The main point of any HD remake is to refine an old idea. This often means taking an old but beloved title and upgrading it for a new generation, graphically or even going so far as to tighten the gameplay. While there have been many successes and failures, Heroes of Might & Magic III – HD Edition accomplishes a truly catastrophic misunderstanding of what an HD Edition should truly be. Not only does it completely fail to improve anything, but this version actually detracts from the experience of playing this classic.
What's sad is this isn't even the only HD edition that misunderstands the meaning, off the top of my head I can think of Baldur's Gate (also available on GoG.com, and one mod does the job far better than the new version), and Age of Empires 2, going into the problems there and compatibility issues is like trying to play a Bethesda game with several hundred mods on it. It has problems from display issues, to not registering what you click on, to not recognizing your network or refusing to join other networks and then also crashing randomly.
ReplyDeleteI don't get a lot of these HD editions either, most of the graphical improvements are as you say here, minimal, if it's something like Spelunky or the Binding of Isaac re-makes, then I think it makes perfect sense as the art and entire engine are completely redone, whereas this is more of a cash-grab.
Really, both of those were just as bad? I'm honestly quite surprised, i'd not heard anything about either of those suffering quite so badly as an HD update. Even some positive things were mentioned about AoE 2 in regards to the tournament community. Thank you, this is something I may have to look into.
DeleteWell, the point of an HF edition I personally see is to enhance certain aspects and bring it about for a new generation. If it actually allows people to access it on new hardware or a new generation to experience a prior title, then that seems fine, and in a few ways it could be seen as preserving gaming's heritage and past. Take the Homeworld HD collection being re-released, that was a series, a very popular one, no one has been able to get their hands on in any digital distribution outlet for years, so having it updated and released here just means it's more open for others. There are definitely pointless and bad ones, yes, but even the likes of Last of Us had enough significant tweaks and improvements to warrant its existence. Especially when it came to the frame-rate and controls.
I can only give my experience and my friends experience with AoE and BG Enhanced Edition, but those were the problems we had with them, and it's a shame because Baldur's Gate has so many loopholes (seriously, there's a site that's hundreds of pages long detailing all of the bugs, several of which are game breaking, and in BG 2 you could abuse to reach max level in less than 3 hours) and it would have been nice if the Enhanced Edition fixed those.
DeleteI think that would be fair if the games weren't already available, if they don't have the game released in a way people can get it very easily then I can get behind it, but when it's already available to the public (like on GoG) and the only improvement is graphical then I'm not so sure about it.
Heroes 3 is in mine opinion best game ever,however this HD reskin is bad joke and pure cash in by Ubisoft.FPS drops and graphic looks more terrible than Heroes 3 HD+ fan mode.This supposed HD edition don't even have expansion packs.Stay far from this abomination,Ubisoft is truly trying to be the worst game Publisher in the world.
ReplyDelete@Sandra Allen.