This is an old time dilemma in the gaming world. And I want to be the first to say, and please dont feel offended, that we gamers are many times big fat idiots (notice how I included myself).Perhaps, PC gamers are more accostumed to this "battle", since we have to decide what to do. Shall we improve the graphics and lower the FPS, or increase the FPS by lowering the graphics? A really hard question, that can only be adapted to our liking in PCs, but for consoles, oh boy, thats different.

So, lets start with a tiny bit of history, or more likely quick briefing.

There is one thing that has been selling games over the past 20 years, and that thing is graphics. The big breakthrough of the NES was its 8 bit graphics, moving from the bland squares in the Atari, to some really detailed sprites like in Super Mario Bros for example. We later moved on to the SNES era, with an even better graphic system, and normally, the fights of that time are depending if the Sega or the Nintendo had the best looking version of certain games.

So, we now reach the era where cartridges died, with the N64, fighting the PlayStation. The PS introduced the discs format (though they were not the first, they were the most succesful so far). Nintendo introduced full 3D games. Sony tried to do the same, but many games could not handle that much power, since the PS was lacking it. So, we saw the beginning of the battle of the devs, to either reduce the performance for better graphics, or reduce the graphics for better performance.

Since the PS/N64 days were times when 3D was strong and good, its hard to judge it, but some things we can remember, games like Zelda that had some stutters. Resident Evil with it Bitmaps as scenarios, and so on. Depending on what they were looking for, sacrifices were already being made.

Then, we have the DC/Xbox/PS2/NGC era. Now, here, we really did see this thing strongly. Lets take for example Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner; perhaps, one of the best looking PS2 games, and one of the best mecha games. ZoE 2, did a lot of amazing things. For starters, we could have many enemies on screen at once. Some destructible objects left a lot of particles when, duh, destructed. All this new quirks, hurted the game performance, with many fps's drops. Specially during the big battle scene.

Or lets go with God of War, we played the games, we loved the games, but we cant say that they were flawless. Graphically speaking, the team at Santa Monica did an amazing job, pulling so much potential from a console like the PS2. But, for doing so, we got lots of screen tearing (its even worser in the second game where the vistas are bigger) and many drops in the level of fps.

On the Xbox side, we got the Doom 3 port, which made many cuts on its graphical side to not only fit the console, but also run properly on it.

So, to make things shorter, lets skip the past era and lets go to the current era, the infamous "Next Gen" (yep, people still call it like that).

I will eliminate the Wii from this part since I dont have many Wii games, and the ones I have, with the exception of the Umbrella Chronicles all run marvelously.

So, PS3 and 360. First, Im not comparing any console here, to say "Yo, this one is da bomb". Nah, leave that stuff to the folks over at System Wars. I just prefer gaming and playing games like in the old days where internet was not popular and we could avoid all the nasty fanboyism.

So. I will analize them toghether.

PS3 and 360 are both powerhouses in terms of "potential" power. Specially the PS3 as many devs have said. But, this power comes with some drawbacks. For example, the PS2 could output faces with the same details as the current gen ones, but the thing was, that the whole machine was working to achieve that. Both PS3 and 360 can do images with the same quality as a maxed Crysis. But this means that the whole console is working on achieving this image.

So, a developers job is to take that potential, and start doing cuts. Decide what is more important given the game and work on that.

For example, games like BlazBlue need to run at 60fps. Why? Because they are games where each frame counts towars a victory. The same for games like Devil May Cry. The higher the fps count, the better. Stutters in this games can mean that the game is broken severely and could cause many headaches for us players.

So what do devs do to achieve this? They cut on other things. For example, Draw Distance, FoV, texture quality, polygons, etc. Whatever works on enhancing the game performance.

Of course, that after some years, devs know much more about the console and can squeeze it much better, but the basics still apply.

So, now, a game that drew many controversy last year. Resistance 2 and Halo 3 (this last one on 2007). Both games are not graphical marvels. Quite the contrary if you were to count the texture quality or the resolution. But why is this?

In both games, the graphical quality was not dropped only to increase the performance, but it also helped in creating more things.

