graphics – Trekking with Dennis

Nvidia DLSS 5: Is This What The Future Looks Like?

Allow me to preface this by saying that I’m not on the “anti-A.I.” bandwagon by any stretch. While I’m sceptical, to a reasonable degree, about some of today’s large-language models, and whether they can really do as much as investors have been promised, I see the potential in A.I. in a lot of ways. I don’t want this piece – discussing one very specific use of A.I. – to be misunderstood! In fact, I’d argue that anyone who claims to be “anti-A.I.” in every possible case doesn’t actually understand what A.I. is and how broad a category it is; it would be like saying your “anti-computer,” or “anti-electricity.” The uses for A.I. are vast – it’s an incredibly big category of inventions.

So what are we getting into today, then? If you missed the announcement, graphics card manufacturer (and major supplier of components to A.I. datacentres) Nvidia has recently shown off its new A.I.-powered DLSS 5.0 – a graphical overlay for some video games, which is intended to add more “realism” to environments, character models, and faces.

And… to be blunt, I think it looks like shit.

Nvidia DLSS 5.0 demo image — The DLSS 5 *Starfield* demo.

Some of today’s generative A.I. models can create photorealistic landscapes, creatures, and even people. A.I. art is a big topic in and of itself, and it can be quite controversial, so we won’t get into all of the arguments around it. Suffice to say that, as someone who runs a small website as a hobby, the only times I’ve used A.I. art (that I’m aware of, anyway) are in a couple of my other articles discussing A.I. – and that was a deliberate choice to help illustrate a point I was making. I’m not actively opposed to A.I. art in all cases; as with any subject, it’s not a black-or-white thing. Not all photographs are “art,” but some can be – and I would suggest A.I. art is probably in that same kind of space.

But we’re off-topic already!

DLSS 5, according to Nvidia, is intended to increase the “visual fidelity” of video games, and the company claims it’s their most significant innovation since real-time ray-tracing almost nine years ago. DLSS 5 uses generative A.I. in some form – the exact details are not clear – and seems to work as a kind of “middle man” during the rendering of frames, upscaling, adding detail, and trying to give games a more photorealistic look.

On the surface, this sounds like a useful invention, right? At least for *some* games, anyway. Game developers have been chasing photorealism since, really, the very dawn of video games and computer-generated imagery, so any new innovation that brings us closer to that goal should be a cause for celebration. Only… well, is DLSS 5 *actually* making things photorealistic? Or is it simply adding a filter?

The screenshots Nvidia provided – which, I would note, are going to have been *very* carefully selected to show the new tech in the best possible light – all feel, well, kinda samey. And that’s despite the games selected to show off this new technology all being pretty different from one another in terms of art style. Yes, all of the games in question were aiming for some measure of photorealism, but there are incredibly important differences in the way they use more subtle things like light, shading, facial animations, and so on. If DLSS 5 smooths all of that out, resulting in games that look indistinguishable from one another… I’m not sure I’d call that a “breakthrough.”

To Nvidia’s credit, they claim, in their marketing blurb, that DLSS 5 is meant to be “tightly grounded in the game developer’s 3D world and artistic intent.” But based on the screenshots and video that Nvidia itself provided as part of this announcement, I gotta be honest: I’m not seeing that. I see a filter that smooths out a game’s rough edges, sure, and definitely adds more detail – but if those details are all the same, and the end result is that faces in particular end up looking incredibly similar from title to title (and, I would add, not unlike a Snapchat/TikTok filter or other A.I.-generated artwork), then I don’t think it’s going to be of interest – at least, not to me.

There’s already a lot of sameyness and repetitiveness in the way modern games look thanks to many of the industry’s biggest studios using the same handful of game engines. Unreal Engine 4 and 5 are so commonplace nowadays that you can almost always notice its presence from the moment you boot up a title. And there are advantages to that – don’t get me wrong. As someone who used to work in the industry, one of the biggest issues developers (and studios) faced was that skills in one engine or one programming language don’t automatically translate; if more studios are using the same software, skills are more easily transferrable.

But for players, the end result has been that an increasing number of big-budget titles feel… samey. And DLSS 5, if it can actually do what’s being advertised, might just make that particular trend *worse*, not better. Photorealism is not one singular thing – just go to an art gallery and look at photos, and you can see that, even in the real world, there are completely different ways to capture a portrait, a city, a landscape… and more. DLSS 5 seems, to me, to be trying to apply the same techniques to every game shown off – and the results are more miss than hit.

One of the titles selected was Starfield – and if you know me, you’ll know I’m of the opinion that Starfield needs all the help it can get! I once described Starfield’s NPCs as “dead-eyed, waxy-skinned Madame Tussauds rejects,” so *anything* that could be added to the game to “fix” its NPCs should be great. Right?

Look at the image above, which is taken from the opening act of Starfield. Look at the two characters – Heller and Lin. Doesn’t Heller just look like… a meme? You know, the edited “Chad face” meme? And what’s with the lighting? The image is horrifically over-lit, completely negating the vibe of the original scene. I can’t believe Nvidia has got me *defending* Bethesda’s “artistic vision” for Starfield, but the original version of the scene genuinely has more character. The dimly-lit, dusty space evokes the feeling of being on a small outpost at the arse end of space; the DLSS 5 version completely changes the entire tone of the setting. It makes it feel washed-out.

