The VG Resource

A few games got me into them because of the sprites. But the most important test of whether or not I stay is the gameplay. I've seen some pretty decently sprited games, only to find the gameplay is bullshit. Here's my breakdown of the most important aspects of a game:

Gameplay - 33%
If the gameplay sucks, or is just boring, there's no point in trekking through the game.

Music and Sound - 33%
The OST plays a heavy hand in immersion. If the music is bland or too repetitive, you can kiss that immersion goodbye. Sound effects need to be appropriate.

Story, Setting, Plot, Characters - 33%
If the game is going to have a story, it might as well be an interesting one. IF it's boring, or I don't care about the characters, what incentive do I have to keep going? Unless the gameplay is decent....you can kiss trekking on goodbye.

Everything else - 1%
Why aren't graphics a big chunk? Because they really don't matter ultimately. If all the other stuff holds up, graphics can be overlooked. Now, this isn't to say poorly drawn games, like stick figures and such, wouldn't be ignored based on screenshots, but as long as the gameplay is decent, it shouldn't matter. After all, you play a game for the GAMEPLAY and whatever story it may have, if any, not to stare at graphics all day.

TL; DR: A few games I've played because the sprites caught my attention, but they aren't all that important.

Everyone always likes to do the Gameplay > Graphics thing, but lets not fuck about here. Graphics are hugely important. They add so much to the atmosphere, the gameplay - everything. Journey, Rayman Origins, any horror game, any FPS (say what you like people's heads blowing off is fun). It really annoys me when people throw down the "graphics don't mean much card" because they do, it's just people don't like to say it because of all of sudden "they don't get videogames."

Look at Alien Isolation, the detail in getting all that old-future stuff looking good sucks you into the game. Uncharted with all it's beautiful water and foliage. Last of Us for it's absolutely terrifying death scenes. Pix the Cat for it's crazy bouncing retro goodness.

Hell, look at Pac-man. It's use of big large colourful sprites made it more fun to look at, appeal to a greater audience and made the gameplay easier to understand.

Not everything has to be photo-realistic or have super "real-time" lighting. I'm talking about style. Just like with how your game plays and sounds thinking about how you want it to look is massively important. Would Guacamelee be as good with generic graphics? I don't think so. Would I have enjoyed Rayman Origins as much as I did if it used polygons (aka "2.5D" as the kids call it) - I doubt it. Would Journey have had any impact at all if it looked like Fable - probably not. If Shovel Knight used "flash" graphics like Castle Crashers, sure it would still be good, but it would have a lot taken away from it.

If a game doesn't look good, It's probably not going to peek my interest. Galaxian's simple sprites are beautiful. Titan Attacks! (PS4) might be the better game, but it looked awful. It looked so generic I just couldn't get into it.

Look at all your favourite (or universally agreed "best") games and I think you'll find they all look pretty damn special.

/\ I wish I could get my doublethanking powers back


I remembered a game with great graphics... Darkstalkers. I don't even like fighting games in general and I love the sprite work in that game.

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there, it was easier than i thought

DarkStalkers is freakin' beautiful. Hell why I decided to rip the damn thing because it looked so damn good it deserved to be ripped (still need to finish doing that...) Everything moved so smoothly, all the attacks were incredible and fun. Just so so good. Man just thinking about Jon Talbain's hair standing on end and teeth showing during his stance gets me all excited. Hell no wonder Capcom kept with the style for well, ages.

That and Metal Slug must be some of the longest running "just keep doing that" style graphics in gaming. And with good cause - they still look pretty damn fantastic even by today's standards.

I can 100% tell you I've never stopped playing a game because of the graphics.

To me, gameplay encompasses the mechanics of the game, the controls, the difficulty, and glitches/bugs of the engine. Basically, anything that deals with how the game performs. So frame rate drops, for example, would make the gameplay take a massive hit, because the player's inputs are getting dropped, and the engine was clearly un-optimized. The music, visuals and story have absolutely no bearing on how the game actually runs and what its mechanics are, so I separate them.

I may COME for the visuals (i.e. Seiken Densetsu 3 and its grand spritework), but I don't leave because of them. The gameplay is usually what drives me away, if not then the story being too bland and not giving me a reason to care about the characters. The music also attracts me to games (i.e. Lufia), and it can get you to leave if it's obnoxious enough (some unlicensed Chinese games).

