What do developers have against 2D?

Y-Disciple

Y-Disciple

[09] Warrior
Aside from Blazblue, when was the last time you played a really good, original 2D game? I'm not talking 2.5D like SF4, but 2D. Personally, I can't remember, and I think that's a bit sad. I love 2D to the point that I play my Sega Genesis as much as my PS3. Now, I know that there are a lot of decent 2.5D games, but I feel that that's not quite the same. It doesn't amaze me as much as the animation in say, BB, and some of these developers are just plain missing the point. Have you played the Turtles in Time remake? It was meant to be nearly the same as the original, but because they added that third dimension- being able to face in all 4 directions instead of just horizontally like it was meant to be, the game is mostly viewed as mediocre.

Why the hell don't the developers realize that making 2D games 3D does not make it better? Look at MK, the first four games (counting UMK3) were a success, and now because it went 3D, it's widely considered a disgrace to the fighting genre and may have contributed to Midway's bankruptcy. Super Metroid was one of the best games on the SNES, but Nintendo seemed to move their attention to Metroid Prime, an FPS. Unless you count Metroid Fusion on GBA in 2002 as its sequel, I feel they've ignored the success of Super Metroid. My favorite series on the Genesis, Vectorman, was scheduled to have a 3D sequel on PS2 in 2003, but it was so bad that it was canceled before it was even released. Look at what Sega's doing now. The new Golden Axe game sucked because it was 3D, Altered Beast on PS2 was awful, the Ecco game on DC didn't make much of an impact, and Sonic has consisted almost solely of debacles since it went 3D. Why the hell doesn't anyone realize that the reason these games were successful long ago was not because of the name or the characters or the general idea of the game, but because of the 2D gameplay. This is why 2D Castlevania games are typically better than the 3D games as well.

End of rant. Thoughts? Agree/Disagree? I'd like to hear some other opinions.
 
To me, the way you are using the term 2.5D is wrong (fuck you Yahtzee!). If the game you are playing is on a 2D plane, its a 2D game, even if all the graphics are in 3D. So Street Figther 4, that is a 2D game; not a 2.5D game. To me, a 2.5D game is a 2D game that gives player's the ability to redraw the 2D plane on another axis. You see this in games like Klonoa, early Tekken games, and even the original Turtles in Time that you are mentioning. The new Mortal Kombat games too, are 2.5D, not 3D. When you step in MK, all it does is redraw the 2D plane.

But for your question... you are asking, why is there a lack of 2D games with 2D graphics? Becauses it looks old. Both Street Fighter 4 and BlazBlue are 2D games, one has 3D graphics though and one has 2D graphics. Why don't people make 2D games anymore? Because NOSTALGIA doesn't hold up for new games. Games today are generaly better than they have ever been; even if they are easier. Gameplay is better, stories are better, graphics are better. Older 2D games don't have as good gameplay, but the gameplay is SIMPLER.

You are critisizing REMAKES of fabled 2D games. These fabled games only hold up becuase of Nostalgia. Shadow Complex isn't the only recent Metroidvania style game, but its succesful, simply because the developers came out and said they were making a new Metroidvania style game. Nostalgia is why Shadow Complex is so succesful. But just because these new 3D sequels to these old genres are garbage (Shadow Complex is good), doesn't mean all 3D games are bad. All it means that these developers who try to cash in on the nostalgia by making shitty games... suck ass.
 
Jaxel said:
These fabled games only hold up becuase of Nostalgia.
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Truth. I like old stuff so when a new game comes out featuring something I enjoyed back in the day, I throw my money at whoever made whatever.

Although, I'd LOVE to see a disc based 2D Castlevania game on these newer consoles...namely a PS3 blu-ray.

I'd expect it to be HUGE and very, VERY pretty.
 
Y-Disciple said:
Super Metroid was one of the best games on the SNES, but Nintendo seemed to move their attention to Metroid Prime, an FPS. Unless you count Metroid Fusion on GBA in 2002 as its sequel, I feel they've ignored the success of Super Metroid.
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Metroid Prime is just masquerading as a FPS but it's really not. It is more of a "first person adventure" than anything else. Also, Metroid Fusion is certainly the sequel to Super Metroid, it says "Metroid IV" somewhere in the opening sequence iirc (Super Metroid is Metroid III of course.) I'd say that the Metroid Prime series managed to maintain the feel of the gameplay of the 2D games despite looking totally different. It is just that most other 3D adaptions of old 2D games don't translate nearly as well.