Even if you prefer the more brightly-lit version of Starfield’s opening area, can we at least agree that Bethesda lit the original room a certain way on purpose? Starfield has other indoor areas which are much brighter, so it’s not a technical limitation. It’s clearly a creative choice for that room, at that mining outpost, to be lit the way it was. And DLSS 5 blasted right through that, ignoring all of it.

The one game where I thought DLSS 5 worked best (or “least badly,” I guess) was EA Sports FC. Those kinds of sports games have always been interested in pushing photorealism, and I just felt that DLSS 5 looked most in line with the game’s art style. But the EA Sports FC promo images also threw up some pretty weird and jarring artefacting in the background: in the image above, note how the player on the left, when DLSS 5 has been enabled, seems to stick out from the background quite abruptly. Compare that to the same image without DLSS 5; it’s a much smoother transition from face to background – something that, I would argue, looks more natural and less artificial.

The lighting issue also affects Resident Evil Requiem. The provided images of protagonist Leon (seen below) show DLSS 5 completely changing the way he appears in that scene – and again, as with Starfield above, it looks too bright compared to the original. For a horror game, where environments and lighting matter all the more, I can only describe that as being a potentially huge problem.

The Leon image also has a weird “glassy” effect to the sky in the background, despite seemingly being set outdoors. That could also be a bug – a bug in the very demo images that Nvidia is using to introduce this new technology.

According to reports by folks who’ve seen DLSS 5 for themselves, Nvidia was running the demonstration on not one but *two* of its top-of-the-line RTX 5090 graphics cards. Here in the UK, those cards retail for upwards of £1,800 – so a rig needing two of them is gonna set you back a pretty penny! Cutting-edge innovation often starts expensive and gradually comes down in price – 1080p HD, ray-tracing, 4K, etc. were all in that category. But if DLSS 5 launches, as promised, later this year and it needs the highest of high-end hardware just to get started… well, I guess that rules me out, anyway!

From what I’ve seen, I gotta be honest with you: I’m not impressed. I think there’s potential – in theory – to use A.I. in some way to improve graphical fidelity, add realism, and do the kinds of things that Nvidia is promising DLSS 5 can. But if the end result is games and characters that look like they’re straight out of memes or A.I. art… I don’t see that proving popular and catching on. Even when DLSS 5 had opportunities to genuinely improve some pretty janky-looking character models in a game like Starfield, it still came up short.

Art is complicated, and art is subjective. And I have no doubt that some folks will happily sacrifice “artistic vision” in order to gain a more detailed, photorealistic look. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the success of indie games over the past decade-plus, it’s that graphics aren’t the only thing that matters to players. I’m still of the opinion that, if I had to choose between two similar games in the same genre, the better-looking one is going to grab my attention first. And the push for photorealism has led to some absolutely beautiful video games over the past few years. But does adding a generative A.I. layer improve things? Based on the evidence Nvidia chose to submit, I’m gonna say “no.”

However, this could be an idea to keep an eye on. If we haven’t yet reached the ceiling of generative A.I.’s capabilities, and if improvements to this kind of system are possible, it could be an interesting technology for the future. For one thing, it could mean there’s less of a need to remaster and remake older games; if the goal of a remaster, like last year’s Oblivion, for instance, is just to improve the graphical fidelity, well, this kind of system might be able to do that much more easily. So, despite not liking DLSS 5 as it’s been shown today, I can at least see the potential for its use somewhere down the line – assuming that Nvidia can hone it, refine it, and ensure that it really does preserve a game’s unique art style without ruining things like brightness and environmental details, or making faces look… well, like *that*.

Thanks for reading. I’m not a tech expert by any stretch, but I wanted to share my thoughts on this new technology as it pertains to video games. If you want to check out my thoughts on one potential future for generative A.I. in entertainment, click or tap here. And if you want to get my thoughts on last year’s alarming A.I. 2027 paper, you can find that by clicking or tapping here. Until next time!

DLSS and DLSS 5 are trademarks of Nvidia. All titles discussed above are the copyrights of their respective developer, studio, and/or publisher. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten Gaming “Hot Takes” (Part 2)

Mon 20.11.23Dennis

A few days ago, I shared the first of my gaming “hot takes,” and today we’re going to finish the job. I’ve got five more “hot takes” to round out this list, and I think we’ve got some spicy ones in the mix!

As I said last time, this isn’t clickbait! These are opinions that I genuinely hold, and I’m not inventing things for the sake of being controversial or to score “internet points.” I’m also keenly aware that I’m in the minority, and that plenty of folks can and will disagree. That’s okay – there should be enough room in the gaming community for differences of opinion and friendly discussion of these topics. This is all subjective, at the end of the day!

So if you missed the first part of the list, you can find it by clicking or tapping here. Otherwise, it’s time to get started!

“Hot Take” #6:
Story matters more than gameplay (in most cases).

