Isn't this subjective/YMMV?: Polygon Ceiling

So instead of putting this into YMMV, just label it "Trivia?"

That is this trope. It's series being unable to replicate things in 3D they could do in 2D. Be it puzzles, jumping, or even just level of detail due to polycount.

That's not what Trivia is for. Trivia is for things like voice actors. Order of release in other countries. Word of God. Things that you can't see just from the work itself. This is really more a subtrope of Pragmatic Adaptation, which is simply a trope.

edited 1st May '11 10:40:59 AM by shimaspawn

I'm sure this trope is not subjective. As for YMMV, I'm not sure it is or is not, but reading the current definition of the trope and comments here seem to indicate it is.

Sonic managed to replicate the 2D games fine. Sonic can jump and run, the graphics are more detailed. The only thing that suffered was the gameplay, which is obviously an opinion.

Obviously 3D games can't be exactly the same as 2D ones, otherwise they'd be 2D.

Sonic Syndrome was a bad name because, even among the people who thought the 3D Sonic titles were worse than the 2D titles, no one could agree why they were worse. "Gameplay did not translate well into 3D" may be vague and YMMV, but it's not nearly as big an offender as "This game series used to be good and now it's bad".

Yeah, I don't think the Sonic games are a good example of the objective part of the trope. It think perhaps rather than listing games as a whole, we should list instances in those games that weren't able to be translated properly.

Castlevania 64, Superman 64?

Still anyway you look at it it's subjective.

edited 1st May '11 4:20:22 PM by Raso

A good specific example for Sonic might be the loop-de-loops; in 2D, you just run past them, and they have very little distinction from normal paths other than the momentum you need to build. In 3D, due to the ability to move left and right and the angle of the camera, loop-de-loops would often become death traps, since they were narrow, your character would often be moving from left to right slightly or vice-versa, and the camera angle lowered visibility.

It's pretty objective; in the 2D games, it was impossible to die in loop-de-loops, but with the addition of 3D movement, they became much more difficult.

edited 1st May '11 5:07:00 PM by Scardoll

It's also much more difficult to jump on an enemy in the 3D Sonic games—they had to add a homing functionality to Sonic's jump attack to make it work, which was a pretty radical gameplay change.

edited 1st May '11 6:20:21 PM by troacctid

There are a couple examples that are "It's 3D now it sucks," but I think those should be cut and the description edited to reflect the ideas pointed out in this thread. Mostly that 2D and 3D are vastly different, and developers don't always properly account for those. Sonic's loops are probably the clearest example.

As far as the loops in the 3D Sonic titles are concerned, outside of some glitches in the earlier titles, you can't die from them either. In fact, with the exception for Sonic R, you don't even control the character as they go through them.

I know in Sonic Adventure 2 I died in loops all the time because of control/camera issues.

No, you can control your character. It's completely possible to jump on one of the loops, and there is some left and right motion; the loop just adds a forward motion. If the problems were glitches, they were depressingly common and weren't fixed for a long time, considering they happened ALL THE DAMN TIME in Sonic Heroes' first level.

edited 1st May '11 10:02:00 PM by Scardoll

Okay, I stand corrected.

Still, i think we should rewrite the description so that it does not come across as being a duplicate of Jumping the Shark.

Agreement there. A focus on when mechanics from the original required new mechanics (the homing attack), or had a previously easy section become a death trap (the loops).

I agree to a rewrite to make the trope focus as Deboss says. I think the examples should really focus on instances rather than entire games.

A vast majority of them are just Camera Screw though.

Then those should be moved to Camera Screw and we should make a note that Camera Screw has it's own page and should not be added here.

So we can take this YMMV now?

edited 1st May '11 11:23:39 PM by MegaJ

No, we've concluded it does not belong there. It just needs clean up.

The trope is largely objective because it is talking about the difficulties of a direct translation of 2D to 3D environments. That is an observable element that many games have had to cross, regardless of the resulting success or failure.

The subjective element comes from rating how well a game crosses that threshold, but you can argue that in the jump to 3D games like Super Mario and Prince Of Persia effectively redesigned the gameplay rather than just doing "2D gameplay in a 3D world." But again, that's where it becomes subjective.

I have no problem with the title, since I am actually familiar with the term from outside TV Tropes. However, I do agree that it's definitely a YMMV trope, and definitely Flame Bait, especially amongst some of the more... passionate fandoms.

For what it's worth, I concur that this is not subjective. It is a direct result of programmers and designers being unfamiliar with the 3D-medium when it first became prevalent, and of a greater focus on creating a game in 3D than on the actual quality of that game.

It's not just Camera Screw either, although that's certainly relevant. A good example is how in fighting games, missiles are important to 2D gameplay, but hard to use properly in 3D.

I say it's not subjective. But then again, who's going to agree with me?

I think it's important that examples be citing specific issues with the transition and not just bashing later iterations of the series. I'm willing to give it a shot at being objective if we can get a curator and some cleanup (if it needs cleaning up).