Notice how Sound Design isnt even mentioned on the meme. That’s how far down that is in everyone’s minds.
But it should because we’ve been suffering for over a decade of flat non surround or abysmal volume mixing. Dialog that is just too quiet while everything else is loud. But I guess as long as we have separate volume sliders in game that’ll fix it. If only every game came with em.
Also we’ve been pushing graphics all the time but Sound has basically tanked since the invention of the Sound Blaster AWE64 or something. What’s a sound blaster? Well kids we used to buy sound Cards for our computers much like you do GPU cards. That’s how much sound tech has stagnated. We had 5/7.1 setups in the late 90s had games with EAX support now everything is just whatever, play sound.wav. I guess Dolby Atmos is a thing but it’s a thing with a subscription fee.
TLDR: what about sound
If the game requires you to use the volume sliders to have a decent sound design, then it’s kind of a “mix it yourself” game.
There was a point I used to turn down SFX because I wanted to listen to the music. At some pointed I started to turn down the music so SFX was more punchy like it used to be.
5.1 and 7.1 systems aren’t all that widespread, even in the music industry. Surround kinda sits in the same place vr does for me. It’s immensely cool, but it’ll never become standard due to hassle and lack of support.
Most of the recent innovation in sound has been trickled down from the music and film industries. Just a general increase in the capabilities of soft synths and a better understanding of foley, alongside dedicated in house recording studios have raised the bar of audio.
To be honest I agree with you that sound is overlooked, sound engineers truly are unsung heroes. I mean even when people point out the sound in a game, it’s usually directed at the composer.
“It’s a technical wonder, never seen before in the industry. Completely unique dialog trees and interactions with NPCs. Elaborate upgrade system. Crafting mechanics. Full open world sandbox experience. Planned DLC for the next 2 years. BattlePass”
Holy fuck I’m tired of this shit
I hate how every AAA game has to be an open world sandbox with loads of extra features. I just want a good story and strong core gameplay.
I want an open world sandbox with loads of extra features
FTL: Faster Than Light
Minimal story
2D graphics
But
Great music
Lots of fun
Edit: Not sponsored btw, just have some obsession with the game.
And all of these things, including the fun were definitely mentioned in all the reviews. Meme doesn’t make any sense.
Totally. That’s why Nintendo games always review poor- oh, wait
The reviews still have a strong focus on graphics, but based on the hardware limitations of the Switch.
Also, the aesthethic is not just about how photorealistic the game looks or what cutting edge technologies it uses. That’s why some games age differently than their peers, simply because their art style is not or less diminished by technological advances.
I don’t care very much about the cutting edge graphics, I rather have something with a round aesthethic than dry looks with ray tracing.
Super Mario Galaxy is still the most beautiful game I have ever played, and also my favourite original soundtrack of all time.
If you ask me, a game has to be tied or close when it comes to fun, story (if applicable), and music in order for me to even care about a game.
You could throw a text based terminal game using ASCII art at me and I’d love it just as much as a game such as Hitman Blood Money so long as it’s fun enough.
Indeed.
Graphics will always be less important
The popularity of various “ugly” games is proof of that
undertale
Rimworld
Dwarf fortress
Minecraft
Diablo 2 (not resurrected)
Probably many many more
My dad is one of those people who seems to think minecraft is lame because of the graphics yet says Mario on the NES looks just fine.
Minecraft is a strange one for me, because it has never caused me that reaction of “this game looks bad/ugly”. I think something like Infiniminer looks ugly, Unturned looks ugly, most Minecraft clones look ugly, a lot of more “realistic” games look ugly, but somehow not Minecraft. I can’t quite put my finger on why I see it as different somehow.
I usually consider graphics to be a secondary to gameplay. I play a decent amount of ascii terminal games, so graphics doesn’t matter much to me.
Graphics are like, one of the last things I give a shit about as long as they’re not hampering the game. I don’t care if I’m playing Wolfenstein 3D or the latest triple-A graphics splurgefest so long as it’s a fun game, but stuff like Cruelty Squad is an absolute no-go because of the dogshit HUD that serves only to distract the player and make it feel claustrophobic.
Same. Love playing a beautiful game, like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but I also love Rimworld. Like more hours in RW than any other title, by a wide margin. And it’s top down goofy 2D graphics and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
One of the reasons why I like Skill Up reviews is because he tends to focus on whether or not the game is a good time.
Personally I’ve stopped watching reviews for that reason. Too much of his review depend on whether he actually had fun with the game or not. If it’s a game he didn’t enjoy he’s going to review it much harshly while finding whatever positives to justify recommending a game he enjoyed.
For instance he didn’t enjoy the Outriders expansion and one of his big points of criticisms was that it’s too hard to play solo. Which is a pretty dumb criticism to have when the game has a world tier system with the sole purpose of letting you set the difficulty. It climbs with XP but you can always set it to a lower difficulty if something is too hard. He could’ve easily set it to world tier one and just shred through the game, he simply stubbornly chose to be on the highest difficulty that was unlocked for him. And he was at the difficulty level where builds start to matter, except from the video it’s pretty clear he doesn’t have an actual build in mind. His criticism was the equivalent of playing master difficulty (or beyond) in Diablo 3 as a monk without any consistent spirit generation, and then saying Diablo 3 is too hard. Anyone who has played Diablo 3 knows statement like that is complete BS but anyone trying to understand whether they’d actually want to play Diablo would instantly be dissuaded from giving it a shot.
And the flipside is Destiny’s Lightfall expansion review where he just decides to add everything “free” into the same expansion review pile because he loves Destiny. And of course then proceeds to downplay every glaring negative point about it such as “No new pvp maps. You shouldn’t expect it because Bungie isn’t focusing on PvP either” and “Nothing new about gambit, the players don’t care about gambit either.” or “One new strike and no real improvements to that core gameplay loop. Game development is hard you guys”. To give the expansion context, it’s the weakest expansion after Y1 (which was the lowest point of the entire series) and is complete filler in terms of the story. Yet Skillup still felt it was good enough to recommend it to people.
For me his reviews have become mostly worthless because I first have to intuit his experience with the game to understand which way his bias has swung, so that I could get context of his final verdict.
Games aren’t meant to be fun, they are meant to make money.
Unless you’re an Indie studio, then games aren’t meant to make money until the bills start piling up.
Very true.
Swap music with Graphics or Story and I’m with you on most games.
IGN’s review of Starfield has zero mention of the music, same with its Fallout 4 review.
Just checked The Verge - also not mentioning the music of Starfield at all.
In my opinion, music is what turns a good game into a great game.
Eh, that’s very subjective. A ton of people (me included) mute the music and have something else in the background (with exceptions, of course).
Very true.
But then again, it’s a Bethesda game. You already know what the music going to be.
Other than the fallout radio and main menu music for the rest, I have no idea… I always turn the music off if it’s coming from a non-immersive source.
You also already know the quality of the story and gameplay. Seems they didn’t buck the trend this time.
No, you don’t, because Fallout 4 was particularly trash on both counts. It’s explicitly why I haven’t even subbed to Gamepass or anything for Starfield after growing up obsessed with Oblivion, FO3, FONV, and Skyrim, as well as buying the Pip Boy Edition of FO4 because I was so excited for it.
Yup. It’s been twenty years since they started the whole “player cannot fail and they must succeed at everything” gameplay ideal. Anyone still expecting better is playing themselves.
The Elder scrolls series had always fantastic music.
It’s been the same music for 20 years.
Oh look it’s another rendition of the Morrowind title theme.