When discussing Starfield a few weeks ago, I said something rather telling. I didn’t really appreciate it in the moment, but looking back, I think it sums up my relationship with video games as a hobby quite well: “I’m someone who’ll happily play through some absolutely bog-standard gameplay if I’m enjoying a story or getting lost in a fictional world…” If you want to see the full quote in context, by the way, you can find my piece on Starfield by clicking or tapping here.

That line pretty much sums up how I relate to most games I play – and almost all single-player and action/adventure titles. There are some exceptions: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe springs to mind, as does Fall Guys, and some turn-based strategy games, too. But when I look at the games I’ve enjoyed the most since at least the second half of the ’90s, it’s story more than gameplay that appeals to me.

It was a solid story and great world-building that convinced me to stick with Cyberpunk 2077, even when I felt its gameplay was nothing special. And on the flip side, it was a mediocre story set in a boring, empty world that led to me giving up on Starfield after less than thirty hours. When I fire up a single-player game, I’m looking for a story that grabs me, and a world I can lose myself in.

It doesn’t feel controversial to say “I want a game to have a good story,” but that isn’t really the point I’m trying to make. For me, story almost always trumps gameplay. While there can be exceptions – games with either incredibly innovative gameplay in which the narrative is less relevant or games that are so mechanically poor or bug-riddled that even the best story couldn’t salvage them – for the most part, that’s what I’m looking for in a new release.

I stuck with *Cyberpunk 2077* because of its story.

It was Shenmue, around the turn of the millennium, that stands out to me as an example of this. Shenmue was the first game I’d played where the story seemed like it would be right at home on the big screen, and I absolutely adored that. Many games have come along in the years since with compelling characters, wonderful worlds, or magnificent mysteries… and I think that’s part of why I still love playing video games after more than thirty years.

If games had stuck to being glorified toys; story-less arcade boxes where the only objective was either “kill everything on the screen” or “keep walking to the right,” then I think I’d probably have drifted away from the hobby. But I was fortunate enough to play some absolutely phenomenal titles as gaming made that transition and many incredible stories were written.

“Hot Take” #7:
More complexity and additional gameplay elements do not make a game “better.”

Some modern games try to cram in too many features and gameplay mechanics that add nothing to the experience – and in some cases actively detract from it. I know this probably comes across as “old man yells at cloud;” an out-of-touch dinosaur whining about how modern games are too convoluted! And if this was something that only happened in a handful of titles, I guess I’d be okay with it. But it seems to happen all the time!

Strategy and “tycoon” games seem to fall victim to this very easily. I adored Rollercoaster Tycoon when it launched in 1999; it felt like a game that was simple to get started with but difficult to master. In contrast, when I tried 2016’s Planet Coaster… I was hit with such a huge wall of options and features that it was offputting. I didn’t know where to start.

There’s a balance that games have to find between challenge and complexity, and some titles get it wrong. I don’t have the time (or the energy) to spend tens or hundreds of hours becoming a literal rollercoaster engineer; I want something I can pick up and play, where I’m able to throw down a few theme park attractions without too much complexity. If the game had those more complex engineering sim elements in addition – as optional extras for players who wanted them – that could be okay. But when booting up a new game for the first time, I don’t want to encounter a dense wall of features and content.

This doesn’t just apply to strategy games, either. An increasing number of shooters and action/adventure games are incorporating full-bodied role-playing systems, and again it just feels wholly unnecessary. Look at a game from the early 2000s like Halo: Combat Evolved. It was a shooter – your character had a handful of weapons to choose from, and you blasted away at aliens. There was no need for levelling up, for choosing traits or skills, or anything like that. But more and more modern games, even in the first-person shooter or stealth genres, are going for these kinds of role-playing mechanics.

Skill points and levelling up in *Assassin’s Creed: Mirage*.

Don’t get me wrong: I love a good role-playing game. But when I boot up something like Assassin’s Creed or Destiny, the last thing I want or expect is to spend ages in menus micromanaging a character who, to be blunt, doesn’t need that level of engagement. Partly this is about balance, and in some cases it can be fun to level up and gain access to new equipment, for instance. But in others it really is a question of simplicity over complexity, and what kind of game I’m playing. Not every game can or should be a role-playing experience with a complex set of stats and skills.

Some titles really emphasise these elements, too, seeking to win praise for including a convoluted levelling-up system and skill tree. And a lot of the time, I find myself rolling my eyes at that. Leave the role-playing to RPGs and leave the overly-complicated systems to simulators and let me pick up and play a fun game!

“Hot Take” #8:
I hate VR.

Promo image of the HTC Vive Pro 2 headset.

Is “hate” too strong a word to use in this context? I’m going to go with “no,” because I genuinely hate VR. I was worried when the first VR headsets started being released that the video games industry in general was going to go all-in on VR, because I felt if that were to happen that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. But thankfully VR remains a relatively niche part of gaming, and even if that were to change, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to replace regular old video games any time soon!

In the ’80s and ’90s, it seemed as if VR was something tech companies were working towards. It was a futuristic goal that was just out of reach… so when VR headsets first started cropping up, I really thought that they were going to be “the next big thing.”

TV shows like *VR Troopers* hinted at VR being the direction of travel for video games as far back as the ’90s.

