FarCry’s graphics are very different depending on the different lighting conditions. So I don’t see it as a matter of aesthetics really, but a technical issue. FarCry 2 is simply more colorful than FarCry 1 in that it has more colors.
Yes, there is a low-contrast low-saturation aesthetic that games have adopted recently to make them grittier. Yes, this is an aesthetic preference for sure. Though I’d characterize your first image from Unreal as being less colorful than the low-saturation/contrast from Unreal Tournament. They just want it to be grittier, that’s why they have adopted that. In Gears of War for instance the colors aren’t even necessarily low-saturation or low-contrast, they are designed with the assumption that the entire world has basically been on fire and is covered with soot and ash.
As for Rainbow Six Vegas, I honestly have no fucking clue what you are talking about. I remember rolling through several different casino types with some of the most interesting and colorful level design I’ve ever seen, from the first stereotypical casino, on to the one that’s all Chinese themed, and then the Convention hall, and then the Diablo casino which is partly colorful and partly still under construction. Rainbow Six is one of the most lushly colorful games ever produced, so I am baffled as to why you use it as an example. Going from a dusty Mexican border town to the neon lights of Vegas is a very dramatic change of pace, and they really do a good job of differentiating each level so that there are so many different types of design to walk through. I like going from parking lot to casino to backroom drab cubicle spaces, back to casino and so on and so forth. I remember distinctly different problems, having trouble spotting guys in the Mexican town because they blended into the background, and having trouble spotting them in Vegas because of the flashing lights everywhere.
It’s my favorite game at the moment. I just got it and I am hooked. It is so fast paced. It gives me butterflies because I really feel like I am standing on top of a crane 50 stories up. It is so visceral, and that you have to RUN through this, that you can’t move carefully is just insane.
I understand your graphical issues, which is probably one of the reasons why I like games like Mirror’s Edge, Rainbow Six Vegas and Halo. I was conscious of it in Mirror’s Edge, and that’s part of the reason I bought the game. I am baffled as to your characterization of Rainbow Six though. I just don’t get it. FarCry 2 as well for that matter.
It’s really a shame. 3D Realms, back when it was Apogee, was pretty much the definition of fun, humorous, imaginative game publishers. My first exploits as a PC gamer were Commander Keen and all the similar (but not as cool) little side scrolling shareware Apogee games, including Duke Nukem, Monster Bash, Halloween Harry, and so on. And then there was Wolfenstein 3D. I remember visiting my company’s Finance office and seeing half the accountants staring in awe at one guy’s screen as he zipped around Wolf3D’s many brick walls. Like them, I became mesmerized by the astonishingly “real” display of first person, “you are there” action. I had to buy that game. Then Rise of the Triad, which I think was also Apogee, introduced some breakable surroundings and that was really immersive. And another underrated game, although it wasn’t all that innovative, was Blake Stone; some great music in that! Apogee was just the publisher, not the creator, but it was responsible for fun games under its aegis nevertheless.
I greatly enjoyed Duke3D too, but wasn’t really panting for its vaporware successor. The Half-Life games took me where I wanted to go; as fun as it was, Duke3D was a bit too enamored of its own frat boy testosterone to captivate me further. Still, it was funny when it wasn’t trying too hard to be a 3D Leisure Suit Larry.
Anyway, I believe the Apogee name is still around. Always hoped for more Keen games, they were a hoot.
It’s possible I’m letting Vegas and GRAW overlap in my memory, though my point, at least initially, was that even Rainbow Six felt the need to drop back into gritty territory–the Construction Yard level springs to mind as a post-Mexico level that moved out of the casinos and back into brown. I didn’t mean to use it as a game that’s not colourful, because you’re right, when it wants to be it’s incredibly vibrant. Perhaps where you saw it as “dramatic change of pace” (which is a perfectly valid way of seeing it) I saw it as “oh goody, sepia tone again”. And I should clarify of course that this is entirely about the art direction, not about the relative merits of any game, although I think the gritty seriousness can impact that, which was what–not to speak for them–I think Argent Towers was getting at.
