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Games that tastelessly overuse graphical gimmicks
- Thread starter lazygecko
- Start date
Mihael Mello Keehl
Banned
Whats with all this whiteness???
Do you mean...aliasing? that's not a graphical gimmick. That's a limitation of hardwares capability to render software. Unless you mean specularity? Specular highlights are an effect to make things appear to have a gleam or shine to them.
Like this
edit: actually heres an example from the actual game in question.
Do you mean like how the pillars in this area look shiny?
I don't notice it as much in pictures it's more during movement in the game. If you go to the dino butt area(or any lava area really) the lava has this glow that extends well above where the actual lava is. Also it's in the light of your character, if you walk around in the Duke's Archives and look at the lighted area surrounding your character you'll see this kind of shimmering silver.
Color grading has been used in film for at least fifty years. It's very useful for setting mood provided that it's used responsibly. Writing off the technique as a whole is pretty silly.
Poimandres
Member
It was kind of part of K&L2's visual "style" though, with the whole game looking like it was filmed through grainy cameras. I actually quite liked it in this game, but can see why people would hate it.
Lumpy Onion
Member
In Square's Bahamut Lagoon there are these colored transparent clouds and mists that seem to be in nearly ever single area in the game. It's like they saw the cool fog in Chrono Trigger's 600 AD sky and used variations of it everywhere. It's really quite gaudy and overused in Bahamut Lagoon.
People involved in art direction use color grading because they want the scene to have a certain color palette. You may not like the results, but it's a pretty simple, understandable artistic choice.
MAX PAYMENT
Member
Right. I'm not writing it off, I genuinely want to know how, when, and why it's used - for good or evil. Lol
James Cameron uses significant color grading in many of his night scenes. You know, that blue tint in Terminator 2.
Valve uses color grading to great effect in Half-Life 2 and its episodes. ..but one of my favorite things about Valve is how restrained they are with graphics effects that other developers abuse.
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
Killzone 2. Vaseline filter. Or waaaaaay too much post process effects being used.
"Hey, look how amazing our low poly, crappy textured game looks!"
"Hey, look how amazing our low poly, crappy textured game looks!"
DOWN
Banned
Nah, people love Killzone 2 because it is one of the most CGI looking games. Killeen 3 looked way more like a game because they killed some really good filters. I love the CGI look they nailed.
toastyToast
Member
Not on PC they weren't. I could watch a 5 minute cutscene to transition to the next area or I could quit to the main menu and load that same scene in 10 seconds. Killed my urge to play New York Minute mode entirely and fucked up the replay value of an otherwise great game.
RurouniZel
Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
Wind Waker HD has some pretty nasty bloom. At least it has selfies.
Windwaker HD is the one game I can think of where all that bloom is actually appropriate considering how much water there is all around reflecting light everywhere.
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
No, it doesn't look like CGI. It has "that filmic look" because of the overabundance of blur and other post processing effects they used to distract people from the low poly count and average textures. Don't get me wrong, it still looked good, but it didn't take long to see through it.
Funny thing is, I actually like a softer image in my games. I LOVED how the Ratchet and Clank games had that soft image quality to them. I prefer it to a really sharp image. Just looks more natural. I just think Killzone 2 overdid it.
The Order looks like it has it just right. ZombiU did it really well too.
SmackAttack
Member
Yeah Battlefield, we get it, the GoPro on the soldier's head is dirty as fuck. Very realistic and cinematic.
(Although it looked kinda cool and wasn't overused yet when Battlefield 3 was the only one making extensive use of the effect)
This is the biggest offender for me right now. I stopped playing Battlefield 3 because of this and didn't even pick up 4. It's also part of the reason I don't like the Frostbite engine because most games that use it have something similar to this. NFS: Most Wanted had one of the brightest suns in a game it made it really distracting at times. I really can't stand this and hope it's not in Battlefront. Oh please don't be in Battlefront.This. Usually I'm a fan of post-process effects, but this is too much.
DOWN
Banned
Chubzdoomer
Banned
The people who made that game must have never actually driven a car (or stepped outside for that matter).
I think subsurface scattering is next. Get ready for human characters who look closer to wax than actual human skin.
Subsurface scattering is what makes skin look real, it just has to be done right.
I have my TV properly calibrated, and then adjusted it based on the brightness setting recommended in the game.
That cave area in MGS3 HD was almost entirely pitch black. I had to raise the brightness on my TV to actually see.
In game brightness settings recommend that you basically enable a bit of black crush where the lower 8 blacks are all solid 0,0,0. In that cave area that makes it nearly impossible to see.
After adjusting the brightness it's definitely better, but if you play the rest of the game with a brightness that makes that cave section reasonable, it's entirely washed out.
Yeah. However I don't think one looks significantly worse than the other, just different and not representative of skin. Hopefully with pbr, good skin shading will be more standardized and handled correctly instead of letting artists fudge their way through skin shaders.
DOWN
Banned
Piss Filters
Bump mapping
Chromatic Aberration
Bloom
SSAO
I think subsurface scattering is next. Get ready for human characters who look closer to wax than actual human skin.
Nah, subsurface scattering is overall great. It brings skin closer to real than before.
Old Lara skin vs new Lara skin is a good example. New Lara has a better skin tone in various lights.
Old Lara's skin is pretty flat and plastic sheen, rather than warm and flushed:
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
DOWN
Banned
Exactly. More games need it. That and PBR.
Unity probably has my favorite look for characters during cutscenes. Their faces are so alive.
Lightning Count
Member
DOWN
Banned
Is that so?
I would stack Beyond Two Souls against almost anything.
