Who Says 2D Gaming is Dead?

Retro Gaming with Racketboy has up a feature looking at the best modern 2D games out there, all on the PlayStation 2. He highlights the best of every genre, from the modern classic RPG/beat-em-up Odin Sphere to the timeless beauty that is the Metal Slug series. "Disgaea: Hour of Darkness & Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: Disgaea greatly resembles other strategy RPGs. Its isometric perspective, 3D battlefields, and nice-looking 2D characters are clearly reminiscent of most other games of this type, and on first impression, so is the game's turn-based combat system. However, you'll soon realize that this game actually plays very differently. The gameplay itself is, in a word, weird."

It will always be alive

[MLCT]

Despite having around a dozen modern games installed on my machine at the moment (and that ranges from Civ4, through HL2 and ending up at Simpson's Hit & run) I just spent the last two hours playing Lemmings. Enjoyable, engaging, straightforward and fun. I can play it while running 5 other things & it doesn't take over my system. I don't know what the "kidz" today would make of a basic 2D game like Lemmings - it would be interesting to see if games of that time really have something special, or if I am just being nostalgic.

Re:It will always be alive

[xtracto]

I just spent the last two hours playing Lemmings. Enjoyable, engaging, straightforward and fun

Aaaah, lemmings, probably on of the beset puzzle games ever created. I loved the SNES port for the multiplayer gameplay. Games like lemmings show you how a 500KB game can be more entertaining and have more replay time than a full blown 2 DVD game...

Personally, I prefer 2D games, nowadays I play a lot of Worms (or the open source equivalent Wormux) with my girlfriend and it is one of the only games where we have real fun and can "share" videogame time playing together.

In contrast, I have a lot of problems getting used to some 3D games, specially those where you have to calculate the depth for some kind of jump or other action, for example, in Super Mario 64 I just cant get used handle Mario accurately because of the depth... similarly with Wii's Zelda and others. I have had the same problems while playing Unreal Tournament or other FPS games.

I don't know what the "kidz" today would make of a basic 2D game like Lemmings - it would be interesting to see if games of that time really have something special, or if I am just being nostalgic.

Some kids today do enjoy those kind of games, and, if you've got a kid and spend quality time playing such games (for example, each time your kid completes a Lemmings scenario, give him a prize) they will like it more. And the educational value is huge. It is similar to the situation I have encountered several times when you put a kid in front of the computer so he can spend some time (with internet, games and whatnot) and after you return he has the MS Paint (or KolourPaint) opened and has spent some time drawing whatever his imagination told him. It is really cool to see that the simplest things can make kids happy.

BTW, I would *really* recommend the Lemmings Revolution game if you like lemmings. Unlike most of the other Lemmings sequels, this one is pseudo-3d, this is, the controls and all are the same as in the original game but you have some extra things (like two races of lemmings). The game has completely new levels (something difficult to find if you have played all the levels from the original game) and the 3D factor is done by placing the scenario as a cylinder that is rotated when you "scroll" the scenario.

Unfortunately I have not been able to play it under WINE...

Re:It will always be alive

[towster]

I must admit I liked lemmings but..
The incredible machine was even more fun to me..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine [wikipedia.org]
I wish they still made games like that..

Re:It will always be alive

[Iwanowitch]

Hmm, let me be the 10%... Shit games? Have you played some of the 'classics' of the new wave of IFs? Things like Photopia, All Things Devours, Slouching Towards Bedlam, Metamorphoses, Shade or Vespers? Or whatever the latest IF competition is going to yield?

Seriously, these things are worth your time. Not as big and time-consuming as the old Infocom classics, I agree. But they do what they have to do (entertain you for a few hours) and the price is right. Damn better than most of the commercial games these days.

Animal crossing?

[porcupine8]

What about the Animal Crossing series? Or does that count as "3D with restricted movement?" I'm not sure what you mean by that label - personally, I like (and consider 2D) anything that doesn't make me swing the camera around, because that confuses me and sometimes makes me dizzy. If it has a fixed camera angle, even if the graphics are 3D-ish and you have 360 degrees of freedom in your movement, it's 2D for most intents and purposes.

Re:Disgaea

[mrchaotica]

So it all comes down to the question of what classifies a game as 3D? We have accepted that it is not the use of 3D models because many early games used 2D sprites. That really only leaves us with control mechanics.

Hey, just because the enemies in Wolf3D and Doom were sprites, doesn't mean they weren't 3D! Was their position described in terms of 2D screen coordinates or 3D level space? Did the levels have 3D geometry? Could you aim up and down, as well as left and right (thereby requiring vectors representing shot trajectories to be 3D)? Any of those things would cause the games to be classified as 3D, from a technical perspective.

Now, if you want to classify games instead by the way they look, lots of even really old games could be 3D. Take racing games on the Super Nintendo, for instance. Even though the console was entirely 2D, games like F-Zero and Mario Kart allowed apparent movement in all three directions (movement down the track, side-to-side movement, and jumping). Heck, Top Gear for the SNES even had hills! And even Pole Position had the same sort of perspective (but had neither jumps nor hills).

So, what's the answer? I say that either the distinction should be based on whether the game world is described in terms of 3D space (whether it uses sprites or not), or all of these games -- from Pole Position to Doom -- should be classified as "2.5D."