Things You May Have Missed: What Was Lost In the Transition From 2-D Games to 3-D Games?

re: Things You May Have Missed: What Was Lost In the Transition From 2-D Games to 3-D Games?

chrisfurniss — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:34:17 GMT

I have always been quite frustrated by the transition in games from 2d to 3d ever since first seeing Mario 64. I always loathed the idea that the blocky polygons were somehow superior to the elaborately hand-drawn sprites of say, Yoshi's Island. It felt too forced to play a game like that, and the desolation and lack of enemies was definitely something I noticed as well.

Then, take New Super Mario Bros. It was a 2d game that handled like a 3d game with partial 3d graphics. Personally, I found it horrible to play. There was no charm to it like in previous Mario games and it was difficult to control and lacking any special character.

re: Things You May Have Missed: What Was Lost In the Transition From 2-D Games to 3-D Games?

Pistolaero — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:58:26 GMT

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you. I feel like your comparison sounds closely to the excuse I hear from people who used to play, "they just got too complicated for me."

Though, I think it is mostly a matter of opinion. I was turned off by the 2D Metroids because I felt like every other screen looked alike. With Metroid 3D, this wasn't the case for me because I am a visually driven person, so remember things by what I'd seen came easy for me. Probably just as easy as 2D backtracking was for you.

As far as Metroid losing some of itself in the transition, I can offer no opinion because I didn't play the 2D games enough. Though I will tell you, ever since Metroid Prime, I've been a huge Metroid fan and will continue to do so.

As far as their 3D map confusing you, I agree. It was definitely a learning curve for me and took quite a while to get used to it. But, I can excuse this because it coincides with Samus advanced gadgets on her visor. "I have a grapple, arm blaster, advanced scanners...but why is my map in 2d?" Just food for thought.

They only time 3D levels give me problems are when they suffer from redundancy. Very much like the first Halo and Halo 2. I couldn't tell sometimes which room I was in because they all looked a like.

re: Things You May Have Missed: What Was Lost In the Transition From 2-D Games to 3-D Games?

kern2000 — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:15:12 GMT

I, too, do not generally enjoy the transition from 2D to 3D in most cases.

Some examples being Metroid (it should've stopped at Super Metroid), Zelda, Castlevania...

It probably has a lot to do with what you originally started playing. For instance, take Zelda. I loved Zelda - a Link to the Past, but couldn't even bring myself to play beyond the first 10 minutes of the later 3D Zeldas. Another example, Castlevania. Symphony of the Night for the Playstation is arguably the best game out there. However, the 3D Castlevanias (Lament of Innocence for example) is horrible.

I'm thinking the reason the transition from 2D to 3D seems like a bad choice is because the developers try to bank on the success of its 2D predecessors. The 3D games resemble too much of the 2D predecessor that you start to miss the greatness that could only be attained through 2D expressions.

Looking at the Metal Gear series, the reason the Metal Gear Solid series are successful is because the game is redesigned from the ground up, with little or no resemblance of its 2D predecessor. You could have loved the Metal Gear series, and still come to love the Metal Gear Solid series because it feels like a whole different game.

You can't do that for Metroid, because the 3D Metroid has too much resemblance of the 2D ones. if you enjoy the 2D ones, the 3D successors only act to point out how much of the 2D greatness is missing.

If the first Metroid game you've ever played is 3D, then in the same way you can't go and enjoy the 2D. At least I can't.

On another note, as an older generation gamer, it hurts to see younger people talk about how they love Metroid for the Wii when they've never played the original Metroid for the NES, let alone Super Metroid for the SNES.

re: Things You May Have Missed: What Was Lost In the Transition From 2-D Games to 3-D Games?

SM5555 — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:12:09 GMT

Well, hopefully the people playing Metroid Prime 3 on Wii also realise that there's two very good entries (okay, the original hasn't held up so well, but Super Metroid is pretty much a universally acknowledged timeless classic) for play on the system. Nintendo needs to push VC more, but that's another rant entirely.

