Overused graphical effects

[DanielBrown]

Outta still count as a modern game, so my vote goes for LOTRO.
I always turn the bloom down to the lowest since it's impossible to navigate in, say, Lothlorien with it on. Looks bad.

 

[spartandude]

motion blur.

Recently playing Mass Effect PC I realized just how stupid this looked. It blurred for every movement, making the game seem fuzzy.

The Film Grain effect was even worse.

Luckily you can switch off the film grain. I found that option as quick as I could.

I loved those effects in the game. for me it added to the 80's style sci-fi

 

[Detheroth]

My biggest problem these days is when companies try to make their Human Character Models look realistic. Developers continue to try and make the human characters appear more and more lifelike and they are beginning to make them look HORRIBLY fake. Key example is Call of Duty: Jam Ops P Ironic, you are God). The characters look TOO gritty and it really turned me off the story (which wasn't any good to begin with) and I honestly prefer the way the character models look in CoD4... And when your customers start preferring the way you did things 3 years ago, you need to seriously review what you are doing.

 

[Geekosaurus]

Treyarch seem to like fire.

 

[Mr0llivand3r]

The color wash lens flare accompanied with explosions. Halo Reach is particularly guilty of this flaw.

Yeah, it's cinematic and dynamic and pretty damn cool to experience the first time it happens, but it's also really distracting when you know it's coming. Especially int eh case of Halo Reach, while it's realistic that a large explosion would fuck up your retinas for a little while, the realism of the story was abandoned when superhumans were fighting multicolored aliens in space stations with guns that literally make "pew pew" sounds.

 

[T-Bone24]

Camera shake and distortion when you take damage. It's distracting for me and only leads to taking more damage as I have no idea where to go. Taking any damage at all in a Call of Duty is a death sentence.

 

[legendarytomuk]

2D sprites! There ugly as hell and get used way too much as a resource cheap alternative to proper modelling!

 

[Toasty Virus]

Anything that blocks your view when you start taking damage.

It's almost as if they want you to die, maybe they're just trying to pad out the tragicly short single players these days.

Edit: Oh! AND BLOODY MOTION BLUR. I HATE IT DAMMIT.

 

[LogicNProportion]

motion blur.

Recently playing Mass Effect PC I realized just how stupid this looked. It blurred for every movement, making the game seem fuzzy.

The Film Grain effect was even worse.

I'm not gonna touch the motion blur, because that's an opinion.

however, the grainy look (which CAN be turned off) is for people who are into the genre and time period BioWare is shouting out to. When Mass Effect was first revealed, many people asked why it looked grainy, and BioWare answered that it was to capture the feel of old cinematic science fiction/fantasy settings from days of old. Mass Effect itself is a shout-out to stuff like Buck Rodgers. In a way, it's supposed to look king of shitty. It's to capture the mood of it all. Granted it's more for movies, and sometimes, this works in it's advantage, as BioWare loves a cinematic feel to their games. In my experience, grain goes bad when overlooking what should be a beautiful horizon and landscape.

I really don't think any graphical effect is overused, because usually for every 2-3 devs that use it wrong, we get a dev that uses it right, and these effects do only work in certain times.

Imma' stop here, and quiet up the art/film student in me. ^^;

 

[Jesus Phish]

Bloom. It gave me a very bad impression when I first got out of the dark sewers of Oblivion. Every single rock and elven ruin blinded me.

 

[badgersprite]

Bloom, especially when it's really obviously just being used to hide the loading scenery behind it.

 

[Canid117]

Motion blur and the fucking dust in BFBC2

 

[Woodsey]

Depth of field.

Just... Uh. Crysis pulled it off mostly, I've yet to see anyone else do it.

Worst offender: Alpha Protocol. It's practically inverted.

 

[northeast rower]

Film grain is awful, but for me the plastic sheen on "realistic characters" takes the cake.

 

[MrGalactus]

Shaky sprint cam. Hate it.
Blood-on-the-face FPS low-health thing annoys me too. I much prefer a health bar.

 

[Kadoodle]

RDR had a lot of film grain in certain parts, but it actually seemed fitting with the old western setting.

 

[Master Kuja]

Fucking Bloom, especially in Bad Company 2, DICE love their bloom in their maps.

I'm looking at you, Cold War.
I've even got bloom entirely disabled just because of that map and it's still HOLY SHIT IT'S LIKE I'M STARING INTO THE SUN.

 

[zehydra]

definitely bloom. Bloom can make a game look worse, despite what some developers seem to think.

 

[zehydra]

2D sprites! There ugly as hell and get used way too much as a resource cheap alternative to proper modelling!

Lol, when was the last time a game used those though?

 

[veloper]

No, it is poor use of a camera. A good photographer focusses on what's important. DoF doesn't do this.

The human eye immediately focusses on anything that has your attention. Effectively everything you notice is in focus. Again DoF doesn't do this. It just blurs everything at a distance.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to get a little condescending here.

Have you ever even tried photography or film-making? Or perhaps aimed down the sights of a weapon?

For the first two, depth of field is not some cheap little gimmick, it's a rather important aspect when used, one that immediately draws the viewer's attention to what needs to be seen, whether it's in the background or the foreground, one can generally use the camera to focus on whatever is important in the shot.

Focus in fotography is an important aspect. That's not my point.
My point is: depth of field in games, gets this entirely WRONG, like a poor photographer might.

And in real life, depth of field will show when you're aiming down the sights of a weapon, you need to see what's past the crosshair and that's all, given how close it generally is to your eye (and I don't mean rammed right into it) the rest of the gun will appear out of focus.

No, it doesn't, because the fraction of a second you look down at your gun, the gun will be in focus again.
Any one thing a person with good eyesight, is currently looking at, is always perfectly in focus. The software can't know which part of the screen you're looking at when you're playing, so no part of the screen should ever be blurred during gameplay.