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General Forum How well has the series aged?    BaffleBlend      4/3/2016 Exactly as the title said, how well do you think the series has aged? If released today into the mainstream rather than a "you-have-to-specifically-look-for-it" site like GOG, do you think it would garner the same or similar attention that it did in the late 90s? I'm personally just mot sure. On one hand, there's still no other virtual pet game like it; everything else is just the predetermined-pattern-based repetition-fest that Steve Grand created the series to stand apart from. On the other hand, we know the engine has it's limits, along with other factors such as the pre-rendered sprites in C3/DS being just plain ugly now that pre-rendered has gone out of fashion. I've also seen younger players call the main games just plain boring, preferring Village over 1/2/3/DS.   Lurhstaap     4/3/2016  1 For the engine? Extremely well. Even with its limits there is simply nothing even close out there. Nothing. There's a reason I was thrilled beyond description when I discovered it would run on modern machines, and bummed beyond description when I realized I'd missed out on YEARS' worth of playing it and enjoying the community. For the art? Depends on the game. The C1 art, IMO, has aged epically well. That old school pixel art is coming back in style thanks to the nostalgia of people my age LOL The art of C2 ages fairly well too. The 3D parts look pretty bad, especially the poor Grendel, but the Norns and the environment art have a charm that overcomes their "primitiveness". The art of C3/DS has aged the least well due to its reliance on what even then was mediocre-at-best 3D work. However, again, as with C2, there is a charm to it. I have been introducing these games to friends of mine, getting them interested through the sheer intensity of my enthusiasm, and not one has commented on the graphics being noteably bad. Rather they are intrigued by the possibilities of the game (stories about my experiments with chemical 130 always get people's attention - they're fascinated by the idea of virtual pets complex enough to get high!) and the extreme third-party customizability. So given that alone I would say the series on a whole has aged quite well. Of course, you can't say it was ever a HUGE success commercially anyway, so it depends on your perspective, but I do think it could easily do at least as well if it were new today. The engine is still innovative as hell by AI standards. As Grand himself has said, the vast majority of AI is designed for either one specific task or a limited range of specific tasks. And at those things it can do very very well, even better than human. But those AIs are incapable of -generalized- intelligence. The AI in Creatures may be very stupid compared to flesh-and-blood animals (I think Grand compared them to ants) but they're VASTLY smarter than any other game AI I know of when it comes to generalizable intelligence. Conclude with killer catchphrase. (Lurhstaap) "This is not knowledge - this is information!" New Model Army, "Courage"   Wrong Banshee Dragoler     4/3/2016 Considering how little this genre has progressed (no one makes life sims like this anymore) I would say it has aged very well. If only the games worked better on modern systems (I have to keep changing to 16 bit colour mode to play DS) As for aesthetically? I think it still holds up, honestly. We still get 2D sprite based games, some recent ones even look worse than stuff that came out 20 years ago but are really good games in their own right, so I don't see how it matters. (Also I really like the C3/DS aesthetic...) Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base.   Lumen   4/3/2016  1 I think it has aged well. In terms of engine/inner workings, it's still more advanced than anything else on the genre. And the C1 graphics will never not age well. They're beautiful.   Zurinsel13     4/3/2016 I agree that the series has really aged well, however about the graphic I have to say one thing: I adore the graphics of all games to be honest, I grew up with the series. Half life one for example is still a great game, regardless the graphics. There are plenty of old games that are classic for a reason, be it story or innovation in gaming. Other examples for good games with nowadays outdated graphics are "The witcher (one)" and "Dragon Age Origins" And surely judging by the metacritics they stay perfect games. ;D "Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others" -Jonathan Swift   Lurhstaap     4/3/2016  1 Absolutely, the graphics are definitely less important on the whole than the rest of the game. But it is valid to analyze how well they've aged compared to other games of the same 'vintage' so to speak, IMO. It's not to say that graphics are overly important, but they do matter. People are more influenced by visuals than they realize a lot of the time. For example a surprisingly large amount of meal satisfaction actually comes from how your food looks rather than anything related to its flavor or nutritional value. I suspect that sort of thing is exactly why games with technically "inferior" art can still look very good subjectively to a viewer - it still has a visual quality that appeals and satisfies regardless of the technical skill required to produce it. Conclude with killer catchphrase. (Lurhstaap) "This is not knowledge - this is information!" New Model Army, "Courage"   Norn_master   4/3/2016 When I was a kid, we had tamagotchi pets. I even had that little yellow Gameboy shaped Pikchu pet. To me creatures is kinda like that. Pets in your computer. I am kinda jealous of people trying any creatures game for the first time. The game holds so many fond memories, C1 and C2 looks like they are had drawn graphics, C3 and DS is early 3D, and the way the Creatures body parts move is just silly. They remind me of Rayman. Creatures are things to care for, teach, and grow attached to. Just like my tamagotchi. The sims may be a more popular life sim. ( people sim but day to day life ) There is spore as well. It's more like your in charge in those games. The Craetures make up their own minds in the Creatures games. No other game does that. It's just a unique kind of game that time forgot. It’s a me! Dvader0086 from the’a Discord!   Lurhstaap     4/3/2016  2 Creatures is vastly more sophisticated than those sorts of pet games - including the Sims and Spore. In those games the behavior of the pets/animals/people is hard-coded. They had no ability to learn or any intelligence of any sort. That's why Creatures is so vastly superior and, honestly, not really part of the same genre even as those games. I wish there were more games like Creatures, but alas. Conclude with killer catchphrase. (Lurhstaap) "This is not knowledge - this is information!" New Model Army, "Courage"   Moe     4/3/2016  2 I'm rather surprised by people criticizing Creatures' graphics as "early 3D" and "mediocre-at-best"... I grant you it's no Triple-A Cryengine title, but go back and look at some other 1998 titles and you might change your tune... Creatures is still bright, crisp, and effective in the delivery of its aesthetic. That's why it holds up visually.   Lurhstaap     4/4/2016 To be honest, I'm quoting my reaction at the time of its release rather than how I feel about it now, so... :p I do find its art charming. It's just very simplistic in a lot of ways. That may say more about the kind of snob I was at that age than anything else! XD I liked a lot of intense detail and to me the cartooniness of the art came across more as simply 'underdone', if that makes any sense. Conclude with killer catchphrase. (Lurhstaap) "This is not knowledge - this is information!" New Model Army, "Courage"   KC11     4/4/2016 I'd say that for its genre it has aged well, and that's a little unfortunate. I say this because it's sort of the only game of its type that has gone as far as it has. Yes, we have other macro evolution games now, but when it comes to realistic personal life there's creatures and.... sims? Petz? Pokeamie? Creatures came out in the 90s, and didn't change all that extremely from its initial design. We've had over 20 years of technological advances in computing technology since then. It's a great game, but it's a shame that the idea didn't continue developing along with these advances. Hopefully Grandroids will come to fruition and bring the genre another step forward. Do not upset the ugly worm, lest it be a dragon in disguise. (>oo)>   Peppery One Papriko   4/5/2016  1 I just wanted to add that we still find it worthwhile to discuss a series of games with the latest entry dating back about 20 years or so. I am no expert, but I don't think pure novelty could keep a community around a bad game this long. Lets play plants! Photosynthesis... Photosynthesis... Photosynthesis...   Sanglorian   4/9/2016 I have the Creatures 1 world as my computer background at work, and co-workers will occasionally stop and marvel at it - I think it holds up tremendously well, as do the sprites for the norns and ettins for C1 and C2.   Lodestar Doringo     5/3/2016 I think it still remains a very unique series even today, and it's world backgrounds still manage to intrigue people.

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