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[Chris Z]

This thread makes me miss Super Joe, and not because of the Bionic Commando reference.

[C.A. Silbereisen]

the "photorealism" of Mortal Kombat

Photorealism indeed

TEST YOUR MIGHT!

SF4 is actually kinda a sad game for me as I made the mistake of buying it on 360 and ragequitting shortly after due to the well-known deficiencies of the D-Pad. I know there's a solution but I'm not sure if buying a special controller for some 35 Euros just for one game is really worth it.

[Derek]

I like the 2d art from Wario Land Shake It.  The game is... just okay.  But this might have been a good style for Rocket Knight.

[sega]

I like the 2d art from Wario Land Shake It.  The game is... just okay.  But this might have been a good style for Rocket Knight.

Man, I give mad props to Nintendo for hiring a dedicated and celebrated TV/film animation studio (Production I.G.) to do the sprite animation work in that game.  That was a wise and bold move.

What's a shame is that publishers/developers look up metacritic ratings based on features, and decide what will be included in future projects based on that.  Wario Land Shake It reviews and sales will contribute to a message to developers/publishers that 2D isn't that well accepted/liked.  There just aren't enough console 2D games to give developers an accurate view to move forward on, so when they drop the ball like this, it hurts.

[C.A. Silbereisen]

I actually mentioned that game a few posts back, I thought it was pretty fun though, trying to get all the treasures I mean.  :D

[alspal]

All those 3D games look just as good as the 2D games, I think they look great.
But I'm not meant to say that in here, I think.

[Derek]

You can say that, I just disagree with you completely.

There's a certain sameness to the 3d graphics.  If you notice, you can't really make out distinctive features on anyone's face in the 3d shots.  There's no exaggeration to anything because it's just a single model being pulled around and rotated.  With 2d you can manipulate each frame to make it look exactly how you want it.

I'm not saying the 2d pixel art is brilliant, because it could be a lot better.  2d is not inherently better than 3d, either (although I'm more partial to 2d art as a whole).  But those 3d shots are just outright mediocre.  They'd be more interesting if they were outright terrible graphics.  They're just dull.

For anyone interested in 2d art, read John Kricfalusi's blog: http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

It's easy to be impressed by mediocre 3d until you know what to look for to find quality in artwork.  I'm not trying to be condescending, because I don't understand it fully myself.  But reading the opinions of really good artists certain things start to stand out to you.  So does drawing a lot yourself (something that I unfortunately don't spend enough time doing).

It's not just OMFG NOSTALGIA, I promise.

What's a shame is that publishers/developers look up metacritic ratings based on features, and decide what will be included in future projects based on that.  Wario Land Shake It reviews and sales will contribute to a message to developers/publishers that 2D isn't that well accepted/liked.  There just aren't enough console 2D games to give developers an accurate view to move forward on, so when they drop the ball like this, it hurts.

That's very true, and very sad.  Thankfully, indie developers have picked up that ball to a certain extent.  Just need to keep improving the skillz.

[Melly]

Wario Land Shake it looks dead sexy.

And I agree with the asian gentleman administrator asian.

 

[AMAZON]

i agree with most of the posts in here. i love 2d. sure there's a lot of personal bias in there but w/e. one of the main reasons is that almost every 2d character has its own distinct style. every 2d game looks totally different. most 3d games look identical. honestly, i love a good stylized 3d game. No more heroes, okami, and viewtiful joe are a few of my favourites (i have a thing for cellshading). if people experimented with it more i would accept 3d more.

[Rynen10K]

I believe that was Ubisoft that made the remake.

Huh. Well, whaddya know. Is it because Ubisoft has the rights to the "Turtles" franchise now or something? You'd think the company that published the original game would publish the remake.

I will say that I did enjoy Mega Man: Powered Up as a 2D to 3D remake.

This thread makes me miss Super Joe, and not because of the Bionic Commando reference.

Now that you mention it, I'd love to see someone make a joke mock-up of an awful 2.5D / 3D remake of Cave Story :D

[C.A. Silbereisen]

They'd be more interesting if they were outright terrible graphics.  They're just dull.

I agree. Mediocre is worse than bad. That's why I played through Flower, Sun and Rain but quit most mainstream FPS I play after a few hours I guess.  :D

I also think that 2D generally stands the test of time better than 3D, and I'm saying that as someone who grew up mainly in the N64/PS1 era. I mean,  tell me how many N64 games you still consider to be visually pleasing. Then do the same with the SNES.  

[Triplefox]

It's easy to be impressed by mediocre 3d until you know what to look for to find quality in artwork.  I'm not trying to be condescending, because I don't understand it fully myself.  But reading the opinions of really good artists certain things start to stand out to you.  So does drawing a lot yourself (something that I unfortunately don't spend enough time doing).

I think the first part of your statement is why we see a lot of 3d. It's easy to be convinced that 3d looks good simply because it renders every frame dead-on accurate, regardless of shape, pose, detailing, or perspective, while doing the same in 2d work will always remain very challenging. But that advantage comes at the price of spending lots of time carefully engineering all of the elements that are just "styling" in 2d work. So while you can iterate more easily on 3d work and get a lot of perceived detail in motion with very little effort, achieving a specific effect is wayy more difficult. Publishers are huge graphics whores so they tend to enjoy the struggle to iterate through the 3d process, though. It makes them feel like something is "happening" when behind the scenes there's tons of backend work going on.

