It didn't have a second screen cockpit view that's apparently holding the entire game back, not to mention that the cockpit view on the gamepad itself is just dull and uninspired.  I mean it doesn't even look like a fucking cockpit, it's like you're in a glass case floating out on the nose of the plane.

Offscreen footage is always a lie.

I was a bit late when I started watching Nintendo's E3 and I jumped right in when they were showing gameplay of Starfox, and I instantly thought it was a 3DS game.

It doesn't pack any kind of challenge. Without it, we would have a 720p frame. The gamepad represents a 44% pixel boost. Not enough to justify that poor result. As I said, it isn't even on 900p level. We also have a lot of titles in 1080p on Wii U at 60 fps, like SSB, that looks infinitely better.

MK splitscreen is more challenging because you are adding extra players. That means taxing the CPU, because you have to calculate collision and physics for all the extra players. For Star Fox, you aren't adding complexity to the scene, just boosting the pixel output and slightly decreasing the amount of polygons that you can cut.

TM2012 is actually a good game that suffered with online issues. The campaign was great and it had a nice amount of destruction on the enviroments. Besides that, it actually looked like a 2012 game. Star Fox zero looks like a 2004-6 game with 2002 enviroment physics releasing on a console that's considerably more powerful than a PS3 and, at least, 3 years ahead. It's interesting that TM2012 enviroments looks way better than Star Fox ones.

Back to the OP now, please or should we continue comparing Star Fox with PS3 games that looks much better than it?

You are correct, I messed up my calculations in the previous post. So it's almost equivalent to a 900p frame and around 70% of a 1080p one. Still, not enough to justify the visuals presented, even more with Wii U games with higher resolutions and way better looking visuals, like Smash.

Yeah it doesn't look as cool, but functionally it's superior. The glass cockpit allows you to see much more, which lets you shoot targets even if they aren't visible on the third person view.

I agree it's not quite enough to justify the poor end result, I'm just saying that the rendering of the additional perspective on the Gamepad does cut into the system's pixel and polygon budget compared to a single-screen game or one where the Gamepad is just a map/menu or duplicates the TV.

Holding both screens to Nintendo's strict 60fps performance target further limits the potential for eye candy.

I guess there's still a chance it could see improvement between now and release...

It's not the sole reason of course, but definitely a factor. I'm sure the other reason is a rush job, but no real proof of that.

You've been comparing SFZ with other games the entire time. This thread is literally titled, "Why Starfox Zero's graphics are bad." I fail to see where we're getting off topic here. I made one offhand comment about your avatar and you're ready to turn that into a strawman, but nice try (and I wasn't referring to TM 2012's graphics anyway). But if you're ready to drop this conversation, then you can just simply answer my original question. Do you have a release date for us? You said this earlier: "It should be a 20 bucks digital game at most with this level of rushing and complete disrespect for the franchise."

So you're either implying:

A) The build that was shown was hastily thrown together to have something to show for E3, therefore it is unpolished and isn't indicative of what the final product wil be.

B) The game is being rushed to completion. How you would have knowledge of this, I do not know. But you also said the game will likely release next year. That's plenty of time to spruce things up.

I would have thought that Super Mario 3D Land would have taught everyone not to write a game off based on a cobbled-together E3 presentation for a game far from release, but I should know by now that nothing ever changes.