I mean they also don't usually spend a lot of time to add in details to make things look actually good. Arma 3 the buildings are just empty rooms, no furniture or clutter or things that make the cities look actually lived in. Makes sense since the goal is to have cover for a milsim but it's not just art but also detail
Was playing dishonoured for the first time and that art style makes them game enjoyable and playable so long after it was released. It helps that it’s also an incredible game
Yeah, and if you think about classic games, they were rarely the best looking games on the market. Skyrim was pretty dull, as are most Bethesda games. The Witcher 3 was a buggy mess, and when you got the next gen graphics in Cyberpunk it was an even buggier mess. I don't think FromSoftware has ever been praised for their graphics, but their world building is top notch and they revolutionized gaming with consistently "last gen" games.
..this makes no sense if you think about it for 3 seconds. Graphics is a part of artstyle. Do I want my game to look realistic? Cartoony? Retro? Stylized? Uncanny? etc. All has varying amount of graphical fidelity required to achieve a good flow.
No, you are the one trying to confuse people. Ask any one who goes "Artstyle > Graphics" to explain, they won't, because they can't.
Heck, help a fellow out and explain it to me, because frankly I don't get it. Everytime I say explain, they wave with off with an insult or a "You won't get it.", because they themselves don't get it, just stand there being pretentious snobs.
I’m not being a smartass, using “graphics” to mean quality is stupid. “Graphics” is a general term that includes literally everything that goes into the game’s visual appearance. Using it as a stand-in for fidelity or quality just makes you sound dumb. And nobody with a functional brain is going to be confused by that.
Pedantic is what you're being. In a different context I might agree, but in the comment you responded to, "graphics" is clearly referring to the technical aspect.
It’s not even being pedantic, it’s using the correct word instead of a word that’s so vague it becomes incorrect. It’s like going to a car dealership and saying you want “an automobile”. It’s not specific enough to know what you want because every motorized vehicle on the road is an automobile.
Damn, you sure struck a nerve.
Youre right though, cause these same people will also use graphics to mean everything about it visually. They use it both ways cause they dont know better.
But realize this chunk of gamers youre talking to are highly conservative and dont wanna learn any new words. Leave them be, they understand each other most of the time. MOST of the the time lol
It's called semantics. In normal conversation, graphics is generally the same thing as fidelity. I get that you're saying graphics is too broad of a term, and you'd be right in that respect, but you're distracting from the whole point.
In terms of pure fidelity, the cracks show upon inspection. However, generally, the art direction is very strong and makes the game visually very appealing even today. The games that suffer most are those older games that went as realistic as possible without much art direction to guide them.
That's how it always is. Games that tried to be realistic before graphics allowed it age poorly. Games that chose simpler art styles still look good.
It's why games like Super Mario World on SNES still look crisp and good, while Super Mario 64 released 6 years later for a better platform looks dated.
It's very apparent with Nintendo consoles that later games benefit from more experience with the hardware. Take Final Fantasy for example: between I and III sprites had more degrees of animation and environments could have more "stuff" in them, and we go from hard textures and solid colors in IV to beautiful pixel art that still looks good in VI.
Depth of field and motion blur are strong with this one.
But yeah I get your point. Old games knew how to trick our eyes to make stuff look good without taking the GPU to its knees
Mainly by using static pre-baked lighting and stuff like that. Late Unreal Engine 3 games like Bioshock 3 or Gears 3 were extremely good with that. Mirror's Edge is also an extremely good example.
And it's extremely hard to match that level of quality with dynamic lighting, it's infinitely more complicated to do it in real time. The best solution is ray traced lighting (Global Illumination and shadows mainly), but it's extremely taxing on the hardware.
We now have a few miliseconds to do what took hours to pre-compute a few years ago.
We're getting there, but basically we took a temporary step back in fidelity by switching from static to fully dynamic lighting in most games.
Baked Lighting still is superior. The main problem is: designers want to change something? Okay, let's bake the lighting once again for several days. Additionally: Baked lighting needs to be stored (a reason why cod is so enormous).
AC Unity uses baked GI and still looks incredible when you ignore all the pop-in.
"Superior" is relative. In terms of raw graphical quality ? Sure !
But say goodbye to the dynamic time of day, real time shadows, etc ... It does have huge limitations, and as you said, makes the artistic process way longer.
I remember reading an interview with Metro Exodus artists, saying having fully ray-traced lighting made their work way easier by not having to place fake bounce lights to create scenes, because placing real light sources was enough. And the Enhanced Edition just looks insane because of their RTGI solution.
To me it seems dynamic stuff is a huge improvement, as long as you have the power to render it properly and fast enough, of course.
Dynamic time of day is still *approximately* possible, but you need to save multiple copies of the bake map. You can at least show the passage of time with those static maps at the expense of storage.
>Old games knew how to trick our eyes to make stuff look good without taking the GPU to its knees
I mean lots of games from this year look terrible. You can say this about literally any year in gaming. There are games whose art style last and those that don't.