But I’ve never found a VR system that I could actually use. I could barely manage playing tennis on the Wii – and even then I had to remain seated! I’m disabled, in case you didn’t know, and the move toward VR headsets and motion-tracking devices felt a bit threatening to me; these technologies seemed like they had the potential to lock me out of gaming.

There haven’t been many VR titles that have interested me, though. One of the only VR titles that did – Star Trek: Bridge Crew – was pretty quickly ported to PC without the VR requirement. While the influence of VR is still clearly present in that title, I think it demonstrates that at least some VR games can work without the expensive equipment.

*Star Trek: Bridge Crew* was quickly ported to non-VR systems.

There’s plenty of room for innovation in gaming, and for companies to try out different kinds of screens, controllers, and methods of interactivity. But for me personally, VR felt like a step too far. I’m biased, of course, because between vision problems and mobility restrictions I don’t feel capable of using any of the current VR systems – not to anything like their full capabilities, at any rate. But even with that caveat, I just don’t think VR has turned out to be anything more than a gimmick.

It’s possible, I suppose, that a VR system will come along one day that I’ll feel compelled to invest in. But it would have to be something I could use with ease, and none of the VR devices currently on the market fit the bill. So I won’t be jumping on the VR bandwagon any time soon!

“Hot Take” #9:
We need fewer sequels and more original games.

I’ve lost count of the number of entries in the Call of Duty franchise at this point…

Across the world of entertainment in general, we’re firmly in an era of franchises, sequels, spin-offs, and connected “universes.” This trend has been going on for well over a decade at this point… but it’s been to the detriment of a lot of stories. There’s always going to be room for sequels to successful titles… but too many video game publishers have gone all-in on franchises and a handful of ongoing series at the expense of creating anything original.

And unfortunately, some original titles that have come along in recent years haven’t found success. I mentioned Starfield above, which seems to be seeing a precipitous drop in its player count, but we could also point to games like Anthem, Forspoken, or Babylon’s Fall – all of which were new settings featuring new characters that struggled to get off the ground.

*Forspoken* didn’t exactly light up the board, unfortunately.

The reason why I consider this one to be a “hot take” is simply because of how many players seem content to go back to the same handful of franchises or series over and over again. Some folks have even gotten genuinely angry with developers for sidelining their favourite series in order to work on something new, as if a studio should only ever be allowed to work on a single series in perpetuity. Sequels, prequels, and spin-offs are all more popular and attract more attention than brand-new experiences, and I think that’s short-sighted on the part of publishers and narrow-minded on the part of at least some players.

And I have to hold up my hands here: I can be guilty of this, too. I’ve written articles here on the website looking ahead to the next Mass Effect game, for instance, while it seems clear that at least some of the folks at BioWare wanted to branch out and create something different. And I have to admit that a sequel to a game I enjoyed or a new entry in a franchise I’m invested in is exciting – more so, arguably, than the announcement of a brand-new project.

Lots of people are eagerly anticipating the next Mass Effect game.

Brand-new games are more difficult and more expensive to get people to pay attention to. They’re also comparatively risky propositions from a corporate point of view; a ton of people will turn up for a game with a well-known name attached, even if it’s not all that good. But a brand-new world has to be something truly special to attract players in the first place – let alone retain a huge playerbase and make a profit.

But it’s a shame that that’s the situation we’re in, because when developers are restricted to sequels and the same handful of franchises, creativity is stifled. Where’s the next breakthrough going to come from if the only games a studio is able to make are sequels and spin-offs to earlier titles? And when audiences get tired of the decreasing number of surviving franchises… what will happen?

“Hot Take” #10:
Graphics actually do matter.

This is perhaps the most contentious point on this list! I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve heard some variant of the expression “graphics don’t matter” when discussing video games. But you know what? If you showed me two similar games in the same genre, with the key difference between them being that one was a ray-tracing Unreal Engine 5 beauty and the other looked like a Nintendo 64 game that had been sneezed on… I know which one I’d choose to play.

When I was really getting into gaming as a hobby in the 1990s, it seemed like the push for better and better graphical fidelity was never-ending. Games used their visuals as a selling-point, and that trend continued into the 2000s with consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation 2. It would’ve seemed wild in those days for a game to not only take a backwards step in graphical terms, but to celebrate doing so.

*Grand Theft Auto: Vice City* looked great in 2002.

We need to separate “graphics” from “art style,” because they’re really two different things. Some games can do wonderful things with cell-shading, for example, or a deliberately cartoony aesthetic. When I say that “graphics actually do matter,” I don’t mean that photorealism is the be-all and end-all; the only art style that games should pursue. What I mean is that games that prioritise looking great – within their chosen style – are going to grab my attention.

I think an interesting example here is South Park: The Stick of Truth. No one would argue that that game is “realistic” in its art style – but that’s the point. Developers Obsidian Entertainment worked overtime to recreate the look and feel of the South Park cartoon – and what resulted was a genuinely fun and interesting visual presentation. Playing that game really felt like taking part in an extended episode of the show. Compare the way The Stick of Truth and its sequel look to the upcoming South Park: Snow Day. I know which one I’d rather play!

*South Park: The Stick of Truth* stands out because of its visual style.

