what are bad graphics?

[Circusfreak]

im currently playing the indie survival game Minecraft. it has a cool first person pixelart retro style that i find really compelling. however whenever i show the game to my friends they always say: "man,thats some crappy graphics!"

that got me thinking; are bad graphics the same thing as low resolution? and if not, how else do you measure it? does megaman 2 for the NES have better graphics than super mario 64 then?
whats your opinion? i think its a little souless to say that graphics is only about resolution.

 

[JWRosser]

"Not realistic"? I'm not sure. I mean, it may well have something to do with resolution, for example all in all, the 360 and PS3 are a lot smoother than the Wii...therefore have better graphics? Unless you are counting games purposly done in 8-Bit style like the Scott Pilgrim game?

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

I... really have no clue. After the N64-Playstation age, when graphics stopped getting polygrammed (blocky), and were smoothe, all the graphics were the same to me.

Personally I can't tell you the difference between Blu-Ray and regular TVs, or the difference between a Playstation 2 and a Playstation 3.

To me, bad graphics are nothing, because for the life of me I could never know if the graphics were bad.

 

[razer17]

Personally I can't stand PS1 era graphics. Bad graphics does often mean low res, low polygon, crappy textures etc. Since 8 and 16-bit games don't have that problem it's true that most NES and SNES games look cool, whilst I hate the graphics in PS1. games.

 

[phenity]

I agree with Ajimbo. It's less about low-poly/low-pixel and more about being badly done these days.

That said, most of your consolebrofriends are only used to playing MW2 and therefore anything that doesn't look like MW2 has bad graphics.

 

[Sazaranthran]

Graphics are subjective and specific to a game, be it developers choice or necessity. To make a realistic war shooter, photo-realistic graphics will always help to increase immersion. But for other things, such as braid or limbo, a much simpler art style can, and should be adopted as it can add to the atmosphere (especially in limbo). But I guess bad graphics are when a developers tries to do something like this and fails to achieve it. When the graphic style detracts from the game in any way. But most of our games are not all too unrealistic and so photo-realism is what we want, and what the consumer wants, the consumer gets. Eventually...sometimes...

 

[oplinger]

Its basically resolution, but not in the sense you're thinking of. It's also a mix of a couple other things.

When I say it's resolution I mean texture resolution. If you take a texture the size of your pinky nail and stretch ot over a horse, it's going to look terrible.


In that same vein if the horse was made out of nothing but giant pointy triangles (think the SNES sort of 3D)

Also shaders, but you don't really notice shaders as much as you notice textures and poly count.

Back in the 2D days, it was less about resolution and poly count, and more about how well you used the resources you had. Like for instance if your sprites need to be 16x16, using the 16x16 square properly would get you praised, but screwing it up...bad graphics.

 

[LightOfDarkness]

I... really have no clue. After the N64-Playstation age, when graphics stopped getting polygrammed (blocky), and were smoothe, all the graphics were the same to me.

Personally I can't tell you the difference between Blu-Ray and regular TVs, or the difference between a Playstation 2 and a Playstation 3.

To me, bad graphics are nothing, because for the life of me I could never know if the graphics were bad.

You can really tell the difference between some games on the wii and PS3/360 though, like buildings appearing as brown blobs in the distance then their texture suddenly popping in at some point.

Some games do this transition better than others (like wind waker and okami).

IMO graphics don't need to be pushed to photorealism as much now, considering the only thing stopping it for the most part is bad voice acting/lip syncing (Like Fallout 3, good voice acting, but they all stand stock still, rarely using their hands and moving their eyebrows maybe a few millimeters), if anything, they should be limited so that people will do better with stylisation, since done right, it can look miles better than photorealism. I understand wanting photorealism for sims and games that are supposed to be realistic beyond just looking realistic.

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

What are bad graphics? A miserable little pile of secrets!

If I can't discern what is what from the first look, the graphics are definitely bad.

 

[BreakfastMan]

If you cannot tell what is happening in the game because of the graphics, or if the art style does not work the tone of the game, those are bad graphics (according to me anyway).

 

[kintaris]

im currently playing the indie survival game Minecraft. it has a cool first person pixelart retro style that i find really compelling. however whenever i show the game to my friends they always say: "man,thats some crappy graphics!"

that got me thinking; are bad graphics the same thing as low resolution? and if not, how else do you measure it? does megaman 2 for the NES have better graphics than super mario 64 then?
whats your opinion? i think its a little souless to say that graphics is only about resolution.

