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Art in Gaming you personally dislike?

Teslerum

Member
I’ve recently shopped on Steam again and came across various square pixel based indie games. This opened up a rather controversial feeling in me again I’ve had for around 15 years.

They are ugly. So ugly.

And no its not because I hate pixel art. I love it. I can go back to nearly every 8, 16 or 32 bit console and have no problem playing these games today. But square pixels, meh. Few games that look good, imo.

Its weird, because the main difference here is just the realities of development for CRT monitors and early consoles and Computer graphics. So it is partly nostalgia talking, but I do think CRT’s added something to pixel art, that modern pixel-art games can’t really replicate.

Anyway what kind of art in games or its evolution do you personally dislike?
 
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STARSBarry

Gold Member
d76.png
 

Ceadeus

Member
The last I seen is Godfall.

In a stream I asked how could he already look like a demi god at level 2 and the streamer answered... well the game is called GODFALL! Then the chat started fanatically praising his answer like puppets.

In what stupid game , you can look like being in the end game, 1 hour into the game..
 
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cireza

Banned
When low resolution games looks like they were copy/pasted from various pictures, instead of having proper pixel-art. This become common in the 32 bits era, and led to awful visuals.

Here is an example (look at the rocks) :
0E7wubhGvG8qq4P7saP_9NrJpxDkVg1TvOTZl6-nPcEeroBi4xXTqHTS_zCuhC0oaiw-Gkv5c0Z67lk5wnD3Cym1iItRqQ
 
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kuncol02

Banned
Godfall, world of warcraft, warhammer have unappealing art style. Also anime games like genshin impact and such.
There is not enough gold in your life. Next you will say that baroque is worst era from art point of view.
Also warhammer art (especially John Blanche one) is amazing!
 
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Vaelka

Member
Most fantasy games parading around as '' realistic '' even when they're not.
And also dudebro armor in general like this:
408-4082033_man-male-armor-fantasy-warrior-mariners-studded-leather.png


967f9827ae861b49768874a3ad3a4ff6.jpg


Not saying that it's '' objectively bad '', it's just my personal taste.
When I look at this I suppose I look at it the same way a lot of people who hate on feminine armor or people who cringe at gear like in Tera.
I just kinda look at this and it does nothing for me, and it feels super bland and generic.
Same with fighting game characters where it's just an ultra muscular angry shirtless dude or military dudes in FPS games that are covered from head to toes in completely needless random tech stuff they never use at any point and wear skimasks with skull paint on them.

I think that the reason why it makes me sorta cringe is because it feels so unselfaware to me.
Like trying to '' be cool '' and then pretend like it makes sense.
At least with plate bikinis there's some semblance of selfawareness, and also because most ppl who play games are men there's such an insane oversaturation with '' cool edgy dudebro '' designs.

It just goes into why I play video games too, I do it for the fantasy and escapism.
More feminine stuff just adds to that, a gruff man who's angry and got scars in his face and wears super bulky armor and oozes masculinity is just kinda boring to me.
But characters like Bayonetta and Ivy or characters like in Tera are just goofy and fun, it feels more to me like the devs are aware of it and aren't taking themselves or their game too seriously.

Edit: Oh wow, add official DnD and MTG art to this too.

It really hurts because I love both, but I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE the art.
It's some of the worst when it comes to what I mentioned, DnD especially is so incredibly generic and boring in terms of art design....
I don't want to get into a big rant about realism and armor etc but just no DnD is not realistic in the freaking slightest... But they try and present it as if it is and that's what I dislike so much.
 
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nkarafo

Member
idie, so called 8-bit retro pixel games because they look nothing like the pixel art we used to have in the past, which was filtered by the CRT.

Also anything anime has no place in my collection.
 

kuncol02

Banned
Agree on Warhammer, but the problem is they spawned insufferable clones.
That's more of problem of clones of basically anything which copy art style or game play on surface level but don't understand why it's working in first place.
 
