Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2010

[cltwhite]

Had anyone played NFS Hot Pursuit 2010...
I played it the gameplay is nice but the graphics are not soo pleasing...
What you all people think about it...

[Quantos]

I've seen it but haven't played it, I actually thought the graphics were really good.  What display setting are you using?

[CBMatt]

I think the graphics are fantastic and the gameplay sucks.  I really wanted to enjoy this game, but it wasn't nearly as fun as the original.

[BC_Programmer]

I think the graphics are fantastic and the gameplay sucks.  I really wanted to enjoy this game, but it wasn't nearly as fun as the original.

That's why I still have High stakes installed, even on my win7 machine

Personally, I really don't like this fascination with pretty graphics in more recent games. It doesn't hurt, but in some games, making things look pretty quite literally takes a backseat to making the game fun. Many newer games are practically just technology demos.

And to think that the 640x480 with 16-color display used by early flight simulators got praise of the form "it looks realistic". For comparison, here is a screenshot of what was considered "realistic:



"I feel like I'm really flying"

"I can see my house from here"

and yet, when you show somebody today something like this:



you get technical sychophants trying to give "advice" to the game developers by saying things like "the flames could be more realistic" or, "the  steering wheel on the car would have totally been blown off, that's so unrealistic the graphix suk".

Basically, it seems that with every step forward in graphics technologies consumers take two steps forward in what they expect, completely forgetting that simply having graphics on a PC at all used to be little more then a pipe dream.
 This isn't to say that a game with good graphics can't be good; of course not. IMO JC2 (pictured above) is a fine example of a excellent game, and the graphics certainly add to it; but then you have games like, say the NFS:underground series (or going off of CBMatt's comments, HP 2010), that literally are worse genre-wise then their predecessors (high-stakes,HP2, etc) and are good because they are "shiny".

[CBMatt]

I agree completely.  As games continue to advance, many gamers become increasingly demanding and picky.  The younger generations have lost track of what really makes a game important.  One of my favorite racing games is Blur, which looks fantastic and is incredibly fun, but people constantly complain about it not being realistic enough.  They say the cars don't crash realistically or that they don't control like real cars...nevermind the fact that they shoot freakin' energy blasts and emit shockwaves.  It's an arcade racer and the entire point of it is to have fun; it's not supposed to be some kind of simulation like GT5.

I think graphics are important for a number of different reasons, but nothing is more important than having fun, which can easily be achieved with just a couple of sticks and a ball.  I guess I'm bound to have a better appreciation because I grew up in a time when the stories/dialog were written down in books (Wasteland) or when we sometimes didn't get graphics at all (and yet we still had a blast).  That's why, when he is old enough, I'm going to start my son off with the classics so he can witness the progression in games first-hand like I did.