Kirby's Rainbow Resort

Kind of surprised that nobody said anything about this. Despite it being kind of funny.

Thing about that statement is, there's a reason for it. Originally, Kirby didn't copy abilities. He simply inhaled, and spat them out, that was how he fought, they hadn't yet developed the concept of copying abilities from foes. So I'm not even sure if that's a valid reason to not like it.

I would say something about your not at all subtle suggestion that graphics and music are somehow unimportant. But from what I'm seeing that was already covered quite well.



As for this. There's nothing to really call you out on about that, it sounds like a personal issue.
In general though, a short game isn't necessarily a bad one. Nor is a long game always a good one.

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"I need a hero that can lead the people. One that can collect and unite them, no matter how afraid or confused they may be.. and it won't be me."

OK, maybe not the least important part.
The point is they shouldn't effect the score.

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Credit to marx hat.

Not only SHOULD they affect the score, but they DO affect the score! At ign specifically, since that's where we're talking about, they include both sound and graphics in their wrap up section, as well as in the main review itself. Besides, music and graphics tie a lot of time and energy to make and simply waving them away is incredibly rude to the people who worked so hard on them
.

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I actually agree to this quite a bit. Music is a great form of communicating the scene, like with Jaws and it's legendary Jaw's theme. It tells the person how the scene is supposed to make them feel. Would you be half as afraid if a scary scene involved a heavy metal guitar solo or something of the like as you creep through the area? Or feel as sad if Don't Stop Me Now by Queen started playing in the background while two lovers say farewell or something dood?

As for graphics, as an NIS fan i have a bit of a bias but i honestly just don't care that much on how great a games graphics are. If the gameplay suffers due to too much focus on graphics, then i begin to think the developers and gamers who play these games are losing touch of what makes it a game (hint, it's the word with the word GAME literally in it). For the hell of it, lets compare Cthulu Saves the World to Final Fantasy XIII. As anyone i know will tell you, i detested playing FFXIII. The main reason being that the game focused mainly on shoving it's graphics down your throat, while largely forgetting that they are making a game rather than a movie and reveled in involving the player as little as possible (like being able to get through every fight simply pressing auto-attack and paradigm shift). Cthulu Saves the World, however proudly declares that it is 16-bit and focuses more on it's gameplay and story to attract players.
Honestly though, this is all just my opinion and shouldn't be taken as absolute fact doods.

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"Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan!"
.......Avatar by Deguass

I'm not sure I understand what the meaning of "bad graphics" is. Do 8-bit games by definition have "bad graphics"? And, if so, does that mean that anything else, by comparison, automatically has "good graphics"? Meaning that, if Kirby's Dreamland had a visual style looked like this:

it would inherently have "good graphics", because it's not 8-bit?

Because, personally, I don't see anything wrong with the graphics of Kirby's Dreamland:

I can tell that Kirby is a puffball, I can tell we're in a forest, I can tell that Whispy is a tree with a face, I can tell he's dropping apples, the HP/life area is legible. The visuals of the game are simplistic and cartoon-like and are limited to the monochromatic colour scheme of the Game Boy, but they aren't by any means "bad".

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You make a good point.

Also I played KDL1 after playing I think almost every other game in the series, outside of....KPL, KTnT and KAv and I still loved it. So maybe something is wrong with me but I don't think so.

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Seriously, I originally was just mad because it got a higher score than kssu. Yet kss got a higher score than dreamland.

So, Acording to IGN dreamland is better than kssu yet kss is just a tiny bit better than dreamland.
>.>

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Credit to marx hat.

Yeah but sometimes people go too far with them and act like a game is great JUST because it has good graphics *CoughMostfirstpersonshootersCough*

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Credit to marx hat.

I TOLD YOU BRO

I WARNED YOU ABOUT THOSE TREES

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hallabsound @ tumblr

Alright now that I've actually made it outside my room...



The funny thing about your music example is I don't care for John Williams' music in-film, as it tends to be obtrusive (I prefer Bernard Herrmann). But I knew someone might bring him up if I used the filmmaking example so I just kept quiet. That, and, well, just 'cause I don't like Williams doesn't mean other people haven't been effected by the way his music accompanies a certain scene in a film, so the point's still made.