I think it's really about whether the graphics are good enough to depict the action or storyline you're portraying. Its a really difficult call, because you could certainly say Megaman had more sophisticated art direction than Mario 64, but you couldn't say it had better 'graphics'. Although inaccurate by dictionary standards, the term 'graphics' has most often literally come to mean the beauty associated with the most advanced graphic technology. In other words, if you read in a review that the 'graphics are awesome', most people think 'Crysis', and not 'Limbo' or 'Braid' or many other fine arcade titles.

Personally I don't put any stock whatsoever in graphics. I'm playing through American McGee's Alice for the first time, and the last game I played was Mass Effect 2. Next I will probably play Defcon (again). All have fantastic art direction, but who has the better 'graphics'? My reply: who cares?

Problem with your friends is they judge books by their cover, and aren't willing to overcome a little change in perspective and attitude to appreciate a fantastic game. (Kind of like when someone hears the first 3 seconds of a song, associates it with a genre they aren't a fan of and immediately skips it.) Which is a great shame and sadly very common.

 

[manythings]

Well the thing about graphics that makes them bad is how they compare to what comes next. The harder they pursue photo-realism and the more successful they are in producing more accurate rendering the faster it becomes dated and ugly. Look at Half-Life 2 and compare it to something today. In a years time which will be harder to look at? Small errors show a lot clearer the more perfect the presentation, notes of discord are the loudest.

EDIT: Personally I believe style and consistancy of artistic vision will pay off for far longer than anything else. In 10 years Okami will still have an amazing look but Modern Warfare 2 won't even look like shit since no-one will even remember it.

 

[Woodsey]

Flat textures, lifeless character models, poor art direction, etc. etc.

 

[Shycte]

It has much do do with the art style I would believe. Mafia (the first one mind you) had characters who looked like boxes and it is still one of the best games of all time, exact the same thing could be said about Theif II.

So what is bad graphics? Turtles in time: Re-shelled had pretty bad graphics. It achieved nothing, the animations weren't pretty and I don't believe that they even tried.

Does Pong have bad graphics? I would say no, because it fills it function and it is what it tries to achive.

 

[Dr. Wily III]

Graphics are bad when a toilet doesn't look like an toilet.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

It's basically Dwarf Fortress only in third person. I honestly don't know what's not there to like. I personally just started playing about a week ago but goddamn I'm having fun.

 

[Circusfreak]

What are bad graphics? A miserable little pile of secrets!

If I can't discern what is what from the first look, the graphics are definitely bad.

i see what you did there

 

[Circusfreak]

Bad Graphics btw

Is for example Two worlds
Two Worlds is an Western RPG like The Elder Scrolls :Oblivion
It came out after Oblivion
The graphics were much worse
So the game has bad graphics

Yet if it were released before oblivion the graphics would have been considered good
seeing as (for easy comparison) they look better than in morrowind

you get my point?

yea but does that mean that new retro styled games like minecraft, megaman 10, knytt and VVVVVV all have bad graphics?

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

Bad graphics are any graphics that prevent you from seeing what's supposed to be happening on screen. If the graphics are such that it's difficult to tell what actions are happening on screen, or make it difficult to distinguish characters from the environment, then they are bad. As such, my personal example of "bad graphics" is Madworld.

I think this is a pretty good sum up of what bad graphics are.

If the game is made to be low resolution (for whatever reason) but it's still easy to see the details clearly then they're good graphics. If the graphics are supposed to be realistic but are difficult to see things clearly or even just look at then they're bad. The mass majority of people are too accustomed to realistic high resolution graphics to actually distinguish the difference between good and bad graphics.

One side note : I've pretty much paraphrased what AjimboB said, if it weren't for him I'd not be able to tell you the difference. Basically not being able to tell someone the difference is completely different to not knowing the difference.

 

[skennedy929]

Bad graphics are like The Conduit on the Wii, a game that gets embarrassed by Metroid Prime. That's a game that came out 7 years earlier BTW.

Good art direction can make up for low polygon counts, but bad design can squander all the best hardware in the world.

For me, the N64 and PS1 years hold up the worst, graphically speaking. Some games on the SNES still look amazing because of great art direction.