I guess I didn't specify enough what I was talking about when I was talking about styles. On the one hand you can look at as subject matter (say Pikmin's whole premise was based on Necromancing armies of the dead rather than pulling Tellatubies out of the ground). Still the gameplay would be the same, unless they changed the goals and or means of attaining them. On the other hand you can look at the style of gameplay. All previous Mario games before Mario 64 were straight platforming. Well at least the main games in the series on the consoles. Mario 64 was somewhere in between Sunshine and Mario World as far as balance between straight forward running and jumping, and scavenging for useless crap. I respect the quality in which Sunshine is presented and wish all of my games had the same amount of shine as it does. But I didn't find it fun. That is just my opinion. I thought the art style in Sunshine was top notch. And that is what I was talking about when I mentioned style.
Let us examine the art behind Sunshine. First Nintendo has chosen to stick to the classic character models. A super deformed appearance is given to all of the characters and enviroments. I'm glad they haven't changed Mario into a super real looking character. Given that he always gets little tweaks to his design in each entry to the franchise, his initial presentation has never changed. If Nintendo changed his design it would be like Disney making Mickey look like a real diseased greasy NY sewer rat.
Next lets look at the graphical choices they have taken. The game almost looks cell shaded. The textures are all original and look as though they fit with the rest of the game. Consistency is what makes a fake world seem real. If Mario Sunshine had bumbmapped textures that were photorealistic then they would seem out of place.
What I said about toon shaded games, and how they should be the focus was about how limitless the number of art styles there are that could be expressed through cel shading. Realistic games all look the same because they are supposed to look real or simulate real. By that I mean they use many different approaches to achieve thier vision of realism like reflexions and bump mapping as compared to a particular toon that focuses only on values, or only on colors. There is more out there than eight layer textures and bump maping. Some of the most supperior lighting effects I have seen have been in toon games. The new cel shading technologies allow for the game developer to make the game look like the game art, but there are more justified reasons for cel shading than making the game look like the instruction manual. Look at Animatrix for example. There are many different design styles. And there are also many different animation styles expressed. Some have strong lines, while others use none, and still others draw focus to the lines by having them unsettled or always moving. Excuse me for focusing on toon animation rather than say surrealistic animation (animation that has surreal characteristics of cartoon or fantacy worlds, but are animated to seem realistic such as Toy Story and Monsters Inc.) because it is easier to make a game look believably really like a cartoon than it is to go head long into realism. Art is an interpretation of realism no matter how surreal the results may be. Toons can be used to create a super realistic game. Remember that no matter whether the artist uses cubism, surrealism, or impressionism (I wish they could on a game, the colors and lively brush strokes make this particulary painting style seem very realistic in my eye) it is still realism, only through a different perspective. I don't believe that color has truly been expressed in games as it has in painting. People say that there is nowhere left to go with graphics other than ultra high polygon rates to make things photo realistic. I say look at art and how artist achieved realism before computers. I know it sounds contradictory when I say realism should die and then say that cel shading is just an interpretation of realism. I just ask you to take the statement with a grain of comon sense and realize I'm refering to the games that limit themselves with this ideal of what realism is. If the developer doesn't take the liberty of creating a creative world and just imitates the look of reality then he is only cheating everyone out of the oportunity of viewing the world differently. This hard to explain. If everyone jumps on the cel shading bandwaggon then will Nintendo jump off? Probably, but I hope not. With the cel shading they can still make their games look like no other games either realistic or cel shaded. But if they decide to go the other direction then they are expected to follow the rules of realsim. Just compare the visual ingenuity of Zelda WW compared to Star Fox Adventures lack of artistic freedom.
As for the controller. It has seven buttons. The double click should be implemented on the next console, but everyone must realize that it is essentially only good for altering the function of the button and cannot be viewed as a stand alone button. The real problems I have are the uncomfortable Z button, the fact there is only one, the sticks don't have double functionality (I like FPS and that clicking makes things simple for things like crouching and zooming), and just to complain some more the d pad is made for small monkey hands.
Topic: The Next Wave: A War of Chance (Read 7877 times)