As far as graphics go: no, I don't really care how good the graphics are as long as they don't disrupt gameplay. I mean, c'mon, one of the main reasons why I want a XBOX 360 is to play Deadly Premonition, which hardly shows off that console's HD capabilities. That, and I'm perfectly fine with my Wii being my main home console. Graphics are a nice plus, like gorgeous cinematography, but if it eclipses the game's purpose as an interactive challenge, there's not much of a point to it.

That being said: a games graphics' can most certainly effect gameplay. Graphics effect more than just the game's looks. After all, you don't navigate through the game based on instinct alone; you go by, and react to, what you see. And if what you're seeing is an enemy that pops out of nowhere and vanishes just as fast, with no indication that it'll ever come back, or that it was supposed to be there in the first place; or if what you're seeing is your character doing the same, so that you have no idea how to progress through the level safely; or if what you're seeing is part of the background that's somehow moved itself to the foreground, making it impossible to see--absolutely, the graphics will have an effect on gameplay. And even if all that doesn't happen, and you're having an absolute blast playing a game, it's still perplexing to see, say, mid-bosses morphing in to each other as if one or the other weren't standing there. Which is what happened in Return to Dream Land. In that case I'd argue that something as simple as having the characters blend in to each other like that is a point off for a game that's been in development for so long. It shows a lack of effort. In the case of low-budget games, or games that were made in a rush, it's unfair to critique something the production staff didn't have the time or the money for. Or, in the case of a Game Boy game: to critique them for something they didn't have the technology for.

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hallabsound @ tumblr

Look, if Uncharted 2 had PS2 graphics it would be nowhere near as impressive as it is. That being said, it would still be a fantastic game.

(also those most first person shooters are actually well-made games and people who don't like them like to hide behind the "people who like them only care about graphics" as an excuse when really the reason generally just is "I don't like them")

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For the music part, i was using something most people would be familiar with, another one i was thinking of posting for an example was The Lonely Man at the end of the Incredible Hulk. But i figured more people have seen Jaws or heard it's theme than that Incredible Hulk movie/song.

As for your argument about graphics affecting gameplay, wouldn't stuff like that be placed under gameplay itself? Honestly, i would say that if it seriously affects the way you play, such as glitchy or buggy scenes, then it would affect gameplay just as much if not more than the controls would.

The way i see games is that they are like bikes (yes, it is analogy time kiddies!) The gameplay works as the frame; the story as the tires, peddles, and chains; the music as the handle bars; and the graphics as the paint job, tassels, bells and whistles, etc. The story keeps the game moving and progressing, as the music controls the emotions and feel of the game, and the gameplay holds the whole thing together. At the end of the work, the paint job is added, and though it is generally not seriously affecting the project as a whole, many people will judge it simply by how the bike (game) looks, rather than its other features.

....dood

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"Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan!"
.......Avatar by Deguass

I feel like your bike analogy gives graphics too little credit. There are some times when graphics MAKE the game! And there are many times when they drastically improve a game. Don't believe me? Let me share a few examples.

First, let's go with Kirby's Epic Yarn. Let's say that the game came out and was called Kirby's Epic Story or something similar. EXACT same gameplay. Same physics, same levels, same boss. Story changes slightly, though. Instead, Kirby gets sucked into a portal and ends up in a world that is made of...world. The trees are trees, the water is water and the grass feels like....grass. He still can't inhale for whatever reason, let's say there is some portal stuck in his gut or something I don't know, but he can shapeshift! and has a whip! Suddenly, a game that reviewers loved for being simple and original and beautiful gets 7's for being yet another single jump, pick-up-and-throw platformer. One where there's no difficulty! That "unimportant" change in graphics makes the highest reviewed Kirby game into another throwaway wii title that happens to have Kirby in it. Starting to see what I'm getting at?

Let's try another one! Back in 2003, everyone is excited for the new zelda game. They loved ocarina and majora's mask and they're ready for another one. And it comes out! The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker releases, starring the same young Link model that was used in ocarina and majora. The graphics are exactly the same as the last two games! Same blurry textures and mostly expressionless NPC designs! It's about sailing now, which is cool! The water looks the same as it did in Lake Hylia! All the enemies retain their original models, etc. etc. Now how is that worse than what Wind Waker actually did? After all, it's just a graphics change! It retained the gameplay, dialogue, sounds, story. But suddenly a world that for the first time in zelda history had towns full of expressive, stylized people and a Link who for the first time ever was able to smile without looking like he took a vise to his lips......loses all that.

