A bit of rambling and some random thoughts

Well, only really one random thought, and not too much rambling, but the title sounded better than "Bored, yet again."

I was reading PC Gamer and took especial interest in their coverage of E3, which is one of the biggest conventions in the electronic entertainment world. It is where a substantial chunk of the new games coming out are unveiled and drooled over by the public. PCG had some 70 odd games that they looked at, and most of them looked very impressive. However, I noticed one thing - almost all are based around high end graphics engines and powerful physics models. Well, sweet! My game will look and perform like real life! Cool! Well, maybe not. I recently downloaded an independent game called UFO:Alien Invasion. This game is a remake of X-Com or something like that, which was a super famous game in the mid 90's. The graphics on it are 3D but not super advanced. It is turn based. It doesn't have a super advanced physics engine. It is also boat loads of fun! You run a Special Ops kind of team, and are supposed to deal with alien invasions. You maintain your base, reaserching things, and outfitting your team, and when aliens invade, you go and kill them. It is extremely tough, and takes lots of thinking. I'm surprised by the overall quality of it. There are still a few bugs in it (mostly sound, but a few other things like the campaign introducton, which isn't finished), but I can't wait 'till it is totally done! This made me really think about the games from E3. Why are developers pushing the visuals so much? Gameplay is much more of a draw for people over the long run. Friends will tell each other "Yeah the graphics are a little dated, but the game is still uber fun!" as opposed to "Yeah it looks good, but . . . " I don't know. I just hope that all of these games have the backgroup to go with the surface.


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