[Rant] PC gaming is too expensive. 'Sup consoles.

Speculative's speculation (hrrhrrhrhrhr) is pretty much spot-on. I want to elaborate on two of the points he makes, though:

No more than HD resolution: Yes, good graphics look pretty. Yes, they make for good screenshots to sell games (Y HELO THER, EA GAEMS). However, why do they need 1920x1080 pixels to look that good? Didn't people say games like FF6, Vectorman, Comix Zone, Viewtiful Joe, and Ico looked good? Hell, I remember a baseball game for the C64 being lauded for "more realistic graphics." We're talking little red stick people here.

"Graphics" need to take a backseat to art. Games can look good without having to run in 4096x3600 or whatever insane resolution that PC game makers are pushing these days. Never before did I need a video card that eats 600 watts of power and raises the temperature in my game room by 10 degrees to enjoy a good-looking game. Hell, you could argue that the original Zork had the highest resolution of any game ever made, because your imagination filled in the details on its own. Graphics don't get more realistic than that.

There was a reason a lot of people drooled over each iteration of Final Fantasy's summon monsters, and although I look upon FF with a less-than-favourable disposition, I must concede this point: it wasn't all about the polygonal flash effects that filled the screen whenever Bahamut spat burning plasma death at the hapless monsters below. Rather, a good part of the interest was how did the artist decide to draw Bahamut this time?. All the resolution in the world can't save a no-talent hack from sucking. Hmm, no wonder Nomura's character designs have done little for Square in the age of HD and progressive-scan. *ducks*

So let's have more games that look good based on style, art direction, and design (*cough*SMT Nocturne*cough*), and less quintilinear-mipmapped 18x psychotropic-filtered 10-factor antialianalasized resolution-fests that lack anything resembling creativity.

No microtransactions: Oh, hel-fucking-lo. Whoever thought of the idea of "micropayments" needs to have his limbs ground to stumps and then be fed into the world's largest food processor, right alongside the moron that thought "unlockables" in racing games or even action/adventure titles would be a good idea or, worse, count as "secret codes" or "cheats." Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Select, Start is a "cheat." Not "beat the game on hard mode in 10 hours to get another costume." BTGOHMITHTGAC is not a cheat, it is taking the player for a complete tool, and it is not welcome.

Much less welcome, however, is "here is a racing game. It has the BRAND NEW AWESOME 2008 LAMBORGHINI! Now that you bought the game, you must pay us $2.50 extra if you actually want to USE that Lamborghini. Sucker." Uhm, 'scuse me, what the fuck ever happened to not releasing a game until it was finished? Oh, right, Working Designs happened. Well, okay, I can see their logic there (Lunar 2 4-month delay I am looking at you), but there is still no excuse for releasing an obviously incomplete game and then being brazen enough to make people pay above and beyond retail cost for the game to get the missing parts. Fuck that shit with a rusty steel pipe.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

I like games where you unlock stuff. I'm not doing all the skill points in Ratchet and Clank just for the unlockables, but it is kinda nice to get something as a reward for doing all of it (though I am opposed to games like Haven where you have to do freaking ridiculous things in order to get a decent ending).

Bad example on my part, which I now realize looking back on my post.

Unlockables like costumes or joke weapons are fine. However, take games like F-Zero or Wip3out. Setting tracks and vehicles, i.e. stuff that fundamentally affects how the game is played or at least make up a significant element of the game, as unlockables, is heinous beyond the descriptive capacity of the English language.

There's nowhere I can't reach.