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At what point do graphics become "good enough" for you?

I like games to look clearly rendered but high quality. I would love if we got to a point where most games can look like The Order 1886 at native res and 60fps.
 
Most of the responses are in line with what I expected, given the title. There are of course fantastic games on very old consoles, so limiting what you'd play like that seems silly.

I'm going to pretend the question was this: "What is the weakest console you would judge to have a library that is on average not ugly?"

And in response, I'd say the NES for 2D graphics and the PSP for 3D graphics. Games before NES are pretty much all ugly with very few exceptions, and 3D at PS1 level or lower is ugly around 70% of the time.
 
Final Verdict said:
I was playing Turok on N64 a couple days ago, and was surprised by how good it still looks, but the controls for it were almost unplayable!! That is when I realized just how big of a deal Halo CE was when it came to nailing down the right control scheme for FPS games.
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Dunno, you get used to controls. Played Turok 2 with a friend back in the day as well and we both though the controls were ok.
 
eeh dunno, psvita kinda pushes what i can tolerate graphics wise. i cant play old games now, i just think to myself "what im doing with my life" everytime i try to play an old/ bad graphics/ retro/ whatever games
 
When the art style isn't butt.

My big problems are the N64's marbled textures and textures not loading for a while. Shadow and foliage pop-in is distracting too. If the frame-rate is consistent, I can handle a low one. But if it's high for most of the time, then hitches at bizarre areas, I get a little irritated.
 
We're fast approaching that i feel. This gen i think will be good enough for me. Of course nobody is really pushing their budgets to make their games with the highest possible graphics, except for certain devs who have something to prove. But when they do, they get really close to being the pinnacle i feel of what games should look like visually. But then we get into performance.
 
If I can play and understand what's going on and what to do, that's enough for me. For example I can play and enjoy Asteroid, Breakout and Pong, and these games are hardly graphically intensive.
 
I can pretty much play any game no matter the graphical fidelity, although some take getting used to at first like certain N64, PS, and PS2 games.

Artstyle plays a much bigger role on whether or not I can stomach a game's visuals.
 
2D: SNES.

3D: Gamecube / Xbox / PS2 era, but in HD and at 60FPS.
 
While I appreciate progress, late 7th generation was my good enough. All that's left was getting better framerate and resolution out of that, and improving small details, like cloth and hair physics, and IQ.
 
I can play 2D games without any worry about the graphics, but I get bored because I always feel like it's simplistic compared to the 3D games I grew up on, even if it's probably way more complex in terms of gameplay mechanics compared to many of the games I play.

Early 3D like PS1 and N64 era is bearable depending on the game, but I think many PS2 games are just unplayable, and that goes for a very small amount of OG Xbox games (stuff like Halo 2 comes to mind, although that's still somewhat bearable).
 
Later or just well-done PS2 stuff is fine to me. I played Gran Turismo 4 via component recently on a big flatscreen and thought it looked beautiful.
 
Completely arbitrary. When I was younger I could play anything, but after playing on PS3 for a long time I saw a PS2 game and was like "TF is this?" There are games that I've missed on PS2, PS1 and SNES that I'm just not going back to because of the graphics. Same as games on portable systems.

At the same time, there are exceptions, usually related to nostalgia. I'm playing Suikoden I because it's the first game I ever beat. Suikoden II is up next because I always wanted it as a child and could never find it. I'll eventually go back and beat Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 because I already beat FE4 and want to wrap up the other major SNES FE. But these are few and far in between.

I could sit down and work this out, but I realized that my backlog would be gigantic if I did so, and I'm having enough problems playing what I have. So, I'm mostly okay with basically only moving forward--plus exceptions can be made if the art style is stylized.
 
I generally prefer at least 1990 visual quality.
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I can go back and play N64 and PS1 games anytime. While I prefer higher resolutions and framerates, they aren't important enough to stop me from playing fun games.
 
16-Bit era is perfect for sprites. Genesis, SNES and NeoGeo still look great.

