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Art in Gaming you personally dislike?

S

SLoWMoTIoN

Unconfirmed Member
Any modern 3D fighter easily. Anything new from Blizzard.
 

kevm3

Member
I really dislike Commodore 64ish 'fat pixel' styled games. I can deal with NES quality, but anything less is awful
 

borborygmus

Member
I dislike most nonrealistic art styles of the last 10 years. There's always something off and they can't seem to inspire me the way 80s/90s/early 2000s artwork did. I can't really tell you why. There's something just slightly off. It's not nostalgia because I occasionally see new nonrealistic styles that inspire me, but they're much more rare now.

It's hard to give examples. Even "nice" new games don't inspire me that much. The artwork in Hades is great, but it doesn't stick with me nor inspire me at all. The same goes for Ori. It looks nice while I'm playing it, but beyond that it doesn't stir my mind's eye. Yet I still find myself thinking about older SNES and PC games, and things like the new Guilty Gear games. There's a timeless quality that used to come easily, that nobody knows how to achieve anymore.
 
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Teslerum

Member
I dislike most nonrealistic art styles of the last 10 years. There's always something off and they can't seem to inspire me the way 80s/90s/early 2000s artwork did. I can't really tell you why. There's something just slightly off. It's not nostalgia because I occasionally see new nonrealistic styles that inspire me, but they're much more rare now.

It's hard to give examples. Even "nice" new games don't inspire me that much. The artwork in Hades is great, but it doesn't stick with me nor inspire me at all. The same goes for Ori. It looks nice while I'm playing it, but beyond that it doesn't stir my mind's eye. Yet I still find myself thinking about older SNES and PC games, and things like the new Guilty Gear games. There's a timeless quality that used to come easily, that nobody knows how to achieve anymore.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that you had to think a lot more about your art both from an artistic and technical level. Not every pixel was square, you had to deal with video modes that had different colors/resolutions, you had scanlines and dithering, two byproducts that were used for effects, you had automatic stretching, so you accounted for that.

TL: DR Artists just had to think a lot more about how the final picture looked on the display. It’s similiar how good quite a few soundtracks were back then despite or exactly because you couldn’t just drop pre-recorded tracks onto the cardridge.
 
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kuncol02

Banned
Upscaled is better for sure.

But those "graphical enhancements ruin it by just throwing shadows on something that's not meant to have them.
Yes that shadows look really bad, but from other side it really show how terrible contrast that game has. Normally it looks like someone set HDMI on TV to full range and console to limited.
 
This is so ugly it almost seems unintentional.
116922-Warcraft-3.jpg
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STARSBarry

Gold Member
I strongly dislike SD characters.

10259977a_m.jpg


This here however pushed it to a whole other level. I wonder how you can actually imagine such thing to begin with :

world-of-final-fantasy-maxima-screenshots-6-ds1-1340x1340.jpg


I want to run and kick their ugly faces with all my strength. And I would feel that I am actually doing them a favor.

I would agree with this up until a point...

if it wasent for the existence of...



I think with any art style is requires developers to use it correctly, SD Gundam definitely got it right.
 
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gojira96

Member
After Arkham Knight, I just can't appreciate this:

It's not that AK was perfect, but character-design wise, the only "wrong" they did was having Bruce/Hush being a gorilla

I really dislike this Fortnite-esque character aesthetic
b2Cd5DF.jpg
 
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01011001

Banned
Mortal Kombat 11, the garbage-level animations are unacceptable to me

MK11 has by FAR the best animations in the series, it's a huge step up...

so If those are still unacceptable to you then for the love of thor don't look at MKX 🤣🤣🤣 that game is a crime against the art of animation itself lol
 
Already some very good replies in this thread. I personally heavily dislike the Calarts simple and deformed drawing that is typical of that style. This sometimes applies to some Japanese art as well, with both having an emphasis of never shading, having no contrast, no grit, shadows, etc, which is what makes art amazing. The reason for this is probably because it takes a long time. I share the same sentiment as cireza cireza above, the industry in the PS3/360 era were all brown shooters, a palette which were supposed to mimic worn torn towns, cities covered in dust, dirt, grime, concrete blocks, some people complained and now the industry goes the other way in adding an annoying amount of colors to everything which makes it distasteful. No subtlety at all.
 

Lethal01

Member
Yes that shadows look really bad, but from other side it really show how terrible contrast that game has. Normally it looks like someone set HDMI on TV to full range and console to limited.

I think that when you are actually playing the game and not through compression the low contrast is great, I think super high contrast is kinda overdone and it was a great change of pace that made the game stick out, seeing the saturation boosted 200% just feels like someone totally missed the painterly style the game was going for.

A little boost to the contrast I can understand but all these reshade videos seem to crank it up to 11 and try to force the game to look like Twilight princess or to show how much more "next gen" their pc is.
 

SirTerry-T

Member
I don't mind the retro pixel art look, though it's outstayed it's welcome a bit now I think.
What does rub me up the wrong way with that style is when a game aims to replicate the look of an old 8-bit or 16-bit pixel art style but in doing so goes above and beyond what the machines of that era could achieve, as far as colour palettes and resolution.
What's even worse is when those games are not consistent in the pixel art detail they are using, so you will have 8- bit style characters mixed in with 16-bit style backgrounds, or vice-versa. It's a consistency issue, really.
 
