I made this thread on FO, for people who hate that place, join in here in my LJ!
What games require our current technology?
With E3 over and it's various reveals out in the open I wanted to have a look at the games of our current generation that absolutely and utterly require the current technology that we have.
Games technology is constantly driving forwards, aiming for higher power and new features but when it comes to telling us why we need this new tech it mostly boils down to "This level of realism just couldn't be achieved before!" and is usually just talking about the graphics.
It's without a doubt that improved power and graphical capability makes for more visual impressive games but what games have we been given that literally could not be achieved before? What experiences in gameplay or atmosphere are we only seeing thanks to the improved power/features?
In answering this question you should think about older games and how you felt when you first played them, back when they were new. Did Resident Evil scare you? Wouldn't that still be the case if games tech had never increased? How has the technology we have now given something that you couldn't have in the PS1 or PS2 era?
For my first pick I would like to nominate a highly-flawed series that I personally enjoy, Dead Rising. These zombie-slaughterfests key feature that just cannot exists to the same degree on earlier technology is the sheer weight of onscreen enemies in a 3D environment. This is the only feature that really distinguishes it from third-person 3D action games of the PS2 era, everything else such as case-structure, story, weapons and level-sizes could easily exist. Which we can actually see in the much less impressive Wii version of Dead Rising 1, losing the sheer amount of zombies takes an awful lot out of the game and exposes it's weaknesses a little more.
With E3 over and it's various reveals out in the open I wanted to have a look at the games of our current generation that absolutely and utterly require the current technology that we have.
Games technology is constantly driving forwards, aiming for higher power and new features but when it comes to telling us why we need this new tech it mostly boils down to "This level of realism just couldn't be achieved before!" and is usually just talking about the graphics.
It's without a doubt that improved power and graphical capability makes for more visual impressive games but what games have we been given that literally could not be achieved before? What experiences in gameplay or atmosphere are we only seeing thanks to the improved power/features?
In answering this question you should think about older games and how you felt when you first played them, back when they were new. Did Resident Evil scare you? Wouldn't that still be the case if games tech had never increased? How has the technology we have now given something that you couldn't have in the PS1 or PS2 era?
For my first pick I would like to nominate a highly-flawed series that I personally enjoy, Dead Rising. These zombie-slaughterfests key feature that just cannot exists to the same degree on earlier technology is the sheer weight of onscreen enemies in a 3D environment. This is the only feature that really distinguishes it from third-person 3D action games of the PS2 era, everything else such as case-structure, story, weapons and level-sizes could easily exist. Which we can actually see in the much less impressive Wii version of Dead Rising 1, losing the sheer amount of zombies takes an awful lot out of the game and exposes it's weaknesses a little more.