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.
OpenGOAL runs flawlessly ime. For TPL and Jak 2, there are some extra qol settings and some added secrets to mess around with (in Jak 2, you can unlock cheats for invulnerable vehicles throughout the city, real time of day, turbo jetboard, etc). They’re still working on Jak 3, but you could always get PCSX2 for that one. PCSX2 is a fantastic emulator for PS2 games that also works pretty much flawlessly. It’s how I replayed the old Sly games and a bunch of others.
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.
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.
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.
I will heavily disagree with you on your evaluation of Sly 4. The higher fidelity models doesn’t really add much to the characters that you couldn’t glean in prior entries in the series, and really only serves to give the characters a more plastic style all while minimizing the features that made them so memorable - their cartoonish aesthetic and stylized design. Not much changed on the design front for any of the major cast, besides more detail regarding their costumes.
I will admit that more details on the smaller bits of their costume would be nice in the older entries, but compromising the style and aesthetic is a much worse tradeoff for what was gained.
There’s many other people evaluating the level design in Sly 4 so I won’t go into that too much, but suffice to say, Sly 2 has comparable level design, and some are better in my personal opinion, but Sly 3 has the best level design of the franchise. None of those level designs were hindered or empowered by graphical capabilities. The only part that would have a noticeable impact, if anything, would be the post processing effects from some abilities in Sly 4, but I don’t really think those added that much to the experience, as most are gimmicks and costume based, meaning they are only used to solve puzzles and don’t play any further part in your arsenal except when the game specifically calls for those abilities.
Now I don’t disagree that modern computing power could make the series much better, but AAA has this tunnel vision on graphical fidelity, when the indie scene has proved time and again, style always has and always will trump substance.
Ratchet and Clank made the transition successfully because they didn’t overblow the graphical fidelity on Clank, it simply looks like a higher quality model of his early iterations, and has been made easier due to the armor and other sci-fi bits of technology in the series, as the genre scales better with the raw fidelity that most AAA developers pursue than other franchises.
Doesn’t really help either that the first step that the Sly franchise took into this modern era was spearheaded by a third party studio. I’m not gonna bash Sanzaru that much, as it’s clear they had to put in a lot of work to approach Sony and Sucker Punch to even get permission to work on the franchise, and it shows in the humor of their mission design, although they were uncertain of themselves and it shows. So not only was Sanzaru dealing with the difficult position of having the newest entry of a beloved franchise, but also coming up with ways to modernize the gameplay and graphics in a franchise almost iconified in the early 2000’s comic and cartoon aesthetic.
It’s clear they had more to juggle than could have honestly been expected of them, not the least of which that the franchise had been dead in the water for 8 years at that point, as the industry had slowed to a crawl after the creep of design scope and the upscaling of the industry caused much of the workflow to stagnate or recursion in on itself.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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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 :)
OpenGOAL runs flawlessly ime. For TPL and Jak 2, there are some extra qol settings and some added secrets to mess around with (in Jak 2, you can unlock cheats for invulnerable vehicles throughout the city, real time of day, turbo jetboard, etc). They’re still working on Jak 3, but you could always get PCSX2 for that one. PCSX2 is a fantastic emulator for PS2 games that also works pretty much flawlessly. It’s how I replayed the old Sly games and a bunch of others.
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.
I will heavily disagree with you on your evaluation of Sly 4. The higher fidelity models doesn’t really add much to the characters that you couldn’t glean in prior entries in the series, and really only serves to give the characters a more plastic style all while minimizing the features that made them so memorable - their cartoonish aesthetic and stylized design. Not much changed on the design front for any of the major cast, besides more detail regarding their costumes. I will admit that more details on the smaller bits of their costume would be nice in the older entries, but compromising the style and aesthetic is a much worse tradeoff for what was gained. There’s many other people evaluating the level design in Sly 4 so I won’t go into that too much, but suffice to say, Sly 2 has comparable level design, and some are better in my personal opinion, but Sly 3 has the best level design of the franchise. None of those level designs were hindered or empowered by graphical capabilities. The only part that would have a noticeable impact, if anything, would be the post processing effects from some abilities in Sly 4, but I don’t really think those added that much to the experience, as most are gimmicks and costume based, meaning they are only used to solve puzzles and don’t play any further part in your arsenal except when the game specifically calls for those abilities.
Now I don’t disagree that modern computing power could make the series much better, but AAA has this tunnel vision on graphical fidelity, when the indie scene has proved time and again, style always has and always will trump substance.
Ratchet and Clank made the transition successfully because they didn’t overblow the graphical fidelity on Clank, it simply looks like a higher quality model of his early iterations, and has been made easier due to the armor and other sci-fi bits of technology in the series, as the genre scales better with the raw fidelity that most AAA developers pursue than other franchises.
Doesn’t really help either that the first step that the Sly franchise took into this modern era was spearheaded by a third party studio. I’m not gonna bash Sanzaru that much, as it’s clear they had to put in a lot of work to approach Sony and Sucker Punch to even get permission to work on the franchise, and it shows in the humor of their mission design, although they were uncertain of themselves and it shows. So not only was Sanzaru dealing with the difficult position of having the newest entry of a beloved franchise, but also coming up with ways to modernize the gameplay and graphics in a franchise almost iconified in the early 2000’s comic and cartoon aesthetic.
It’s clear they had more to juggle than could have honestly been expected of them, not the least of which that the franchise had been dead in the water for 8 years at that point, as the industry had slowed to a crawl after the creep of design scope and the upscaling of the industry caused much of the workflow to stagnate or recursion in on itself.
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.
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.
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?