Games These Days

Let's take a look at a few of the games in the stores today. I daresay 8 out of 10 games just look nice but really suck when it comes to game play. It has been quite a while since I actually played a really good game.

My definition of a good game? Something that's fun to play. Not something nice to look at but lacks in the gameplay department.

Today, you need a decently high-end graphics card just to play most games, as many games now render 3D graphics real-time. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. I'm just questioning the need for almost all games to have 3D-rendered graphics in such detail.

Some simple games do not need that much eye candy to make it a good game. I would say that Command and Conquer : Generals is one such game.

Electronic Arts – C & C: Generals

It's a known fact that you will need a pretty high-end machine, and at least an ATI Radeon 9600XT-class graphics card to fully enjoy the game without endless lag. My question here is - is there really a need for the game to utilise such a high degree of rendering power? Where does this leave all the other 'poorer' gamers who cannot afford a spanking new graphics card?

When I first saw Command and Conquer : Generals, I was fairly impressed with it. However, I was also left wondering why the heck the game's engine needed such a powerful graphics card to render some of the effects when it was also possible to do something similar on a lower-end card.

Yes, the eye candy might not be as mouth-watering if they did so. But was all that fancy graphics really necessary? Does a more translucent fog effect versus a more opaque fog effect mean anything to the gamer? Does the type of fog actually have any real impact on how the game is played? Does it even have any effect on the way the game will be played?

My point is that 19 out of 20 games released today require high-end gaming machines and expensive high-end graphics cards. What happens to the poorer gamers out there? Just because it’s easier to make gamers get a faster graphics card than it is to tweak codes to get the game to run well on lower-end systems; doesn't make it right to do so!

And to think why some people in the industry actually wonder why sales of games have dropped over the years? Duh! Not everyone who buys a PC today is going to upgrade every 6 months just to play a new game. So, how do you expect us to buy new games when our systems can't even run them?!

Developers should think about that when they work on their next game with fantastic graphics that will not only blow you away; but will also require you to blow away a huge wad of your hard-earned money.