Graphics whore thread - serious decline in videogame graphics since 2007

[Deleted member 7219]

1998:

2013:

One's an FMV-based game and other is pixel art, but it kinda shows where adventures games are going now.

In all seriousness, some games did look better in the 90s than some games do in the 00s or the 10s.

I blame the stagnation of the last console generation, which meant graphical quality still hasn't gone anywhere since Crysis, combined with a greater focus on indie and phone gaming particularly when it comes to adventure games.

 

[Lyric Suite]

CryEngine 2 was a great engine but I'm tired of seeing Crysis wheeled out as an example of a game with good graphics. That game looked like absolute shit except for the alien spaceship level. Every other level was a visually busy foliagefuck green god ray bloom sparkling incomprehensible piece of crap

Indeed. I seriously hate the way those games look, particularly the second one.

 

[Gerrard]

CryEngine 2 was a great engine but I'm tired of seeing Crysis wheeled out as an example of a game with good graphics. That game looked like absolute shit except for the alien spaceship level. Every other level was a visually busy foliagefuck green god ray bloom sparkling incomprehensible piece of crap

What can you expect from people who never actually played it and only seen screenshots made in the editor?

Fucking next gen graphics here.

 

[Astral Rag]

Spa

 

[Garryydde]

Spa

Too bad Gran Turismo 5 is shit.

 

[Multidirectional]

So now you fags made me reinstall Crysis..

Yup, looks terrible! Bet it would look even worse with some texture/foliage mods and additional ini tweaks!

 

[Gerrard]

Typical console peasant.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The game doesn't look as good when you are actually playing it. This probably goes more for Crysis 2 than the first one. There's just something wrong about how those games are rendered. Reminds me of Skyrim. The game looks better in screenshots than in does in motion.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Pre-2007:

Post-2007:

 

[No Great Name]

This thread needs more screenshots of Riven.

 

[Multidirectional]

The game doesn't look as good when you are actually playing it.

Nonsense, it looks better in motion. Crysis 2 is also a good looking game, also in motion because animations are improved from C1. Downgrade from C1 in some aspects, but also has improved explosions and lighting.

 

[DefJam101]

Problem with Crysis 1 is every screen not perfectly framed to be a screenshot of a shoreline or a wide road looks like a clusterfuck of green leafy stuff. When you're actually playing it's a constant struggle to figure out what the fuck is happening on the screen. Or at least, that was my experience playing on near max settings. Crysis 2 I thought looked better but it still suffered from the occasional everything is shiny syndrome.

When Half Life 2 released I never thought I'd miss its bland as fuck, boxy, sterile visual style but compared to some of the shit released today it seems understated and attractive.

 

[A user named cat]

While a modded out Crysis is certainly impressive and still leagues above most FPSes technically....

I would take 90's graphics any day, whether it's from Amiga or DOS. There's no comparison to the atmosphere these kind of visuals created.

incline

 

[Utgard-Loki]

Problem with Crysis 1 is every screen not perfectly framed to be a screenshot of a shoreline or a wide road looks like a clusterfuck of green leafy stuff. When you're actually playing it's a constant struggle to figure out what the fuck is happening on the screen. Or at least, that was my experience playing on near max settings. Crysis 2 I thought looked better but it still suffered from the occasional everything is shiny syndrome.

i think the problem isn't that it looks bad, it's just that crysis was more of a sandboxy techdemo than it was a game. they basically just made a few interesting and good looking setpieces that sometimes offered interesting ways of tackling them and connected them with poorly constructed filler pathways.

 

[Gerrard]

While a modded out Crysis is certainly impressive and still leagues above most FPSes technically....

What exactly is supposed to be impressive about this shot? Hurr trees.

 

[Havoc]

Even the binoculars have that look of DURRR.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Graphical effects are the things developers now use when trying to achieve a photoreal rendering, and they go the wrong way of abusing "camera" effects, making a simulation of a view through a movie camera rather than the human eye. You get lens flares, Bloom, HDR, 3d effects, blood on the lenses of the "camera". All of those things are rarely perceived by the eye, maybe some godrays and burning of eyes when you leave a dark cave into midday sun outside.

In order to graphics improve they have to sharpen textures, improve their shader effects, and increase the poligons. That's why i like some old games with a retexturing mod, that actually bring a fresh view that makes an old game actually beautiful in HD big monitors, making them better looking than new games sometimes.

Crysis 01 is still being used as an example because it does not have exagerated bloom, flares and all these camera effects, and the enviroment they set to make they did good, which was a jungle island. The game had some bad texturing here and there, and bad lighting effects (like flashlight beams and rainbow in waterfalls), but it looked better than crysis 2 that had blurry textures, and water with fake reflections.

Then I played the 1st mission of battlefield 3 and everything was cinematic effects.

On the other hand, some games really go for that cimatic feeling, like MGS games that have so many cutscenes, that I find the flares and cinematic effects in this new version kind of fitting and consistent with its presentation, that it actually doesn't bother me.

 

[A user named cat]

What exactly is supposed to be impressive about this shot? Hurr trees.

 

[DefJam101]

Honestly a lot of modern games look like amateur mods of themselves. They have a bunch of reasonably high quality graphical assets and effects but few of them fit together in a way that feels natural. NPCs have vibrant, glowing shaders applied to their skin, objects with high res textures sit next to low res walls or floors, there's no thought put into where the player should be looking or what's important in the scene, color tones between grimdark brown and Hotline Miami neon pink don't exist, etc

I'd much rather see technically unimpressive, visually consistent graphics than yet another next-gen clusterfuck.

 

[A user named cat]

 

[pippin]

I'd much rather see technically unimpressive, visually consistent graphics than yet another next-gen clusterfuck.

that's probably why the witcher felt so good and fresh. it was a no bullshit medieval fantasy environment, which was really needed. and it had lots of gud tits, so it's a win win situation.
but yeah, most graphical work right now feels like the new tech demo for this little feature of a certain graphical engine. i feel maximum cringe everytime i hear or read something about the resolution shit, for instance.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Problem with Crysis 1 is every screen not perfectly framed to be a screenshot of a shoreline or a wide road looks like a clusterfuck of green leafy stuff. When you're actually playing it's a constant struggle to figure out what the fuck is happening on the screen. Or at least, that was my experience playing on near max settings. Crysis 2 I thought looked better but it still suffered from the occasional everything is shiny syndrome.

When Half Life 2 released I never thought I'd miss its bland as fuck, boxy, sterile visual style but compared to some of the shit released today it seems understated and attractive.

Honestly a lot of modern games look like amateur mods of themselves. They have a bunch of reasonably high quality graphical assets and effects but few of them fit together in a way that feels natural. NPCs have vibrant, glowing shaders applied to their skin, objects with high res textures sit next to low res walls or floors, there's no thought put into where the player should be looking or what's important in the scene, color tones between grimdark brown and Hotline Miami neon pink don't exist, etc

I'd much rather see technically unimpressive, visually consistent graphics than yet another next-gen clusterfuck.

This.

 

[shihonage]

The most important lesson Crysis taught me is that all Koreans look exactly the same.

 

[Astral Rag]

Pre-2007

Post-2007

 

[Destroid]

They're simple but I thought the graphics in that gun game were pretty nice.