Games and Realism: Part 1 - Thems Fighting Words

If it's not already obvious, it should be mentioned that I'm a huge fan of Street Fighter and other fighting games made by Capcom. I study them, analyze them, and enjoy playing them competitively at high levels. I often use the fairly horrible analogy that the good stand-out fighting games are basically high-speed chess: defeating your opponent takes a lot of mental fortitude, just at a very high pace. It's a stupid analogy, really, and one that needs to cease being used, but there is some truth in it. The lesson that needs to be taken from that analogy is that the amount of brain power required to defeat a good opponent is unlike any other game I've played. Anyone who says gaming fries your brain has obviously never played a fighting game properly before.

I've spent my most impressionable years of gaming playing fighting games and getting better at them, particularly the fighting games made by Capcom. As a result, I have a little (meaning huge) bias when it comes to fighting games: I prefer 2-D sprite-based fighting games over 3-D polygonal fighting games. To this day, I firmly believe that the gameplay of the 2-D fighting games is superior to that of the 3-D fighting games. And this has been a hotly contested debate in the circle of fighting gamers for years. Are 2-D games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear inherently better than 3-D games like Tekken and Dead or Alive?

Well, I'm not here to argue this point with you. I just need you to know where I stand on this issue so I can tell you the story of a previous argument I had. Believe me, if you try to argue with me that 3-D fighting games are better than 2-D fighting games right now, I will ignore you. That's not the issue at hand. If you wanna talk about it, we'll discuss it later, okay? Now is not the time. And so now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's move on shall we?

So yeah, the story: I once engaged in a conversation with a coworker of mine long ago. He was one of those know-it-all types who believed he is more capable than he probably really is in just about everything he does. And so one day, somehow Street Fighter was brought up, after which he promptly began to regale me with tales of his conquests using Chun Li as a result of his incredible talent. Now, I've heard numerous people claim they are very proficient in the ways of Street Fighter before and, based on the conversation, I can usually judge whether or not a player is actually good. And he wasn't actually good. And as I slowly began to expose his lack of knowledge on the game, he did what anyone would do in a good argument: he completely dismissed the main topic as irrelevant.

Sensing his demise at my hands, he quickly went from bragging about his Street Fighter prowess to implying that Street Fighter wasn't worth discussing. It was irrelevant, suddenly, whether or not he was good at Street Fighter because... because... well, because Tekken was obviously a far superior game. And suddenly I found myself in a completely different debate. I, in my infinite realm of biases, began to counter-dismiss him by claiming Tekken was actually far inferior to Street Fighter. And then, to support his new argument, he pulled out the ultimate trump card, that ol' stand-by that people love to use when debating about video games in general:

Tekken was more realistic.

That's right. The whole basis of his argument came down to the fact that Tekken looked more real and, since he was a capable martial artist when he was younger (groan), he could recognize that Tekken was a far more strategic game because the characters actually fight like real fighters. Street Fighter was a cartoon.

Now, in my days I've listened to various debates about the quality of Tekken and I've had great arguments pass by my ears of how the gameplay of Tekken actually is quite strong. The fact that it looks realistic isn't one of them. Looking realistic has nothing to do with gameplay. And isn't gameplay what video games are really all about? I couldn't believe that, while trying to have a gameplay debate with him, he gave me an argument completely unrelated to gameplay. It's like the time someone told me that Mortal Kombat was better than Street Fighter because it looked better, sounded better, had Fatalities, and you could punch people through the floor. Uh huh. Thanks.

No argument bothers me more than that "realistic" argument because, not only is it not relevant, but it also hits a sore spot with me. I mean, what you are trying to say is that Tekken is a better game because it looks more realistic. Does that mean that Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness on PS2 is better than Pitfall II on Atari 2600? Hardly.

It's almost disturbing to me how much realism gets brought up when talking about video games these days. There's a disturbing trend in gaming that seems to make realism a huge focus for designing games. Particularly with the next-gen systems starting to flex their muscles, it seems as though trying to make a video game look and feel realistic is becoming the common goal for games. And I personally feel that with all that new-found power in the likes of the 360 and the PS3, trying to make games as realistic-looking as possible is a terrible waste. With that much power, there is so much more you can accomplish.

There is a time and a place for realistic looking games, but there is a need for more than just realistic looking games right now. There is a definite need for style and artistry. While some games have actually gone that route, I do not like the fact that these games are so easily singled-out as unique and different. It should be a more common occurrence.

And so for the next few posts, I'm gonna talk about various topics related to realism in games. Don't worry, this won't be a series of posts trying to say "Real = Bad!" I've got a lot more to say about the subject matter than just that.

Next up: Part 2 - Graphics, Reliastically Speaking