Topic: It's about the ideas not the graphics...

It's not about the visuals, it's about how well the game can pull you into its world which can sometimes mean visuals. It's like going to see a movie, impressive visuals aren't enough but they sure do help. And I don't just mean the sort of visuals that require a beefy GPU

The title of this thread are the words I live by when playing videogames!
Gameplay and ideas over graphics any day.

"If graphics didn't matter, we'd all still be playing Atari 2600." - unknown

For me, something like DKC is much, much more appealing to look at, than say, a highly detailed CoD.

Sometimes a highly detailed game is just too much for me to take in.Sometimes

Sometimes it can be about both ideas and graphics. Take Heavy Rain as an example. No aspect of the game was lacking due to the emphasis on ideas and its graphical achievement.

Sometimes speculating and comprehending from a different, optimistic point of view, can better your understanding of a topic.

I haven't personally played arkham city but for the superhero-cinematic hero adventure brawling genre it's said to have really moved things forward, so yeah might fit the bill! I'm not too much into transformers so icannot judge, portal series of games - didn't they start indie? And yeah from what I have seen I got a soft spot for uncharted because I'm hugely into Indiana jones type of games!

So yeah you do have a point but given from my game history I did not play one of the titles mentioned so for me it really appears to stagnate a bit! I think the last impressive triple a title I played was bio shock 1. Plenty of awesome indie games followed that one though!

This always gets blown out of proportion. There are plenty of games that innovate without pushing graphics to their limit.

Nobody ever talks about Spec Ops: The Line. Which is a shame, because everyone should.

Good example! Similar game that I liked a lot: la noire! They closed the studio...
And yeah sometimes it is and should be both it's just that mostly big publishers don't want to take any risks trying something new nowadays!

I've heard lots of positives about it but didn't play it since I'm not too much into military shooter. But the point is - for me - for every good innovative game I feel like we get 30 meaningless sequels with a fresh coat of paint. Which is rather sad. All personal opinion of course!

I really didn't make this thread to generally piss off anyone or say I still love my 8 bit graphics no matter what, no I just wanted to point out that even the impressive (and over a year old) engine demoed by capcom and square Enid during ps4 reveal won't save a game that's generally boring and bland from being just that only by having impressive fire effects! Those engines need to be crafted with by good story tellers and used for new ways of gameplay and fresh ideas if anyone is going to move the industry forward innovation-wise.

That said I believe that any console this new generation can come out "on top" regardless of gpu power if it offers the most impressive games no matter the fidelity. It's just a question if the market even wants something better -I know I do!

A game doesn't have to push the graphical envelope. Best game I've played this year was Monoco so far.

I do like it when games look pretty though. I probably won't get it but I downloaded the 1080p 60 fps trailer for Battlefield 4 and it looks amazing.

Or Metal Gear Solid, unfortunately.

Spec Ops is a fantastic example of this, though, Its storytelling, character development, and visuals are superb. So superb, it was a sleeper hit.

Oh please, everyone talks about MGS.

(Even if everyone doesn't, you still have hundreds of people in your head talking about it I'm sure )

Rethinking about it, MGS does two things really well. Story and all the cutscenes, and gameplay. The shame is most people overlook the gameplay because of story, cutscenes or graphics.

Of course graphics aren't as important.

Until devs try to port games to a system that runs differently and with different specs than the next and current gen systems, in some cases resulting in a poor port to a system that caters to first-party games anyway.

But hey ideas are grrreat!

I disagree. Everything is important.

Also true ~hierarchy ftw~

PS2 proved that graphics don't matter as much. It was still able to do everything GCN and Xbox could do to an extent(Resident Evil 4 still played better on GCN). The actual function was there.
I honestly liked GCN the best that gen, rarely played PS2 or Xbox, and wondered why even the PS2 was getting all the games. I remember thinking exactly, "Why is PS2 getting more games, when GCN has better graphics?"
Now the situation is flipped, and graphics are higher up, no matter where you look. I'm sure the Wii U will be the PS2 of this gen(success wise), and the 3DS should be able to carry on the legacy of the Nintendo handhelds.
I agree that game play and immersion is what matters most. The graphics are like EXTRA icing on the cake. They're nice, which is why I'll probably buy an Xbox One.

http://i.imgur.com/TSab5oP.jpg?1

Graphics matters, take Silver 1999 for example which I played the other day.
If you look at that screenshot, what do you see?

Horrifically bad models, but also surprisingly beautiful and varied environments, if you play it the effects of the spells and gameplay is pretty awesome too.
If the environment was bad, then I might of considered it one of those horribly aged games and not bothered finishing it.

Sometimes a game just needs to be good in one department graphically to be remember-able if the gameplay is good.

Well, graphics aint just "instagram layers"... its about power... new possibilties to achieve all of these ideas that developers might have.

but it's not just about power. Style, art and quality animation are more important than how many jiggahertz your RAMs have. It would be fairly easy to argue that something like Luigi's Mansion 2, Wind Waker or Bioshock Infinite are visually better games than the next Crysis or CoD will be. Hardware is important but at the end of the day it's just a tool that a "game artist" uses to communicate their "vision".