I'm curious to see how other gamers feel about graphic styles for video games. In a generation where so much hype and prestige surrounds games based on their appearance, where do you stand?

Personally, I always have, still do, and probably always will prefer graphics that lean away from realism. I love game worlds that are loaded with lush, vibrant colours, and spectacular effects that one could never hope to see in the real world. I prefer the way Halo 3 looks to the way CoD4 looks, even though CoD4 is commonly considered to be superior in the graphics department.

For me, perhaps the best looking game this gen would be Mario Galaxy based on personal preferance. I can't even imagine how beautiful the game could have been if it kept the same style, but had the power of a 360 or PS3 behind it.

As good as realistic looking games like Gears 2 and KZ2 look I would love to see a game with Pixar level animation down the road as opposed to a game that looks liek a live action movie.

What say you? To which side of the graphics fence do you lean?

I prefer Cartoonish, especially since Grimdark seems to be the poster child for realism.

I like both honestly. Just depends on the situation and how well they use it. If I had to choose I'd pick cartoonish because that can be more surprising in it's artistic qualities. I can easily tell you why I love the visuals of Valkyria Chronicles, but I can't easily put into words why a game like Killzone 2 is impressive visually simply because I don't know the technical language. 

cartoonish still.

Have yet to play a game with "realism" that doesn't suffer from frame rates or clitches or even "freezes".

Torillian's right, it depends on the situation. a game such as gears or killzone would look awful if it was cartoonish however games such as mario would fail if they looked like real people

Parellelism
Realistic vs Cartoonish

Agreed, but in which case, why does the most realistic looking game always get heralded as having the best graphics?

Is it even possible for a cartoonish game to be considered, regardless of how amazing it looked?

Well people heralding a game with realistic graphics are calling it the best technical graphics. Whereas most times cartoonish styles are used when they don't really have the technical know how or the budget to have the nicest graphics in technical specs.

I can't really think of any game that had a cartoonish style and amazing technical specs as well. Perhaps they exist but it isn't as easy to tell because you don't have an easy reference to compare it to like you do for realistic games.

Depends on the game really. Certain genre's are much better realistic and others cartoonish or stylized.

I'll say this though, I find that far too many games on the HD systems have the same look to them. I loved the look of Prince of Persia. Wish more developers would go with something other than realism.

I don't see such a clean cut juxtaposition. Realistic doesn't mean drab and cartoonish doesn't mean vibrant.
Movies like Hero played with colors more than The Corpse Bride.
Uncharted is vibrant and Afro Samurai is subdued.
It's all in the art direction really.

Btw, I would not say that Gears nor KZ2 are really striving for true life-like appearance. They are only choosing a more realistic or even hyperrealistic art direction, but still pushing a very definite style. Simple realism in graphics, as in CoD4, tends to come off as boring, indeed, unless great things are done with editing.
PS: if you want to see the closest thing to a Pixar movie as a game, I think you should look at Ratchet and Clank.