[XANDER CAGE]

Anyone ever had a situation where they just weren't quite sure what the graphics in a game were actually supposed to be? Even in games with great technical graphics, there are times where things might not mesh, and sometimes games with good art direction don't have the muscle to quite display some things. Hell, sometimes the visuals are fine and our brains just don't get what the hell we're supposed to be looking at.

I popped FFXII back in recently to do another run, and looking at it brought back memories.

Bad memories.

What the hell is wrong with Vaan's abs?



Like, if I look at them just right, it looks like he has weird geometric abs. Most of the time, though, it looks like he has a terrifying skeleton thing poking out of his torso - as if someone had inverted his muscles so all of the big parts are concave and all of the creases are convex.


what is wrong with your torso aaaaaah

That texture is all kinds of fucked. Anyone else have little visual hangups like this? we all know that the pineapple blocks in Super Mario World are speakers/intercoms

[grumpy]

Final Fantasy 13

Anime-like characters, anime-like story, anime-like dialogue. Ultra realistic graphics. That game just looked and felt wrong.

To be honest, I don't think I'd hate 13 so much if it looked like one of the recent "Tales of" games.

[ULTROS!]

Star Ocean 4's Edge:

[JGS]

Spiderman 3 had very good graphics and city details for an early 360 game.

However, the faces and character movement in the cutscenes were horribly atrocious.

[Shaffield]

were the battle animations in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon supposed to be clay figures or something?
this game was too ugly for me to finish, especially after replacing the gorgeous sprites from Sacred Stones.

[Lyphen]

Mass Effect 3's 'shitty character generator' NPCs versus player/party characters.

The demo's council sequence makes me wonder if Anderson and Shepard are the same species as everyone else.

[Salvadora]

This topic was made for Oblivion.

[bengraven]

beatenbyseconds

[StuBurns]

Team Nora in FFXIII look really stupid, and not fitting the world compared to their peers.

[Colonel Mustard]

Characters in Star Ocean IV.

They looked like those creepy japanese sex dolls.

[BadWolf]

The characters look pretty nightmare inducing during Assassins Creed 2's cutscenes.

[chickdigger802]

Pokemon ds over world look. No 8 way walk, low framerate. It's really odd IMO.

[Anteater]

For Mass effect games, some of the lighting condition + the character generator characters really made some of the models look inconsistent, Dragon age origins did a better job at it, while characters don't look as unique due to using the same assets/hair in dao, they look much more consistent.

Hair is often bad in most of the games, like the chick in Mirror's Edge:


duuude

[LiK]

Popeye Cloud

[Vulcano's assistant]

that fuzzy smear all over Okami that does not allow me to see the art.

[Tawpgun]

For some reason I HATED Crysis 2's visuals. I played the beta and did not like the way the game looked.
Can't really say why. I think it was the brightness maybe... something like that.

Didn't like Blacklight: Tango Downs art style either. It was super bland and gray, and everything was made really grainy and the whole interference/blue screen of death/static effects they had when taking damage were annoying.

[hayguyz]

The dudebros in Gears of War. Something about their proportions just creeps me out.

[The Boat]

To be honest, most games' graphics nowadays don't click for me.

I'm not super knowledgeable about the technical side of things, so I might be saying something silly, but the common practice of using piss-filters, bump mapping (or something along those lines) everywhere and loads of other exaggerated effects turn me off to the point of preferring last gen/older graphics to some extent. Oh and the fact that you can spot UE3 2 miles away so damn often.

Of course the biggest problem is bad art direction and design, but I guess that kind of goes without saying.

[Glass Rebel]

Borderlands is a butt-ugly game to me even though I love cel-shaded stuff. :-/

[Kerub]

Star Ocean 4's Edge:

Oh my god, NIGHTMARE FUEL!!

It looks like a mutated baby.

[Persona7]

Skyward Sword as a whole, everything is pixelated,blurry and muddy. The Image Quality is abysmal. I see what they were going for but it didn't work out at all.

It is a shame because all the cool art is underneath the ugly.

[Sethos]

Battlefield 3 hands down.

The game doesn't really have a style. While it has a beefy engine, the style of the game is bland beyond anything. It's so sterile and completely forgettable.

[perfectnight]

Pretty much anything that looks like Gears of War or those batman Arkham games. The new Zelda also looks like shit to me. Gears and Batman because the models look like they are made out of clay, and because they went overboard with the brown/grimdark/grey aesthetics. I hate how uniform the games look. As for Zelda SS, crappy sd wii graphics aside, the art has this really distasteful washed out look and the characters look incredibly weird and unappealing. Their heads are huge and the rest of their features are just weirdly disproportinate. It's a really bad mix of exaggerated and realistic.

And yeah BF3 art is kind of forgettable but at least it doesn't look like the games I mentioned.

[Alessandro]

Jungle Valley in Killzone 3



It seems off with the rest of the game.

[thuway]

Jungle Valley in Killzone 3 It seems off with the rest of the game.

There is so much wrong in your post its not even funny. The Jungle in Killzone 3 might be one of the most beautiful settings I've ever seen in an FPS.

[Hasardeur]

I'm trying to think of a game with stylized graphics (Wind Waker, Skyward Sword, Borderlands, Okami, Killer 7) that I dislike, but I don't think there's one

I don't like the anime look, so I guess the visuals of most JRPGs these days (bring back low-res sprites :( ) don't click with me.