I agree about the Vectorman 3D game though, so glad that game got canned cause it looked BAD.

There are still a fair amount of good 2D RPG games that come out on portable consoles btw. Knights in the Nightmare is really good 2D strategy RPG/2D shooter hybrid for DS and I've heard good things about Devil Survivor as well, just to name recent stuff
 
almost all developers just want to go 3d cause it's newer technology and u can do a lot with it than u can with 2d... i think for all other genre of games it's better to go 3d rather than fighting genre... fighting games to me r a lot more intense and exciting when it's 2d... on that last great 2d game i played and still playing is kofxii... bitch and compare about the game's extra content all u want but it clearly beats bb and sf in terms of balance, labour of love, purity, simplicity yet versatile gameplay... and it's not even a finished game... lol... wait till xiii to see the full extent of pwnage...
 
You take a game like Blazblue or ... KOF XII and it looks fine certainly. But it takes more work and is harder to make adjustments with than a 3d model.

3D: "Shit that move's too slow, okay let's just mess around with the animation - okay done. Perfect. That's beautiful."
2D: "Shit that move's too slow. Better get on the phone with the guys in korea. Give it three weeks and see if they can cut out two frames of animation. If they can't redo the whole sequence"

3d models are just cheaper and easier to work with now and still have a professional looking product.
 
Tiamat said:
There are still a fair amount of good 2D RPG games that come out on portable consoles btw. Knights in the Nightmare is really good 2D strategy RPG/2D shooter hybrid for DS and I've heard good things about Devil Survivor as well, just to name recent stuff
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Do not buy Devil Survivor the battle system is awful. All the other parts of the game are great, but the whole way battles play out made me quit.
 
Who's played Prinny: Can I Really Be The hero? Odin Sphere?

There are 2d games out there. Nobody bothers to play 'em tho.
 
Impending_Doom66 said:
Do not buy Devil Survivor the battle system is awful. All the other parts of the game are great, but the whole way battles play out made me quit.
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haha ok, wasn't planning to get it (though I had considered it). next RPG ill buy is probably growlanser 1 for psp, though I'd have to play on my brother's psp (since I don't own one) so I haven't bought it yet haha

playing Knights in the Nightmare on my second play lately and doing Bangai-O on dreamcast (which is a 2D shooter). Knights in the Nightmare is hardcoreeeeeeeee
 
have you beaten it yet? if so, how many times/difficulty etc? I'm on my second play but it's normal mode again because I figured I'd pull my hair out on hard mode and I still have a lot of characters to get. gonna do hard mode for my 3rd play whenever that is

would you be up for a knights in the nightmare discussion topic? though it prob just be us talking but there's a lot in the game worth discussing
 
2D is expensive, hard to do, time consuming, and to top that off isn't all that popular anymore for the general gaming populace.

You can't easily change anything like you can with 3d models. Say you wanted to change the hairstyle of a character, you would have to redraw/modify by hand every single frame. While with the 3d model, you just adjust the polygons on the model and you've just changed them for every frame. Or if you want to provide an alternative costume for a character, well, that's redrawing a bizillion frames again, at least with 3d you can re-use the skeletal animation data. Which is why in Blazblue you can only adjust the colors of your character and not anything else about them.

Take Blazblue even, the backgrounds are all done in 3d. To get that kind of parallax depth effect in pure 2d would be ridiculously hard if not impossible, in 3d, its done automatically for you by the mathematics involved. Or watch when the camera flies out from the background and you see the character's up close and pixelated, that never happens in a 3d game.

2D actually starts taking up a lot of space, as 3d data is far more compact, as you only have to store the positions/orientations of your bones per frame, while in 2d, you need an entire sprite per frame. When you start scaling up to high definition resolutions, these sprites start taking a lot of space and memory.

The animation in Blazblue is actually quite crude if you go into a replay and step through it slowly. I know when I switch between Blazblue and SC4, SC4 feels a ton smoother to me. Sure you could animate a full 60fps animation in 2d, but, you do want to actually play the game sometime?

