Jimquisition: The Best Looking Game of This Generation

[Terminate421]

I could agree, however there are some exceptions to the cause of how things look.

Metroid Prime is by far one of the best games that still looks good. I played it for a bit last night and while the ground is very blocky at a distance. The animations and beams look fucking Solid. Even Samus's face looks convincing by today's standards. Besides that, color is all over the place, one minute your in haunted ruins full of browns, oranges, and darkness, the next you are in a jungle with cool greens and blues. The Sequels are much the same

Rayman: Origins is a game that traded 3D visuals for something someone would have done with an Art Tablet, because of this, it will age solidly. When I played it, it flowed great and looks terrific and colorful.

Halo: Reach is a game that will definitley age well. Textures may look typical at times but underneath that, there is one of the most colorful "serious" shooters out there. You'd have to be on meth to not see the amount of well done effort that was put forth into colors and explosions alone. Gun fire from Alien and human weapons seems other worldly and then we have Forge World

While Fallout 3 isn't exactly perfect in graphics (I'd give it like a 7/10 in terms of that) there is one thing that Bethesda really honed in on:

No its not dark gritty realism. Its the use of atmosphere to drive up ones graphics, this method was seen quite well in the following game which NO-ONE would expect a horror game to have. A fine mixture of Glowing Blues that go with Oranges or Yellows.

And BEFORE you type in "Oh Dead Space wasn't a horror game! It wasn't scary like Amnesia! Which you should totally play because it's an Indie game!" Did you even pay attention to the hallway at all?

One the second chapter there is a hallway which has a flat escalator and on the wall is a moving billboard which keeps flashing white and red fast as hell. Well if you walk by it, some of the add begins to shine on both Isaac and the Floor behind him, showing his shadow.

I agree with Jim that Viva Pinata does look good, but one must not ignore other titles with great graphics decisions.

 

[VeryOddGamer]

Team Fortress 2 is a nice-looking game that I think will look nice for quite some time. And it's a western FPS, the genre that seems to be leading the grimdark graphics style.

 

[Hollyday]

Just finished replaying Jade Empire and was genuinely surprised to find that it still looks absolutely gorgeous. Way better than Mass effect 1 and Dragon age: origins, and simply for the reason that it's so brightly coloured and, well, pretty. The backdrops (trees covered in cherry blossom, floating palaces, flying machines painted like iridescent insects) are beautiful.

 

[Eric the Orange]

Oh, COME ON Jim. You may not be the sharpest knife in the draw, but normally you aren't beaten to what you're saying by extra credits by *this* much. http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/graphics-vs.-aesthetics

See that? Season 2, episode 16. Over 50 weeks ago. 50 weeks! Almost a year. Ab-surd. *sigh* Oh well. Guess the actual content wasn't bad though. Even if extra credits did do it better.

EDIT: look at this! Yahtzee managed this in 2009 http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/6372-The-Conduit

Not saying Jim's point isn't relevant, but this really is leaving it late.

I dunno, I like seeing different people covering the same topic. It shows different styles of journalism. Kind of like watching the Bollywood version of a western culture film. It shows the same thing through a lens of some one else.

 

[LazyAza]

Yeah I think in under a decade from now most people are going to look back at this generation and think of it the same way many do the 90s. Where it took a very long time for people to realize all the sad attempts at being "dark and edgey" for dark and edgeys sake was absurdly misplaced.

Gears of War was a fun series but I will never want to play those games in the distant future like I do my classic PS2 titles or PC games because the visual art direction was awful from start to finish.

 

[Ranorak]

The Best Looking Game of This Generation

The Jimquisition takes a break from discussing consumer shenanigans to focus a little on the games themselves.

Watch Video

Nice video!

But why, WHY did you have to end the credits with TWW's Sailing song.
Now I wanna sail the seas of Hyrule again, but I don't have the time!

Curse you, CURSE YOU, I say.

 

[Active Schizophrenic]

No love for Okami in your last gen section?

Stylised graphics will always age better than titles going for photo-realism.

That's why Journey will still look awesome in 10 year, and MGS 4 won't

Okami was one of the best looking games I have ever played.

 

[Active Schizophrenic]

No Crysis? Really? Colour. Colour everywhere.

Ya, I loved Crysis for its awesome colourful visuals. It wasn't until Crysis 2 when they eventually fucked it up.

 

[RandV80]

No love for Okami in your last gen section?

Stylised graphics will always age better than titles going for photo-realism.

That's why Journey will still look awesome in 10 year, and MGS 4 won't

I agree, Okami is the best looking game of the past 10 years in my opinion.

 

[uttaku]

suprised mario hasn't come up really, i would have argued mario galaxy 2 truly showed that a game can look jaw droppingly stunning while running on pretty much last gen tech.

 

[Therumancer]

Why do people think I am in some sort of arms race with Extra Credits?

We cover similar topics. Overlap is inevitable, and I don't really watch their show regularly so I don't know what they cover. In any case, just because one series may have touched on a topic that doesn't automatically disqualify every other series in the world from covering it too.

Seriously, this whole, "oh mah gawd Extra Credits did this" thing is just ... weird.

It's not you. Extra Credits was a favorite of some people even if my opinion was mixed at best, and it's departure and the contreversy about it left a bad taste in people's mouth that gets more intense when they see something similar, and nostolgia turns to a bit of rage they have to vent somehow.

