10 groundbreaking games that look bad now
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Date: 2023-01-18
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Comments and reviews: 14
Dirk
If we are going to put Oblivion on this list Skyrim has to be here too. It went even more towards the supposed realism look and frankly the character faces are even more weird and crazy than Oblivion. Everyone looks like they have two emotions sleeping and constipation. So by the rules laid out here for LA Noir and Oblivion.
Yep Skyrim sits here along with Fallout3 and NV, GTA4, Mafia, Dragon Ages, Half Life, Doom3, in fact most FPSs, anything made using the Frosty engine, and so many more.
Yet these games are awesome to play and can be played over and over like beloved friends. They had and still have amazing gameplay that most AAA titles coming out now lack. So my point is what really aged like putrid sun baked milk is quality in developers that left making amazing complete games in order to take in money like a Hoover left running.
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If we are going to put Oblivion on this list Skyrim has to be here too. It went even more towards the supposed realism look and frankly the character faces are even more weird and crazy than Oblivion. Everyone looks like they have two emotions sleeping and constipation. So by the rules laid out here for LA Noir and Oblivion.
Yep Skyrim sits here along with Fallout3 and NV, GTA4, Mafia, Dragon Ages, Half Life, Doom3, in fact most FPSs, anything made using the Frosty engine, and so many more.
Yet these games are awesome to play and can be played over and over like beloved friends. They had and still have amazing gameplay that most AAA titles coming out now lack. So my point is what really aged like putrid sun baked milk is quality in developers that left making amazing complete games in order to take in money like a Hoover left running.
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InForObservation
Super good call on Falcon's part not going back too far with the subject matter here. As a lifelong gamer now in his mid-40s, I can say that the whole bad graphics=unplayable thing really only applies to games made since the jump to 3d in the late 90s/early 2000s. With the obvious exception of cartoony platformers like Mario 64 or the original Crash games, immersion is kind of the point of 3d. 2d games never tried to be immersive, so they're either playable now or not on either-or game mechanics or story (if there was one. Early 2000s 3d was so new and amazing at the time, but these days so much of it is just blurry and headache inducing. 2d games with interesting gameplay and tight controls are still playable (at least for me) and seem more quaint than outdated, but maybe that's just my childhood nostalgia talking
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Super good call on Falcon's part not going back too far with the subject matter here. As a lifelong gamer now in his mid-40s, I can say that the whole bad graphics=unplayable thing really only applies to games made since the jump to 3d in the late 90s/early 2000s. With the obvious exception of cartoony platformers like Mario 64 or the original Crash games, immersion is kind of the point of 3d. 2d games never tried to be immersive, so they're either playable now or not on either-or game mechanics or story (if there was one. Early 2000s 3d was so new and amazing at the time, but these days so much of it is just blurry and headache inducing. 2d games with interesting gameplay and tight controls are still playable (at least for me) and seem more quaint than outdated, but maybe that's just my childhood nostalgia talking
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jettblade
I really hate saying this but the field map and character + vehicles models in FF7 is bad. The battle graphics and the cutscenes are good and still hold up to a certain degree but the characters nope. All I got to say is 'Popeye arms'. One of the things I really wanted to have was a Remaster of FF7 with updated graphics and maybe some more content like new areas inspired from Crisis Core or story fixes basically writing in Vincent and Yuffie in as the master cast rather than optional/secret character(basically the same game just with updated graphics. I think the FF7 Remake is fantastic looking but it isn't the game I wanted, it is still an amazing game and is going in a very interesting direction.
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I really hate saying this but the field map and character + vehicles models in FF7 is bad. The battle graphics and the cutscenes are good and still hold up to a certain degree but the characters nope. All I got to say is 'Popeye arms'. One of the things I really wanted to have was a Remaster of FF7 with updated graphics and maybe some more content like new areas inspired from Crisis Core or story fixes basically writing in Vincent and Yuffie in as the master cast rather than optional/secret character(basically the same game just with updated graphics. I think the FF7 Remake is fantastic looking but it isn't the game I wanted, it is still an amazing game and is going in a very interesting direction.
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Aaron
GOLDENEYE 007 can be added. I mean even then it was pretty bad, but it was THE console shooter of the late 90s, but as a package it is pretty bad, borderline unplayable really.
On contrast, Banjo-Kazooie, another outing from Rare, was the top 1-2 N64 games on the system, tho it did come some what later than goldeneye so there was that.
An oft overlooked game is the N64 version of The World is Not Enough, which despite its short length could almost qualify for an early Ps2 game for how decent it looks and how fast it moves compared to the painful slog goldeneye was.
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GOLDENEYE 007 can be added. I mean even then it was pretty bad, but it was THE console shooter of the late 90s, but as a package it is pretty bad, borderline unplayable really.
On contrast, Banjo-Kazooie, another outing from Rare, was the top 1-2 N64 games on the system, tho it did come some what later than goldeneye so there was that.
An oft overlooked game is the N64 version of The World is Not Enough, which despite its short length could almost qualify for an early Ps2 game for how decent it looks and how fast it moves compared to the painful slog goldeneye was.
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Pic
You know, L. A. Noire did not change for me at all, I never thought it looked good in the first place. Yes, the face is fine, but the seams are just way off. Similar thing is Oblivion, I felt like the only one with eyes in my possession, it was always washed out with haunted characters, stiff animation and empty, boring, uninspired world.
Hate me for it, but play it without nostalgia glasses. The core gameplay is fine, the roleplay is fine, but the whole package is not good and never was. I really wanted to like it, but it just cannot be done.