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Moogle11

Banned
Agree with OP on not liking most pixel graphics things anymore despite getting into gaming with NES. it was ok back in the day on small CRTs, butost look awful to me on a big HDTV. In recent years I can pretty much only stand to play them on handhelds as they look better on smaller screens to me.
 
I dislike anything thats that cutesy anime style.
On paper, games like Senran Kagura should be right up my alley, but I just dont like the art style. The girls have no noses or lips and very sharp pointy chins. All the pretty girls that I see in real life have lips and noses.
I really admire the Japanese for still making sexualized female characters, I just wish I liked their cutesy anime artstyle like so many others seem to.
 
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Trimesh

Banned
Agree with OP on not liking most pixel graphics things anymore despite getting into gaming with NES. it was ok back in the day on small CRTs, butost look awful to me on a big HDTV. In recent years I can pretty much only stand to play them on handhelds as they look better on smaller screens to me.

I really think it's possible for this stuff to be too sharp - I've got a couple of PVMs - one is a 21" PVM20M4J with a 800TVL high-res tube. But I've found that (especially when connected via RGB) it makes the pixels on old 8 and 16 bit consoles look too sharp and square.
 

kevm3

Member
I can't stand most modern 'anime' style art, nor can I stand that lame J-pop/K-pop inspired look where every game has to feature feminine looking prettyboys. Those Atelier series of games and FInal Fantasy 15 are examples of what I'm talking about.

I don't know what happened to Japanese designs. They used to be so much cooler in the 90s, but it looks like all the testosterone has been drained from their art.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
The “wet plastic” look of so many games from the 7th gen never gelled well with me.

Treasure’s character design before Ikaruga is the worst kind of anime. Chara design in Gunstar Heroes, Mischief Makers and Radiant Silvergun is atrocious.
 
I've got a few. Here are some I can remember:

-I hate plasticy looking textures. Example SFIV and SFV. It only seems to have got worse in SFV.

-Pauldrons

-Giant unnatural weapons with zany zig-zag shapes that look retard and would never work in real life. Example Monster Hunter weapons.

-Cartoony proportions. Really depends on the game, but I was a little disappointed Diablo IV looks like D3 with a different filter. It's not just the proportions, but even things the edges on the building blocks are rounded off and not sharp. It's like they're afraid of straight lines. I'm not sure if it's strictly a design choice or partly because of a game engine because I see it everywhere. I want building blocks to have real textures. I want sharp edges. I don't want it to look like it's made of rubber.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
whenever someone half-asses a pixel art by including hi res vector art alongside it. so ugly.

im sorry, if you are going pixel art, every asset should be pixels.

also, i hate low res 3D games getting up-rezzed. a Nintendo 64 game at 4k looks godawful to me. give me the original low res version any day of the week, it is far superior.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
I’ve recently shopped on Steam again and came across various square pixel based indie games. This opened up a rather controversial feeling in me again I’ve had for around 15 years.

They are ugly. So ugly.

And no its not because I hate pixel art. I love it. I can go back to nearly every 16 bit console and have no problem playing these games today. But square pixels, meh. Few games that look good, imo.

Its weird, because the main difference here is just the realities of development for CRT monitors and early consoles and Computer graphics. So it is partly nostalgia talking, but I do think CRT’s added something to pixel art, that modern pixel-art games can’t really replicate.

Anyway what kind of art in games or its evolution do you personally dislike?
Just add CRT shaders using Reshade.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
World of Warcraft design and sensibilities - that carries across to Fortnight, Overwatch, most of the new artsy looking "indie first party" games releasing on consoles.

All trash visual's imo. A dev with a vision and lazy visual art style.
"Ignore my threads and posts."
 

JCK75

Member
I like Retro gaming, I really love gorgeous 16 bit games but I have so little desire for the look to go back any further than that.
Like once a game looks like it's for Atari or NES it's just being lazy IMO.. pixel art can be absolutely amazing but I want it to look as good as it possibly can.

I also don't like remastering N64/PSX era games without new assets making them look like awful.. that was a strange puberty period of gaming and it's hard on the eyes.
 
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