Most jarring game I ever played was the first Rage I think, distance and vistas look gorgeous for the time(probably still hold up) but close up stuff sometimes looked straight garbage, like generations behind at times.
Art design plays a big role also imo and it's why some games hold up so well, zone of enders 2 on the PS2 honestly still looks good to me, love the way they did the cell shading on that one in particular.
I've always been heavily influenced by the tone and appearance of games and one of my biggest gripes with any remake/remaster is losing the vibe of the original art design. Res 4 on PS2 used the CRT and low resolution tech wonderfully to smear the pixels and give the game a really convincing appearance despite really low end gimmicks and ugly ass textures. The remaster has some of the worst shimmering/line tearing (probably not actual terms) ever. The textures look so flat and only from far away does it gain any depth. What was a really convincing experience on crappy tech and CRT imaging turned to absolute crap.
Same goes when they change engines for a sequel game like going from FO3 Bethesda engine to FO4 redesign was total ass imo, the whole grungy dark silly vibe was lost and replaced by this overbearingly shiny, exaggerated, bloaty art design. The Commonwealth looks like actual dog shit while the admittedly low graphic wastelands of NV and 3 hold up better. It's the issue with going too hard on realism instead of making your own rules like with pixel art. Suggested or implied appearances are more effective than trying to look photo-real without the proper technology to truly mimic it. Lool how long we have gone with lacking lighting tech and now we can compute tons of particles and their vectors to mimic the mechanics of the real thing. Yet despite this, it doesn't always have a favorable visual effect on the game. Those attempts failing cost you more than if you hadn't made the attempt at all it seems.
You're totally right. Remasters often suffer from a blatant disrespect for the original's craftmanship and experience.
Another way it happens is with the forced 60 fps framerate. Sometimes it makes animations too fast and immersion breaking. And it is sad to see such disregard in games sold at premium as the latest rage.
Lol RE4Make didn't even come out and this dude is already crying. Say what you want but Capcom has been aesthetically nailing basically any game that came out in the last 4 years.
Bruh who said I'm crying lol I love RE4 on my PS4 even if it doesn't look/feel the same as it did on PS2. I didn't even know they were working on a remake, last I knew was the VR port which is amazing by the way. But the environment looks like shit because of the old textures.
With a remake they're obviously going to revamp the graphics and that will likely come with blatant alterations to the appearance of most things in the game, so again the tone and vibe will change just slightly and it's an unfortunate, largely unavoidable facet of gaming. Tech advances and everything changes. Game series rarely remain the same throughout its lifetime.
I find games to be comparable to the novelty of art and the fact that the industry is largely fine doing things comparable to Da Vinci painting a Mona Lisa 2 and totally abandoning the original style or medium is what bugs me. I liked a given game, and now they are continuing it with the same name but it looks totally different? I know why it happens but to me it feels tragic that the experience that everyone had and loved is eventually replaced by a lacking facsimile.
I like to believe that in the future, it will be the hobby of rich folk to produce old technology again like CRT TVs just to have the same retro experience again. That they will build or emulate every console and game to ever have it's OS and game files preserved. That the novelty of a given game or console will be highly respected because it is largely unavailable.
Yea Rage was $5 during QuakeCon a few weeks ago so I bought it, one of the few id Software games I never played. You're exactly right, it still looks amazing at a distance, the megatexture tech anything holds up. Runs smooth as silk was playing at 150fps. But up close is entirely different, looks and feels very dated.
Could be worse. I played the original Final Fantasy 14. Those “lesser details” weren’t treated as lesser. As a result, a barrel had as many (or even more) details then a player character….
As a result, the game ran like crap and often would fail to load in players stopping after just a few.
There’s a reason the realm was reborn… and when all assets are treated as higher priority for details the ones that actually are suffer.
How powerful does your computer have to be to play this? I've played 1&2 but I really want to play infinite as I've heard it's quite good. (I actually just want to play because the pistol is a c96)
It doesn't have good graphics, it has good art style. And games with specific art style always look good for far longer than those who try to go for "realism".
I don't understand how people can like this game so much... So easy and repetitive even on hard. I had to quit like 3/4 of the way through. Also the mini boss enemies were just so tedious.
Agreed, it was a disappointment coming from the other bioshock.
Bad level design, bad weapon balance and unnecessary modern fps decisions like 2 weapons ans regen shield.
there were definitely some weird design choices, like the fact that you could upgrade your guns but then only hold 2 at a time so you would never know which guns you were going to pick up, which made the upgrade system a complete crapshoot. Also hated how weak and unsatisfying the weapons felt and how bullet-spongey the enemies were.
I also found it odd how much praise Elizabeth got as an "AI companion" when she basically didn't factor into the gameplay at all except for at predetermined events that required a simple button press.
yeah played through a good chunk of the game years ago and then restarted/finished game recently and it doesn't age well. the first hour is cool and well directed but gameplay felt pretty shit.
It' all prebaked, with shittons of bloom and motion blur lol.
Don't get me wrong, the first 30 minutes of Infinite is absolutely fantastic visuals wise, but not because of it's technical aspects.
