Monday, September 13, 2010

Wow, kind of looks like shit now.

Hello the three possible people who follow my blog.
I recently started playing Delta Force- Black Hawk Down again recently (2003), and it occurred to me how dated it looks now in comparison to when I first played it when I was around 10 years old.
That may of been seven years ago, but its has still aged quite a bit when you compare it to other games released around that time (ie the first Call of Duty).

 
        Delta force- BHD                                                                   Call of Duty

But to be fair BHD's mission maps are huge and you go through the whole things with no loading screens, something that was rare for the time but would have sacrificed the higher details. 
COD maps on the other hand were more linear meaning more pixels could be squeezed in.     

It got me thinking though about how much video game graphics have evolved over the years. 
I remember when I first saw Grand Theft Auto 3 and I thought, ''wow look how realistic it is, it will be tough to match that.'' How wrong my little self was. 
These days you have the likes of Mass Effect and Crysis. These will probably look dated in another 7 years though, and I'll be linking this in some sort of future blog (wow the future!).
Of course I thought some games looked shit even when they came out *cough cough Driver 2* but I guess it depends on the system it was released on. 
I'm looking at you, Playstation One.

What really bends my mind though is how good sprites still look.

    
                                      Space Quest FTW

These don't age. These still look as good as they did 10, 15 or even 20 years ago. Especially ones that are hand painted. I guess you can't really make them any better.
3D technology advances so quick, something that was made even 3 years ago looks outdated compared to something released yesterday.
It will be interesting if 3D ever actually reaches its limits.