Even I'm using 3d prerenders, though at least for the game I'm making it only shows up in the final art on the stuff most amenable to 3d (vehicles, environments, particles) while the characters will only use 3d models as pose references for drawn work. One of the nice things about prerendered CG is that the process can go in any direction you want it to: 3D to 2D and back again. You can use a compositing process to exaggerate the lighting and coloring on everything and bring back the contrasty look; you can do paintovers; you can use a 2d image for texturing or heightmapping. Lots of mind-bending options are available, and I'm just starting to learn how to use them all in effective ways.

With these 3d remakes, you have to work within the restrictions of real-time 3d. The advantages of real-time are to have the camera go anywhere and for the animation and posing to be manipulated arbitrarily. But these advantages don't really get used well when the game is fundamentally 2d. You can't do complex materials, high-detail meshes, or sophisticated post-processing in real-time. The range of styles with today's technology gives you the options of "generic plastic", "shiny and sweaty", "imitation celwork" and everyone's favorite, "bloomy and colorfiltered." Or when you run out of art budget you start covering everything in particle effects, leading to the ever-popular "fireworks display."

Essentially: you are going to end up looking generic unless you can throw down some really mindblowing texture and shader work.

(There is another thing driving the use of 3d, which is that on older consoles, high-res, fluid sprites blow through your space and memory budget really quickly, but the current gen doesn't really have the memory problem, and not even really the space problem either.)

[Chris Z]

There's a certain sameness to the 3d graphics.  If you notice, you can't really make out distinctive features on anyone's face in the 3d shots.  There's no exaggeration to anything because it's just a single model being pulled around and rotated.  With 2d you can manipulate each frame to make it look exactly how you want it.

While I won't completely disagree, I think it's important to point out that this is a problem with the content creators and not 3D as an artistic medium.  An excellent example of nuanced 3D animation was already brought up, which is Street Fighter IV.  The faces that Zangief makes when he's posing after a win or the face of most characters when they eat an Ultra are priceless.  Not to mention all the rest of the "nice touch" animations such as Rufus's belly shake, and a lot of the other win/intro/super/ultra animations.  Looks like they're gonna pull the same awesomeness with the new version (SSFIV) coming out in the Spring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW_RGZ18WUc

[Derek]

Yeah, I think SF4 looks great.  That said, the characters are huge and they have tons of close-ups (especially during the Ultras), so you can see their faces very clearly.  That's not the case with any of the platformers we were talking about from earlier in the thread.  You can't just zoom in that close during a platform game - you have to be able to see all around the character.

And actually I don't think it's the modellers' fault, that's just the problem with 3d at that scale.  Pixel artists can pick out each pixel of each frame and make it count, and at that scale, they have to.  With 3d graphics all you can do is make sure it's moving fast enough so that no one notices that a particular frame might look like shit.

Look at how many more pixels the remake has over the original, and it still turns into a mess in certain places (especially the faces):



Part of it's the jpg compression, but still.

It works for some platformers, though, like Contra: Shattered Soldier.  They do a lot of cool 3d effects and who's ever needed to see the face of one of the Contra dudes, anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJUy3vah3MU

What I was trying to say was that sometimes 3d is appropriate and sometimes it is clearly not the right/best choice.  There are a lot of things you can do with 2d that you just cannot do well with 3d.  It's unfortunate that a lot of people think that 3d is always superior by virtue of it being an extra "d".

[Chris Z]

While a lot of it has to do with texture resolution limitations imposed by programmers, crazy effects and postprocessing obfuscating detail beyond belief, I still think the artist is to blame at least partially.  For example, look at these cute little fuckers from Little Big Planet.  Would this game have worked better as pixel art?  Normally I'd say it doesnt matter but in this case, no.  The lighting, effects, and smooth animation were really superb and made you believe these little rag dolls were alive.  They take up as much screen real estate most of the time as the Rocket Knight screenshots and you can still make out their very expressive faces.  That doesnt mean the Rocket Knight remake should be in 3D if they're gonna half ass it (although that cant be changed now), just that 3D shouldn't be ruled out for these kind of games where expressiveness or detail is important. 

[Derek]

LBP is a good example.

And there's hope for Rocket Knight... those static screens just don't look very good and it doesn't seem like very much of the personality of the original game shines through.  Like I said, though, maybe it's better in motion.

[xerus]

Those screens give me little faith.

Oh well.  Time to go back and play the Genesis version another 100 times.

[Xion]

Game looks like ass.

Am convinced it will not live up to its history.

Shame.

[konjak]

The new aesthetics (and that horrible music) sure ruined Turtles in Time on XBLA for me, so I wouldn't hold out much hope for this...

[Dragonmaw]

Am I the only one in the world that thinks that Rocket Knight Adventures was only average? Seems like everyone I know shits their bricks over it, and I'm just like "eh, it's okay."