Well, it does if we’re going off the ‘individual format’ charts, where games which are released over eight different consoles don’t count, anyway.

But yes, Mario Kart Wii - almost eight months after its initial release - is back at the top of the charts, no doubt helped by the irresistible appeal of the Redknapp clan and the screech of “aww, ah lav bee’in yewwww” from her-what-used-to-be-in-Eternal in the current UK telly ads. Of course, what the ad fails to note is that Mario Kart Wii actually offers the worst local multiplayer in any home console Mario Kart to date, and that online twelve-player races is actually where it’s at. Still, I’ll concede that it’s a lot of fun if you’ve got plenty of casual gamer friends and three Wii Wheels, and it is the most accessible in the series to date. Yay for the ‘expanded audience’. Sort of.

Elsewhere, lovely lovely Wii Music hangs on in there at seven, only just outsold by PS3 big-hitter Resistance 2 in the latter’s launch week. Does this mean the British public has taken Miyamoto’s latest creation under its collective wing? Let’s hope it does better over here than in the US and Japan…

Kawashima’s at 3, Wii Play’s at 4 and Wii Fit is at 8, all months or even years after being launched. Pretty amazing scenes, all told - with all of these games going at least double-platinum, it seems Nintendo has cracked the formula for extending a game’s shelf life.

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One of the most unsavory terms that gamers fling at each other during heated online arguments is "graphics whore", referring to a gamer who prides visuals above all else.

Certainly there has been no shortage of games over the years that have attempted to use flashy graphics to hide gameplay deficiencies, particularly after the introduction of optical storage media (think Rebel Assault, Microcosm, Rise of the Robots, Heart of Darkness...)

But while it's hard to imagine many people who are actually willing to spend money on games purely to show off fancy graphics or the capabilities of new hardware, there is little doubt that high-end visuals can help provide a much more immersive and enjoyable experience.

Today regular Screen Play contributor James "DexX" Dominguez provides a follow-up to another recent Your Turn article that explored the relationship between "gameplay and "eye candy"". Click below for his piece, and let us know what you think.

In defence of eye-candy

Keith Fung's recent Your Turn article "Gameplay over eye candy" covered a range of topics, but I would like to address the point alluded to in the title: the idea that high quality gameplay and impressive visuals are opposing forces, fighting for dominance.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a poor game will often feature dazzling graphics to mask substandard gameplay, and that a classic game that plays like a dream does not need to be tarted up with cutting edge graphics in order to impress. I feel that this is an extension of the ancient rivalry between art and science, which also expresses itself in the frequently-expressed opinion that poor films cover up their shortcomings with expensive special effects.

My core argument is that, when both are done well, good graphics and good game design are not rivals, struggling for a greater share of development resources. Rather, they are complementary.

Many modern games work because they create a convincing artificial world. These digital surroundings and characters attempt to elicit emotional responses from the player, such as excitement, tension, fear, sympathy, laughter, anger, or sadness. I argue that evoking such emotions works best when the world is as real as current technology allows it to be.

An interesting example to look at is Quantic Dream's long-promised and recently teased Heavy Rain. This game will live or die depending upon the believability of its characters. If they fail to emote, but instead plunge screaming into the depths of the uncanny valley, one of the game's primary aims will have failed.

In the case of Heavy Rain, advanced graphical technology can only enhance the gameplay, which consists essentially of an interactive film - part drama, part thriller. The more real the characters look, with detailed skin shaders, painstaking animation, and fine control of the many virtual facial muscles to create emotive expressions and convincing speech, the more the player will care about them and the more the game will succeed in its goal of emotional immersion.

A similar example of a graphically groundbreaking game - and, as it happens, critically lauded for its gameplay - is Half-Life 2, released a little over four years ago. Again, character animation played a significant role, especially in the realisation of your artificial companion, Alyx Vance. Half-Life 2's Source engine allowed unprecedented realism in the facial expressions of real-time digital characters. Alyx was beautifully-rendered, but rather than being simple eye candy the technology lent her a lifelike quality never before seen in a game, which made her feel more real and more important to the player.

Rather then being just an AI, Alyx became our friend. I remember on my first play through being genuinely concerned for Alyx when she got into dangerous situations.

