What makes a game work #2: Graphics

£6.95 this cost me. Worth every penny too.

I’ve been gaming for a long time. Longer than I care to admit, really. Put it this way, I remember giggling at the news of Atari filling landfills with unsellable ET cartridges. Throughout my gaming career, I think I’ve owned just about every gaming platform known to mankind, with only a very few exceptions (and if anyone has a cheap Vectrex going, give me a shout). Mostly, seeing a game that particularly impressed me drove my progress from console to console, and it’s usually these games that stick in my memory.

Ok, so, set the way-back machine to, ohhh, 1984 or thereabouts. I was meandering through a shopping center in Edinburgh, clutching my newly purchased copy of “Bruce Lee” for the Commodore 64 tightly, safe in the knowledge that there’d be much martial arting taking place later in the day, when I happened across a branch of John Menzies, a big poster in the window declaring that “Knight Lore” had been released. “Yum,” thought I, and dashed into the shop without further ado.

The first time I saw a werewolf

Like this picture? you had to look at it for five minutes while the game loaded.

As luck would have it, the game in question was loading up on an old speccy at the back of the shop. I stood there, patiently, listening to the whine-scrape of the loading noises, looking forward to seeing what Ultimate (soon to be Rare) had given us this time? More brightly coloured shenanigans in the style of Sabre Wulf? The title page came up. The kid waiting by the computer pressed the “0” key to start a new game. My jaw hit the floor.

Green, blocky, but wierdly solid

Knight Lore isn’t a terribly good game, truth be told, but if you ask any thirty-something gamer to give you a vivid memory of mid-eighties gaming, and I’ll bet Knight Lore is in there somewhere. The graphics weren’t colourful, but they were solid, clear, and gorgeous. Most importantly, they pushed the hardware to places it was never designed to go.

Zombies, soliders and, er, zombie soldiers

Aaargh! Get him!

Let’s skip forward a few years. I had popped ‘round to visit my mate, Rick, who had one of these new fangled PCs, and claimed they had quite good games. He fired up a little title called “Alone in the Dark.” I watched the impressive polygon-rendered opening cutscene and then, to my utter disbelief, the game continued – using the same graphics. Once again, my Jaw ate carpet.

A few moments later, he’d put on Wolfenstein 3D. The same effect. By now, my jaw was growing tired of being dragged along the floor behind me, so I dashed off home to play with my nice, safe Amiga

A third dimension

For the first time, horrors lurked just out of sight.

Anyone noticed what Knight Lore, Alone in the Dark, and Wolfenstein have in common yet? Yup – 3D. Not 3D for the sake of it, but 3D that subtly alters the perceptions of the person playing it. With Knight Lore, the player was immersed in a world, which felt very solid, lending a sense of challenge to the game. No more was Mr. Gamer pushing pixely squares about the screen, now he was pushing solid objects, and this alone placed the game in the halls of fame.

With Alone in the Dark, 3D was used for an entirely different purpose. A fully polygon rendered environment allowed the developers to move the point of view around, to view the same scene from many different angles, resulting in some memorably shocking moments. Walking along a corridor, the camera in front of the player, all is calm, all is quiet. Suddenly, the camera switches and there’s something nasty lurching along, mere feet in front of you. Quick change of underwear, back to the game.

Wolfenstein 3D accomplished something special. For the first time in gaming, Wolfenstein gave gamers a true Virtual Reality experience, a good deal more impressively than the nausea-inducing wireframe systems that were showcased on Tomorrow’s World. In one fell swoop, the FPS was created, dropping gamers directly into the head of the game’s main character, allowing complete freedom of movement

Suspending disbelief

Erm, nope. Doesn't work, does it?

You’ll have noticed by now that these three were graphically impressive for their time, Knight Lore especially. They weren’t, however, all good games. Despite Knight Lore’s incredible look, the game itself was clunky and slow. Groundbreaking graphics couldn’t prevent it from being a run of the mill pick-em-up game. The important point here is that it’s not just the graphics that are important. It all comes back to What makes a game work part one. If there isn’t good game design present, there isn’t a good game.

Ok, so switch off the way-back machine and stow it safely in the sad compartment of your backpack. What can we learn from the little rant above? Graphics stick in the memory – they’re the first thing you notice in a game, before the storyline or gameplay mechanics sink in, before you experience any of the level design. Graphics are in your face. They’re your interface with the electronic world that the game attempts to create for you. Many retro-gamers will protest that graphics aren’t important, that it’s gameplay that counts and they’re right – to an extent. Playing a game is like reading a novel – it’s all about suspension of disbelief. Anything that assists this improves the game.

Don’t get me wrong – of course defender, space invaders, and Jet Set Willy are good games and have their place in the grand scheme of things, but would Half-Life have been as immersive as it was if it looked like Pacman? Graphics don’t make a game good, and bad graphics don’t always ruin a good game, but good graphics can raise a good game to higher limits.

Putting it all together

The picture says it all, really.

So what do we consider to be “good graphics”? Does it have to be 3D? Nope. Not really. Most games produced today are in 3D simply because the availability of cheap 3D hardware means that the game mechanics can be taken to new levels. Admittedly, some games are forced into 3D unnecessarily (Frogger 2, anyone?), but for the most part games are developed in 3D because it adds depth to the gameplay (groan). The Capcom vs SNK series is old-school 2D because that’s what’s best for the game. Similar titles, like the upcoming Soul Calibur 2, could work just as well in 2D, but then the glorious graphics are as much a signature of the series as the gameplay is. Platforming games generally work better in 2D because it’s easier to make those pixel-perfect jumps, but that didn’t stop Metroid Prime from reinventing the genre.

What the people want

Why don't I know anyone who looks like Yuna?

These days, very few people would pay full price for something that looked like Sonic the Hedgehog (although we all paid more or less the same price for it ten years ago), but would happily pay the same money for Sonic Adventure 2 battle (arguably). Why? It’s basically the same game, isn’t it? Nope – with 3D, as well as fancy graphics, comes a flexibility of level design that 2D pixel work can’t match. The ability to design the level around 360 degrees of freedom, for one thing.

So graphics don’t matter, but are vitally important all at the same time. We look at Halo and think to ourselves, “why can’t all my games look this good?” It’s fair comment. They provide you with a quick link to the game world, tie you into the emotional experience of the game. They also work on a far deeper level. Anyone who’s played Final Fantasy X knows how moving an experience it can be. The opening cutscene, as soon as the game loads, shows the characters sitting, looking at a ruined city in silence, while a mournful piano melody plays in the background. Tidus stands, slumps his shoulders, and walks slowly around the others, pausing by Yuna. He leans over, lays a hand gently on her shoulder. She turns and gives him a sad smile as he walks up the hill and stands silhouetted, alone, facing the ruins. Well animated graphics, 2D or 3D, add an emotional depth to a game that didn’t really exist before the previous generation of consoles.

So, if we stamp our feet and complain that a game’s graphics are horrible, we’re not graphics whores – we just know what our consoles are capable of and want our games to be as beautiful as they are clever.