It's All About the Graphics, Part 2
"Why are the graphics used to judge a game?"

Welcome to part two of my `It's all about the graphics' series of investigations, last months issue I put myself inside the shoes of someone who judges games solely through graphics. And this month I'm going to be opposing these people (yay I'm going to have a lot of fun writing this investigation!).

So this month I'm going to be asking myself quite a variety of questions, why do people just judge a game by its graphics? What would the newer (Psone/N64) generation of gamers say about the old games (NES/Master System)? And some other questions that may appear.

Why? Would be the question to ask immediately. Graphics can't just be used to judge a game surely? Well tell that to quite a number of people who like playing video-games, it seems that they all find that graphics in a game is the only way to judge a game. Though I might add that it's more the Ps1/N64 generation of gamers that are doing this, but it doesn't exclude the older gamers and there seems to be a growing number of the older gamers starting to judge games just by its graphics. I myself work in the games department of a store and I constantly here the same things,

"Huh.The graphics on this looks crap," and, "The GBA is sh*t because it can't do proper graphics," and, "It looks awful."

It looks awful? LOOKS?! What are these people on about, they're just judging the game by its graphics! Most of the time I wonder if these people know what a good game is, and I bet that they haven't even read either a review of it, seen it in action or even asked a friend what the game's about. It's pitiful that a person can just pick up a game, turn it over to see some screen shots and just judge the game there and then, without any prior knowledge of the game.

It'll be very interesting when the Wind Waker is released over here (May 3rd), I wonder how many people are going to pick up the game box and then put it back down because the graphics are rubbish or the graphics look to kiddy for their liking. Fine not everyone finds cel-shading the best thing in the world, but just looking at the game and not even finding out what the gameplay's like, the music or even what the plot is like. I in fact know some people who aren't going to get TWW because of how it looks, they enjoyed OoT and MM, so why not TWW? And I know there are more people in this world that will not get the game because it doesn't look realistic.

In this day and age, the competition between the games companies is very strong. So fair enough graphics will come into play when making a judgement about a game, but it does not mean you should judge a game just by its graphics. Take for example, Time Splitters 2 (TS2 for short), it is a multi-format game, appearing on all 3 major consoles. I know that the graphics in each version are exactly the same, but try telling that to someone who doesn't know and has all 3 consoles. They will actually stand around looking at each game to see if the graphics are different and which one will look better, I have seen this kind of stupidity, the differences the person should have really been looking for are the controller differences. It depends on what controller you prefer, not the graphics and anyway so what if the GCN version's graphics aren't as good as the Xbox's? There are other things to consider like the controller and how it would effect to gameplay.

Now onto another matter, there is now the PS1/N64 generation of gamers around and many have never seen the NES, SNES, Mega Drive (genesis), Commodore 64 or any of the older consoles in action. It seems that this certain generation of gamers are the main culprits on judging games by its graphics. So let's just see, if I took a handful of them and took them on a nice trip back in time to the days of the NES, I wonder what they would say to the graphics on those machines. Well for example I put in The Legend of Zelda, and started to play the game, I believe this would most likely to be said:

"Duh..Look at the graphics, it's not even rounded, there's just ummmm..blocks of colour."

Also:

"The Graphics are absolutely sh*t, I'll never play that, it doesn't look like a game." (I've heard this one being said).

Also most likely the games would be ripped apart by them, sure the older games now look dated and possibly some of them look unplayable, but it doesn't by any means, mean they're absolute rubbish which should never see the light of day again. I still enjoy playing the games, Mario, Zelda and Kirby games still get me hooked. Though it is an actual shame some of the gems of gaming are not known by most of the newer generation of gamers, I've met people who think OoT's the first ever Zelda game to be released!

So graphics seem to be a very popular choice for judging games, I still don't 100% know why people do this, fine games should look nice and pleasing to the eye, but just to judge a game just by it's graphics is very saddening.

This is the end of part two there will be a third instalment of the `It's all about the Graphics' in the near future.