But obviously these are both very stylized choices, so for the last example I'll leave Nintendo behind. At E3, Ubisoft did a (for the most part pretty bad) conference where they showed off the latest game in one of their bestselling franchises - Assassin's Creed. They started it off with a heavily stylized, animated short of a cel-shaded assassin running along a rooftop, jumping from building to building before showing off the trailer, which was so graphically impressive that my parents did not believe me when I told them it was all CG. Apparently when some of my friends who have not played the AC games saw the first short, they thought it was showing off the new stylized art style of the new game. When the second trailer was shown, a lot of them were disappointed, saying that obviously they were too scared to go outside the realm of just "good graphics" for the series. I disagreed, however. Assassin's Creed is supposed to be about history. The developers constantly go out of their way researching old architecture and historical figures, and the games are full of actual historical figures, looking like they came to life out of the few paintings and sketches that had featured them. Blurbs about these people and places, as well as the culture and society of the time, help to paint a surprisingly accurate picture of the location. I feel - and I'm sure the developers had a similar frame of mind - that the realism in the art style really helps with this accuracy. A model of renaissance Venice that's cel-shaded is cool, but one that tries to be picture-perfect, down to the texture of the building materials used? I'd much much rather get to run Ezio around there. I am not afraid to say that if the next Assassin's Creed was cel-shaded, it would very much ruin the game for me. Yep. Graphics being less realistic would ruin a game for me. I just said it.




With KDL, of course, it's a very different story. Back then, impressive graphics didn't really reflect too much on the art directors. What they DID do, however, was show off how good the programmers were. The better looking a game was, the more programming the guys making the gameplay had to do to get it there. So if you say that graphics don't matter for a gameboy game, but programming does, you are in effect saying "programming doesn't matter, but programming does". And that doesn't make sense.

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OK, I'll admit that sometimes bad graphics and bad music can make the game non-enjoyable.
But for me that's usually when they try to smash 3d graphics onto a system that's best suited for 2d.
For example: Super mario rpg: LEGEND OF THE 7 FAILS.
The graphics were very blurry and looked terrible, since they weren't.....2d....on the snes!
The snes can't handle those kinds of graphics without making them look all blurry and ugly.
And the music didn't make up for it either, it was sounded like they really didn't try, or maybe the beats just didn't work for me, meh.
Overall, it was a painful experience for my eyes and ears.
(And it was painful for my brain since the story was so stupid it involved a giant sword that fell from the sky and took over bowser's castle -_-)

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Credit to marx hat.

man that was such a good game

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I'm having a hard time getting into Super Mario RPG but that's another story for another thread. Although, yeah, now that I think about it the game's presentation does bore me. The music's pretty bad, and the graphics aren't that interesting--but I'm comparing this to Paper Mario, which is essentially the Kirby's Epic Yarn of the Mario RPGs.

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hallabsound @ tumblr

(by the way your logic is that a 3d look on a 2d system can't be good, when the Donkey Kong Country games and Kirby's Dream Course, along with plenty of other examples, disagree with you pretty heavily)

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With songs like "And my name is Bukki" and "Beware the forest mushrooms", I wouldn't ever dare call Super Mario RPG's music bad (I'm also a fan of Yoko Shimomura's stuff).

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Kirby: Cosmic Chaos

"Beware the Forest Mushrooms" is the only song I like tbh.

But I still need to finish the rest of the game. And all the other stuff I downloaded from the virtual console. /o\

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hallabsound @ tumblr

This is why i said it GENERALLY doesn't affect it as a whole. Yes, there are games like Okami that use the art style for the gameplay, or games like Wind Waker, Scott Pilgrim, and Castle Crashers that are designed with a set art style and based on that. However, i just see it as graphics being generally just used for decoration to impress players into buying it, like Street Fighter IV, MvC3, or any of the recent Square Enix games. They aren't really important to the overall design of the game, just used as a final touch to make it nice and polished.
....dood

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"Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan!"
.......Avatar by Deguass