Poll: Your "cup of tea" in terms of Graphics

[Manwat]

Whatever gets me a solid 60fps. I have extremely low standards.

As for aesthetics, I like any game that can use colors other than rust brown, gun metal grey and blood + fire red without seeming toonish or like it's just randomly coloring things. It's not that I hate it because it's "kiddy" I just get bored of seeing rusted walls and blood stained floors. Brink is a good example of my prefered style of color coding; the high tech security live in consistant patterned faintly blue areas as opposed to the course red rusting wreckage the rebels reside in. TF2 is another example of excellent palette work.

But all in all, I'm more of an audio-phile, horror games that faintly whisper scratches on the other sides of walls (System Shock 2, Amnesia). Dialog and voice actors that sound amazing (Mass Effect and Team Fortress). Soundtracks and music that perfectly fit the mood. (Deus Ex)

 

[4RM3D]

You haven't played Team Fortress 2? Don't get me wrong, the aesthetics(I think its a much better word to use, because I'm talking about the overall visual style) in Mirrors Edge were great and definitely served a large role in the way the game itself was played. But Team Fortress took it even further due to their emphasis on class identification and even the style of each teams base. Also hats.

I personally like a stylized look, but anything that is more than just shades of gray (fucking Fallout 3 I'm looking at you) is fine by me. Still, doing something to stand out is always a plus. I loved XIII, and half the reason I did was because of the cell shaded and comic book-esque style the game had.

I haven't played the game. I have seen the style though and it looks nice. Another great example of utilizing graphics (aesthetics).

 

[Durananrananrananran]

my cup of tea: Odin Sphere, Gunstar Heroes, Vandall Hearts, Breath of Fire 4

 

[DEAD34345]

I spend most of my gaming time staring at ASCII. I can say with absolute certainty, I do not care about graphics.

Readability? Sure!

Style? Sometimes...

Graphical quality? Nope. Not at all.

ASCII art tends to limit the ability of the game to differentiate enemies, it's why I play stuff like Nethack with tilesets most of the time. It's very easy to forget what colour D is a massive dragon who can rip you to shreds and which colour is your pet dog. I'm not saying ASCII games are bad, when there's no other option like in ADOM I don't mind playing them at all, just that there's a reason games grew out of it.

Personally I like graphics to be as modern as possible but I'm not willing to sacrifice quality for that. If I have to pick between a really good text based adventure game or a modern game that totally sucks I'd go with the text game which isn't so much bad graphics as not having any graphics.

I sort of disagree here. I find that often, increasing the graphical quality of a game makes the creatures less readable rather than more-so. For example I find it much easier to distinguish between two differently coloured Ds than I do with one smallish green blob and a second, slightly larger smallish green blob.

Of course this is not always the case, and graphics can be used to increase a game's readability as you have said. In this case graphics have improved the game, but the game is not improved by the graphics. The game is improved by the increased readability caused by the graphics. Unfortunately many games increase their graphical quality for it's own sake. This tends to result in making the game less readable, and wasting development time that could have been spent actually improving the game.

As I have said I do care about readability in games, and often do use a tile-set in games like Nethack which have so many creatures that they cannot all be easily represented in standard ASCII. In games like City of the Condemned however, which have very few different kinds of creatures, the ASCII graphics serve to increase readability far better than any tile-set ever could. The game is actually improved by not having good graphics.

 

[Pearwood]

The game is actually improved by not having good graphics.

I can understand that, what I was saying was that once you get past a certain amount of monsters you need a graphical way to distinguish between them so there's that limitation. Graphics also help you identify how tough a monster is on sight, a huge fire breathing dragon is likely to be more of a threat than a little dog but it's impossible to tell which is stronger out of a red D and white D on sight.

And I completely agree with games improving their graphics just for the sake of graphics, I would argue that as long as the actual gameplay is still solid it just adds some beauty to something that's already good in its own right though. Besides games haven't needed to improve their graphics to improve user friendliness since the 1980s.

 

[DEAD34345]

The game is actually improved by not having good graphics.

I can understand that, what I was saying was that once you get past a certain amount of monsters you need a graphical way to distinguish between them so there's that limitation. Graphics also help you identify how tough a monster is on sight, a huge fire breathing dragon is likely to be more of a threat than a little dog but it's impossible to tell which is stronger out of a red D and white D on sight.

And I completely agree with games improving their graphics just for the sake of graphics, I would argue that as long as the actual gameplay is still solid it just adds some beauty to something that's already good in its own right though. Besides games haven't needed to improve their graphics to improve user friendliness since the 1980s.

I'd say that the beauty of a game comes almost purely from it's style rather than it's graphical quality, but other than that we're pretty much in perfect agreement. I had actually even wrote a line about how graphics can improve a game when there are too many objects to represent in pure ASCII, but then I accidentally closed the tab and had to re-do the post.

I am all for graphics in order to increase readability (such as showing relative threat or distinguishing between enemies), just not for their own sake. I always wonder how much better many AAA games could have been if all of the effort and money poured into graphics was spent actually improving the game-play.

