BENGALURU: You know that thrill of going against the grain? Like when you stay awake till 3 am scrolling through pages of dank memes when you know you have an early day (or perhaps a tough exam) ahead. Releasing a classic console with old games in a new, more graphic demanding age is no different — it’s like crushing rice with a pestle instead of using a grinder. And yet, we see PlayStation and Nintendo releasing their classic consoles for some nostalgia points. And that’s because going against the grain is elitist fun.
Now one would probably expect a listicle discussing the “Top 5 games we would like to play again”, but I’d like to go a little meta with some “against the grain” logic. I’d like to understand if a new-age game — one that has released in the good-graphics age and taken advantage of the latest specs available, would ever work in the classic-console age.
Consider Uncharted — a series which only ever released for the PS3 and PS4. It’s a brilliant game with its spectacular views for exploration, it’s fast paced linear story mode, and shoot-outs. The past is great. It was a simpler time, with lesser graphics and less complex controls. The creativity they had went into graphics was shown through readable text narrations. I think we’d still appreciate a misshapen, primitive 3D version of a Nate Drake where we read his sassy comebacks on screen. We would probably, even appreciate the fact that we can’t do as much wall and cliff-climbing as the new versions, and even settle for some puzzle or a creative non-graphic heavy, slower-paced equivalent of a stealth shoot-out.
But we wouldn’t really want to play this for 15 hours. It would work as a gag, a fun one-time thing for some fans. And this short-lived success of a stagnant gaming format is probably why TellTale is closing. Don’t get me wrong — I loved every bit of a TellTale game, with its elaborate and aesthetic artwork. But TellTale’s episodic adventures catered a very specific purpose, and their games will have a ‘classic revival’ in future. The gaming world can be quite unforgiving to an unchanging format... ‘Against the grain’ can be abrasive.