In one of the subsequently released episodic follow-ups to Half-Life 2, a major character is unexpectedly killed. I was surprised at the depth of feeling this evoked in me. Put simply, I wanted revenge. I wanted to avenge that character's death by punishing the killer.

While unusually high-quality voice acting and solid scriptwriting were also components in my immersive concern for these artificial people, I suspect I would not have been drawn in to such a degree if the graphical grunt of the engine had not allowed them to be rendered so convincingly.

Beyond interactions with other characters, impressive graphics can enhance the game-playing experience in many other ways. A good example is the lighting model in Doom 3. Graphics technology has progressed so quickly that it is easy to forget just how astonishing Doom 3 looked the first time we saw it. The engine could render complex real-time shadows from multiple light sources, a first in game technology.

Doom 3's amazing lighting model and ability to render extremely complex environments allowed it to be, in a word, scary. There had been scary games before, but Doom 3's ability to hide monsters in shadowed corners and to have them burst unexpectedly through destructible scenery made it terrifying on my first play-through. Sadly, the level design for Doom 3 was very samey, and the effectiveness of the scares decreased as the game edged dangerously close to becoming boring, but the power of that graphics engine to scare the player was impressive.

Another underappreciated ability of a good game engine is the "wow" factor. Few games sum this up as well as the God of War series on PS2 and PSP, especially the opening battle against the colossal animated statue in the opening sequence of God of War 2.

Even though I had read online about the general theme of this extended action sequence, nothing could have prepared me for how breathtaking it was. As I controlled a crazed Spartan warrior, making him dodge out of the way of a massive bronze fist the size of a double-decker bus, I remember thinking, "This is what video games are all about."

That impression stuck with me. That entire game series consistently created a sense of incredible scale, with beautifully rendered combat arenas the size of sports stadiums, prolonged battles with awe-inspiring bosses, ranging in size from elephants to sky scrapers, and intensely satisfying (and graphically impressive) magical spell effects - lightning, volcanic eruptions, and rampaging ghostly warriors, among others.

The God of War series has very tight design - the games play very well, and apart from a few wonky camera moments and sudden difficulty spikes, they are simply great fun. I argue, though, that the God of War experience would have been very different had the developers not pushed the ageing PS2 hardware to its absolute limits to bring us the best-looking game they possibly could. I doubt that God of War would have really been God of War without those graphics-driven "wow" moments.

In summary, I think that good design in gameplay is only assisted by added grunt in the graphical architecture, and I do not think it can ever detract from the quality of a gameplay. Critics have a valid complaint when a development team has obviously spent too much time on visuals and not enough on gameplay, but I find that this is not as common a phenomenon as you may think.

In my experience, a poor game tends to be poor across the board. If the development team has neglected one of the many facets of good design, then it is more likely that they will also have neglected others.

For this reason, I think that impressive graphics tend to be more common in high quality games, and poor visuals are more likely to be found in unsatisfying products. The disappointing Too Human is an excellent example: most reviewers found it to be a flat and repetitive playing experience, and most also concluded that the visuals were unsatisfactorily behind the curve compared to its current generation siblings.

There are exceptions, of course. The movie tie-in game Wall-E is flat and uninspired, a real chore to play, but it took visual assets directly from Pixar's film production, so on current generation platforms it is quite impressive. Naturally, games that do not strive to create an truly immersive world are also exempt, such as puzzle games and more stylised, artistic games. I could not count the number of hours I have sunk into Puzzle Quest, but nobody is ever going to give it awards for stunning graphics.

Generally, though, I have found that evident poor quality in any important element of a modern game is a strong indicator that the complete package is likely to be unsatisfying.

What do you think, Screen Play readers? Have you played any hideous classics or beautiful duds?

- James "DexX" Dominguez

Screen Play readers can submit articles or ideas for consideration in Your Turn using the email address screenplayblog@gmail.com. The best blog post published on Screen Play between December 1, 2008 and January 30, 2009 as judged by Jason Hill will win a PlayStation 3 console from Sony Computer Entertainment worth $699. The next Your Turn prize winner will be announced on January 30. Only Australian residents are eligible and the judge's decision is final.

