Things aren’t looking good for me. I’m a few levels into Selaco, a new FPS out now on Steam, and I’m stuck behind a bar as a group of sci-fi soldiers unload their rifles and shotguns into my hiding spot. I’m also low on health. So yeah, a bad spot to be in. I take a deep breath and try something.
As smoothly as I can I slide out from behind the bar, toss an ice grenade toward the enemies, and then dash behind a wall. A moment later a boom happens and my foes are frozen. I spot a nearby propane tank, pick it up, and chuck it at them. A second later I shoot it and watch them blow up. On my screen, a notification lets me know I’ve killed enough of these bastards to unlock a new milestone and earned some new crafting materials to make my assault rifle even better. Sweet!
I then remember that the game I’m playing—that lets me do all this and more was built using a modified version of the ancient Doom engine and giggle. This kind of thing happens a lot in Selaco, a game that rarely feels like it’s built on old bones and dated tech, but instead feels like a polished and modern shooter with some slick retro visuals. What’s most surprising about Selaco isn’t that it’s developed in GZDoom, but that it might be one of the best shooters I’ve played in years.
Makes sense. I’ve always been disappointed that instead of using better processing power to make bigger, more complex games, we used it to make the same games with more complex animations and details. I don’t want a game that only differs from its predecessors through use of graphical upgrades like individual blades of grass swaying in the wind, or the character starting to sweat in relation to their exertion; I want games with PS1-PS2 graphics and animation quality, but with complex gameplay that the consoles of that era could only dream of being able to handle.
There’s something special about a game like red dead 2 or ghost of tsushima that makes you stop and just enjoy the scenery. Games with good graphics have their place, it’s just that they need to also have all the other elements to be any good.
Red dead redemption 2 didn’t stop at being pretty. If it did I don’t think we would all talk about it so fondly. Totally agree that it’s a great looking game though.
thing is, games aren’t pretty because they model every cell in every lifeform and have 5 gigabyte textures for each individual leaf, they’re pretty because they have good graphical design.
Just lighting alone is like 50% of making a scene look nice, you can literally just slap together a low-poly flat-colour scene in blender and set up nice lighting and people will call you talented.
A prime example of this is valheim: ps2-style models and textures and yet the lighting and general graphical design makes it look lovely and atmospheric, especially combined with the music.
Hell, minecraft’s vanilla textures look downright gorgeous with lighting mods.
it annoys me to no end that people think minecraft looks terrible and attribute that to the textures, it’s literally just pixel art! Other games are praised for having pixel art! aurgh!
Minecraft might be considered ugly, but in that case it’s probably moreso because its lighting is… rudimentary… or that person specifically just doesn’t like the artstyle.
Also something that almost no one ever talks about is render distance! Games with a gargantuan render distance look SOOOOOO much more appealing and are easier to navigate, but people just don’t think about it!
I recently played Satisfactory and holy shit that render distance, when i called down the space elevator it’s the only time i can recall a game ever making me just sit there in awe, never before have i felt such a visceral sense of scale from something on a display!
Oh, don’t get me wrong, minecraft’s art style is absolutely charming and a perfect fit for the “blocky” nature of the gameplay. See how many of its imitators try to look more realistic and end up looking genuinely ugly. But to speak to the top comment’s point, when fancy shaders are added minecraft’s simple style gets elevated so much and it goes to show how simple and effective design paired with good-looking lighting can make even the lowest-poly games look absolutely gorgeous.
Hyper Light Drifter is absolutely stunning and its a 2D pixel art game with amazing lighting.
Noita has some decent lighting too
This is exactly how i feel about genshin impact. Its art design is absolutely stunning and can run on a damn phone.
All the photorealism is nice and all but i prefer good art styles and better and more gameplay.
Great point. I saw an interesting video recently that touched on this exact issue:
https://youtu.be/x4_8rIUh7E8?si=-E1VWA8bZ-eVibkL
As graphics increase in quality, the desire for developers to fill spaces with clutter grows – which makes it harder to make meaningful levels with thoughtful design.
There are plenty of big and complex games with great graphics.