Game Comparison

Level 3 games design
unit 78 detail graphics for computer games
Charles Hardy

Game Comparison

Enclosed inside this document is two games which are compared in many different ways to show the difference between each game and how some games are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to graphics, game play etc. The games I have chosen are "GTA5" or "Grand theft auto" ("GTA5" will be used for the rest of the article) and "Risk of rain" because they are very different games in game play, visual effects and even behind the scenes are completely different.

Graphics

The art styles are completely different and are not meant to be similar because of the way the games plays, if risk of rain had the same graphics as GTA5 or vise versa it would look out of place. GTA5 has photo realistic graphics and they are as real as possible and with graphic enhancing mods it looks even better. Risk of rain however looks completely different with its very pixelated graphics and almost shoddy with a very exaggerated look. First lets look at risk of rain and how the graphics work and make the game look good while keeping that new look despite looking old.

Risk Of Rain Graphics

As you can see from the image, Risk of rain has a very strange look to it as the game looks very old with its pixelated look. The game uses some basic art styles such as exaggeration for the size of some of the monsters and also uses a pixel art style but does this in a very clever way. The way the background looks further away than the main screen could suggest some clever cell shading and the HUD looks closer than the rest of the screen. The graphics look basic but have a polished look which make the game look nice. I choose this image as it accurately depicts what the game is about and how the art style makes certain aspects of the game look really further forward or backwards compared to the other things on the screen.  

Grand Theft Auto Graphics

GTA5 has some very photo realistic graphics and the textures with the shadows make the photo realistic graphics make them  look very elucidated. The graphics are not exaggerated and the smooth surface with no ruff edges look phenomenal, the sheer amount of quality is fantastic and is one of the most photo realistic looking open world games ever made. GTA5 looks even better with graphic enhancement mods. The reason I choose these images is because the first image shows a decent shot of the character and buildings with shadow and the second image is very good at showing a before and after.

Comparison Graphics

The graphics in both games are completely opposite and they look different with no art styles in common at all. They both have there strengths with no real negatives. Some people will hate risk of rains look and some will think the art style is very clever and will appreciate the art style. With GTA5 not many people will say that the game looks bad and most will be very impressed with the beauty of the game. The art style suit the game though as GTA5 graphics on risk of rains would look ridiculous and over the top for such a simple 2D game and this would be the same case as risk of rains graphics on GTA5 would make the game unplayable. 

File extensions and File types

The file types for each game are different because of the game texture quality and how big each file has to be which means risk of rain and GTA5 will be different. Risk of rain uses ini files which stands for initialization and they are on the same lines as txt and cfg files. The textures are vector images because when you have the option in the games menu to zoom in and out giving the player a chance to see more of the layout of the map and because of this the images never lose out on quality. GTA5 could uses a mixture of raster and vector images as when zooming in on walls it because pixelated and blurred but because it is a background not many players will care about such a small flaw and people or cars stay the same quality because you will zoom in on them with a sniper etc. This means that risk of rain likely just uses jpeg files while GTA5 uses both jpegs and tif files to make sure the player gets the best experience. The trailers above are prove that for the above text.

HUD

The HUD in both games are very different as each one is used in a different way. The gta5 HUD is simple with a fair amount of information on the screen and only shows half of the information until you press a button and the rest of the HUD shows. I choose this image because it very clearly shows the games HUD and labels it. The Risk of rain HUD is different because it shows all of it at any given time and there is no way to show more or hide more with the game. The reason that the game does it like that is because all of the information shown on screen is required. I choose the image because it only shows the basics of the HUD and nothing else on the screen. 

Compression

Compression is used when an image is to big and needs to be smaller. This is done by reducing the amount of pixels on the sprite/image. This does lower the quality of the original image but this does not always matter because the image could be a large sprite meaning that pixels will not been shown. Risk of rain is clearly very compressed because the images are almost always so pixelated that you can see the pixels even if you have zoomed out the furthest possible amount. GTA5 has been compressed but not as much as the pixel count is very high because of the texture quality. The reason for compression is so other machines of less power can run the game as well as the developers  machine. I choose this image because it highlights of the main points of what I was saying earlier about how the texture only changes quality if the image is small or has small details.   

Box Art

The box art is used to shot the player what they are buying before the actually buy the game, this helps give the player an insight into what they are buying and even some screen shots etc. Because risk of rain is an indie game and this means that there was never a physical copy made, I will be using the closest thing to a box art. Both of the box arts shot detail about the games and it is clear what each one is about and what the general gist of the game is. The box art on GTA5 is what happens in the game and players who have never heard of the game will know what they are buying when they pick the game off the shelf, while risk of rain has more mystery it certainly has somethings about it that are obviously there for a reason, the art is pixelated and the background is very simple. The art styles on the box are even different and because both games where released in the same year, it really is amazing that they where both successful dispute being so different, even for the box art.

Conclusion

The final conclusion is that these games despite having almost nothing in common are still huge hits with one game yielding more money than any video game ever made and really will be remembered in the gaming community as a masterpiece, as for risk of rain it did so well that the two man team that made have since started a company and are making more games for their fans to enjoy. Both games are fantastic examples of how to do art styles correctly. These games may be different but the one thing they have in common is success and are both insanely fun games, made by two different teams with two people working on one game and thousands on the other with different budges and art styles which is what makes these games stand out among the crowd of games released each day.

(1)http://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/49291/grand-theft-auto-v-official-cover-art.html
(image 2) http://store.steampowered.com/app/248820/
(3)https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d74REG039Dk/maxresdefault.jpg
(4)https://img.gta5-mods.com/q95/images/realism-graphics-mod/1fcbff-Untitled-1.jpg
(5)https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6c/Risk_of_Rain_Cover.png
(6)http://media.rockstargames.com/rockstargames/img/global/news/upload/actual_1364906194.jpg