Gameplay wise, there's no reason that 2.5D can't play out identically to the equivalent 2D game. At its heart, Blazblue is really just a bunch of bounding boxes moving around the screen, the representation of that could be anything. If you added a playable 3rd axis and turned it into a true 3D fighter, then yeah, you'd be talking a totally different beast and likely lose the soul of the gameplay in the game (which is likely why the 3D MK games failed, I've never played any of them, but, that really gives it a totally different set of game mechanics that their original audience probably didn't want).

If you went the other way, and say Namco made SC5 into a 2D fighter, could you really tell me that would be an improvement for the better and wouldn't destroy/fracture their fanbase? Course, if you played Raphael, would you even notice? :)
 
Jaxel said:
Why don't people make 2D games anymore? Because NOSTALGIA doesn't hold up for new games.
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I see what you're saying, but a game doesn't need to be based on nostalgia in order to be 2D. Like I said at first, I'm looking for an original 2D game, not just a rehash like that Earthworm Jim remake they're working on. Why should we completely abandon the 2D platform genre just because it's possible to make a game 3D instead? Like I said, 3D is not necessarily better than 2D. The closest thing I can think of is Little Big Planet, but that's 2.5D, as you described.

I can understand why they would choose to use 3D graphics for a 2D game, but my point is, why are 2D games so scarce today? Even if it had 3D graphics, I would kill to see something like Vectorman or Super Metroid today.
 
Y-Disciple said:
I see what you're saying, but a game doesn't need to be based on nostalgia in order to be 2D. Like I said at first, I'm looking for an original 2D game, not just a rehash like that Earthworm Jim remake they're working on. Why should we completely abandon the 2D platform genre just because it's possible to make a game 3D instead? Like I said, 3D is not necessarily better than 2D. The closest thing I can think of is Little Big Planet, but that's 2.5D, as you described.

I can understand why they would choose to use 3D graphics for a 2D game, but my point is, why are 2D games so scarce today? Even if it had 3D graphics, I would kill to see something like Vectorman or Super Metroid today.
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I dont think you're paying attention to what I wrote... There are already a TON of original Vectorman/Metroid type games today; just look on PSN/XBL... they just don't sell. The only reason Shadow Complex is selling is because Cliff Blezinski is banking on nostalgia for Epic Games, Super Metroid and Castlevania. If Shadow Complex had come out without the ferver, without Cliffy B saying its like Metroidvania, even with the high ratings, it still wouldn't have sold. So basically, a game DOES need to be based on nostalgia in order to be 2D. Shadow Complex is a new property, but it is still based on Nostalgia.
 
Jaxel said:
I dont think you're paying attention to what I wrote... There are already a TON of original Vectorman/Metroid type games today; just look on PSN/XBL... they just don't sell. The only reason Shadow Complex is selling is because Cliff Blezinski is banking on nostalgia for Epic Games, Super Metroid and Castlevania. If Shadow Complex had come out without the ferver, without Cliffy B saying its like Metroidvania, even with the high ratings, it still wouldn't have sold. So basically, a game DOES need to be based on nostalgia in order to be 2D. Shadow Complex is a new property, but it is still based on Nostalgia.
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Therein lies the problem: they're on PSN/XBL. Downloadable games get minimal publicity, if any at all, partly because a lot of them are half-assed, like Rag Doll Kung Fu. I, as well as others, were completely oblivious that these games existed because of that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's the reason they don't sell.

Anyways, enlighten me on some other games that fit this formula. I'd like to learn more about this.
 
Y-Disciple said:
Aside from Blazblue, when was the last time you played a really good, original 2D game? I'm not talking 2.5D like SF4, but 2D. Personally, I can't remember, and I think that's a bit sad.
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are you talking about games in general or JUST fighting games? Because I have a list for both



2-D fighting game I enjoyed before (while waiting for) BB:

Guilty Gear

Arcana Heart

Melty Blood

2-D games in general:

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth

Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria

Odin Sphere

Castle Crashers

Mega Man ZX (Advent)


And that's just off the top of my head. As far as I can see, there are still tons of good 2-D games out there to have fun with.
 
How "original" was BB for that matter?

A 2D fighter, with new characters, special moves, gauges all over, finishing moves.... sounds like most 2D fighters to me...
 
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