The games look great even to this day. I’m personally a huge fan of PS2 graphics and how it forced artists to rely on style rather than “realism.”
It’s pathetic how resources will need to be wasted on making a remastered version of something that doesn’t even need it just so a new audience can participate in a mini hype cycle.
Maybe it won’t be until we’re 60 and we realize that the best games are the ones that stand the test of time, similar to movies. Too many people are still in their adolescent phase of gaming where the only things worth playing are the things released current year.
I think people care about Jak, but Naughty Dog is constrained to marketing success and has to focus on their money makers Crash, Last of Us, and Uncharted, no?
I think a modern port for other systems would do very well, Sony just isn’t interested in reviving the series which does suck. They did HD versions for PS3 which regained some interest in the franchise, but then they just ported the PS2 versions for PS4/PS5…
If we can have those HD versions on Steam, it’d be a huge deal. Right now most people can’t play the game without jumping through hoops. As an aside, you can play the decompiled versions on PC using OpenGOAL.
I played the HD version on a PS3 emulator and honestly didn’t notice that much of a difference from the PS2 game with upscaled resolution.
I think the point of this post, which I agree with, is that the PS2 version that is available via emulators or on the PS store currently is good enough as it is and the series doesn’t need revived at all.
Sort of in the same vein is that I tried playing MGS1 twin snakes which is the gamecube remake of the PS1 game. Maybe it’s nostalgia of the original being my favorite game of all time, but it just didn’t hit the same for me as the original. It’s just about the closest thing to what a modern “remake” would look like, except I guess with the graphics of how the new remastered snake eater game looks instead of the GC graphics.
It sucks that people might skip timeless classics like these because they’re not remastered with updated graphics.
Wow. This opengoal project is so cool!
You made me dig through old boxes to find my Jak games. I know what I’m doing this weekend :)
I don’t entirely agree.
Say what you will about what it did with the characters, but Sly 4 took the level design and art to new heights, and that was thanks to modern advancements in graphics.
Rift Apart does the same for Ratchet and Clank.
Jak hit differently though. It had a good mix of great platforming and creative use of graphics. If anything without Jak I wouldn’t have played rift apart or sly.
Ok?
I’m saying is that modern game engines and rendering tech allow a lot of the things that are good about these games to be turned up to eleven, both in terms of gameplay and art.
Yet games like these dont get made
Sure they do. Just not often enough.
These graphics trends are basically the opposite for indie games. Look at Schedule 1 and STRAFTAT.
Abiotic Factor, which is a new open world survival game based on a mix of og Half-Life and SCP, so the graphics and models look like they come from the 90s or early 2000s.
Hands of Necromancy (and pretty much all other GZDoom games for that matter) all look like they came right out of 1996 - with the exception of Selaco. That game is actually beautiful.
Going Medieval has a slight pixel/voxel look to it.
There’s also Ultracop, which I think is made by one person and also looks straight out of the 90s. It’s also only like $2 and it’s a decent time waster.
Pseudoregalia, Fly Knight, Lunacid, Verho, Dread Delusion, Nightmare Kart…
These are just from my own games list. I’m not sure why I even made this comment. Sort of a recommendations list I guess?
Style and aesthetic only go so far. The low poly counts and blurry textures will still drag it down for anyone not already enamoured with legacy 3D graphics.
Pixel art games seem to have much more longevity than early 3D
My first PlayStation was a PS3, and thankfully, around then they were still releasing a number of ported “trilogies”.
Even though mine was not a backwards compatible model, I was also able to play digital versions of the Fatal Frame series, which is sadly now pretty much inaccessible.
I never played Jax, but I saw an analysis of its vector-based facial animation, where there were few enough vertices for animators to directly tweak; and it does feel like a nostalgic way to make cartoony, expressive faces.
There’s actually somewhat of a resurgence for retro-ish games even among new gamers.
General consumers are mostly keeping up with the latest releases or updates because that’s what their friends or streamers are talking about. High fidelity adds to that but I don’t know if that’s the big draw. Especially since things like Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite seem to be the juggernauts right now.
Its just harder to create new conversations around something like Ps2 games because all the talk around them has passed.
