An HD Coat of Paint‏

Last week, I talked about the new Oddworld remake that just came out. Of course, this is a PS1 remake, so the developer—Just Add Water—waited long enough and really re-made the game: new graphics, animations and voiceovers.

Last generation, we experienced a similar thing, where PS2 games were remastered for the PS3. Upscaled graphics, and more importantly, an HD, 16:9 presentation made the purchase worth it. Games like Kingdom Hearts were actually built almost from the ground-up, and many seemed to have included a couple of games all in one package (Jak & Daxter, God of War, Final Fantasy X/X-2). The value is there for me since going from 4:3 to widescreen looked great, especially with new or upscaled graphics. Seriously, try playing your PS2 games now: they really don’t look that great anymore.

A nice article on Kotaku made me think: are we going to see the same trend on PS4? The Last of Us got a remastered edition. The PS4 edition was thoroughly improved with updates such as higher resolution and better framerates. But in the end, is it worth it? Maybe so, for someone who has not yet played the game. I myself wouldn’t mind returning to the game as it was easily my favorite game of 2013. With that in mind, the game was barely made 1 year ago. Moreover, I don’t think jumping from 720p to 1080p is much greater than the move from 480p to 720p. Maybe it would be if I had a 50”+ television, but the original PS3 game looked great on my 40” 1080p screen.

Anyway, I digress. My real point is: will The Last of Us open the floodgates for remastered last-gen games? I feel like it will, and I’m very indifferent about it. On one hand, some games may play much better given the better hardware; but on the other hand, I bet some developers will put a half-assed effort into re-releasing games that are barely 1 year old.

GTA V

Naughty Dog has clearly put a lot of effort into remastering The Last of Us for the new architecture, but in the end, consumers don’t really care and just assume it was easy to just port a game. Regardless, I feel that successful franchises should make use of the beefier hardware and port older games to acclimatize themselves to the new consoles’ architectures. It’d be a great learning tool and a better chance at making their following games better and faster.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if The Last of Us: Remastered and GTA V are big successes just like they were last year.