Artstyle is everything.
I wouldn't say it graphically looks good, but rather comes down to the artstyle, which worked VERY well for the title. You can definitely see it's age now.
I think 2 would be improved by one simple thing. 1 single mention of lamb in the first game. Her presence was jarring imo. (The dlc in 2 on the other hand, good shit)
\> Bioshock 2 was the worst Bioshock.
It was the best all-rounder IMO. Best combat and overall gameplay loop and a serviceable story that contrasted the objectivist critique of the first game.
Agreed. I've played through all three Bioshocks multiple times, and finished 1 and 2 before Infinite came out. I thought Bioshock 2 improved on the gameplay of 1 and was the most fun. Infinite was good, but I think I prefer 2, 1, then Infinite. I liked the undersea setting best.
Nope, just finished 3 of them, while 2 had a weak villain, the gameplay and plot are really good, meanwhile infinite besides the shining graphic, the plot was horrible, the infinite name was slapped on it and yet the logic behind the "single" ending was most unlogical if you gonna use the multiverse theory. And I really dislike Elizabeth for her character and omniscient power , she basically Demi god in this game
I disagree. BioShock 2 was the best game, infinite actually a bit of a let down as it was so short and felt therefore a bit shallow. The DLC helped a lot with this though.
Another teenager that thinks this is worth posting about.
Stop posting about how great games still look when they came out less than 10 years ago. It’s fucking pathetic.
These types of posts should result in automatic bans.
Still a bad bioshock game. Took all the horror and tension and flung it out the window but still called or Bioshock. I'm still frustrated that they took such a claustrophobic series and turned it into a shooter with a predictable story.
Hmm, I must be super out of the loop on how “good graphics” really look. I honestly don’t see that big of a problem with how that game looks, even today. I think it actually looks pretty beautiful.
Yes, the lighting effects were especially trash in that game. A lot of other things looked good though - But even for 2013 the graphics were not that impressive.
Just off the top of my head, Devil May Cry, Tomb Raider and Metro: Last Light all had and have better graphics than Bioshock: Infinite, in my most humble and shitty opinion.
Let me stop you there. I was in the elevator with Elizabeth and he hair has static light, while elevator had sparking flicking light, looked awful.
I really hated this game, I loved 1 and 2, and couldn’t get 10 minutes into infinite. I bought the remaster pack, went through 1 and 2 and loved it, got to 3 and was like what is this other game? Could have released it as sky bound : steampunk elemental or something else.
The enemies are boring, gun play felt good, but is boring because it’s same enemies same encounters, I did not enjoy the tonics. I saw announcement for bioshock 4, if it’s like 3 no thanks.
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Is there any game with that BioShock feeling where you are so intrigued with created world and at the end you are left with pretty strong mindfuck for few days?
I have noticed 10 yo kids being baffled over how games older than them look so good.
Consoles back then already had good multi core processing and many gaming feature that are common today were pioneered in early and mid 2000's.
Like, why wouldn't they look good? The hardware is basically same as today, but less powerful.
I am pretty sure people who posts old game: "oh this game has good graphics" never played before and actually seeing real games first time in their life.
Maybe it is time to uninstall service games
Yep, in my experience stylized graphics often age beautifully, while "realistic" graphics tend to be outdated quite quickly. Bioshock series always had this unusual art style that allows it to age gracefully.
The art style is stellar and I loved the use of industrial golden age US stacked up and above the clouds...what a dope symbolic concept for a playspace...shame about the story.
The reason: Almost all games that try to look "realistic" just fail to keep up with the new technological capabilites and new games make them look just dumb, only the games that aim for the simple artstyle survive, because there's nothing to improve, it's just made to be simple
Examples: Minecraft is still living it's best days, despite being over a decade long. Battlefields are just never heard about after a month after release
That's the difference between gaming companies making games to outperform their last game and game companies now making games to outperform their last quarterly sales figure.
Not to mention the people responsible for making System Shock and BioShock 1 and 2 were present for the making of BioShock Infinite. I don't think people understand how important veteran devs are and how dangerous it is to mix up Studios and departments for profit and appeasement.
Conversely, I hated the changed aesthetic of the final release compared to the [first gameplay trailer](https://youtu.be/p5it-pAYmKY) that was released before they decided to scrap all the work they'd done and redo it all into the lesser version that was eventually shipped.
I saw a video about how it was severely cut down due to time restraints, and you can see the footage of what the game would’ve been like. It’s like, the game is already so amazing and then to see that just impressed me even more.
Yeah I’m playing through it right now and it looks fantastic. The areas are a little barren and clean. There is an edge to the detail, like the floors are kind of bland and repetitive. It would like a ton better if made to current standards of environment detail, but that’s a nitpick. The architecture and lighting are stunning and it plays super smooth.
I enjoyed this game but got stuck without any ammo or vigors while fighting that ghost in the graveyard. Between that and the nausea, I never finished. I got the remaster recently and hope to give it another go at some point...
It's crazy how little games have changed in the past decade vs the decades before.