And holding steady because I can’t seem to find any good ingredients in the 130-150 range. I have several stacks in the 160-165 range (I guess you call stacks of Troll Spit “gobs,” eh?). Does this mean I need to grab a crafting buff from an oRvR battlefield objective?

I haven’t found Apothecary to be very interesting to be honest but the health potions I’ve made have had huge impacts on my RvR performance. I can’t count the times I’ve killed someone only to die to the last couple ticks of their lingering DoT or had someone kill me with only a tiny sliver of health remaining. What happened to pets/squigs living on after the owner’s death? I was looking forward to that feature. Waaagh!

Anyway, my normal crafting routine consists of using a 50 brass glass vial, putting in a high end main ingredient, and then loading up the remaining slots with water or enough to make it a “guaranteed to succeed” potion. Those “makes more, weaker potions” or “makes a shorter duration, more powerful potion” ingredients just don’t come into play; mostly because any time I’ve used them, they haven’t worked.

Can anyone point me to a good Apothecary crafting guide? I only know what I know through experimentation and I have a feeling I’m just not getting it. That or it just wasn’t that great to begin with.

I took scavenging as my gathering profession. Was that a mistake? I seem to gather a lot of water and main health ingredients (strangely insta heal only, never any HoT stuff) but I don’t think I’ve ever picked up an enhancement ingredient. That tradeskill is up in the 180s. Curiously, where do these tradeskills cap out? 200?

I have 150 Apothecary and I’m still a n00b! Please help me!

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• 10 new levels
• Map reverse - press X while playing
• Best jump record - when jumping in the air - jump length will be count.
• Car skins - dress car in some nice skin(skins can be easily add by user )
• 2.5 D - no more flat 2D we are going in 2.5D

I don’t know if I count Wario as a villain anymore. He hasn’t really done anything that is all that evil in a long time. He’s been playing mini-games, and just being a bit mean in sports titles. We need another game that pits Mario against Wario, or even the other way around!

List here

List here

• Rumor: IBM, TSMC to make chips for Xbox 360 Jasper, Valhalla
  
• Opus, Valhalla chipsets to follow Xbox 360's Jasper?
  
• Xbox 360's Jasper to result in price cut and better reliability?

While this is a game presented in simple 2D sprites and count-the-frames animations, its underlying maturity and creativity is somehow all the more potent for it. And in this DS update, everyone has the chance to turn back the clock to see how, in many ways, the Japanese RPG’s brightest future still lies in its past.

Eurogamer also states that sources have told them to expect a February release for Chrono Trigger in Europe. No official comments just yet, but I’d bet that Eurogamer knows what they’re talking about.

• Still Alive - Mirror's Edge theme

• Still Alive - Teddybears remix

Album: Mirror's Edge
Label:  Nettwerk
Release:  November 11, 2008

Track Listing:
1. Still Alive (Mirror's Edge Theme Song) - Lisa Miskovsky
2. Still Alive (Remix) - Benny Benassi
3. Still Alive (Remix) - Junkie XL
4. Still Alive (Remix) - Paul Van Dyk
5. Still Alive (Remix) - Teddybears
6. Still Alive (Remix) - Arman Van Helden

• You MUST reply in the comments with a valid QJ username.

• The contest will be open till Wednesday, December 3rd at 11:59pm PST. All comments must be submitted by this time to count as entries.

• Contest is open only to U.S. residents. No whining!

• Still Alive - Mirror's Edge theme

• Still Alive - Teddybears remix

Album: Mirror's Edge
Label:  Nettwerk
Release:  November 11, 2008

Track Listing:
1. Still Alive (Mirror's Edge Theme Song) - Lisa Miskovsky
2. Still Alive (Remix) - Benny Benassi
3. Still Alive (Remix) - Junkie XL
4. Still Alive (Remix) - Paul Van Dyk
5. Still Alive (Remix) - Teddybears
6. Still Alive (Remix) - Arman Van Helden

• You MUST reply in the comments with a valid QJ username.

• The contest will be open till Wednesday, December 3rd at 11:59pm PST. All comments must be submitted by this time to count as entries.

• Contest is open only to U.S. residents. No whining!