Better Draw Distance. Seriously, the DD in R2 is breathtaking. Better lightning, just look at the light and shadow changes in Halo 3, Bungie really did a nice job there. Consistan fps rate, both games do this perfectly. And for example, in Resistance, you can have over 30 enemies, on screen at once, all shooting bombing, etc and no drops on the fps department.
 
Other games, like Uncharted or Gears of War, prefer to have an fps rate that can vary sometimes, aside from screen tearing and texture pop up. But in exchange, you get a game that looks like a Michaelangelo. So, a sacrifice in performance, enhances the graphical output. The same with games like GTA, Age of Empires and such. 
 
We cannot expect Crysis level graphics on every game. Or that every PS3 game from now on will look like Uncharted 2 and every 360 game will look like Gears of War 2. Its basic development and basic management.

So, after this, you may ask yourself. What is this guy point? Well, its simple, we cant judge a game for how many polygons it has, for how detailed its textures are, etc. Games are a result of many variables (DD, FoV, fps, etc) factorized. So, when we say: Resistance 2/ Halo 3 looks like turd, we should take into account all the other things they have that no other game had back then, or even now. How many FPS of the same caliber as R2 do you know that can run online with 60 guys firing Pulse Guns all the time with no drops?

Thought so. So, that would be it. Judge a book by its content, not by its cover.

ARE WE AS GAMERS GETTING MORE STUPID? OR ARE DEVELOPERS NOT TAKING US SERIOUSLY?
 
Speed read on the bottom 

This is a question I've been asking myself for the past 3 years. Am I getting smarter as I grow, or are games just being more simply done? In other words, easier?. 
As I game, I go back and forth between those ideas, as I find games challenging, easy, pathetic or just hard in the wrong way.  There are cases that represent all those ideas, but back in the day, when I started with the Atari 2600/5200, games where hard, because it required some "path" to be memorized. As we moved to the NES era, games evolved, including random patterns, but still featuring a path to be learned. Now, once the SNES/ Genesis era began, we saw games that were completely new, games that were hard in the good way, that required a deeper participation from the gamer in the product.
This can be seen in the SNES era The Legend of Zelda games, or in the SNES Metroids, and Castlevania. And lets not mention Super Mario RPG (Nintendo, WHERE IS MY DS or WII REMAKE??) or Final Fantasy (though this did not reached the states normally until Sony took the franchise) or Bahamut Lagoon?.
 
Later on came the PSX and the N64 (my most beloved console). With them, we received true 3D, at least from Nintendo's side, and started seing games that were not only challenging, but also required lots of thought, and showed true hard work on their end. For example, the early Tomb Raider's, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (who doesn't remember the dreaded Water Temple?) or Resident Evil many puzzles?. Even the first Dino Crisis, with its ID card keys (To think that I realised near the "Watergate" ID that the ID letter was also the first letter of the password).  Or Metal Gear Solid, with its multiple paths, and Vagrant Story with its crafting and combo system (man, I wish I did not used fakes as a kid, but originals were not available here at that time)
During this era, games began using also something called AI, a completely new thing, but this was just seen in few games. Who doesn't remember the first 3D Mario? Super Mario 64? The best 3D Mario ever. Mario Sunshine was a joke, and despite the charm of Super Mario Galaxy, its so easy that my 5 year old cousin could collect all the stars with no trouble (though I had to point her in the right direction a couple of times, she is a kid after all). Super Mario 64 mixed both amazing graphics, with complex level design that would require a certain amount of skill to complete the level, specially if going for the hidden stars, or the 8 Red coins challenge. And how about the Magic Carpet level? Who did not die repeteadly in that stage?.
Or how about Ocarina of Time. In Ocarina, being hit by an enemy was something common, even in the amazing Wind Waker. But, despite the graphical upgrade, and the art (my favourite) in Twilight Princess, it fails to represent a challenge during the whole game. You know that the game is easy, when you can beat Ganon without using a single potion. 
Few games evolved well from this era. 
 