3D games benefit more from technology upgrades, but even PS1/N64 games are still fun and playable.
 
No such thing as good enough.
My cutoff point for 3D is basically US Dreamcast launch, though. 2D cutoff would be NES for consoles, earlier for arcade.
 
PSWii60 gen was good enough for me.

Those visuals with 1080/60 and full AA is all good for me to be able to thoroughly enjoy a game that plays well. I'd rather they scale the visuals back in order to achieve that is possoble.

I know that will never happen.

edit: I may be misunderstanding the thread? If it's what I'd accept to be playable? Dreamcast/PS2/Xbox/Cube level. For 3D anyway. For 2D, 16-bit is fine.
 
I've enjoyed games on every console. I want games to continue to get better, not give up on improving. We have the technology.

Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon are both very playable and enjoyable to me still, but video games would be in a lousy state if we stopped there and said it was good enough.

I'm not a graphics whore, but picking some arbitrary stopping point doesn't make any sense to me.
 
Sprite based graphics are easy to look at still ,but man are PS1 / PS2 games ugly as hell these days. Even some PS3 games I've looked back at are ugly.

Made so because of the horrible aliasing and shimmering and all that jazz. Really this is the first console generation where the screen IQ has very nice on a majority of the titles. So really this is the first generation where graphically I have been completely at ease.
 
Depends on the game. 95% of games in the PS2 era looked fine to me. Just give me HD at 60fps. Racing sims are the only games I care about at the bleeding edge of graphics.
 
PassiveObserver said:
I was satisfied with Dreamcast/PS2 level graphics. After that point it's all about the art direction.
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Same here. I'm still impressed every now then playing old Dreamcast games through VGA. The last game that really floored me visually was Silent Hill 3 to be honest.
 
When I play Killzone Shadow Fall or Drive Club I think. Yeah. We've finally got there. Anything more then that is just cherry on the cake.
 
it depends a lot on the artsyle, especially 3D games so the graphics can be really good but if the art style is bad I won't appreciate them
 
This gen 3D graphics are starting to look good enough to me.
But i'd still like better AA and a solid good framerate.

I enjoyed n64, PS1, PS2, etc, games, but the graphic were disgusting imo.
 
Around drive club is enough for me. If they can enhance the pop ups and at 60fps, then I am done and happy of what we were able to achieve in terms of graphics.
 
When I can't distinguish the real world from what I see on the screen. Lighting will likely be the greatest contribution to this, I think.
 
Since I easily get motion sick: When they dont inflict physical pain. I rember playing Half Life 2 and having to nearly puke after an hour.
For 2D 16bit will do.
 
Ethelwulf said:
Honestly, I didn't use to care at all. I just played. I now care though :( Half Life 2 and L4D 2 are damn good enough IMO.
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Why is it a bad thing to care? The technology that pushes graphics also enables advancements in gameplay and new ways to play games (occulus rift for example). Gaming wouldn't advance in any meaningful way if we stopped caring about graphics.
 
I still play N64 games, so I have no problem at all with simple graphics. I just need to know what I'm looking at. After a few minutes, I actually don't give any shit about graphics once the gameplay got me hooked.
 
Piggus said:
And you'll probably think that again in another 6 or 7 years. :P We still have so far to go with graphics.
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Yeah. I agree. But right now. That level of graphics is good enough for me. I'm satisfied with that level.
 
2D - SNES (but I can tolerate 8bit caliber visuals if game is good enough or its a stylistic choice that works)
3D - PS2/Dreamcast (but I can tolerate PS1 caliber visuals if game is good)

I enjoy excellent graphics and appreciate what my PS4 can do versus my older systems, but graphics are not the only or most important thing to me.
 
PS2 graphics are more than enough to me. Graphics do little to the genres I like playing the most and I am not into "photo realism", so whatevis.
 
If it at least looks as good as uncharted 2. That game came out 6 years ago and if your big budget game can't at least match it (not regarding frames/resolution) then your graphical development team needs some work.

Of course that's for now, I expect much better as the years go by.
 
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