That said your correct, and when it comes to big issues (and this is a fairly big thing within the arena of gaming, and the perception of games) they need to be covered more than once if they are not to be forgotten. This basic message wasn't even knew when Extra Credits did it, it's something that gets covered periodically, and truthfully is something I think should be covered far more.

That said, while irrelevent to your point, I'm not a huge fan of things that are overly cartoony. I enjoyed a lot of the fairly serious cell shaded works, but am less of a fan of things like say Kirby or whatever. Honestly I think what we need to see is something like a western, or universal, version of anime. A serious style of art, meant to convey serious material, whithout it being quite so stylized in terms of facial features and so on, something that would age better. I saw people aiming for this kind of approach years ago, but I see it less and less now, and really the only thing that comes close to carrying that torch is Borderlands (which you mentioned), but Borderlands kind of suffers from just being a little too silly in its overall presentation, and the very limited bestiary and number of models, while easy to overlook in the midst of gameplay, really means it's hard to say if that aestetic is versatile enough for them to do more with it. I mean you can only shoot a skag or some bandit wearing a goalie mask (which comes in varying degrees of size) so many times. I frequently wondered if the limitations were because the designers just couldn't come up with much else that worked.

 

[2fish]

Why do people think I am in some sort of arms race with Extra Credits?

Do you deny you are stockpiling alien(s) products of mass destruction?

Do you deny you have a show like them?

Do you deny this show could be called competition?

Are you a yellow bellied pinko commie red?

That's all the proof the internet needs.


Fun show by the way.

I wonder how you would look as an alien princess peach...

 

[Grunt_Man11]

I find it kind of funny that people often use the Halo series as their "poster child" to represent the "brown shooter." (Moviebob as the Game Overthinker does this constantly.) When it is actually one of the more brighter and colorful shooter out there.

No, it's not a vibrant as XIII, Killer 7, or any of the colorful games Jim mentioned but it's not pure brown and gritty. The second level of the first Halo shows just how vibrant it can be. Hell, look at the city level in Halo: Reach.

Don't get me wrong. Halo does have it's "brown and gritty" moments. For example, the friggin' Library levels! Also, yes the human ships and tech are very brown with a bit of dull green, but that's our military for you. However, look at the Covenant tech and weapons.

It's a friggin' purple tank! Make it out of Papier-mâché and it would blend right in with the world of Viva Pinata, if you ask me.


With that said, I agree with what Jim says about the more vibrant games having the better chance of being remembered, and withstanding the test of time.

Let me show you what I thought was the best looking game of last generation.

Boom!

 

[Mstrswrd]

All I heard in this episode was you not simply saying El Shaddai and the video then ending. All other arguements are invalid

I kid, I kid (not about El Shaddai being the best looking game of the generation, but about the not hearing the rest of the episode). I myself have always been one for artstyle over graphics; I don't care that I can see the individual fucking hairs on that random soldiers head, I want that graphical technology paired with good art styles. El Shaddai, Asura's Wrath, Muramasa, The Last Remnant (proof that Square Enix can make great games that, yes, have good art direction), hell, even Nier had a certain charm to it, and that game was not by any definition a graphically advanced game. Instead, though, the design was great, and the effects (the way all energy seems to be words bound in form, how things seem to flow) gave the game a powerful visual aspect that would have been missed otherwise.

 

[theultimateend]

Couldn't agree more Jim I think its a shame that the viva pinata games were never that successful

THE two best games on the 360.

I've never had an urge to get anything else, game fly'd some stuff and nothing came close .

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I agree with Mirror's Edge, Borderlands, Sonic Generations all looking bloody amazing. Never played Viva Pinata so I can't really judge it, but it certainly was bright and colourful in the video. Metroid Prime still looks good, Okami is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played (though, since it was made for the PS2 first I guess it counts as a previous-gen game), Mario's never hurt my eyes (except maybe with SM64), Sonic Team's never had much of a problem with environments that look good (especially considering that theirs have to look good as you rocket past them)...

There are a lot of games this generation that look awesome without being brown and grey. Which actually isn't that realistic - the world's colour palette is not actually as washed-out as Infinity Ward makes it out to be.

 

[Yopaz]

Why do people think I am in some sort of arms race with Extra Credits?

We cover similar topics. Overlap is inevitable, and I don't really watch their show regularly so I don't know what they cover. In any case, just because one series may have touched on a topic that doesn't automatically disqualify every other series in the world from covering it too.

Seriously, this whole, "oh mah gawd Extra Credits did this" thing is just ... weird.

Because the internet is full of whiny twats that will complain about just about anything. They will complain about the game industry being stale and unoriginal and they will still buy those games and ignore titles that look unconventional.

OT: I agree with the fact that cell shading gives a lot prettier games that stand the test of time better. Viva Piñata is a great game even not considering how it looks and it doesn't need anything more. The new Rayman game also looks fantastic in HD.

 

[GeorgW]

One of my favourite looking games this year has been Kirby's Epic Yarn, and while it may be an SD game, I'm still surprised Jim didn't mention it given how much of a Kirby fan he is. It's got a unique and vibrant aesthetic that really fits the game world.