What makes graphics great?

[Kwaad]

OriGin said:
Very good points made here, and this is why I'm a bit of a graphics whore. I personally LOVE to see what the creation capabilities of hardware rendering in real time are... i love pushing the boundaries and seeing the little things that they can start to do. That is why when HDR lighting came around it made games look SOOO much different that it was so refreshing, and why it is the new lens flare.

I think Motorstorm has that nice high res pixel look too it but it's not that overly impressive to me, technically it's okay but it doesn't feel or look right... i dunno what it is about that but it's just OKAY to me.

But there is something i'm seeing lately that I think makes games look incredible... namely take a look at Lego Star Wars on 360. I think that game looks amazing, yet the textures and the graphics are very simple (and it's a shit game) but there is some sort of blur effect on the areas of the screen that aren't in focus, I haven't seen a lot of games doing this (or maybe i'm just blind) I think GRAW2 has it too. (Wii Sports Boxing has it).

I personaly prefer the graphics in Wind Waker to Twilight Princess (infact I like that game better as a whole than TP). I LOVE cel shaded and anime stylised graphics, that's why Grandia II dispite it not being graphically MASSIVE is one of my favourite looking games EVER. Not from a technical point but from the way it looks.

It's all art style. Before recent a lot of graphics have been looking like shiney plastic which i hated, i hated that sector of that age of graphics (think Doom 3).

All a bit of ramblings, but for me it all comes down to style and art direction rather than pure technical wow... however when I see things done on hardware (like RE4 on the GCN hardware) that makes me go WOW they are pushing THAT out of the POS then that is impressive to me.

So far the only thing on the Next Gen consoles that have given me that techincal WOW they are doing that on that hardware spec is Gears of War, nothing else has caught it yet. I'm looking forward to seeing Ratchet and Clank running on PS3 cause I think that might be the next one :)

Lair -- MEH to me.

(begin biased part of post) Lair looks good, it looks like I feel a PS3 game should look, divided by 2. I am more intrested in Heavenly Sword for graphics. However the cnimematic on Lair looks amazing. If there is little/no loading on Lair, I think I can give it ALOT more credit.

I am kinda reserve when it comes to games that wow me graphically. I havent r ealy been to impressed this generation, and I agree with Origin, that motorstorm has the high res pixel, but the textures look great... but they dont look real... yet that is what it is meant to be. So even though it looks 75% better than a PS2 game. I dont feel it looks amazing, as it is meant to look real. It dont. Guess what. If it's meant to look real and it dont, it dont matter if it looks like moving blobs, or 'something is not quite right' real. It failed it's art goal. To look real.

My love for motorstorm is the gameplay.

 (end biased part of post)

Great post you got there OriGin. I agree with everything you have to say 100%