs have suffered the most from the 3D revolution. It used to be that in RPGs, you had an entire world map to explore. Not anymore, though. With all the new emphasis on realistic graphics, and voiceovers, ( FFX, Suikoden 3, and Xenosaga), there isn't any space on the disc for a world map, and you're reduced to picking destinations from a list (and frequently you don't really have a choice of destinations, anyway). Remember Dragon Warrior? You could go to any town, in any order if you felt like it.

The freedom of moving around on a world map is important to me in a console RPG, and I miss it.

EDIT: Incidentally, why do all RPGs have to have voiceovers now, anyway? Whatever happened to reading?
I don't know all the RPGs, but of the few I've played, one that totally doesn't fit your description is Morrowind. It's fully 3d, got good graphics, it has a world map (and even a large paper map in the box... I've posted it on the wall in front of my computer monitor). You can go anywhere you want at any time, and there are several ways to do it depending on the place you're in. (ie boat, magic, etc.) There are voiceovers, but only as you walk by people - when you click to talk to them, a big dialog box comes up listing (depending on the person) anywhere from 5-50 topics they can tell you about, and those can sometimes lead to other new topics.

I'm sure there are many RPGs that don't come close to this in terms of gameplay and stuff, but this is one of the 3d games that works for a classic rpg gamer you describe.

[DarkDragoonX]

Originally posted by Mak-X
From playing through most of Final Fantasy X and from what I remember reading, I don't think not having a world map has anything to do with disc space. I thought the point of not having an overworld in FFX, from what I remember reading, was instead of having a little character walk around a zoomed out map, you instead traveled from area to area all over the world, so you felt more immersed in the world. Similar to this, although Zelda games aren't real RPGs, instead of moving around a zoomed out map, except for Zelda II, you actually explore the world and travel from place to place.

Yeah, it probably has nothing to do with disk space so much as it is that with all the other work they do, they just don't feel like making a world map. As for it being more immersive, it had the opposite effect on me.

And Zelda isn't an RPG, it's an Action/Adventure game, and thus, the world map doesn't apply. However, I'd like to note that I enjoy the 2D Zelda games far more than the 3D ones. The new Zelda games are still excellent, and great fun... but LttP is still better.

Paradox: You're right. Morrowind rocks. To be honest, I wasn't thinkling about real, PC RPGs when I made my post, so much as I was thinking about console RPGs. RPGs that use a first-person perspective, such as Morrowind, Betrayal at Krondor, etc., only gain from better 3D visuals. Still, no matter what you say, isometric RPGs should be 2D. Neverwinter Nights is a constant frustration in fiddling with the camera angle, and, as a a matter of fact, Baldur's Gate 2 still looks much, much better.

[linkofzelda1]

It doesn't matter to me at all. Some games are better in 3D-- Like Morrowind, for instance. I didn't really like the other games in the TES series until it got to Morrowind, where the graphics were amazing and the sounds were perfect. BUT, there are lots of them that are better in 2D, such as Final Fantasy,

[Dracula]

Originally posted by DarkDragoonX
EDIT: Incidentally, why do all RPGs have to have voiceovers now, anyway? Whatever happened to reading?
I always found it better to read dialogue than listen to it... I always thought it was cool to read the words and imagine hearing the voice in my head, other than listening through crappy voice-overs that make the storyline laughable... that's just me, tho... I guessthe only game that I really appriciated to listen to the voice-work is Metal Gear Solid and MGS2. And I am SO glad that Nintendo hasn't done voice-overs for Zelda... I think the aoccasional "Yah!" by Link in a sword fight is enough.

[Archibaldo]

2-D games are the best. like DragonballZ Buddekai 2, the characters are 2-D but the backround is 3-D. I find 2-D games have more detail.