When a developer wants to go down the photorealism route, though, it’s great to see just how far they can push modern hardware. There were moments in games like Red Dead Redemption II where the environment felt genuinely real – and that feeling is one that games have been chasing since the inception of the medium. I really can’t wait to see how graphics continue to improve, and how realistic some games might be able to look in fifteen or twenty years from now… if I live that long!

At any rate, visually beautiful games are always going to catch my eye, and games that don’t prioritise graphical fidelity will always have a hurdle to overcome in some ways. Gameplay and story are important, of course, but graphics aren’t irrelevant. The way a game looks really does matter.

So that’s it!

A Sega Dreamcast console. I had one circa 2000.

We’ve come to the end of the list – for now! I’m sure I’ll have more “hot takes” and controversial opinions about video games that I’ll be able to share before too long.

I hope that this has been interesting – and not something to get too worked up over! As I said at the beginning, I know that I’m in the minority and that a lot of folks can and will disagree. Although some people take gaming a bit too seriously sometimes, I like to think that there’s room in the community for polite discussions and disagreements.

Have fun out there – and happy gaming!

All titles discussed above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Some images used above courtesy of IGDB and Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

The worst things about modern video games

Wed 24.03.21Sat 06.08.22Dennis

The first home console I owned – after saving up my hard-earned pocket money and pestering my parents for ages – was a Super Nintendo. Gaming has changed a lot since then, and while many of those changes have been fantastic and introduced us to new genres, not every change has been for the better! In this list I’m going to cover some of my biggest pet peeves with video games in 2021.

As always, this list is entirely subjective. If I criticise something you like, or exclude something you hate, just keep in mind that this is only one person’s opinion. Gaming is a huge hobby that includes many people with many different perspectives. If yours and mine don’t align, that’s okay!

Number 1: No difficulty options.

Some people play video games because they love the challenge of a punishingly-difficult title, and the reward of finally overcoming an impossible level after hours of perseverance. I am not one of those people! In most cases, I play video games for escapism and entertainment – I want to see a story unfold or just switch off from other aspects of my life for a while. Excessive difficulty is frustrating and offputting for me.

As someone with health issues, I would argue that difficulty settings are a form of accessibility. Some people don’t have the ability to hit keys or buttons in rapid succession, and in some titles the lack of a difficulty setting – particularly if the game is not well-balanced – can mean those games are unavailable to folks with disabilities.

While many games are too difficult, the reverse can also be true. Some titles are just too easy for some people – I’m almost never in that category, but still! Games that have no difficulty settings where the base game is incredibly easy can be unenjoyable for some folks, particularly if the challenge was what got them interested in the first place.

In 2021, most games have difficulty options as a standard feature. Difficulty settings have been part of games going back decades, and in my opinion there’s no technical reason why they shouldn’t be included. There’s also not really a “creative” reason, either. Some developers talk in grandiose terms about their “vision” for a title being the reason why they didn’t implement difficulty options, but as I’ve said before – the inclusion of an easier (or harder) mode does not impact the game at all. It only impacts those who choose to turn it on, and considering how easy it is to implement, I find it incredibly annoying when a game is deliberately shipped without any difficulty options.

Number 2: Excessive difficulty as a game’s only selling point.

While we’re on the subject of difficulty, another pet peeve of mine is games whose entire identity is based on their difficulty (or perceived difficulty). Think about this for a moment: would Dark Souls – an otherwise bland, uninspired hack-and-slash game – still be talked about ten years after its release were it not for its reputation as impossibly difficult? How many late 2000s or early ’10s hack-and-slash games have dropped out of the cultural conversation? The only thing keeping Dark Souls there is its difficulty.

A challenge is all well and good, and I don’t begrudge players who seek that out. But for me, a game has to offer something more than that. If there’s a story worth telling under the difficult gameplay I’m impressed. If the difficult, punishing gameplay is all there is, then that’s boring!

Difficulty can also be used by developers as cover for a short or uninteresting game. Forcing players to replay long sections over and over and over can massively pad out a game’s runtime, and if that’s a concern then cranking the difficulty to ridiculous levels – and offering no way to turn it down – can turn a short game into a long one artificially.

I’m all for games that offer replay value, but being forced to replay the same level or checkpoint – or battle the same boss over and over – purely because of how frustratingly hard the developers chose to make things simply isn’t fun for me.

Number 3: Ridiculous file sizes.

Hey Call of Duty? Your crappy multiplayer mode does not need to be 200 gigabytes. Nor does any game, for that matter. It’s great that modern technology allows developers to create realistic-looking worlds, but some studios are far better than others when it comes to making the best use of space! Some modern games do need to be large to incorporate everything, but even so there’s “large” and then there’s “too large.”

For a lot of folks this is an issue for two main reasons: data caps and download speeds. On my current connection I’m lucky to get a download speed of 7 Mbps, and downloading huge game files can quite literally take several days – days in which doing anything else online would be impossibly slow! But I’m fortunate compared to some people, because I’m not limited in the amount of data I can download by my ISP.

In many parts of the world, and on cheaper broadband connections, data caps are very much still a thing. Large game files can take up an entire months’ worth of data – or even more in some cases – making games with huge files totally inaccessible to a large number of people.