What a beautiful shot that didn't come from the console and was part of press kit promotion
Here's a pair of full res screen captures from an actual console that don't look as hot stretched to 1080p. Beyond was amazing, but no, it does not look like Crysis 3 on PC. You guys are killin' it.
Lightning Count
Member
Were you always this bitter and jaded?
Seriously, your hate for consoles is only going to piss people off.
I think my problem with human faces is they make the light that shines on the iris way to unrealistic. Also i'm glad to see we aren't making the sclera 100% blinding white in games for the most part. This pretty much happens with all the faces i've seen in this thread. Devs don't really take that into account and i wish they did.
DOWN
Banned
What? I only own consoles. PS3/360/PS4/ONE
I'm just rightfully impressed by Crysis 3 and keep getting contested for an accurate comment. I am jealous of the quality in a PC pic. Why the hell not?
He's right though. The one you posted was a bullshot, and he posted some off the console screencaps.
I think that Beyond's assets are capable of looking as good as that bullshot, but that's not what you get on console and unfortunately that's currently the only way to run the game. No need to get all ad hominem bud.
JimboJones
Member
While the little lens artifacts are silly, i've defenitly been in situations when driving where the sun was so bright my eyes where watering, especially after rain and it's also reflecting off the ground. But then they could have added a sun visor to pull down, just had the character wear shades or just not include it because not everything needs to be realistic lol.
Exactly. More games need it. That and PBR.
Viva la subsurface scattering!
It's rare for cutscenes to be one of the reasons I stop playing the game after a couple of hours, but that's what happened with Max Payne 3.
I was surprised Far Cry 3 SSAO hasn't been mentioned yet.
This was distracting in Deus Ex Human Revolution as well.
Theatrhythm is a pretty good example of the paper doll effect looking weird. It works ok with the style of the sprites, I guess. But it's very obvious.
Wind Waker HD has some pretty nasty bloom. At least it has selfies.
The bloom in NintendoLand, this, and MK8 are all gross.
This argument comes up for a lot of different effects, but it always rings hollow for me. Most game cameras don't behave anything like eyes in the first place.
Dr. Buni
Member
The only gimmick I can think of that annoys me a bit is bloom, specially in colorful games like Wind Waker. It makes my eyes hurt like hell. In games like Twilight Princess and Demon's Souls, it doesn't bother me that much, because those games aren't colorful enough.
Well, it is Zelda, you can't say anything negative about Zelda U without the fans jumping at your throat. The funny thing is that the fans will surely hate the game once it is released, as they always do with every new entry in the series.
DOWN
Banned
Yep. Game visuals are heavily tied to cinema camera conventions for many reasons and effects, so people calling out certain lens effects as 'not like real vision' never fit the discussion to me.
The year was 1997. Someone in some region of Kyoto, Japan was working on Nintendo's long-awaited follow-up to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Nintendo 64. It was to be the first 3D Zelda game. This man was working on the game's User Interface. He thought long and hard about how to use the User Interface to aptly express to users just how three-dimensional the game is.
Inspiration struck. What if the pause menu was placed inside a cube, and one rotates the cube to get to various sub-screens? What if each transition took over a second? What if, cumulatively, everyone who was ever to play Ocarina of Time would rack up thousands upon thousands of years of waiting for these menu transitions to happen, just so they could see how three-dimensional the game is?
THREE. DIMENSIONS.
Inspiration struck. What if the pause menu was placed inside a cube, and one rotates the cube to get to various sub-screens? What if each transition took over a second? What if, cumulatively, everyone who was ever to play Ocarina of Time would rack up thousands upon thousands of years of waiting for these menu transitions to happen, just so they could see how three-dimensional the game is?
THREE. DIMENSIONS.
First person shooters especially. Weapon placement alone is a ridiculous compromise given how little vertical field of view most games give you. I understand why it's done that way, but we passed "realistic eye-like camera system" a long time ago.
It's only a matter of time before games add this effect after looking into the sun.
Next up: Eye floaters! Blue field entoptic phenomenon!
It's only a matter of time before games add this effect after looking into the sun.
Next up: Eye floaters! Blue field entoptic phenomenon!
I already see my own floaters when looking up at an in-game scy. However It would be satisfying to finally be able to look at a floater without it moving with your vision.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
LOL @ that Jim Power parallax. Whoever did that completely misunderstood how parallax is supposed to work, haha. Too bad because the graphics are actually very beautiful, but I got a headache watching a minute of footage. Yikes.
Honestly, in LotF, the dirty lens effect is way, way more annoying than the CA ever was. I hear they added a setting to remove the CA via patch, but I hope that removes the stupid dirt/condensation effect too. Can't stand that shit, especially in games where you aren't even wearing a modern fucking helmet.
Better stay clear of Lords of the Fallen then, lol.
Honestly, in LotF, the dirty lens effect is way, way more annoying than the CA ever was. I hear they added a setting to remove the CA via patch, but I hope that removes the stupid dirt/condensation effect too. Can't stand that shit, especially in games where you aren't even wearing a modern fucking helmet.
It's actually intended to be played with glasses that have one polarized lens. If you were to do so, you would actually get a 3D effect where the parallax actually looked appropriate.
Spring-Loaded
Member
Knew what this was before I clicked. Just thinking about it makes me nauseous.
Fascinating. I'd love to see that properly one day. I feel terrible for all the kids who played it without that though.
Dictator93
Member
It's only a matter of time before games add this effect after looking into the sun.
Next up: Eye floaters! Blue field entoptic phenomenon!
Unless I am mistaken.. doesnt some game have eye floaters... like chronicles of riddick when using eye shine or crouching? I forget...
Portugeezer
Gold Member
The absolute worst:
Mass Effect 2.
Similarly, I really dislike when games grey out the screen as you lose health...