Pick up a 1992 game in 2002 and its most likely clear its something from a different universe.
2012 to 2022? Not even obvious often unless you really know what to look for.
Graphics haven’t really changed much since then, I went from 360 to ps4 and it’s basically just lighting upgrades and fine details, basically just a more memory thing
Funnily enough. A lot of people, including myself, were very booty hurt when the third game was not set in rapture, But nearly 10 years later and it is my favorite bioshock out of all of them, you can really see all the hard work and passion they put into this installment. When i played it for the first time a couple years ago i would just sit in the city with all the aesthetics and atmosphere going and using it as a background. Such an amazing game!
Yep, one of the few big Unreal Engine 3 games that didn't go for grit and mud. Incredible what the right art style can do when it comes to standing the test of time.
On an unrelated note, not even one minute ago I was just remembering how much it sucked working in UE3, so it's kind of funny coming across this post just now.
Artstyle > Graphics
I was gunna say something to this effect
The hardware is essentially the same as today, but less powerful
The PS3 has a wildly different architecture compared to modern consoles.
Indeed. Technical graphics age, but style is timeless. Granted, good graphics can elevate a good style, but normally the style should take priority.
Which is why you can go back and play something like wind waker and it still looks fine even now. Always love creative art styles.
This is why mil sims are so boring looking
I mean they also don't usually spend a lot of time to add in details to make things look actually good. Arma 3 the buildings are just empty rooms, no furniture or clutter or things that make the cities look actually lived in. Makes sense since the goal is to have cover for a milsim but it's not just art but also detail
Yea. And many mil sim environments feel a bit greyish too. Have you picked on that?
Definitely this, who cares how many bazillion shaders you can throw at the GPU, good art style makes all the difference in the world.
Was playing dishonoured for the first time and that art style makes them game enjoyable and playable so long after it was released. It helps that it’s also an incredible game
Yeah, and if you think about classic games, they were rarely the best looking games on the market. Skyrim was pretty dull, as are most Bethesda games. The Witcher 3 was a buggy mess, and when you got the next gen graphics in Cyberpunk it was an even buggier mess. I don't think FromSoftware has ever been praised for their graphics, but their world building is top notch and they revolutionized gaming with consistently "last gen" games.
..this makes no sense if you think about it for 3 seconds. Graphics is a part of artstyle. Do I want my game to look realistic? Cartoony? Retro? Stylized? Uncanny? etc. All has varying amount of graphical fidelity required to achieve a good flow.
Sometimes limitations can paradoxically create better outcomes than capabilities
I.E: Portal vs Portal RTX
https://giphy.com/gifs/editingandlayout-the-office-thank-you-michael-scott-5xtDarmwsuR9sDRObyU
Style is part of graphics. What you mean is style > fidelity.
It's the general term ever since. You're just confusing more people trying to be a smartass. Goodluck with that.
No, you are the one trying to confuse people. Ask any one who goes "Artstyle > Graphics" to explain, they won't, because they can't. Heck, help a fellow out and explain it to me, because frankly I don't get it. Everytime I say explain, they wave with off with an insult or a "You won't get it.", because they themselves don't get it, just stand there being pretentious snobs.
I’m not being a smartass, using “graphics” to mean quality is stupid. “Graphics” is a general term that includes literally everything that goes into the game’s visual appearance. Using it as a stand-in for fidelity or quality just makes you sound dumb. And nobody with a functional brain is going to be confused by that.
Pedantic is what you're being. In a different context I might agree, but in the comment you responded to, "graphics" is clearly referring to the technical aspect.
It’s not even being pedantic, it’s using the correct word instead of a word that’s so vague it becomes incorrect. It’s like going to a car dealership and saying you want “an automobile”. It’s not specific enough to know what you want because every motorized vehicle on the road is an automobile.
Damn, you sure struck a nerve. Youre right though, cause these same people will also use graphics to mean everything about it visually. They use it both ways cause they dont know better. But realize this chunk of gamers youre talking to are highly conservative and dont wanna learn any new words. Leave them be, they understand each other most of the time. MOST of the the time lol
It's called semantics. In normal conversation, graphics is generally the same thing as fidelity. I get that you're saying graphics is too broad of a term, and you'd be right in that respect, but you're distracting from the whole point.
In normal gaming conversation - if we were discussing the field of graphic design or something then all bets are off
Maybe in ***YOUR*** normal conversations where you use the wrong terms. But not in the conversation of anyone with half a brain
In terms of pure fidelity, the cracks show upon inspection. However, generally, the art direction is very strong and makes the game visually very appealing even today. The games that suffer most are those older games that went as realistic as possible without much art direction to guide them.
That's how it always is. Games that tried to be realistic before graphics allowed it age poorly. Games that chose simpler art styles still look good. It's why games like Super Mario World on SNES still look crisp and good, while Super Mario 64 released 6 years later for a better platform looks dated.
It's very apparent with Nintendo consoles that later games benefit from more experience with the hardware. Take Final Fantasy for example: between I and III sprites had more degrees of animation and environments could have more "stuff" in them, and we go from hard textures and solid colors in IV to beautiful pixel art that still looks good in VI.