On this point, something clearly lost, especially in action games, is the objective nature of a camera in a 2D game. That's especially important when it comes to the action in something like Metroid, because you know what's behind Samus even if you "shouldn't" from a reality-based perspective. It's something that's always bugged me ever since Doom, and has done so to this day: even the best action game with a camera attempting to approximate the player's point of view is going to be unable to create perfect situational awareness. But you don't have the situational awareness problem in 2D games.

(It's important to note that, aside from a few brief - and failed - experiments, first-person views have never really caught on in sports games. The camera has to remain objective in order to give a gamer a chance of being decent.)

Another interesting problem is that even if Metroid is still "2D", it certainly loses something when you attempt to replicate three dimensions even if you stick to 2D sprites. How do we know this? Because of the DS / GBA game Scurge: Hive, which was as close a Metroid clone as you're ever going to encounter, with one key difference: it was told from an isometric, rather than flat 2D, perspective. While isometric visuals have their place in action games (Diablo), they're not conducive to games with a lot of jumping.So while Scurge: Hive had all the advantages of the more objective camera, attempting to mimic a third dimension in a 2D game hurt it a lot.

So that's what Metroid lost. But how do you get it back, while still keeping the visuals up to what current gamers expect? My solution would actually be to take an engine that could produce something similar to the Scurge: Hive look in 3D. The obvious choice, of course, would be the X-Men Legends / Marvel Ultimate Alliance engine, which has proven capable with multiple action games by now. So the combat would be just fine. The one thing it HASN'T been really good with is jumping (sure, you CAN jump in the XML games, but there's rarely a need for it). But, to me, that would a better accommodation of the basic concepts and gameplay of 2D Metroid into today's 3D universe than the FPS approach, especially with Nintendo's design team behind it. No more worrying about what you can see out of the visor, cameras, or lock-on targeting. And the games have proven themselves to be commercially successful, so there's no problem on that front.

re: Things You May Have Missed: What Was Lost In the Transition From 2-D Games to 3-D Games?

harrison25 — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:29:14 GMT

the challenges and opportunities opened by 3d gaming are... insane.

metroid prime 1 is without a doubt one of the 10 best games i've ever played, super mario 64, ocarina of time, goldeneye...

metroid prime 2 and 3 failed to innovate, and were average titles at best.

personally, i could never go back, or even comprehend the lingering appeal of 2 dimensional portable games... there is no going back. bioshock, mass effect, gears of war, god of war...

these games are massively better than their 2d progenitors.

re: Things You May Have Missed: What Was Lost In the Transition From 2-D Games to 3-D Games?

supergg2k — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:53:03 GMT

2d is to 3d what Widescreen is to Pan and Scan. In 2d games you can see everything on screen as it happens, In 3d games your view is limited to what is in front of you. That doesn't mean that one-d is better than the other-d necessarily. It just means that one is better suited to certain game types than others. As an example, Geometry Wars would be near impossible to play in 3d from the point of view of the ship. Regarding what was lost; I don't think anything was lost. People will play games they enjoy whether they are 2d or 3d. I don't think a game would perceived as poor solely on it being 2d vs 3d.

re: Things You May Have Missed: What Was Lost In the Transition From 2-D Games to 3-D Games?

trip1ex — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:05:33 GMT

Much was lost moving to 3d. Not to say there weren't gains either. Obviously 3d gave the ability to better simulate the 'real world.'

But you lost some of the innocence of videogames. You lost some of the immediacy and pick up and play nature of them. 3d introduced camera control and disorientation and complication. Problems that 2d games didn't really have for the most part.

I still think some genres would be better served by staying 2d or 2.5d. RTS games? Civ IV? It seems like we'd much better performance and more units (in the case of rts games) and the cost of doing 2d graphics is much less which would leave more money to polish games and work on the gameplay.

Perhaps my biggest complaint about 3d is that it became (and still is to some degree) a buzzword that every game must make use of. I wish developers/publishers would have not followed this carrot so blindly.

I think an fps game could do some sweet things in 2.5d that would be quite fun and still look great. By staying with lesser graphics you could use your budget and left over power for things like destructibility and AI and gameplay. Over 10 years ago you could shoot out alot of objects in the environment in Duke Nukem 3d. 3d pushed that back for years.