Don't get me wrong, there are lots of fun games out there which do not have 3D graphics, but there are a lot of great games out there which do. The added realism that high quality 3D offers can add quite a bit to the immersion. It won't make a bad game, or break a great game, but it will certainly enhance even an OK game.
That doesn't mean that it makes the games less enjoyable, necessarily, but certain art styles are just better at conveying timelessness.
At some point we'll probably reach a certain peak level of graphics that can simply be considered "good enough" for most purposes henceforth (Have we already?), but in general investing too much in graphics for production purposes over tech demos and research, is often shaky.
This hasn't stopped Mario 3D, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or Final Fantasy VII from becoming classics, despite being some of the first games in the 3D space.
> That doesn't mean that it makes the games less enjoyable, necessarily, but certain art styles are just better at conveying timelessness.
However, that art style is not pixel art. I've gone back and tried to play some of the pixelated stars from the past - they don't age well on modern display devices. From their 40pt fonts, to their pixels which actually look worse on LCD monitors than they did on our old CRT TVs.
They are still classics, and frequently enjoyable, but in many ways they require a bit of context to understand why they were such classics.
I have a stash of bulky crt monitors and TVs for this reason. They are almost free nowadays.
That's why it's timeless.
> "...your field of view is strictly limited to a 2D plane, but the use of isomorphic projection and billboarding techniques are used to create depth"
The original DooM engine isn't based on billboarding.
I played this awesome "pure 3D" FPS the other day.
It was called Laser Tag and it rocked.
We are well past the point where it explicitly ages badly though. HL2 still looks pretty good IMO and that is past a decade old. A few years ago you couldn't say that about many decade old games.
No 3D game released now that doesn't look terrible to start with is going to look hideous against what-ever is modern in a decade's time - it won't look as good of course, there will various bits of flair/realism/detail/what-ever missing somewhere, and the uncanny valley and such effects will be more noticeable, but it'll be perfectly playable and if the game is good the lesser graphics won't make it any less good.
Going back to HL2, if you compare it to Bioshock Infinite you can see the improvements in technology over the years, but it sill just looks less refined, not bad, and the differences don't affect immersion much (I would argue that BSI is more immersive, but that is mainly due to the design improvements (the whole but: art, music, story, ...) and not really due to the graphical improvements on their own).
3d can age well also, Warcraft III still looks better than most modern games, it might not have dynamic lightning, shadows, etc but the overall impression is just stunning.
Warcraft III is such a great example of how make sure the 3D isn't working against you, both from gameplay and visual perspective. The camera angle is always fixed which means they can optimize the way characters look from that particular angle, not like sims 3d where you can zoom in and around and end up looking at an untextured ceiling. This also makes it much easier to design the gameplay such as selection and control of characters because there is only one scenario to cater for, instead of twisting the camera to select a character behind a building/mountain you simply design the game so that characters can't be hidden behind mountains. Other 3d RTS games from that era(probably today as well) made the mistake of thinking we haz 3d!!!1 now the player should be able to move around everywhere which just can only end with infinite bad camera angles instead of one good one.
One of the main issues with 2D is the fixed resolution. If you can live with that, it's not bad. I actually played D2 again a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Same for Planescape Torment.
But lets talk about Legendary ones: might & magic series, planescape torment, baldur's gate, day of the tentacle, neverwinter nights, monkey island series, ultima online, warcraft 1, starcraft 1, diablo 1, heroes of mm & Ultima 1/2/3 etc...
The games you are listing can be highly rated, but they will not be remembered..
Source ports add more 3d stuff to the game engine, like collision by cylinders with height (ie, a flying Cacodemon not would colide with you if it is flying above you), opnegl rendering, 3d camera, modern controls, slopes, etc. But at the core, keeps being a 2d game.
On other side, the original game engine, use 2d math with fixed point to rendering on a 386 CPU. Don't uses mvp matrix to render, like a real 3d game.
Take a look to : http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_rendering_engine
It's the difference between looking 3D and being 3D (well, being represented 3D in the game engine before rendering to your monitor).
Doom isn't 3D because the level maps can be squashed flat to a 2D grid. For every x,y position there was only one z for you and the mobs. There weren't any situations where a bridge or ramp took you/mobs over a lower spot you/mobs could also be at, rooms weren't stacked, etc.