Like I said, you play a game to PLAY a game, not to stare at graphics all day like it's a still image.

http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_bo...ce/iceage/

Goemar said a lot already and I need to go to bed so...

Graphics/Style are extremely important. Style more so than graphics, as graphics are stuff like shaders/polygon count and all the high tech stuff. A game with a great style will look good beyond it's years but a game with "cutting edge realistic graphics" will pale in comparison to future games.

Half of playing a game is staring at a screen like it or not.

(01-25-2015, 09:09 PM)Helmo Wrote: [ -> ]http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_bo...ce/iceage/

Pfft, l find that hard to believe it's a GBA game.  What's it play like, I wonder...*youtubes*

I got pulled into games by the graphics a lot when I was younger, not so much nowadays.

Donkey Kong Country, Mario RPG, and Kirby's Adventure were big ones for me. Also most Genesis games at the time.

Although I don't really let graphics choose the games for me anymore, I do admit that a bad graphical style can definitely turn me off of a game. ("Bad" does not mean "low-tech" though, I love retro style games).

Even if you say graphics don't matter Koh, a good reason you buy/rent/borrow/pick up a game to play is mostly because of it's visuals. I'm not talking about games you already know and love no matter what, I'm talking about games you never played before. The gameplay may make it or break it for you in the end, but It's the graphics (the style at least) that attracts you to the game in the first place. Wheather it be it through screenshots or box art. I could be mistaken as different people have different tastes, but I think the most important aspects of a game should be 25% of all story, OST/sounds, gameplay, and graphics. They are all equally important.

(01-26-2015, 02:49 AM)BlueBlur97 Wrote: [ -> ]Even if you say graphics don't matter Koh, a good reason you buy/rent/borrow/pick up a game to play is mostly because of it's visuals. I'm not talking about games you already know and love no matter what, I'm talking about games you never played before. The gameplay may make it or break it for you in the end, but It's the graphics (the style at least) that attracts you to the game in the first place. Wheather it be it through screenshots or box art. I could be mistaken as different people have different tastes, but I think the most important aspects of a game should be 25% of all story, OST/sounds, gameplay, and graphics. They are all equally important.

That's why I've stated I've come because of the visuals before (Seiken Densetsu 3), but that's not always the case.  Things like the Most Challenging Game or Flappy Bird certainly don't win any awards for graphics, but rather the gameplay is what attracted people to them.  As much as I hate Flappy Bird and all of its fan made spinoffs for being the bare minimum of what you can call a game, its gameplay model is designed to get people addicted and coming back for more.  "Just one more point."

Visuals can certainly help with advertising, especially in the olden days when 3D was a new thing.  I don't disagree that the style can bring in a lot of people.  But when it boils down to staying after playing, you would never hear someone say "I only continued to play because of the graphics/visuals."  That would be outrageous.

You can have the prettiest, or most stylistically pleasing visuals in the world, but ultimately lose all the players because the game sucks. But rarely do you hear of a game losing its players because the gameplay was well polished and fun, but had bland visuals. It just shows up as a point in a critique.

I played Dodonpachi and other awesome Arcade shooters because of their visuals, but then got hooked on the killer gameplay.



I also picked up some of the SNES fire emblems for that reason, too.



Comix Zone.

(01-25-2015, 08:41 PM)Koh Wrote: [ -> ](i.e. Seiken Densetsu 3 and its grand spritework),

Hot ass, i forgot about this game. this one as well.

Most of the games I've played I'd already seen the graphics of. The graphics are usually what attract me to a game. The Spriters Resource has been useful to me in that respect.

Recently I've been drawn to Nanashi no Game, CONTACT and Hotel Dusk, for example.

Graphics are not really important for me, as long as they are not ugly. I wouldn't play a game looks like this:

(01-29-2015, 08:32 AM)Mors Wrote: [ -> ]Graphics are not really important for me, as long as they are not ugly. I wouldn't play a game looks like this:

This basically.  But I do at least give them a shot...you never know, you might come across a really good game, that just happened to have been drawn by a 5 year old.  Like, everything's all polished and smooth, except the graphics XD.  It's happened before, I'm sure.

/\ please someone make a game out of these graphics