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Technically impressive games with terrible art style
- Thread starter egocrata
- Start date
lvl99 Pixel
Member
Yep.The elder scrolls games have some of the ugliest npcs and some very evidently photo textures poorly wrapped to geometry
Define good. Im not a fan of Gears style, but its very consistent and competent. Also even if you dont think it was good, the OP was asking for terrible
This is a good choice.
Borderlands isn't really technically impressive.
Also, if you don't like how the finished game looked, you should have seen it before.
Its a GBA game and there are barely any pics of it on the interwebs 😁
Strangelove77
Member
This was a bad idea for a thread.
ridiculously chunky characters aside, gears 3 has some stunning art design full of gorgeous vistas and neat architecture. its art has also been incredibly cohesive while becoming ever more refined
gears 1 and 2 are tough to go back to i'll give you that. except for certain underground sections in 2
Cannon Goose
Member
Yep, this is it. The game has heaps of options and runs great on a variety of hardware, but it's just so... Not good looking.
FormallyFamicom
Member
I remember that Wii FPS game The Conduit got maaaad hype from the IGN Nintendo guys about how much they were pushing the Wii technically. The game ultimately looked and played like shit though.
Eeehehehehe!
No. Those Forerunner levels in Halo 4 were better than anything Bungie ever did. I didn't like Halo 4's outdoor levels at the time but the indoor ones were some of most amazing I had seen till that time.
Phoenix RISING
Banned
ALL
of the Tenchu games.
of the Tenchu games.
Seriously, Horizon Zero Dawn and terrible art style? I'd like to see a real explanation for this.
Oblivion is a prime example for great technical achievement at the time but bad art direction. It's especially apparent when you compare Skyrim with it.
rackham
Banned
Like what? I wouldn't even say the order is technically impressive since it's so limited in what you're doing.
Curious about your reasoning for Horizon.
Thomas Kinkade meets Michael Bay's Transformers. I can see how someone could find it garish and over designed. Im not a fan of some of the character designs and lighting choices, but I wouldn't say it is terrible.
I mean, if we're going off visuals, then The Order is impressive. You're right in that the Order is a very limited game (and I dislike it for that reason) but the art quality in that game is damn good.
As for why I don't like the style, I really dislike hyper-realism. The Order's main style was realism and it wasn't for me. I know it's not fair to judge a game on what it's not, but it didn't take the steampunk-tech angle far enough for my liking.
Buddy Mcpuddy
Member
Viva Pinata gets a pass, but you honestly don't think Nuts and Bolts is a visually appealing game do you?.
In Nuts and Bolts Rare was able to take their hideous designs from Banjo Kazooie and somehow make them even more boxy, insipid and grotesque.
pixelation
Member
I do not agree with this reasoning at all (and people use it frequently) to knock on TO1886's presentation. They had a vision for that they wanted to acomplish and did it masterfully, not every game needs to be open world in order for their tech prowess to be appreciated.
Also... the art direction was quite good too (and the actual game as well).
pixelation
Member
The graphics are obviously enormously impressive technically, and the robot creatures and human faces look pretty great by themselves, but like The Witcher 3 when you are actually playing the art style doesn't read very clearly for either gameplay OR emotional imapct, they've gotta cover the screen in HUD crud and insert cutscenes. Contrast to Destiny, GTA V, Uncharted 4, or Breath of the Wild which are masterful at that kind of thing.
neurosisxeno
Member
Uhhhhh. From day 1 WoW has literally been the opposite of this topics original question. It's a game that has never even tried to be technically impressive while having phenomenal art style/aesthetics to make up for it. Compare WoW to something like Rift--a game that had a lot of very impressive effects, but was a brown and grey mess that was terrible to look at.
capitalCORN
Member
Blizzards hasn't been top of the line since Warcraft 2.
neurosisxeno
Member
My point exactly. The question was which games are "technically" impressive with terrible art. Blizzards design philosophy is to make games that have great art direction but aren't technically impressive. And they do a damn good job in that regard. I would consider them a company that is consistently the opposite of the original question posed.
I thought it looked fine overall, environments were pretty good but nothing jaw dropping. The characters were pretty bad, though. Unappealing designs, too dark and far away to see them in detail outside cutscenes so they all looked kinda generic. I don't even know exactly what art style I would have wanted, but it pretty much isn't what we got.
Arkham Knight looks really damn good, though. First game this gen to really "wow" me. I didn't like it as much as Asylum as a game, though.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
The Order has some of the best PP and PBR implementation in a video game, it's literally one of the few examples of games that I would say is genuinely good at mimicking the look of CGI and that's absolutely because they polished the visuals to an obsessive degree at the expense of every other aspect of the game.
When has Cave Story been technically impressive? Lol.
The topic is about terrible art-styles.
Neither Witcher 3 nor Horizon fit that bill. Even if you think their technical ambition exceed their art style.
