Really, whats wrong with game industry nowadays? Did every art director became blind or brain damanged? Lense flares, dirty screens, unfocused blur vision, vignette (corners darkening). bad gamma with washed out colors, and other ugly, unrealistic, immersion braking, eye bleeding effects everywhere!
This crap started in Star Trek by JJ Abrams, lenseflares was ugly and was everywhere, then it was on YOUTUBE, crappy CS Source and COD video montages with Skillex brostep (some still think its a dubstep, but whatever) made by 13 years old kids with no taste and brains became popular several years ago, these vidoes was full of awfull post screen effects such as lense flares, overkill bloom, washed out colors and so... also there was ENB mods for San Andreas and Skyrim, which by default looks good, but kids loved to tweak it to extemes that makes them looks ugly and unrealistic like crap, and this thing also became popular - then it seems like game devs decided to appeal to this 13- years old gamers and started to copy all this ugliness in game.
Few of the worst example of this stupid trend is Battlefiled 3, Syndicate, Hitman Absolution, Metro Last Light, Medalf of Honor 2 2012, Crysis 2, Dead Island (no lenseflares, but really ugly bloom and vignette) and there are more, and what make it even worse - most of them 1st person (keep this in mind, this is important!).
Lets for a second think what all the 1st person games all about? Its about SEEING GAME WORLD WITH YOU OWN EYES like you see it in reality!
One of the most important aspects of 1st person games is IMMERSION and REALISM! And i dont mean that everything you see in game world should be uber realistic, i mean that WHE WAY YOU SEE anything in game world should BE REALISTiC.
Now lets talk about dirt on screen, lenseflare and other crappy effects.
Does they look realistic????? Nooooo!
They called lenselfares and camera dirt for a reason - this is reason that it only sutiable for cameras and their lenses. Camera lenses can get dirty and can show lense flares- your eyes however not camera lenses, they will never get dirty, and you will never see lenseflares. There is very little possiblity however - when your eyes are really wet and aint fully opened them and keeping them unfocused, you can see some little flares, but thats it and you dont play like blind in games, in games your eyes always open and dont even blink for a second.
Dirty cam efffect should not exist in any case in FPS games, eyes aint dirty! It could be ok in some game where char wearing helmet all the time, but yet again in rea life ditry helmet screen obstruct vision, so people tend to clean it up and remove any annoying dirty from vision. No mattter if char in game wearing helmet or not, his vision is always dirty, you cant blink (expect for Alone in Dark 2008 it the only game i remember where you can blink to clear your eyes), cant clean your helmet so its really getting annoying as more as you play.
Same about other effects, such as vignette, unrealistic colors, flares etc.
It looks bad. it looks annoying, it looks unrealistic, its impossible to see anything like this by eyes and in FPS games you play as EYES, not as camer, its not third person game with camera behind shoulders!
In some games there even more stupid thing, such as weird comic overlay in recent crappy Call o Juarez (Btw, Techland, thanks for ruining series completely, 1st 2 games was really good, 3rd was no good, 4 is just awful) and there is no in game options to turn of crap like this.
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No let me speak about Dying Ligh - i was looking forward to buy this game and was thinking about is as true Dead Island 2 (not that riptide lazy done crap), but when i saw screenshots with dirty screen (dirty eyes really ?), washed out brown colors, vignette, extreme bloom and really ugly aura around everything to to unfocus blur (not sure how this effect called reminds me poorly prnted pictures or bad tv screens, where every edge has aura of 2 colors at both sides, i looks like offset of some colors was shifted\displaced and they was printed few pixels left or right wrong) - and this really turns me off from buying ths game.
I will not buy it untill this ugly post effects removed completely or if devs will confirm that where will be GFX option that will allow to turn off all ugly and unreaslitc on screen effects one by one and that there would not be prerendered cut-scenes with such effects that cant be turned off.
And there are many thousands of people who will avoid this game as well for same reason!
Please Techland, stop making your game ugly by post fx, do internet research about what people think of colorgrading, lenseflares, dirty cams, vignette and other effects like this in games - most of people hate them trying to find the way to disable that crap in games and play games with realistc colors and look, and yet you ignoring this and keep asking for troubles and forcing this ugly post fx nobody needs and almost nobody will like, expect for 13 years old ♥♥♥♥♥, but arent this game is 17+ ? Why should you care about 13 years old players if you games for 17+ age group which has better taste and not a good opinion about such effects?
Please, remove it from game until its too late and understand that many many people dont like, especially in 1st person games!