During the PS2/NGC/XBX era, games evolved again, now having a more than solid AI system. With more randomness in their answers to your presence. But also, it was the birth of the new era of Beat Them Up, now called Hack & Slash with Devil May Cry (seriously, it would make your butt cry), Ninja Gaiden and of course, God of War. Both Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry featured simple puzzles with deep combat system. Ninja Gaiden revolved around combos and structure, attack, defend and counter. Devil May Cry started as a Resident Evil spin off (you had to aim first in Devil May Cry, though this was dropped for DMC 2 and 3). And God of War mixed simple combos structures with a rich story, amazing graphics, music and relatively complex puzzles. 
But, not only this games appeared, games as Halo, Call of Duty and Doom 3 also showed their lovely faces in this era. This games presented a challenge to us, the gamer. The first 2 had good AIs for the time (specially Halo 2). Doom 3 changed its ways, and now featured a text based story (all those PDA's), a more horror survival setting and gameplay, and really, really hard bosses (except the final Cyberdemon). 
On a different side, we got the Shin Megami Tensei saga finally to the US (not considering the first 2 Persona in PSX). Games as Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga really challenged the player, as reaching a point required lots of work, both strategically as mental. Persona games are a little bit easier than those 2, but show the same great system in work. 
Metal Gear Solid also evolved, now featuring an amazing AI (unless you are one of those bitches who like exploiting the few blind points and glitches). 
 
But, how many of those sagas got the same results during this era?
If you played Daggerfall or any old The Elder Scrolls, you will realize that the only good thing in Oblivion is the fast travel option. Fallout 3 is an insult to Fallout players. 
Halo 3 is a joke compared to Halo and Halo 2 in terms of difficulty. Call of Duty 4-5-6 are still using Call of Duty 2 engine and the enemies still dont have AIs. Super Mario Galaxy is easy as it can be, Super Smash Bros Brawl has no challenge, where is my new Giga Bowser challenge?? I seriously dont see it here. Resident Evil 5 only problem is the mediocre AI for Sheva in PRO, the rest is very easy. Prince of Persia? Devil May Cry 4? They all lost the challenge they had in the past.
 
Few games kepted their challenge. Fire Emblem is one of them, Metal Gear Solid 4 is another, also GTA IV and Ninja Gaiden. We can add some new IP's to the mix, but the truth is that many games have lost the challenge they used to present when they were conceived. Resident Evil: Code Veronica on DC was the last true Resident Evil that appeared, where are games as Shenmue? Once we get a game with a more than amazing story as Yakuza, nobody buys it.
Gameplay has become so important that many things that make a game are forgotten in the middle. Games as Wolverine that would have gotten a 6 with luck in the past are now scoring well over 7. Games that show no depth in any way, no such thing as a puzzle, or challenge, or even worse, story. 
It seems that today, blood, gore and foul language is what is needed to be succesful. 
 
Long gone are the days where a game was the sum of its parts, and that having great gameplay was not enough.
 