This one doesn’t seem like it’s going away any time soon, though. In fact, we’re likely to see file sizes continue to get larger as games push for higher resolutions, larger environments, and more detail.

Number 4: Empty open worlds.

Let’s call this one “the Fallout 76 problem.” Open worlds became a trend in gaming at some point in the last decade, such that many franchises pursued this style even when it didn’t suit their gameplay. Read the marketing material of many modern titles and you’ll see bragging about the size of the game world: 50km², 100km², 1,000km², and so on. But many of these open worlds are just empty and boring, with much of the map taken up with vast expanses of nothing.

It is simply not much fun to have to travel across a boring environment – or even a decently pretty one – for ages just to get to the next mission or part of the story. Level design used to be concise and clever; modern open worlds, especially those which brag about their size, tend to be too large, with too little going on.

The reason why Fallout 76 just encapsulates this for me is twofold. Firstly, Bethesda droned on and on in the weeks before the game’s release that the world they’d created was the “biggest ever!” And secondly, the game had literally zero non-player characters. That huge open world was populated by a handful of other players, non-sentient monsters, and nothing else. It was one of the worst games of the last few years as a result.

Open worlds can work well in games that are suited for that style of gameplay. But too many studios have been pushed into creating an open world simply to fit in with a current trend, and those open worlds tend to just flat-out suck because of it. Even when developers have tried to throw players a bone by adding in collect-a-thons, those get boring fast.

Number 5: Pixel graphics as a selling point.

There are some great modern games that use a deliberately 8-bit look. But for every modern classic there are fifty shades of shit; games that think pixel graphics and the word “retro” are cover for creating a mediocre or just plain bad title.

It may be hard to remember, but there was a time when the idea of using a deliberately “old-school” aesthetic would have been laughed at. The first few console generations were all about improvements, and I’m old enough to remember when 3D was a huge deal. It seemed like nobody would ever want to go back to playing a SNES game after trying the Nintendo 64, and while there are still plenty of gamers who love the retro feel, I’m generally not one of them.

That isn’t to say that realistic graphics should be the only thing a game strives for. And this point works for modern graphics or visual styles in general – bragging about how detailed the graphics are, or how unique a title’s art style is, means nothing if the game itself is shit. But it likewise works for pixel-graphics games – an outdated art style does not compensate for or cover up a fundamentally flawed, unenjoyable experience.

Games with pixel graphics can be good, and many titles have surprised me by how good they are. I’ve written before about how Minecraft surprised me by being so much more than I expected, and that’s one example. But I guess what I’d say is this: if your game looks like it should have been released in 1991, you’ve got more of an uphill battle to win me over – or even convince me to try it in the first place – than you would if your game looked new.

Number 6: Unnecessary remakes.

We called one of the entries above “the Fallout 76 problem,” so let’s call this one “the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition problem.” In short, games from even ten or fifteen years ago still look pretty good and play well. There’s far less of a difference between games from 2011 and 2021 than there was between games from 1991 and 2001 – the pace of technological change, at least in gaming, has slowed.

“Updating” or “remaking” a game from ten years ago serves no real purpose, and in the case of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition I’ve struggled at times to tell which version of the game is the new one when looking at pre-release marketing material. There’s no compelling reason to remake games that aren’t very old. Re-release them or give them a renewed marketing push if you want to drum up sales or draw attention to a series, but don’t bill your minor upgrade as a “remake.”

There are some games that have benefitted hugely from being remade. I’d point to Crash Bandicoot and Resident Evil 2 as two great examples. But those games were both over twenty years old at the time they were remade, and having been released in the PlayStation 1 era, both saw massive upgrades such that they were truly worthy of the “remake” label.

I’ve put together two lists of games that I’d love to see remade, but when I did so I deliberately excluded titles from the last two console generations. Those games, as I said at the time, are too recent to see any substantial benefits from a remake. In another decade or so, assuming sufficient technological progress has been made, we can talk about remaking PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 games – but not now!

Number 7: Fake “remakes.”

On a related note to the point above, if a title is billed as a “remake,” I expect to see substantial changes and improvements. If all that’s happened is a developer has run an old title through an upscaler and added widescreen support, that’s not a remake!

A lot of titles that acquire the “HD” suffix seem to suffer from this problem. Shenmue I & II on PC contained a number of bugs and glitches – some of which existed in the Dreamcast version! When Sega decided to “remake” these two amazing games, they couldn’t even be bothered to patch out bugs that were over fifteen years old. That has to be some of the sloppiest, laziest work I’ve ever seen.

There are other examples of this, where a project may have started out with good intentions but was scaled back and scaled back some more to the point that it ended up being little more than an upscaled re-release. Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning springs to mind as an example from just last year.

Remakes are an opportunity to go back to the drawing board, fix issues, update a title, and bring it into the modern world. Too many “remakes” fail to address issues with the original version of the game. We could even point to Mass Effect: Legendary Edition’s refusal to address criticism of the ending of Mass Effect 3 as yet another example of a missed opportunity.

Number 8: The “release now, fix later” business model.