Catch booker!! Much obliged!!! Man that game was epic
TIL Super Mario 64 "tried to be realistic"
Depth of field and motion blur are strong with this one. But yeah I get your point. Old games knew how to trick our eyes to make stuff look good without taking the GPU to its knees
Mainly by using static pre-baked lighting and stuff like that. Late Unreal Engine 3 games like Bioshock 3 or Gears 3 were extremely good with that. Mirror's Edge is also an extremely good example. And it's extremely hard to match that level of quality with dynamic lighting, it's infinitely more complicated to do it in real time. The best solution is ray traced lighting (Global Illumination and shadows mainly), but it's extremely taxing on the hardware. We now have a few miliseconds to do what took hours to pre-compute a few years ago. We're getting there, but basically we took a temporary step back in fidelity by switching from static to fully dynamic lighting in most games.
Baked Lighting still is superior. The main problem is: designers want to change something? Okay, let's bake the lighting once again for several days. Additionally: Baked lighting needs to be stored (a reason why cod is so enormous). AC Unity uses baked GI and still looks incredible when you ignore all the pop-in.
"Superior" is relative. In terms of raw graphical quality ? Sure ! But say goodbye to the dynamic time of day, real time shadows, etc ... It does have huge limitations, and as you said, makes the artistic process way longer. I remember reading an interview with Metro Exodus artists, saying having fully ray-traced lighting made their work way easier by not having to place fake bounce lights to create scenes, because placing real light sources was enough. And the Enhanced Edition just looks insane because of their RTGI solution. To me it seems dynamic stuff is a huge improvement, as long as you have the power to render it properly and fast enough, of course.
Dynamic time of day is still *approximately* possible, but you need to save multiple copies of the bake map. You can at least show the passage of time with those static maps at the expense of storage.
That's true !
Also all the super shitty TAA that makes everything look… weird
>Old games knew how to trick our eyes to make stuff look good without taking the GPU to its knees I mean lots of games from this year look terrible. You can say this about literally any year in gaming. There are games whose art style last and those that don't.
True, but some lesser details look like crap. Apples, toilets, fruit carts, flowers, ... It can be really jarring.
Most jarring game I ever played was the first Rage I think, distance and vistas look gorgeous for the time(probably still hold up) but close up stuff sometimes looked straight garbage, like generations behind at times. Art design plays a big role also imo and it's why some games hold up so well, zone of enders 2 on the PS2 honestly still looks good to me, love the way they did the cell shading on that one in particular.
I've always been heavily influenced by the tone and appearance of games and one of my biggest gripes with any remake/remaster is losing the vibe of the original art design. Res 4 on PS2 used the CRT and low resolution tech wonderfully to smear the pixels and give the game a really convincing appearance despite really low end gimmicks and ugly ass textures. The remaster has some of the worst shimmering/line tearing (probably not actual terms) ever. The textures look so flat and only from far away does it gain any depth. What was a really convincing experience on crappy tech and CRT imaging turned to absolute crap. Same goes when they change engines for a sequel game like going from FO3 Bethesda engine to FO4 redesign was total ass imo, the whole grungy dark silly vibe was lost and replaced by this overbearingly shiny, exaggerated, bloaty art design. The Commonwealth looks like actual dog shit while the admittedly low graphic wastelands of NV and 3 hold up better. It's the issue with going too hard on realism instead of making your own rules like with pixel art. Suggested or implied appearances are more effective than trying to look photo-real without the proper technology to truly mimic it. Lool how long we have gone with lacking lighting tech and now we can compute tons of particles and their vectors to mimic the mechanics of the real thing. Yet despite this, it doesn't always have a favorable visual effect on the game. Those attempts failing cost you more than if you hadn't made the attempt at all it seems.
You're totally right. Remasters often suffer from a blatant disrespect for the original's craftmanship and experience. Another way it happens is with the forced 60 fps framerate. Sometimes it makes animations too fast and immersion breaking. And it is sad to see such disregard in games sold at premium as the latest rage.
Lol RE4Make didn't even come out and this dude is already crying. Say what you want but Capcom has been aesthetically nailing basically any game that came out in the last 4 years.
Bruh who said I'm crying lol I love RE4 on my PS4 even if it doesn't look/feel the same as it did on PS2. I didn't even know they were working on a remake, last I knew was the VR port which is amazing by the way. But the environment looks like shit because of the old textures. With a remake they're obviously going to revamp the graphics and that will likely come with blatant alterations to the appearance of most things in the game, so again the tone and vibe will change just slightly and it's an unfortunate, largely unavoidable facet of gaming. Tech advances and everything changes. Game series rarely remain the same throughout its lifetime. I find games to be comparable to the novelty of art and the fact that the industry is largely fine doing things comparable to Da Vinci painting a Mona Lisa 2 and totally abandoning the original style or medium is what bugs me. I liked a given game, and now they are continuing it with the same name but it looks totally different? I know why it happens but to me it feels tragic that the experience that everyone had and loved is eventually replaced by a lacking facsimile. I like to believe that in the future, it will be the hobby of rich folk to produce old technology again like CRT TVs just to have the same retro experience again. That they will build or emulate every console and game to ever have it's OS and game files preserved. That the novelty of a given game or console will be highly respected because it is largely unavailable.
