As paradoxical as it may seem for some, the Wii has probably more survival horror games than its HD competitors. Deep Silver's Cursed Mountain is one of them and since the game will be available on August 25 in North America - followed by the European release a couple of days later - it is a good opportunity to discover some new - and quite appealing - screenshots.
All comments (15)
As bleachedsmiles said, creativity all the way! It is one big factor when a console's power doesn't help you get immersed in a game.
If you make a game with a set budget and distribute your resources accordingly i think you'd end up with a better game if you develop for more powerful hardware as you'll no doubt have more freedom.
I agree with what you are saying, but in being right you're also furthering the point. If you develop for better hardware people expect more from the graphics. The result is you have to spend more resources on graphics to even be a viable product in people's eyes, inflating the dev costs and running a bigger risk of not profiting from the game unless you can sell it to a bigger audience. Movies follow the same truth, Eternal Sunshine doesn't have the budget of Transformers 2. I realise that there is room and even a need for progress in terms of graphics, but you can't expect the Eternal Sunshines of gaming to get the Transformers 2 treatment.
I've been hoping for that kind of evolution in gaming aswell and when I heard about Nintendo's plan I was sure the Wii would be it. In retrospect the PS2 has really been the one to step up to that plate so far, but things are arguably beginning to shake loose now however. Quite a few projects are slowly coming to frutition on the Wii, things that aren't quite XBLA material but also wouldn't realistically be able to compete with HD blockbusters.
I honestly don't even get the graphics thing anymore. I FEEL like we've gotten to a point where all platforms work fine if worked on with a good sense of their quirks and limitations, but maybe it's just that I'm older and don't give a crap about that stuff anymore. For me, a breathtaking DS game manages to be breathtaking even though it exists alongside Killzone and Gears of War, and whether a game is fun, suspenseful, exciting, scary, all comes down to its ability to manipulate how the player feels through gameplay. Resident Evil 3's Nemesis wasn't scary because he looked scary or realistic or whatever, he was scary because of how he was presented and how the player was haunted by him.
Michel Ancel did an interview with Gamespot once talking about this very thing, balancing the sensation of power within a game. It was really insightful, but I can't find it anymore. :(
I mean sure there's the speedtree alternative, but how do you make that work without ending up with one type of realism throughout all expensive games?
Likewise, the very issue we're talking about is making games that aren't conventional, that are interesting and push genres in other directions and even to an extent break new ground. If indeed we have tools optimised for blockbusters we'll have an environment where it's STILL economically idiotic to go against the grain.
I mean don't get me wrong, in a perfect world you would be able to make a game with Wii/PS2 graphics/physics/sound et cetera for the 360 or PS3 without people going batshit insane, but gamers aren't there yet, it's a question of maturing as an industry. The PC has been there for ages, which is ironic because it sometimes seems PC dudes won't ever shut up about their hardware and how many frames they can push with it.
Your comments on creativity though I don't necessarily agree with. I think you can still make a NES game that rivals Bioshock in how genious it is. I've never, ever banked creativity on hardware, and what few limitations there are if you TRULY think something through have been decidedly eliminated already by the PS2 generation. Sure, we'll prolly see jumps ahead in areas in the future, but what is already here in no way prevents people from having totally insane, awesome ideas that shouldn't be bogged down by vases not falling off the table or news clippings on walls not being readable in HD.
And just like with movies, the less desirable games will have to earn less. In the movie industry there are plenty of little obscure independent flicks floating around, probably hardly covering their own costs and if you want to make stuff like that you'll just have to accept that the profit margin is smaller, and some offshoot like the wii won't change the direction of the entire industry i think. There will still be the big ass blockbuster games and then we'll have the french art movies on the side, that the connoisseurs enjoy. Even on the wii that is still true as the broad mass of the wii owners don't give a flying fuck about creative games, they just want Wii Sports Space Shuttle Adventure and Super Mario Multiverse while guys like you dig out the little nuggets of gold from underneath the piles of dung.
Provided pricing is dynamic (ie nothing like Microsoft's GOD pricing here in europe) I think digital distribution will eventually blur the line between the Dynasty Warriors and the Modern Warfares of the world where each game will be measured by what it's setting out to do and who it's setting out to appease, but it's a gloomy thought that it will require the death of sexy pre-order bonuses and awesome packaging just as LE stuff is really taking off. Atlus is going absolutely nuts with that stuff on the PS2, and it's exactly the kind of thing a niche audience to a niche game appreciates.