This isn’t the first time I’ve criticised the “release now, fix later” approach taken by too many modern games – and it likely won’t be the last! Also known as “live services,” games that go down this route almost always underperform and draw criticism, and they absolutely deserve it. The addition of internet connectivity to home consoles has meant that games companies have taken a “good enough” approach to games, releasing them before they’re ready with the intention to patch out bugs, add more content, and so on at a later time.

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most recent and most egregious examples of this phenomenon, being released on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in a state so appallingly bad that many considered it “unplayable.” But there are hundreds of other examples going back to the early part of the last decade. Fortunately, out of all the entries on this list, this is the one that shows at least some signs of going away!

The fundamental flaw in this approach, of course, is that games with potential end up having launches that are mediocre at best, and when they naturally underperform due to bad reviews and word-of-mouth, companies panic! Planned updates are scrapped to avoid pumping more money into a failed product, and a game that could have been decent ends up being forgotten.

For every No Man’s Sky that manages to claw its way to success, there are a dozen Anthems or Mass Effect: Andromedas which fail. Time will tell if Cyberpunk 2077 can rebuild itself and its reputation, but its an uphill struggle – and a totally unnecessary one; a self-inflicted wound. If publishers would just wait and delay clearly-unfinished games instead of forcing them to meet arbitrary deadlines, gaming would be a much more enjoyable hobby. Remember, everyone: NO PRE-ORDERS!

Number 9: Forcing games to be multiplayer and/or scrapping single-player modes.

Some games are built from the ground up with multiplayer in mind – but many others are not, and have multiplayer modes tacked on for no reason. The Last Of Us had an unnecessary multiplayer mode, as did Mass Effect 3. Did you even know that, or notice those modes when you booted up those story-focused games?

Some games and even whole genres are just not well-suited to multiplayer. And others that are still have the potential to see single-player stories too. Many gamers associate the first-person shooter genre with multiplayer, and it’s true that multiplayer games work well in the first-person shooter space. But so do single-player titles, and aside from 2016’s Doom and the newer Wolfenstein titles, I can’t think of many new single-player first-person shooters, or even shooters with single-player modes that felt anything other than tacked-on.

Anthem is one of the biggest failures of the last few years, despite BioWare wanting it to be the video game equivalent of Bob Dylan. But if Anthem hadn’t been multiplayer and had instead maintained BioWare’s usual single-player focus, who knows what it could have been. There was potential in its Iron Man-esque flying suits, but that potential was wasted on a mediocre-at-best multiplayer shooter.

I started playing games before the internet, when “multiplayer” meant buying a second controller and plugging it into the console’s only other available port! So I know I’m biased because of that. But just a few short years ago it felt as though there were many more single-player titles, and fewer games that felt as though multiplayer modes had been artificially forced in. In the wake of huge financial successes such as Grand Theft Auto V, Fortnite, and the like, publishers see multiplayer as a cash cow – but I wish they didn’t!

Number 10: Early access.

How many times have you been excited to see that a game you’ve been waiting for is finally available to buy… only to see the two most awful words in the entire gaming lexicon: “Early Access?” Early access billed itself as a way for indie developers to get feedback on their games before going ahead with a full release, and I want to be clear on this point: I don’t begrudge indie games using it for that purpose. Indies get a pass!

But recently there’s been a trend for huge game studios to use early access as free labour; a cheap replacement for paying the wages of a quality assurance department. When I worked for a large games company in the past, I knew a number of QA testers, and the job is not an easy one. It certainly isn’t one that studios should be pushing off onto players, yet that’s exactly what a number of them have been doing. Early access, if it exists at all, should be a way for small studios to hone and polish their game, and maybe add fan-requested extras, not for big companies to save money on testers.

Then there are the perpetual early access games. You know the ones: they entered early access in 2015 and are still there today. Platforms like Steam which offer early access need to set time limits, because unfortunately some games are just taking the piss. If your game has been out since 2015, then it’s out. It’s not in early access, you’ve released it.

Unlike most of the entries on this list, early access started out with genuinely good intentions. When used appropriately by indie developers, it’s fine and I don’t have any issue with it. But big companies should know better, and games that enter early access and never leave should be booted out!

Bonus: Online harassment.

Though this problem afflicts the entire internet regardless of where you go, it’s significant in the gaming realm. Developers, publishers, even individual employees of games studios can find themselves subjected to campaigns of online harassment by so-called “fans” who’ve decided to take issue with something in a recent title.

Let’s be clear: there is never any excuse for this. No game, no matter how bad it is, is worth harassing someone over. It’s possible to criticise games and their companies in a constructive way, or at least in a way that doesn’t get personal. There’s never any need to go after a developer personally, and especially not to send someone death threats.

We’ve seen this happen when games are delayed. We’ve seen it happen when games release too early in a broken state. In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, we’ve seen both. Toxic people will always find a reason to be toxic, unfortunately, and in many ways the anonymity of the internet has brought out the worst in human nature.

No developer or anyone who works in the games industry deserves to be threatened or harassed. It’s awful, it needs to stop, and the petty, toxic people who engage in this scummy activity do not deserve to be called “fans.”

So that’s it. Ten of my pet peeves with modern gaming.

