Poll: Your "cup of tea" in terms of Graphics

[Caligulove]

Art Style and Design goes much farther than simple graphic power. It's why I keep playing Half Life 2, but just made one playthrough of Crysis 2- for instance. Or why I think Wind Waker is better than Twilight Princess. Also why I keep playing Unreal Tournament 2k4 and never moved up to UnrealT III. It just looked too much like Gears of War and stopped looking like it did before, they overhauled the art design, not that it was very unique in the first place, but it just felt like a different game altogether and I much preferred the previous style.

If youre talking about raw graphical power, though- The Witcher 2 left me awestruck the entire time I watched my roommate play it. Unfathomably gorgeous

 

[Estocavio]

I actually like drab, depressing color systems. Theyre more real.
Naturally, this should differ on location, but i tend to like the Graphics in games like Condemned, Still Life, and GTA IV.

 

[redisforever]

Really, all I want is clean. I want to be able to see what's happening.
I like most Source engine games, because they look clean, and easy to see. Unlike Black Ops, where everything is a smear. Serious Sam also looks very vivid and clear.

 

[Firetaffer]

Bahahahaha, graphics....i don't really care about graphics as long as i'm playing with polygons.

Take it ya don't like 2D or voxel based games then huh?

 

[zehydra]

The graphics have to fit the overall atmosphere of the game, and that's really it.
There also can't be absurdly excessive amounts of bloom...that's just annoying.

yeah I've found games that just throw bloom in for the hell of it, and well, it just ends up looking less realistic AND annoying, so I turn it off.

 

[thenamelessloser]

I say it is a sense about art direction/aesthetics/style

Okami does this great
So does Chrono Trigger
The Witcher even though they take place in a frequently used type of setting (medieval fantasy) appeal to me aesthetically and have little details like animals moving about or people looking for shelter when it rains.
I also like the Assasin's Creed games because at least they try differnet kind of settings and I like playing an open world game with a huge setting and tons of people walking about. I play them mostly for the graphics.

Chrysis 2 looks very realisitic but the actual aesthetics/art design dont' appeal to me much.

 

[Speakercone]

I enjoy competent graphical showmanship only if presented within an awesome overall aesthetic design. On that note, I really enjoy cel shaded graphical styles in most cases and would like to see more of this in future due to obvious awesome.

 

[krazykidd]

pfft graphics....casuals...

 

[bluestarultor]

I've written multiple pages worth of text on my preferences, actually. But to sum it up, I'll take pretty sprites over ugly 3D any day. The DS had some serious issues with this. Take two games from Square: The World Ends With You and Final Fantasy III (DS version). Both on the same system, but TWEWY looked worlds better in 2D than FF3 did in 3D. For that matter, I prefer the NES version's 2D sprites to the DS remake's models because for the most part they did far more with their roughly five colors each than the DS models did with their roughly five polygons each.

 

[Snotnarok]

As long as it's not blurry I'm okay with it. It's mostly why I never got into the 64, a lot of the games (because of carts memory limits) had blurrier textures. I'd rather have big fat pixelation than blobs of blur.

 

[SkyHawkMkIV]

I noticed this recently as my brother and I were talking about what games we liked. I started listing of my favorites (Borderlands, Team Fortress 2, Killer 7, Viewtiful Joe, Jet Grind Radio, etc.), and I realized that I like highly stylized, cel-shaded graphics. I think that bright, stylish graphics can beat "mud" games to the punch if done proper.

 

[Sir Boss]

Graphics don't phase me in the slightest,
Aesthetics on the other hand... prefer vibrant colour schemes, going beyond the three basic colours of this generation (brown, grey and muzzle flash)

 

[Drummie666]

When the visual aesthetic matches the tone of the rest of the game.

For example, I liked Medal of Honor's visual aesthetic. It matched the rest of the game by trying to put an emphasis on realism, which for me... kinda.... made it look good.
It was certainly more visually appealing to me than BlOps' aesthetic. That fucking game looks like it got everything covered in mud.

 

[Nightvalien]

I don't care much about graphics but i would say something like half life 2.

 

[Disaster Button]

Though i dont really care about graphics in general, i find myself very strongly attracted to cel-shaded games.

This. Where has all the cel-shading gone? Borderlands and Prince of Persia are pretty much the only two of this generation that I know of that have cel shading. And even last generation it wasn't done much. It's an awesome look, why can't we have some more of it?

Though i dont really care about graphics in general, i find myself very strongly attracted to cel-shaded games.

This. Where has all the cel-shading gone? Borderlands and Prince of Persia are pretty much the only two of this generation that I know of that have cel shading. And even last generation it wasn't done much. It's an awesome look, why can't we have some more of it?

I think Tales games are still doing it, but the only one of those I've actually played is Symphonia. Those are also some of my favorite titles aesthetics-wise - I'll take clean design and primary colors over brown and bloom or final fantasy visual busyness any day of the week haha.

There's Dungeon Defenders coming out in... some point this year. That's a cel-shaded, 4-Player Co Op FPS/TD game.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

Anything that complimets the game, and supports the general "look and feel" of the game.

But I am also a fan of realistic glare from light sources WOOOO!

 

[lacktheknack]

I WANT IT ALL! Basically, I want all games to look like Just Cause 2.

If not, I'd take style before fidelity, but "realistic" colors being translated to "anything but green" just annoys me.

 

[V8 Ninja]

I want to say it's a good combination between color and lighting with my favorite example being Super Mario Galaxy, but that wouldn't make any sense considering that I liked STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl's brown-to-grey-to-blood-red pallet and somewhat weird lighting. I guess the aesthetic has to match what the game is going for.

 

[Omnific One]

Lighting is the most important to me, as well as textures.