[XANDER CAGE]

Just to be clear for some folks, I'm wondering a little more about specific details (like Vaan abs texture or Oblivion faces) rather than just, I dunno, games people think have bad graphics. Odd models, textures, etc.

[RoboPlato]

Most UE3 games still have a distinct "look" to them that never seems to mesh right. Characters and environments look like they're from totally separate planes of existance. I wish I could pinpoint the exact issue but it's noticeable for me in every UE3 game outside of Mirror's Edge. That's honestly why I was super impressed by Samaritan. Hopefully UE4 addresses whatever the problem is.

[godnorazi]

thats not a pineapple?

[perfectnight]

Jungle Valley in Killzone 3 It seems off with the rest of the game.

There's a MP map in the game that looks like this and I couldnt tell what was going on 90% of the time.

[dark10x]

For me, one great example is Castlevania - Lords of Shadows. The game itself is absolutely beautiful and most of the animation is excellent. That is, however, except the running animation. Yes, the one animation you see throughout your entire playtime simply looks like shit. There's no weight or connection to the ground and it ultimately ruins the feel of moving through the world. When coupled with a poor framerate the game just doesn't feel good to play which really does hurt ones enjoyment (at least for me).

[Meccanical]

Max Payne's face in Max Payne 1.

[Anteater]

There is so much wrong in your post its not even funny. The Jungle in Killzone 3 might be one of the most beautiful settings I've ever seen in an FPS.

Maybe it's the off screen pic and the calibration, but his screenshot does make it look terrible :lol, even the hand and the gun look ridiculous there!

[added_time]

The dudebros in Gears of War. Something about their proportions just creeps me out.

Very true. It honestly looks like they are playing a joke on gamers with that character design.

[prwxv3]

Skyward Sword. The characters are great and some instances the game overal looks great. But most other times the game looks terribad. Tunnel sections and the puke village most most notably.

[King of the Potato People]

The Mass Effect series, almost every time I see something that isn’t alien.

[prwxv3]

The Mass Effect series, almost every time I see something that isn’t alien.

I agree with this. All the alien races look great. The humans not so much.

[twisteddeeds]

Anteater said...

Hair is often bad in most of the games, like the chick in Mirror's Edge:

Reminds me of dennis hopper in the super mario movie... :(

[Bleep]

that fuzzy smear all over Okami that does not allow me to see the art.

Just in case you don't know, the Wii version of Okami has the paper filter removed. It looks very clean in Dolphin if you have a PC that is able to run it.

[Jokab]

While I appreciate the art as good art, it doesn't click with me. It doesn't make want to play the game, there's just something about it which I can't put my finger on.

[Anasui Kishibe]

Capcom's RE characters' legs/hips. They're bizarre, cylindrical logs with no muscles whatsoever

[Vulcano's assistant]

As beautiful as crysis is..
The back lens of the scope is butt-ugly

Red Dead Redemption SPOILER
Ouside the fact that I think John Marston couldn't have asked for an uglier son, the mustach and the hair makes everything worse. click here for the image

[Vanille]

Fucking putrid.

[malingenie]

Skyward Sword as a whole, everything is pixelated,blurry and muddy. The Image Quality is abysmal. I see what they were going for but it didn't work out at all. It is a shame because all the cool art is underneath the ugly.

There are moments of genius in SS art style and moments when it looks like crap and the art style actually hinders the IQ.

I found Twilight Princess to be a bigger offender, IMHO.

[joe2187]

It's just so ugly, the design is all strange and atrocious.

[Veal]

that fuzzy smear all over Okami that does not allow me to see the art.

You should play the Wii version. The paper filter has been reduced quite a bit. Still gorgeous though.
EDIT: Beaten!

[Flachmatuch]

http://www.lo-ping.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/max_payne_face1.jpg Max Payne's face in Max Payne 1.

More games should use friends/relatives/remote acquaintances of developers for character design. Made Max Payne one of the funniest games ever. Way too fucking awesome.

You should play the Wii version. The paper filter has been reduced quite a bit. Still gorgeous though.

Still too much filtering imo. No idea how it looks on the PS3, but that may be the best way to play Okami? I can't try it, I only have an import for the PS2, but iirc the Wii version looked even worse for some reason. Doesn't matter though, awesome game (and plays a lot better with the DS2 than with the Wiimote imo).

[KevinCow]

Enemy monsters in Japanese character action games, like DMC, Ninja Gaiden, and Bayonetta. They're usually way over-designed. Throw claws and appendages out everywhere, a couple angel wings, but that wasn't enough so add a few more angel wings... They just keep adding nonsense until it becomes clusterfuck to look at.

[ZombiePlatypus]

Final Fantasy 13 Anime-like characters, anime-like story, anime-like dialogue. Ultra realistic graphics. That game just looked and felt wrong. To be honest, I don't think I'd hate 13 so much if it looked like one of the recent "Tales of" games.

I don't think it's fair to just label XIII's plot as "anime." There's a lot of anime with mature, competent stories intended for older audiences. XIII's story is just bad. Were you trying to suggest that the plot was childish and the visuals should have been more kiddy to match that? I personally don't the think those gorgeous graphics should have accommodated that mess of a story at all. The story should have just been better to be on the same caliber as the visuals.


Anyway, as for my entry:

Fallout games. Everything about these games is an uncanny-valley, hideous mess. To the point where I can't play them.

[phantomsnake]

thats not a pineapple?

Hold on, those are not supposed to look like speakers?