This was a rant, but it was just for fun so I hope you don’t mind! There are some truly annoying things – and some truly annoying people – involved in gaming in 2021, and as much fun as playing games can be, it can be a frustrating experience as well. Some of these things are fads – short-term trends that will evaporate as the industry moves on. But others, like the move away from single-player games toward ongoing multiplayer experiences, seem like they’re here to stay.

Gaming has changed an awful lot since I first picked up a control pad. And it will continue to evolve and adapt – the games industry may be unrecognisable in fifteen or twenty years’ time! We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed for positive changes to come.

All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective developer, publisher, and/or studio. Some stock images courtesy of pixabay. Some screenshots and promotional artwork courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

An amazing tech demo

Mon 04.05.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

I’m an avid collector of free games on PC. I browse the listings on various digital storefronts and almost any time I see a title being offered for free I snap it up. Many of them have been crap – or at least not my idea of fun – but in amongst the advertisements and first attempts and games of yesteryear there are some real gems. One I picked up recently on Steam falls into that category.

Mýrdalssandur, Iceland is the name of the title, and it really isn’t a “game” as much as it is a tech demo, showing off what Unreal Engine 4 is capable of. Even on my ageing PC this interactive walking simulator looks absolutely incredible, and some of the screenshots and footage I’ve seen captured on far better rigs than mine are unbelievable.

Screenshots honestly don’t do *Mýrdalssandur, Iceland* justice.

The term “photorealistic” comes to mind, and while it is still possible to tell you’re playing a game, the level of detail, even when zooming in to look at small objects, is phenomenal. One thing that has surprised me over the last decade or so – really emphasised by the success of titles like Minecraft – is how there has been a movement among a significant portion of game developers and publishers away from ever-better and more realistic graphics. The jump in quality from titles of the 16-bit era, which is when I first got into gaming in my youth, to the 3D worlds that came later was massive, and graphics continued to improve over the years, pushing ever closer to photorealism.

Shenmue was the first game I can remember playing that genuinely felt cinematic, and small details like individual fingers on the hands of main character Ryo that moved independently were a huge part of how that game felt. Returning to Shenmue today shows it has actually aged rather poorly, even compared to some other titles of its era, but to me at the time it represented a huge leap forward in what games were capable of. Minecraft, as I mentioned above, took me by surprise in how popular it became partly because I felt that its pixel graphic style was simply out-of-date and that would be offputting to a gaming audience who had, until that point, generally favoured the march toward photorealism.

At least partly inspired by Minecraft’s success, there have been hundreds of titles released over the last decade or so that emulate the graphical style of older eras. Partly this is because such games are cheaper and easier to make – there are tools on Steam, for example, to let budding developers make their own titles in that style that are very inexpensive. A single person in 2020 can make a 2D pixel graphics platformer in a weekend that would’ve taken an entire team of developers months in the 1980s or 1990s. The entire “indie” genre – or a large part of it, anyway – is made up of titles like this, inspired by the likes of Terraria, The Binding of Isaac, and Stardew Valley. The graphical style is from another era, but people do still love those games and there’s a huge market for them.

Promo image for *Minecraft*, a game which doesn’t care at all about graphics!
Picture Credit: IGDB

In some respects, the growing market for titles that don’t try to do anything graphically new has probably slowed down the advancement toward photorealism exemplified by Mýrdalssandur, Iceland. But generally, games in that style are their own genre doing their own thing off to one side. Some modern games, especially the titles which make the most money for their companies, do try to look as realistic as possible, though. Franchises like FIFA and Madden in the sports genre, and big-budget releases like Call of Duty use the best graphics engines available to their development teams to try to look better with each iteration, even if they don’t really push the boat out. Almost the entire racing genre – especially those titles that feature real-world cars and are closer to simulators than arcade-style racing – always manage to look great.

Consoles, and the fact that there have been such long console generations in recent years, are definitely a contributing factor to the slower pace of graphical improvement. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4, to use the current lineup, were both released in 2013 – using components available at that time. Every aspect of their hardware is based on technology that is now seven years old, and even at the time of release they were still outmatched by high-end PCs using more expensive components. Every major title released this console generation has been constrained by that technological ceiling: games have to be able to function properly on an Xbox One or PlayStation 4 from 2013, despite the fact that technology has moved on since then. Were it not for that requirement, more games could push graphical boundaries and look even better. I know that’s straying into “PC Master Race” territory, but it’s not untrue to say it.

Seriously… try the experience for yourself to get the full effect.

To get back on topic, Mýrdalssandur, Iceland looks stunning. A casual glance at the screen and you’d think you were looking at a photo or video. The imagery would fit right in with CGI created for the big screen – and looks a heck of a lot better than many of the CGI environments present in films from just a few years ago. My PC has certainly never run a title that looks this good, and I’m amazed to see what my graphics card and older processor can still manage.

If the title is still free on Steam when you’re reading this, I highly recommend checking it out. You won’t want to spend hours playing in this empty world – there isn’t anything to actually do, after all – but as an example of what graphics can be I think it’s well worth a look.

Mýrdalssandur, Iceland is available on Steam, and was free to download and keep at the time this article was written. Mýrdalssandur, Iceland is the copyright of Caves RD, and Unreal Engine 4 is the copyright of Epic Games. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.