I also like artistic designs better than technical graphics. Mp3 looks alot better than alot of games on my 360 and ps3 because of the artistic design meshed with technical. Each beam was colorful and the environment was just beautiful. I can't count how many times I said "WOW". In realistic type games I just say "WOW" a few time , because overall you are seeing the same thing over and over.

Realism is for photography.

I want art. I'd rather play Yoshi's Island, Katamari Damacy, or Okami than any new realistic (brown and bloom) FPS.

I have a 56" HDTV, and only a Wii hooked up to it with component cables. I bought the screen for the inches, not the pixels. I'd still like a nice black and white game if it played nice. And 2-D games still rule: Contra 4, Geometry Wars, Brawl, Super Paper Mario, etc., and we all wish Sonic would go back to 2-D anyway.

I'm 25 and I've been playing since I could move my hands. I even rocked Donkey Kong Jr. Math before I learned math. The game tricked me into thinking math was fun and turned me into the supergenius I am today.

Well I've been playing games since Snes-N64 era, and I must say that some graphics impress me today. But I find art style like Okami, Mario Galaxy, MP3 and Final Fantasy to be more interesting than realism.

People using a certain art style just seem to put more originality than those who just take a realistic approach. Realism suits some games more but it just fails to make me impressed. It's like if it was just too plain looking to my eyes. I mean we see realism everyday, in our lives!

Anyway though, I'm not the kind of person to whom the visuals are that much important. I would take amazing gameplay anytime over amazing graphics. I'm beating Terranigma for the first time and the game is awesome but the graphics are dated for today! Doesn't take away the fun at all.

Don't know anyone brand new to gaming to compare too, but I know for myself, hyper realistic graphics mean nothing to me as far as my enjoyment of a game.

In fact as a PC gamer, I wish more games had worse graphics so I could play them! UT2004 looks and plays WAY better on my laptop than UT07, that's because my graphics card can't do '07 justice, but too bad for Epic 'cause I'm not buying '07 as a consequence. Can't even play half the games out there.

The best way to explain it imo is if you look at the normal rating system for a game review. Graphics are a single section of the review along with sound, story, gameplay, replayability, etc.. And yet a disproportionately large amount of time, money, and effort goes into the graphics of most games released today. Developers would be served well to allot more time on those other areas, and I can think of no greater example of how true that is than Left 4 Dead.

Left 4 Dead is not at the cutting edge of graphics, but it looks decent. What it does have is some great sound along with an awesome context driven automated character speech system so that if you're cursor goes over a zombie when you're group isn't in battle it makes your character cry out "Incoming zombies!" or "Hunter!" (depending on the type of zombie) etc...combined with the AI director to increase replayability to whole new levels and a gameplay ideology built around "cooperate or die" rather than "cooperate..if you want to".

I'm not saying that L4D makes up for its lack of graphics with these other strengths but rather that other games attempt to make up for their lack of diverse strengths by having fantastic graphics instead. In short, I think the way L4D was prioritised is the right way to make games, and thats not to say that you can't have great graphics, I just don't think great graphics shouldn't be at the expense of everything else.

i'm very impressed with the graphics of today

anyone who started ther'ye video gaming life on an atari 2600 and an intellivision can see that graphics do matter

lots of the time the graphics where so bad that you couldn't really figure out what to do

the graphics between last gen and this gen are not really all that important as there weren't many visual issues that hindered gameplay 

Eh, I don't know if it's necessarily long-time gamers but PC gamers certainly aren't impressed with graphics often. People foam at the mouth for Killzone 2 graphics but it just looks like year old PC graphics with good lighting to me.

I'm 21 though and I've been gaming basically my entire life and I tend to care less and less about graphical prowess every generation. In the late 90s they were practically all that mattered to me. In the PS2/GC generation I found they were important, and in this generation I'm mostly uncaring to them, despite owning what's by far the most graphically impressive console this gen, the PC.

There are a lot of things I'd place above graphics. gameplay, good sound track, good artwork, good voice acting, well contructed story, physics, good (non-repetitive) design, and replayability. I of course want graphics to be clean, but past that they just need to create a suitable atmosphere for the game.

 Yeah , but that isn't the case now where you could obviously see what is happening. 

I've been a gamer for like ...18 years ( since i was 5 ) and i think that at least for me .... since i've been playing games for that long ... graphics aren't the most important thing for me in a game ... i still play with my friends a lot of games on the NES, SNES Genesis and other old consoles ... and also a lot of newer games. I think this fact helps us realize that no matter how "real life" graphics can get ... in the end they are not the best part of a game ... and that's why at least for me and many of my friends... this new amazing mage super hiper photorealistic graphics don't amaze us that much

well ... just my two cents :P

I would say that this would apply to games as a whole. I am not impressed with games like I once was. I've played Brawl and have to say I'm not impressed with it like most here are. Not that it's a bad game but probably where I'm getting older. Since there is little   that hasn't been done before graphics and sound does add to a game more than in the old days. No doubt it's was these two which improved CoD4 experience.