EDIT:
As it seems that many are missing the point here, be it because they read it partly, or just because I may have expressed myself unproperly (after all, english is not my nathal tongue, and I keep this blog as a way to practice it so it doesnt rust) I will sum up some concepts below for those who want to speed read it.
- Current Gen games are amazing, I never said anything about them being bad, or that NES-PS2 era being better. All I said is that in many franchises, the evolution cutted most things that made them what they were in the past.
- There is no need to point out the few games that really accopmplish degrees of uniqueness in this era, because I most likely have played and loved them (as Valkyria or Bioshock or Afrika)
- The change in difficulty does not come only from an interface being redone, its a big group of things. Zelda games never required much Combat skill after all, yet the puzzles were amazing. And later enemies had a tendency to be more harmfull, and dungeos had more threats than in TP. I still prefer TP (took me over 40 hours for my first finish due to the huge amount of things to do and explore), as it is in my opinion, the best depiction of Hyrule that Ive seen. Though I would have liked Nintendo using MP3 and not Midi's for their music. 
- Fallout 3 falls under the same category as Resident Evil. The new ones are not bad games, they are just not like their source material. Fallout 3 lost the level grinding and most RPG elements (Really, Bethesda Idea of level caping, and growing enemies is plain stupid imo). Resident Evil was stripped from its Survival Horror elements in 4, recovering some survival elements in 5. But it lost all the deduction that the player had to put on the game, all the puzzles. Where Resident Evil 4 has only a handful of them, Resident Evil 5 has none. Thats my complaint on their change of difficulty.
- I think that what many are thinking, is that the change in difficulty, only means stronger enemies and bosses, but that is not it. Difficulty is made from a wide arrange of things, enemies are just one part of it. Level design and puzzles are what concerns me, and that IS something that is being lost little by little. I fully understand what some of you mean, that games can be more accessible. Heck, I cant play an RPG nowadays unless I decide to go to bed late at night (since I work almost all day long I dont get many gaming hours) and many modern games are covered in checkpoints, or close save points. But that is not my complaint, who in his righteous mind would want to start a game all over again when he turns it over or dies? I know I dont.
- I repeat just for those with a weak mind, I LOVE THE CURRENT GEN, and possibly, even more than past gens. Why? Because my idea of a game is the mix of this 3 things: Story (world design also included here), Music (sound effects also included here) and Characters, and many current games have great stories (for their genres) with reach worlds to explore, or just do what I normally do, sit and admire getting lost in thought in an Afrikan Savanah in Far Cry 2, getting lost in a battlefied while using a mech in Killzone 2, or just saying WTF in Crysis after seing your first morning lights from the sun at max settings in DX10. By Music I mean both the soundtrack, and the sounds of the game. And normally they tend to go hand by hand. As catchy as they may have been, I would rather listen to the Black Mages "Fight over Big Bridge" version than listening to the midi thing in FF V. And I rather have the variety of sounds found in games as Metal Gear Solid 4 (seriously, turn the 7.1 one, and its amazing what Hideo has done) or the ambient noices from battlefields found in Killzone 2, Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 or Gears of War rather than the old, not so "nice" "ratatata" etc found in old FPS's.

Well, in my pursue to own every console this gen (partly because Im a working man as of now) Ive decided that it was time to have a DS join the party that my PS3, Wii and PSP were having (and my PC).
Its a nice console, I had to buy a DS Lite for the GBA slot since I have many GBA games that I play when I travel.
Its a nice console, though its kind of sad when you have on one hand a PSP 2k graphically and musically speaking. Still, Nintendo does have some amazing games that I just can let pass me. Reason why I also bought a Wii.



Though, just to make a point, games as Boom Blox are not my kind of games so you could say that I bought the Wii for like 10 or less games. Mostly sequels to NGC games xD.
Anyway, Im a happy gamer now, I will buy a 360 later this year, gotta play Star Ocean 4 and Ace Combat 6!!!!!.  I had one, but it RROD on me.
Anyway, by this year end, I will be a FULL FLEDGED MANTICORE!!!!!
Yay for me I guess. Though I say, Yay for The Almighty Dollar!

Finally I could make the change to HD, having suffered all this months with some games that I had to leave unfinished due to bad "text" on them, I can now pick them up again and finish them. I bought a Bravia 32" TV, which also supports Full HD, or 1080p. Its goregeous, and has 2 sockets of everything, escept for antena and VGA.