I am someone who, however, while conceding the technical and graphic merits of the latter, found Vice City infinitely more fun than GTA 4, so it may be that I just don’t like the gritty thing all that much.
Commander Keen and Wolf3D were developed by this little company called id Software. I think they just just vanished after that.
Apogee for the most part just distributed other people’s titles to get the trial versions in stores rather than just copying from BBSes. The first game that 3D Realms developed was Terminal Velocity.
Duke Nukem Forever is not officially dead. Even if 3D Realms shuts down, 2K Games owns the publishing rights and could easily purchase all developmental assets and finish the game themselves.
In fact, they would be crazy not to at this point.
They didn’t develop Terminal Velocity, and that was actually one of the last games they published.
Also, 3D Realms was just a publishing label that Apogee Software created for “3D games” back when that had a real meaning versus 2D games. “3D Realms” was just another name for a company that had been formed in the late 80s. Terminal Velocity was no more their first publishing effort than Muhammad Ali’s fight against Sonny Liston in 1965 was his first fight because he was known as Cassius Clay before.
Well, your photo there has almost all the greenery in full sunlight, posing no contrast problems, while your screenshot has all the greenery in heavy shadow, with the dirt in full sunlight; something has to give. Current graphics engines don’t deal well with high contrast ratios, it’s true, but this is a limitation of display technology as much as anything; witness the sort of dynamic trickery that’s resorted to by HDR engines. The shots above really aren’t a like-for-like comparison.
The photo is heavily over-saturated; those aren’t natural tones at all. I agree that even on its own the Far Cry 2 screenshot looks washed out, but as noted this is highly dependent on specific lighting conditions; it’s easy to take a screenshot that shows any graphics engine in its worst light; turn around and you might have something much more natural. Remember too that these engines have to take in a wide variety of conditions without expert photographers behind the lens, adjusting things to perfection.
There are certainly some lazy games out there that have veered far too much towards muddy palettes, no doubt in part because it helps disguise low-quality textures and the like. But I think Far Cry 2 is a bad example; it’s a very impressive attempt to faithfully model a distinctive environment. Remember, too, that realism for realism’s sake isn’t what they’re after; they want something evocative, and I think mswas’s screenshot shows they clearly achieved that.
Why? To be honest, the cachet of the Duke Nukem franchise is mostly gone. That was a LONG time ago, in video game terms; many of today’s most avid gamers were in preschool when Duke Nukem 3D came out, and would be no more familiar with the Duke Nukem brand than they would be with Lawrence Welk.
I think you underestimate how much cachet Duke Nukem still has with anyone who played Duke3D in the mid to late 90s. And talk of DNF on gaming sites will inevitably lead to 100s of comments from gamers who say they would pay any amount of money to play the game in whatever condition its in. The appeal of “what kind of game could have possibly taken 12 years” is strong.
Beyond that, Duke Nukem 3D on the XBLA was a huge seller. So there’s definitely a market for Duke Nukem in today’s game industry.
I wonder… if the source code were released into the public domain, how much interest there would be from open-source developers to finish the game and release it to the public.
Bummer. I check about every 6 months to see the current status of Forever. I had just checked about 2 days ago and it seemed like they were saying they were about 90% done. If they had never really put a serious effort into finishing this game, then what a bunch of assholes.
The Duke Nukem franchise still has a large value because many gamers (even if they are older - they have money) know the name and that it was an innovative and fun game. Building that kind of name recognition from scratch costs a lot of money.
I didn’t think of that when I wrote what I wrote, but exactly!
And Fallout was a cult game that built up a reputation over the years to lead to build the hype towards Fallout 3. Duke Nukem Forever is building off the hype of one of the biggest games of all-time.
Laid-off employees are posting some screens and concept art online. I dunno if they’re still holding on to the interesting stuff, or if that is the interesting stuff. If these shots are indicative of the overall quality, I feel sorry for them. There’s nothing there that doesn’t look lifted out of Prey or Gears of War.