I guess I consider WoW (or possibly Warcraft 3) to be the origin of the generic cartoon fantasy style that is the default of all mobile games for example. It communicates gameplay but I find it impossible to have any sort of immersion or emotional response.
Drillary Clinton
Banned
Right. Impressive how good that game looked and it showed the strengths of the engine but lord the character models were abominations
I guess I was focusing on games that were EXTREMELY technically impressive to me, and finding ones with an overall art style that prevented me from enjoying them. I could probably come up with a much longer list of horribly ugly games that had something technically impressive.
What?
deadscreensky
Member
People complain a lot about the characters in Gears of War and that's fine, but I think it's crazy to suggest the series hasn't always featured gorgeous environments.
Red Faction Guerrilla (particularly on a modern PC) actually has some nice environmental visuals too. It's Mars so it's nothing particularly varied or gorgeous -- no 'destroyed beauty' here -- but there's a specific look to the lighting and environment haze which can be really nice to look at. I wouldn't put it up against Gears, but I think focusing just on the homely characters does it a bit of an injustice.
I honestly can't think of too many technically impressive games just as a starting point. Terrible art styles are easy to find -- let's go with Final Fantasy 15, Street Fighter 4, Super Mario Odyssey -- but not many of these games are also impressive on any sort of technical level. Maybe something in the Tekken series? When was the last time those games looked impressive?
Red Faction Guerrilla (particularly on a modern PC) actually has some nice environmental visuals too. It's Mars so it's nothing particularly varied or gorgeous -- no 'destroyed beauty' here -- but there's a specific look to the lighting and environment haze which can be really nice to look at. I wouldn't put it up against Gears, but I think focusing just on the homely characters does it a bit of an injustice.
I honestly can't think of too many technically impressive games just as a starting point. Terrible art styles are easy to find -- let's go with Final Fantasy 15, Street Fighter 4, Super Mario Odyssey -- but not many of these games are also impressive on any sort of technical level. Maybe something in the Tekken series? When was the last time those games looked impressive?
WhiskerFrisker
Member
nkarafo
Member
Yeah, i mean, i don't get what's wrong with Flink? The game looked amazing to me. It's like an ultra-detailed Amiga game.
neurosisxeno
Member
Not even close. Most of the generic cartoon fantasy you see in mobile games is for cost and logistical reasons--cheaper to get people to draw a bunch of static sprites or variations of such than pay people to make hyper-realistic textures and very demanding 3D models that will completely destroy the hardware/battery. That look definitely predates WoW as well. It's probably more rooted in JRPG's than anything.
I wouldn't call WoW cartoony. It's stylized. The art direction in WoW is actually phenomenal considering it essentially changes with each expansion, and each expansion has a very distinct style--on top of the fact that each race even the non playable ones has its own style. Blizzard put a lot of effort into the aesthetics of WoW.
This is the worst attempt I have read trying to downplay those games. The troll quality is just as bad as all those stupid threads lately.
TheCthultist
Member
From what little hands on time ive gotten with it, Nidhogg 2. Still just as fun to play and maybe even a little more technically advanced than the original, but god that art style is hard to look at.
BigBoss007
Member
Crysis.
/thread
/thread
I dunno, that level of detail at 60fps on a handheld is pretty impressive to me. I can't think of any other similar type of game that comes close on mobile hardware.
DrBillRiverman
Member
To be fair though, style is pretty subjective.
Personally I think the art is pretty middling in Both.
I've seen less of Witcher so maybe its more impressive in game, but it certainly looks very generic fantasy to me.
Horizon has a beautiful world, but the character and creature design is very offputting for my sensibilities. Especially the creature design.
If I had to pick one game to fit the OPs bill... Then I'd probably go for Killzone Shadow Fall.
Killzone 2 heavy grey aesthetic was oppressive as fuck and really fit the world. Everything in Shadow Fall was just... bleh.
Horizon has a dynamic hud option that works beautifully. I wish all games had one like it. Not sure what "doesn't read clearly for either gameplay or emotional impact" actually means.
This can't be a real complaint. Especially about the HUD in Horizon and I haven't even played that game.
Stiflers Mom
Banned
Seriously, Horizon Zero Dawn and terrible art style? I'd like to see a real explanation for this.
Oblivion is a prime example for great technical achievement at the time but bad art direction. It's especially apparent when you compare Skyrim with it.
I am in the same camp, though..
Horizon looks looks incredibly bland compared to how well it is done technically.
Off course it's not "horrible". It's just so so good in one department (the technical side), that its actual design comes off as a little bit uninspired.
TheRedSnifit
Member
People don't like how Crysis looks? What?
Console warriors? At least they aren't claiming you need a $6000 GPU to run it anymore . . .
Console warriors? At least they aren't claiming you need a $6000 GPU to run it anymore . . .
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