It is true what people says, once you see how they are in HD, you cant go back. And its not the same as the ones that you see in the stores, because this time its in your room or Living Room or kitchen or wherever you want to put it. The biggest improvement comes from textures. Things that could not be noticed before are now as clear as sun light. For example, when I picked up Eternal Sonata, the grass was "plain" looking, it was the old, green mass of texture with no special detail, but now in HD, its a whole different  tale, it has texture in the grass and it looks wonderful.
There is another advantage that I found, specially in Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (Which I have to call the best looking game ever, including Crysis).  The thing I noticed is that my FoV (Field of View) drastically increased. I no longer had to move the camera to see the rear view mirror and I could see more of the inside of the car, as well as better textures, less Jags and better lights and colouring.
The other game that got completely changed was Lair. Yeah, I know most of you hate it, even though you havent played it. Lair was one of the first to come with Native 1080p and at that resolution, it looks more than beatiful. Given the scale of the levels, some graphical things can be forgiven as the low res foot soldiers and such. But the dragon models are gorgeous, the detail on them, aside from the animations as the wings moving from the wind (flapping), the veins, the different layers of colouring in each dragon variant, etc. Lair was a solid 7, and got to 8 thanks to the Dragon Update which included Analog Support. The best part of the game though has to be its sound track. Its just impressive.
The next game I will be mentioning is my favourite JRPG of this gen, Valkyria Chronicles. Despite what many think, Valkyria has more than impressive sales, placing it as one of the top 5 most selled S-JRPGs in history with its close to 300.000 units sold. Even the Disgaea saga is less popular with an average of 180.000 (yes, even the PS2 versions). The game looked great in SD, with lovely graphics and art direction. The CANVAS engine really does a great job (I cant believe people think that a Wii could pull this, fanboys should really check their tongues some times) Anyway, the game was gorgeous, but once I changed to HD (around chapter 6) I found myself against a whole different thing. It was impressive, everything looked beautifull, though some things in the stages are really cheap, the rest overflows with quality, lovely graphics, excelent choice of colours, the animations and attention to details, etc. Valkyria Chronicles is a genre changer, much as what Halo did for the console FPS genre, and what Super Mario 64 did for console platformers, Valkyria is the new standard for Strategy J-RPGs.
I tried the rest of my colection, as well as some Demos, to see how "different" they where, and in most cases it was really noticeable, but in others not that much, such as the case with Turok (dont blame me, I love the franchise, and I actually liked the game, as long as it was me, my knife and a Dino) and NFS Carbon (really crap, but I bought it really cheap at a time that I needed a racing game aside from Motorstorm.
PS2 and PS1 games look great. PS1 games get a facelift at 1080p thanks to the upscaling tools in the console, making things look cleaner, most PS2 games look great at 1080p also, but for some reason, Yakuza 2, despite having 16:9 and Progressive Scan support looks like crap, which still intrigues me considering that games whithout 480p as Final Fantasy XII look amazing.

Boy, its been ages since I last tried this crap, and how did I went on whithout it for so long???
For those who are either noobs or just ignorants, M.U.G.E.N is a fighting game engine, completely customizable for the PC. Its source of material comes strictly from fan made content, but thanks to some dedicated fans, you can get some great material.
The game basically requires you to create the interface, backgrounds, animatios, attacks and then that is combined with the games engine and you get a new game out of nowhere. Well, actually out of what you did.
But dont worry, you dont need to know any "coding" to make your own. In fact, you can get characters from the internet (why hasnt this won a Nobel prize yet??) and then add them to "YOUR" game, or in its defect, add them to the rooster of the game you are playing. Its a really great feature, and thanks again to the heavy mod community of the PC world, there are some really great games to try.











For example, for us old folks, you have a Saint Seiya themed game called Mythologie. For the old and young, we have a Dragon Ball Z simply called Budokai M.U.G.E.N. And for those wanting to get some really good time out of it, we have Everything vs Everything, which has characters from TV shows, cartoons, anime, movies, video games, etc all pitted toghether in one game. And its really good, because the modders have created some really good .gifs of the characters, sometimes using the ones from the games, like the Gundam M.U.G.E.N project which is using the old PSX Gundam Battle Assault gifs, or the Budokai M.U.G.E.N which is using the old Super Battle 22 gifs along with some custom made ones.
But, one of the best Ive found is called after one of the best 2D fighting games, I will give you 3 lines to think about it.
.
.
.
Got it? No?
Well, the game is... .... .... .... .... ........ ......... ........... ..............
MARVEL vs CAPCOM 3
Yes, 3, its a fan made rendition of the marvelous MvC2 that we all love. The game now features some really good DC characters, as well as all the MvC2 characters and some new guys. The graphics are exactly the same, the backgrounds also, and they even got all the attacks. Of course, some moves had to be changed to suit the M.U.G.E.N engine, so neither Megaman nor Ryu can charge their attacks, and some combinations were simplified for this.
The game is really good, just see the images below and you will realise that they kept all the same past glory, and the best part, is that you can include new characters as you see fit, so lets say, that how about Snake got to fight against Ryu? Or Master Chief? Now all of that is possible.



















I guess, that the best part of all this is, IT IS COMPLETELY LEGAL!!!. Yep, the engine is completely legal, and well, the material may be not due to copyright infringements, but it does not hurt anyone, since if you want the best experience, you should still go with the real deal, but if you want to have some "LOL" (god I hate that expression) moments, then its a sure bet.