 

[Pearwood]

I always wonder how much better many AAA games could have been if all of the effort and money poured into graphics was spent actually improving the game-play.

I don't know, I'd miss the pretty looking games like Final Fantasy and Bioshock. The graphics and aesthetics really add to the experience and without them then Bioshock especially wouldn't be half as good. Personally I think the problems are more to do with developers making cliche graphical choices like painting everything brown and running out of ideas for gameplay or being unwilling to risk losing their investment on an untested concept.

 

[Katana314]

I think what makes a game look best to me is smooth animation in terms of gameplay. For instance, that video someone made, fully-animating Half-Life 1 gameplay looked really cool. When we saw the very first, completely fake Killzone 2 video, what wowed us was the smoothness of all the movements, since they were all pre-made, not dependent on button presses.

Call of Duty 4's first-person animations always looked really good to me, as do Killing Floor's. What jerks me out of immersion is when an enemy makes a 90-degree turn while running, without even swerving at all, or making slow laborious animations just to showcase their movement.

 

[RuralGamer]

I'm not too bothered; even games as old as eight years ago have nice graphics in my books; the only thing I really get infuriated with is bloom/glare; there are a couple of BFBC2 maps which are ruined by it for sniping.

 

[Who Dares Wins]

Fuck realism, give me style. Games like Zelda Wind Waker and the Crash and Spyro trilogies for the PS1 still look great, better than many today's games, simply because they had a style, or if you allow me to copy Extra Credits, aesthetics.

 

[Scizophrenic Llama]

It's all about following a style and following it well.

Minecraft is my best example of this. It's not graphically superior to any games coming out these days, but I'd argue that it is far better than most of them simply because it all flows together so well.

Looking realistic doesn't make a game look good, I'd take Wind Waker over quite a lot.

 

[DEAD34345]

I always wonder how much better many AAA games could have been if all of the effort and money poured into graphics was spent actually improving the game-play.

I don't know, I'd miss the pretty looking games like Final Fantasy and Bioshock. The graphics and aesthetics really add to the experience and without them then Bioshock especially wouldn't be half as good. Personally I think the problems are more to do with developers making cliche graphical choices like painting everything brown and running out of ideas for gameplay or being unwilling to risk losing their investment on an untested concept.

I don't tend to enjoy the Final Fantasy games, and I didn't actually enjoy Bioshock much either (probably because I had already had the twist and most of the story spoiled for me). I liked L.A. Noire, and that wouldn't have been the same without it's graphics due to the whole facial recognition thing. Other than that though, there isn't many games I can think of that would really be worse off with lesser graphics. Plus... (and I haven't played this myself), wasn't System Shock supposedly more atmospheric than Bioshock despite being much older?

Honestly apart from when it directly impacts game-play, I do not get any enjoyment out of graphics. Aesthetics sometimes improve a game, but that often has little to do with graphics. Uplink, which basically has no graphics, is one of the most atmospheric games I have played. I was very impressed by Metal Gear Solid's aesthetic recently too, and by modern standards that game looks crude at best. The people don't even have eyes, just weird dark spots where eyes should be. The game still looks great, just in a different kind of way.

 

[Febel]

Ooh a nice cup of Twining's Lady Grey would be lovely...oh I got thirsty before I finished reading.

Anyway, really any sort of graphics, no matter how primitive will work provided they fit the game. The only one that immediately turn me off brown brown and more brown shooters

 

[Pearwood]

wasn't System Shock supposedly more atmospheric than Bioshock despite being much older?

I'd say that Bioshock is more atmospheric, System Shock is a better game though.

Really I get some enjoyment from graphics but like you said the aesthetics are far more important and a game can never stand up on graphics alone, good graphics can be an addition to make a good game better but generally I don't care if something is in 1080p HD or ASCII art so long as it keeps me entertained.

 

[DEAD34345]

wasn't System Shock supposedly more atmospheric than Bioshock despite being much older?

I'd say that Bioshock is more atmospheric, System Shock is a better game though.

Really I get some enjoyment from graphics but like you said the aesthetics are far more important and a game can never stand up on graphics alone, good graphics can be an addition to make a good game better but generally I don't care if something is in 1080p HD or ASCII art so long as it keeps me entertained.

Then we pretty much agree, as I have said.

The only difference between our views seems to be that I just don't get enjoyment from good graphics at all any-more, and I'm not sure if that's just because I have become bored of them or whether I never really liked them to begin with.

 

[Baneat]

Anti-Aliasing, high-res textures are top of the bill for me. HDR is good, but not bloom.

 

[Jess Green]

I like polished graphics and i like it when a game makes me go 'ooooh how pretty' and make me appreicate the time and effort taken into it but its not overly essential, there are still games i will always love and the graphics these days hurt my eyes for the first 20mins as my retina's need to adjust from High Defination quality to pixelated worlds but hey, classics never die!

 

[SuperNova221]

Extra Credits covered this already. So, pretty much what they said I agree with.

Edit: Thatsaid AA. Love AA. Supersampled? Even better. But jaggies just really stand out, and they never, NEVER look good.