My housemate bought a big TV a couple of weeks ago - a 50" LCD rear-projection. It is, by the tenets of conventional interior design, too big for the room. However, it with an HDMI feed from an Xbox 360, it resembles a portal into another world. I was a bit cynical about HD, but the improvement over a normal widescreen CRT is huge. Everything's sharper, brighter, more real. Graphics are a dazzling sensory experience again.
The effect on my housemates has been especially interesting. They've gone from occasional dabblers to fanatics. Games have been bought, battle stratagies refined, cars compared. Some aliens abducted my housemates and replaced them with gaming doppelgangers.
The new TV has changed the games that get played. Forza 2 has become a staple, with much track study and pimping of rides. GTA4, which was a previous favorite, has been ignored. Bioshock is a new and popular purchase, as is DOA4. Table Tennis is gathering dust. Lego Star Wars has only seen the light once.
It's not yet obvious which games are most improved by HD, but I guess it's those that depend on sensory output to impress the player. GTA4 is a funny game whether explosions are crisp or not. Funny is funny: you only need to see what's going on. With Forza, the pleasure of driving fast is proportional to the fidelity of the image presented. Ninja Gaiden 2 is surprisingly underwhelming - DOA4 in comparison is stunning.
That's not to say the HD approach is wrong - in fact, I'm glad there is a school of "gorgeous" visual design in games. It doesn't even require the creation of vast textures and meshes, as Geometry Wars shows. It will be necessary for some games to develop a more informative style in contrast. The only surprise has been the games that seem to need it most.
1 comment:
The TV + HD really has rekindled my love for games, for which I am extremely thankful. The only problem now is Jon's ability to sap all remaining fun from every game we discover, like a wasp larvae draining spider juice from a golden orb's legs.
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