That was fine, Doom pulled off its sleight-of-hand extremely well and the gameplay it offered was captivating!
You could argue there are no 3D graphics. Everything is transformed into a 2D screen representation.
Hence my squashing analogy, DOOM levels don't overlap and can be drawn ("squashed flat") on a 2D surface.
But you can't actually occupy a different height for a given location. This is NOT real 3D. That's why DOOM is sometimes described as a 2.5D game. Quake was the ID Software game that was 3D.
If you think DOOM is a 3D game, try creating a level that contains a player accessible location above/below another player accessible location, and see how the game renders it. Or, read the DOOM rendering engine links that are posted and pay close attention to the "not a true 3D engine" paragraph.
I suppose at the extreme end, I'd have to explain why Wizardry on the Apple II is or isn't a 3D game, which would be more of a strained philosophical argument.
The format of the levels or the fact that there are no rooms over other rooms don't really factor into it.
I'm honestly surprised there's as much of a debate over this, the breakdown always seemed rather clear to me: That while there are "great games" that "serious gamers"(tm) love (I'm personally a massive SS2 fan, play it to this day) we are in the vast minority and the Next Gen race has been almost entirely about throwing increasingly flashy presentation-oriented features at core game mechanics that are known to be successful.
As usual, tastes are subjective. Many people consider Moby Dick to be a classic - but when compared to more modern allegorical works, it's rather dry and boring. This doesn't mean Moby Dick is not a classic, but it also doesn't mean that Moby Dick is the be-all-end-all example of an allegorical tale.
Those games are classics, but being a classic does not prevent a game from being surpassed, nor does it prevent newer games from becoming classics as well.
> neverwinter nights
Was in 3d. The Starcraft and Diablo games had 3d models which were rendered down to 2d sprites (and considered by many to be dramatically inferior to hand-drawn 2d sprites).
Many of these series continue to exist today, in 3 dimensions.
And despite having arguably the worst 3d graphics in the lot, Final Fantasy VII is still a favorite for many folks.
They have gone back and forth on open world vs rails or corridors, and I find the open world, like FFXII, the most enjoyable and replayable of the titles.
When FFVII was released, it was one of the first my wife really wanted to play with me. We played lots of games, but the vivid nature of the story, lots of activities, puzzles, mini-games (Oh, how we spent time on Chocobo breeding...), really made for an awesome experience!
But, an attempt to play it today is tough. The really poor visuals often get in the way, and it just reeks of old.
This is true of many 2D titles too.
One difference is how abstract the game is. An old 2D game, such as TEMPEST, or DEFENDER, actually looks and plays well today. It is what it is, and that isn't much, but the challenge is there, presentation sufficient, and it's sort of timeless.
Those games that went for some realism, or that made more identifiable characters seem to age a lot more quickly, though somebody up thread mentioned SONIC. Yeah, that one is still relevant, and is a stellar example of a timeless presentation involving simple, easily understood mechanics.
In that case I wouldn't call it a game, but more of a tech demo or an interactive experience.
I also recall that you could replace the peons' wood-chopping sounds with fart noises, which was hilarious for almost 30 whole minutes.
Likewise, the entire premise of Minecraft depends purely on the simplicity of a voxel-based world - a technique for defining a procedurally-generatable, deformable landscape. Maybe Minecraft is only a tech demo or an interactive experience, but... it's a damned successful one.
What has the story and design of Portal to do with graphics? Nothing, because story and design are independent of it. Would Portal be an equally great game if done with the engine used in Narbacular Drop, but with the same design and story. Yes, again graphics has nothing to do with story and design.
So to reiterate. What made Portal great has nothing to do with how many pixels you fit on the screen or how many shadows you can render. What made Portal great was story, design and the tech( portals ).
Sure, the number of pixels you fit or the lighting effects are not key to Portal being a good game- but being 3D certainly is.
Cramming more graphic textures or perfecting water algorithms might be secondary (or tertiary) to the game, but they can still influence the gameplay directly. Take Team Fortress 2, where a lot of care was put into making each character class have a distinctive silhouette, so at a glance you can see who everyone is from a distance or from different angles - this isn't what most people talk about when they discuss "graphics," but it is the element of graphics that matters most.