Filed Under » gaming

We live in an age where there's a lot of grousing and cynicism about the state of videogames – always-online DRM, DLC tactics, and a distinct lack of Half-Life 3 have left a lot of gamers with a sour taste in their mouth about this era of gaming. Yet this may be the greatest era for gaming we've ever known, for a number of reasons. 7 reasons, at least…

Reason #1: Everything Looks Incredible

There was probably some moment for everyone, around the time the Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo came out, where you saw some game with something your young, naive mind simply could not comprehend. Maybe it was the 3-D effect in F-Zero or the vectors in Vector Man (which must have been pretty good to name the game after them). Whatever it was, you thought to yourself "This is it. This is the pinnacle of graphics. They will never be able to achieve anything greater than this."

Of course, now we live in an age where this is possible (with the aid of a few mods):

We're at a precipitous point in graphical technology – it's so, so, so good that it's nearing something very close to realism. However, if it can't quite make the jump (and who knows whether it ever fully will), we're going to have one hell of an uncanny valley to deal with. But for the moment, games are capable of staggering beauty and incredible design that would probably shake our younger selves to the core. And even games that aren't going for the total immersive realism of Skyrim are doing great things: indie games like Fez and Limbo do incredible things and utilize technology to produce beautiful, simple graphics.

Then again, in 20 years someone else is probably gonna have a list on the singularity-net (or whatever the internet's called then), showing that Skyrim picture and saying "CAN YOU BELIEVE THOSE IDIOTS USED TO THINK THIS WAS GREAT GRAPHICS?! LOL! ANYWAYS, THE RADIATION FROM THE LAST NUCLEAR WAR IS RAVAGING MY INTERNAL ORGANS, SO I'M LOGGING BACK INTO THE HEALTHSPHERE."