I just tried playing Prodeus recently and it made me realize that something I really value in a shooter is visual clarity. in Doom (1993) you can see like 3 pixels and know just based on the color palette that you’re looking at an imp. or you could see an item out of the corner of your eye and know immediately that it’s a red keycard. everything has not just a distinctive silhouette, but a distinctive color palette that pops from the background

a lot of modern shooters can’t do that (Prodeus included), because their priority is to look visually impressive instead of visually clear. they have all kinds of fancy shader effects, reflections, colored lighting, etc. and that adds way too much visual noise for the game to be able to clearly communicate what’s going on to the player

it reminds me of the difference between Halo 1 and Halo 1 Remastered, where the remastered version has more polygons and lighting effects but at the expense of a lot of visual clarity. another example that comes to mind is DoTA 2 vs. League of Legends

@kasdeya > Halo 1 and Halo 1 Remastered

what is clean to you?

I played h1 remastered after like 5+ years not touching h1 - remastered is so much cleaner - from h1 original graphics I could not filter enemy from ground on grass on far (and I have played original h1 for thousands hours)

> DoTA 2 vs. League of Legends

same
I could not get over d2 graphics when first time played in 2015 - but got used to it and brain recognized everything
when I played leagues in 2020 - look so so bad unplayable

@kasdeya >in Doom (1993) you can see like 3 pixels and know just based on the color palette that you’re looking at an imp

old games for me with no exception - is absolute pixel mess

recently I watched my videos of me played games in 2008-9 - how I even recognized anything there in those games - when back then it felt so natural

it not about "age" - it just about learning and get used to new stuff - same as to old, and then brain forget old - and old look like junk visually