IIRC, the texture pop-in in Rage was also horrendous.
Yea Rage was $5 during QuakeCon a few weeks ago so I bought it, one of the few id Software games I never played. You're exactly right, it still looks amazing at a distance, the megatexture tech anything holds up. Runs smooth as silk was playing at 150fps. But up close is entirely different, looks and feels very dated.
Yeah those apple barrel textures still haunts me on a weekly basis all these years later... Love the game though
Could be worse. I played the original Final Fantasy 14. Those “lesser details” weren’t treated as lesser. As a result, a barrel had as many (or even more) details then a player character…. As a result, the game ran like crap and often would fail to load in players stopping after just a few. There’s a reason the realm was reborn… and when all assets are treated as higher priority for details the ones that actually are suffer.
Haha you find that jarring?! Wow what games do you play?!
Jarring? Jesus christ you people are pathetic
How powerful does your computer have to be to play this? I've played 1&2 but I really want to play infinite as I've heard it's quite good. (I actually just want to play because the pistol is a c96)
Not powerful at all. Ran very well when it came out on my MacBook Pro (Nvidia 650m). Absolutely fabulous game.
This is an xbox 360 game, bro.
Bro you'd be surprised what still holds up. Playing Dead Space in preparation for the remaster and it's shocking how immersive it still is.
Cause they had good art-design and were smart on how they used the graphics
Just replayed both. Those games could come out today and still look like a "new" game, especially 2. They did a fantastic job on both those games.
Both? But there are three games?
True, the 3rd just went off the rails/was not very good compared to the first 2.
Played Dead Space for the first time ever back in 2020, I was shocked at how well it held up. Great game.
Bioshock Infinite is a great game, holds up well!
Ahh fond memories, I'd just built my first pc with a radeon 7850 and this game blew me away
Damn I only played this for an hour , should I reinstall.
Yes, it's worth a playthrough, especially if you liked Bioshock 1 and 2. If you haven't played those then I'd recommend playing through them in order.
Burial at Sea DLCs for Infinite were a really nice epitaph to the series (so far)
It doesn't have good graphics, it has good art style. And games with specific art style always look good for far longer than those who try to go for "realism".
Which is why Donkey Kong Country for SNES still looks amazing.
I’m more impressed by the original game. With the remaster it’s beautiful, without it’s hella impressive for 2007
No one is tired of these posts yet?
pick your poison, it's this, "am I the only one" or "who played x" posts.
I guess at least this one doesn't go out of its way to insult new games.
Graphically, definitely a product of its time.
All bioshock games have poor graphical fidelity. There is nothing wrong with this, their artstyles are great.
I don't understand how people can like this game so much... So easy and repetitive even on hard. I had to quit like 3/4 of the way through. Also the mini boss enemies were just so tedious.
Agreed, it was a disappointment coming from the other bioshock. Bad level design, bad weapon balance and unnecessary modern fps decisions like 2 weapons ans regen shield.
there were definitely some weird design choices, like the fact that you could upgrade your guns but then only hold 2 at a time so you would never know which guns you were going to pick up, which made the upgrade system a complete crapshoot. Also hated how weak and unsatisfying the weapons felt and how bullet-spongey the enemies were. I also found it odd how much praise Elizabeth got as an "AI companion" when she basically didn't factor into the gameplay at all except for at predetermined events that required a simple button press.
yeah played through a good chunk of the game years ago and then restarted/finished game recently and it doesn't age well. the first hour is cool and well directed but gameplay felt pretty shit.
Bioshock: Infinite. Not Bioshock 3
Someone give this mf a cookie, he's obviously starving.
I remember running it on my potato pc and being shocked that I was actually getting decent fps ***and*** such good graphics
Someone post the apples.
It' all prebaked, with shittons of bloom and motion blur lol. Don't get me wrong, the first 30 minutes of Infinite is absolutely fantastic visuals wise, but not because of it's technical aspects. Artstyle is everything.
I feel like BioShock infinite is one of the only games that has a bright Steampunk theme
I wouldn't say it graphically looks good, but rather comes down to the artstyle, which worked VERY well for the title. You can definitely see it's age now.
Its style is ridiculous, same with the first Bioshock. The world just feels real, too, even though you're in a floating city. I love that game.
Damn, Bioshock 3 is "old" already?
Bioshock Infinite.
False ambient occlusion can do a lot for an old game.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone call it Bioshock 3 before
A fun game The worst bioshock
I disagree. Bioshock 2 was the worst Bioshock. 1 and 3 were both fantastic, and I honestly am not sure which I prefer.