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T

The New Guy

Unconfirmed Member
I wasn't a big fan of the art style of games like Life is Strange. It was hard for me to get in to it because of the dialogue, too. I don't normally cringe, but I must admit it was hard for me to get through.

89g1.gif


Those graphic episodic type games just don't do it for me. I can understand why someone would enjoy them, but it isn't for me. If I'm going to play something with choices, I'd much rather play a game like Heavy Rain or Detroit: Become Human.
 

SirTerry-T

Member
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I will never understand the praise for this shit

I think it's fair to criticise BOTW on a technical art level....to some degree, baring in mind the hardware it's running on.
To criticise it's art direction just seems to be churlish, in my personal opinion.
What do you think is "shit" about it? The technical or artistic choices.
See, as someone who works as an artist in game dev, the worse criticisms to hear or read are those with no base.
Tell us exactly what doesn't tick the Good Art boxes for you.
"Too cartoony" is one that always triggers me when I see it.
What does that mean? To colourful? Too simple looking? Black outlines on everything?
Not photorealistic enough?
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
The chunky cartoony WoW style. Hate it. (Love a good cartoony art style though, like BotW.)

Also Godfall looks appalling to me, those character designs are disgusting.
 
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T

The New Guy

Unconfirmed Member
The chunky cartoony WoW style. Hate it. (Love a good cartoony art style though, like BotW.)

Also Godfall looks appalling to me, those character designs are disgusting.

Also don't really like Godfall. I had trouble getting in to Warframe as well, which people often compare it to. It just doesn't hit me right for some reason. Likely wouldn't bother with that game when I get a PS5, looks very generic & uninspired.
 

Bkdk

Member
The way how bioware, bethesda or many western rpgs design their characters, they often look shit and will need to be heavily modded to fix them.
 

JeloSWE

Member
I've never liked the "chibi" (or whatever you call it) style.

Take a game like Bravely Default 2. Concept art looks great:
bravely-second.jpg



Then you go in game and are greeted with this ugly shit:
Bravely-Default-II..jpg


They just look like weird deformed dolls with awkward proportions.
Interesting, I think the reason chibi style came about for two reasons, one is that they look cuter because they resemble kids and the other is that on older low-res systems and hand helds, larger heads were easier to emote with.
 
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It's so refreshing to see so many people sharing my distaste for that over designed post-wow Blizzard art style. It's an instant turn off for me whenever I see a game with that specific type of cartoony designs. Especially since 90's Blizzard had a great and unique art direction. Lords of the Fallen is probably one of the worst offenders, as it tried to mix that with a dark and gritty color palette that just made those oversized pauldrons seem even more out of place. Although to be fair those same devs later went on to make The Surge, which I absolutely loved.

I'm also not a fan of the trend towards photorealism in AAA games, it's seems like a wasted opportunity to enhance the narrative through striking and evocative visuals, instead going for a pointless effort to emulate reality. Even in movies authors know the utility of exaggerating color and lighting to create ambiance, why shy away from that in a medium that intrinsically lends itself to exaggeration?
 

John2290

Member
Bloodstained ritual of the night didn't sit well with me and I hate mobile game art or when classic genres take on a pristine hand painted look like this...

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I can't play games that do this and even when they are good, like Torchlight 2 it devalues the game somehow...

03_torchlight2.jpg


There was only one case of a game with this kind of art that I came to love and that was Dust: An elsian Tale. Not only did I come to love the game but I came to love the art, oddly enough putting aside the furry shite but I suppose it us cause there is at least some artistic deviation and stylization with flaws to be seen.

896e1ee6ead2235482cadd3686db3f69.jpg
 
Neon-80's/cyberpunk aesthethics usually combined with synthwave. Probably popularized first by Far Cry 3: Blood-dragon.
Now don't get me wrong, I loved the art style at first, and there is a lot of synthwave music that is excellent. Blade Runner, Akira, 2000AD etc. (franchises which popularized those styles in the actual 80's) will always have a large place in my heart.
But the whole look and feel is becoming tired as it has been done to death due to 80's nostalgia saturation, and indies releasing their own titles anticipating the release of Cyberpunk 2077 (which was first revealed 8 years ago now). That game btw, might be the aphothesis for the whole genre in my opinion and it will be decline from here on out. I noticed a eurogamer article recently criticizing the cyberpunk genre, so I think fatigue is setting in now.
 
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Keihart

Member
Yeah I much preferred the more stylized look in DMC 1-4.
Though I also think part of the blame is with the RE engine. It just has this weird uncanny valley look that other realistic looking games (like, say, Uncharted 4, Gears 5, Modern Warfare 2019,etc) don't have.
I find 5 to be way more stylized than 4. DMCV Style reminds me a lot of the the characters of SH1-3, specially in cinematics....maybe a little creepier even, kinda like rule of rose or something. I think it's super fitting too, more so than the weird middlepoint to anime in 4 or even the full anime style in 3.
 
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