I loved Cell-da :P too

I love the art direction in resident evil REmake, one of the most gorgeous games of last gen, all the "claroscuros" for the lack of a word in english.. (one side clear and the other dark, its an illumination technique)

I like a unique art direction, and depending on the mood of the games, the art direction. I will go into more depth here on this.

Okami - Beautiful game, it's about loose drawing for weapons. Becuase of that, the loose art style, with the shaders they use, just fit together so perfectly. The game is near flawless in it's art direction.

elder scrolls - Ok This isnt a mainstream art favorite. But If you look at the overall art direction, it's so massive, so mystical, so overkill in many places. The foresty house in Morrowind, The citys the way stuff were shapped, designed, and overall made, I loved the art style. The Daemonic gates in Oblivion are BEAUTIFUL, the Daedric Armor, and alot of other stuff, overall I was dissapointed in content in Oblivion, but what was there, had great art.

Folk Soul - This one's not out yet, but I have the demo to it, and the general art direction is rather unique, and has a good feel to it.

PS: You can download the japanese version of the demo from the japanese PSN store. The game is beautiful, and so unique it's not even funny. It whiddled it's way into my MUST BUY list for this year... and I cant even read what they were saying. 

yea on folksoul. that is looking to be a really mythical looking game. we needed a game that takes art in the more imaginary direction.

as for cell shade, sly cooper. havent played wind waker yet (just got a gc today and will play it after prime 1) but sly had nearly perfect use of cell shade. second/third favorite art style of last gen (i just loved ratchet).

Better Graphics help the artists who design the games show their true art. Folklore is an excellent example.

The Wii is great for good drunken fun with friends, but anything that's to be a professional masterpiece I would want on 360 or PS3.

But yeah, I'm turned off by the ultra-realistic approach that most American games have taken.

Haha yeah, whenever I play Oblivion I just think "Wow this is really pretty. Pretty and boring."

personally i prefer Art Direction and Presentation over graphical prowess.

lets take 2 mmo's

world of warcraft and everquest 2

graphically everquest2 blows world of warcraft out of the water "technically" in graphical prowess, but the art of world of warcraft- even with it's lower graphical prowess- is the more beautiful and more popular game.

ya i like mmo's

I think it would prefer on the game really. For instance, I would like things like driving games, flight games etc to be as realistic as possible, as that would give the feeling of going round corners at 150mph, or flying at 8,000m at 2000km/h!

However, if it's something like an RPG, it's normally better with an artistic look as most of it is not trying to be realistic.

I also think that FPS should be a mixture of the 2. For instance I think R:FOM and GOW are some very good looking games. Reason being is that the physics etc is really realistic, but the surroundings are created in very good graphics, but an a kind of artistic style. For instance, in R:FOM, I find the surrounding buildings look awesome, because it's set in the 1950s, so because the buildings are in that style, it makes it seem 50 years ago, rather than just an imitation.