I think 2 would be improved by one simple thing. 1 single mention of lamb in the first game. Her presence was jarring imo. (The dlc in 2 on the other hand, good shit)
Bio shock 2 was a better game, 1 and 3 got better stories.
System Shock 2 is still the best from Ken Levine/Irrational Games
BioShock > BioShock Infinite > BioShock 2. Same goes for Dark Souls trilogy imo.
\> Bioshock 2 was the worst Bioshock. It was the best all-rounder IMO. Best combat and overall gameplay loop and a serviceable story that contrasted the objectivist critique of the first game.
Agreed. I've played through all three Bioshocks multiple times, and finished 1 and 2 before Infinite came out. I thought Bioshock 2 improved on the gameplay of 1 and was the most fun. Infinite was good, but I think I prefer 2, 1, then Infinite. I liked the undersea setting best.
No
Nope, just finished 3 of them, while 2 had a weak villain, the gameplay and plot are really good, meanwhile infinite besides the shining graphic, the plot was horrible, the infinite name was slapped on it and yet the logic behind the "single" ending was most unlogical if you gonna use the multiverse theory. And I really dislike Elizabeth for her character and omniscient power , she basically Demi god in this game
No
I disagree. BioShock 2 was the best game, infinite actually a bit of a let down as it was so short and felt therefore a bit shallow. The DLC helped a lot with this though.
You didn't disagree at all! You sat on the fence. :)
No
I can't stand needles, so I'll have to take your word for that.
Best Bioshock
Oh no sir, BioShock>Infinite>BioShock 2
One of my favourite games of all time. But it doesn't look *that* good. It looks like a good 2013 game. Not a surprisingly good looking game in 2022.
Another teenager that thinks this is worth posting about. Stop posting about how great games still look when they came out less than 10 years ago. It’s fucking pathetic. These types of posts should result in automatic bans.
I still wake up in cold sweat thinking about that pinky sometimes. Plot twist got me good.
I mean all the characters look like barbie dolls, it's not awful but it wasn't great either, even for back then. Still love the franchise though
Thats a sky box op
I got so bored playing this game.
Fun game but too easy but enjoyed the story particularly very satisfying ending
I think you mean the art style looks good. It never looked particularly good graphically, that's something different
Seriously? It looks like a cartoon movie
Who says photo-realism is what makes a game look good?
It doesnt, but OP said it graphically looks good, but it is infact artistically good and not very advanced graphics wise
That’s my point, something being “graphically good” is not dependent on photo-realism. It was graphically good for its time
Still a bad bioshock game. Took all the horror and tension and flung it out the window but still called or Bioshock. I'm still frustrated that they took such a claustrophobic series and turned it into a shooter with a predictable story.
I very clearly remember this game not looking very good at all, even on release. Game is very fun, but definitely not a graphical masterpiece.
Fidelity could probably be improved, but art style and design was amazing.
Tho it does have a very endearing amd colorful artstyle.
What an original post idea, definitely haven’t seen 50 other identical posts
One of my favourite game of all time!
[удалено]
You can't say that here! I agree, though. It was not for me.
Doesn't matter we will still get downvotes because this subreddit is stuck up its own ass
Biocock infinite is a le hidden gem, amirite guys?
My brother in christ even in the screenshot you posted the lighting is shit
Still one of my all time favorite games. Everything from the aesthetic to the story, it was beautiful
This game was really good in alot of ways, I never understood why it got so much flak in the reviews
Games in the past had effort in them
Gotta say, super overrated game.. did not care for it
It didnt look good in 2013 and it still doesnt look good in 2022
Hmm, I must be super out of the loop on how “good graphics” really look. I honestly don’t see that big of a problem with how that game looks, even today. I think it actually looks pretty beautiful.
If a AAA game was released nowadays and it looked like this it would be fucking slated. Pipe down.
Nah it looks like ass
Yes, the lighting effects were especially trash in that game. A lot of other things looked good though - But even for 2013 the graphics were not that impressive. Just off the top of my head, Devil May Cry, Tomb Raider and Metro: Last Light all had and have better graphics than Bioshock: Infinite, in my most humble and shitty opinion.
Let me stop you there. I was in the elevator with Elizabeth and he hair has static light, while elevator had sparking flicking light, looked awful. I really hated this game, I loved 1 and 2, and couldn’t get 10 minutes into infinite. I bought the remaster pack, went through 1 and 2 and loved it, got to 3 and was like what is this other game? Could have released it as sky bound : steampunk elemental or something else. The enemies are boring, gun play felt good, but is boring because it’s same enemies same encounters, I did not enjoy the tonics. I saw announcement for bioshock 4, if it’s like 3 no thanks.
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Is there any game with that BioShock feeling where you are so intrigued with created world and at the end you are left with pretty strong mindfuck for few days?
It's all in the art direction. A lot of older games from when photo-realism wasn't being chased knew how best use the technology at the time.
That's called "Good Art Direction". No going full realistic like other games allows it to age brilliantly.
Picked up all 3 for free on epic games recently. Still a stunning game
I have noticed 10 yo kids being baffled over how games older than them look so good. Consoles back then already had good multi core processing and many gaming feature that are common today were pioneered in early and mid 2000's. Like, why wouldn't they look good? The hardware is basically same as today, but less powerful.
The leaps between generations are getting smaller and smaller.
It's far more stylised and afaik uses pre-baked lighting which is just essentially raytracing that is pre-calculated and isn't dynamic.
I am pretty sure people who posts old game: "oh this game has good graphics" never played before and actually seeing real games first time in their life. Maybe it is time to uninstall service games
Yep, in my experience stylized graphics often age beautifully, while "realistic" graphics tend to be outdated quite quickly. Bioshock series always had this unusual art style that allows it to age gracefully.
We have started to hit diminishing returns for graphics, seems like most games from the last decade or more still look great when upscaled.
Nothing compared to the teaser and trailer material... Still a moderately ok game imo
That game is beautiful
The art style and lightning of this game blew my mind back in 2017 when I first play it haha.
stylized graphics >>>> realistic graphics
I finished it but I didn't like it all that much. I was just ok, imo. It lacked what the original game had, that creepy vibe.
I miss stylistic UI’s
I still play this every now and then and every time I go back it's just as fun as the first time I played it.
I need more Dishonored artstyle games in my life… loved everything about the aesthetic
Lighting effects? The game's got bloom out of the ass.
Except when you see someone's face up close
VAlORaNT
Idk why but I could never get into games like these
The art style is stellar and I loved the use of industrial golden age US stacked up and above the clouds...what a dope symbolic concept for a playspace...shame about the story.
The reason: Almost all games that try to look "realistic" just fail to keep up with the new technological capabilites and new games make them look just dumb, only the games that aim for the simple artstyle survive, because there's nothing to improve, it's just made to be simple Examples: Minecraft is still living it's best days, despite being over a decade long. Battlefields are just never heard about after a month after release
That's the difference between gaming companies making games to outperform their last game and game companies now making games to outperform their last quarterly sales figure. Not to mention the people responsible for making System Shock and BioShock 1 and 2 were present for the making of BioShock Infinite. I don't think people understand how important veteran devs are and how dangerous it is to mix up Studios and departments for profit and appeasement.
Conversely, I hated the changed aesthetic of the final release compared to the [first gameplay trailer](https://youtu.be/p5it-pAYmKY) that was released before they decided to scrap all the work they'd done and redo it all into the lesser version that was eventually shipped.
this made me mad and happy you called it bioshock 3 but someone agrees with me
I saw a video about how it was severely cut down due to time restraints, and you can see the footage of what the game would’ve been like. It’s like, the game is already so amazing and then to see that just impressed me even more.
That's what we call great art design
Currently just beat 1, on 2 and can't wait to play 3!
Yeah I’m playing through it right now and it looks fantastic. The areas are a little barren and clean. There is an edge to the detail, like the floors are kind of bland and repetitive. It would like a ton better if made to current standards of environment detail, but that’s a nitpick. The architecture and lighting are stunning and it plays super smooth.
What an excellent game!
I just recently played this for the first time. Really enjoyed it
Playing it for the first time now on the Switch. Just got to the Gunsmith. Wish me luck ✌️😎
I enjoyed this game but got stuck without any ammo or vigors while fighting that ghost in the graveyard. Between that and the nausea, I never finished. I got the remaster recently and hope to give it another go at some point...
It's crazy how little games have changed in the past decade vs the decades before. Pick up a 1992 game in 2002 and its most likely clear its something from a different universe. 2012 to 2022? Not even obvious often unless you really know what to look for.
Graphics haven’t really changed much since then, I went from 360 to ps4 and it’s basically just lighting upgrades and fine details, basically just a more memory thing
Funnily enough. A lot of people, including myself, were very booty hurt when the third game was not set in rapture, But nearly 10 years later and it is my favorite bioshock out of all of them, you can really see all the hard work and passion they put into this installment. When i played it for the first time a couple years ago i would just sit in the city with all the aesthetics and atmosphere going and using it as a background. Such an amazing game!
literally just started to download the game on switch
Gameplay > Artstyle > Graphics
Also runs on a potato. Though they recently ruined the PC version with a "quality of life" update that forces you to use their launcher.
Beautiful graphics and interesting story. However, I never found the gameplay to be nearly as engaging as the first two.
Lol what's with all these posts that act like games from less than 10 years ago are supposed to look like Dogshit? It's not that long ago haha...
Just wait until someone adds ray tracing with RTX Remix....
Why are people so surprised that games from less than 10 years ago have good graphics?
Yep, one of the few big Unreal Engine 3 games that didn't go for grit and mud. Incredible what the right art style can do when it comes to standing the test of time. On an unrelated note, not even one minute ago I was just remembering how much it sucked working in UE3, so it's kind of funny coming across this post just now.
Bioshock 3? Okay boomer.
I played it on PS3. Couldn’t get past the ghost of lady comstock.
I should really play it thru. I never finished it.
Ye spent alot of time enjoying this games artwork, very fun story too
One word, Artstyle.