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You know, L. A. Noire did not change for me at all, I never thought it looked good in the first place. Yes, the face is fine, but the seams are just way off. Similar thing is Oblivion, I felt like the only one with eyes in my possession, it was always washed out with haunted characters, stiff animation and empty, boring, uninspired world.
Hate me for it, but play it without nostalgia glasses. The core gameplay is fine, the roleplay is fine, but the whole package is not good and never was. I really wanted to like it, but it just cannot be done.
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Zach
1: 47 He does look like the character. The Witcher looked weird back then and had janky combat. Laura Croft looked better when her character model was smoothed out but before she went realistic.
Why is Final Fantasy 7 not on this list? That game looks terrible. I was wondering why people say this game is awesome but when I played it, it looked very dated.
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion: You can improve it with mods. That's why I play it on PC.
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1: 47 He does look like the character. The Witcher looked weird back then and had janky combat. Laura Croft looked better when her character model was smoothed out but before she went realistic.
Why is Final Fantasy 7 not on this list? That game looks terrible. I was wondering why people say this game is awesome but when I played it, it looked very dated.
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion: You can improve it with mods. That's why I play it on PC.
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MagicalWheelyWagon
I don t know how one could call Oblivion s atmosphere bad. It s one of my many positives with the game. I stopped noticing the faces around 2 hours into it and it changed my way of looking at games. I love the graphics even though they may not be realistic at all. I was born 2008, 2 years after the game was released. 10/10. Combat and the ayleid ruins are the biggest negatives. Combat is a lot better than The Witcher 1.
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I don t know how one could call Oblivion s atmosphere bad. It s one of my many positives with the game. I stopped noticing the faces around 2 hours into it and it changed my way of looking at games. I love the graphics even though they may not be realistic at all. I was born 2008, 2 years after the game was released. 10/10. Combat and the ayleid ruins are the biggest negatives. Combat is a lot better than The Witcher 1.
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Big
Played some of these games in their releases. Specially Tomb Raider and Oblivion. Man, the first time i saw that vegetation moving with the wind in Oblivion was amazing. That and the beautiful soundtrack sure was impactfull for me. Tomb Raider is more terrifying than a horror game lol the silence, the eerie atmosphere, the emptiness and the (maybe not intentional) jumpscares sure made my childhood very thrilling haha
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Played some of these games in their releases. Specially Tomb Raider and Oblivion. Man, the first time i saw that vegetation moving with the wind in Oblivion was amazing. That and the beautiful soundtrack sure was impactfull for me. Tomb Raider is more terrifying than a horror game lol the silence, the eerie atmosphere, the emptiness and the (maybe not intentional) jumpscares sure made my childhood very thrilling haha
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William
Completely disagree about L. A. Noire. To this day no other game showed the subtleties of facial expression and emotion. It's because it wasn't just capturing motion data, It was recording actors performance from multiple angles and projecting those onto a 3d mesh. It was low res because of resolution, storage, and memory limitations of the time, but if done with today's technology would look absolutely stunning.
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Completely disagree about L. A. Noire. To this day no other game showed the subtleties of facial expression and emotion. It's because it wasn't just capturing motion data, It was recording actors performance from multiple angles and projecting those onto a 3d mesh. It was low res because of resolution, storage, and memory limitations of the time, but if done with today's technology would look absolutely stunning.
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Kelvin
Normally I don t take kindly to people shitting on NieR, however in the case of NieR Gestalt (2010, I will allow it so long as the quality of the story is acknowledged. If you want to get the NieR Replicant/Gestalt experience today, play NieR Replicant ver1. 22474487139. It was released in 2021 as a remaster to the original and it fixes the problems of the original and adds content including the canon ending.
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Normally I don t take kindly to people shitting on NieR, however in the case of NieR Gestalt (2010, I will allow it so long as the quality of the story is acknowledged. If you want to get the NieR Replicant/Gestalt experience today, play NieR Replicant ver1. 22474487139. It was released in 2021 as a remaster to the original and it fixes the problems of the original and adds content including the canon ending.
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Dwight
I am a huge gamer mid-twenties and I've never thought games looked good until the past couple years and just barely. Basically heavily modded Skyrim Special Edition, Red Dead Redemption 2, Demons Souls remake, Horizon Forbidden West, recent Far Cry games, Assassin's Creed since Unity. I have a powerful gaming computer with RTX 3090 and PS5 and we're just now getting decent video game graphics this gen
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I am a huge gamer mid-twenties and I've never thought games looked good until the past couple years and just barely. Basically heavily modded Skyrim Special Edition, Red Dead Redemption 2, Demons Souls remake, Horizon Forbidden West, recent Far Cry games, Assassin's Creed since Unity. I have a powerful gaming computer with RTX 3090 and PS5 and we're just now getting decent video game graphics this gen
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Jens
Oblivion ugly. On what planet. I recently played through Oblivion, on console, and it still looks great if you don't count the face graphics. I always found Skyrim to be far uglier though it has graphical improvements over skyrim. But that may be on account of me being from a nordic country and being tired of winter settings in games. Thus the summer graphics of Oblivion were more to my taste.
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Oblivion ugly. On what planet. I recently played through Oblivion, on console, and it still looks great if you don't count the face graphics. I always found Skyrim to be far uglier though it has graphical improvements over skyrim. But that may be on account of me being from a nordic country and being tired of winter settings in games. Thus the summer graphics of Oblivion were more to my taste.
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Geribaldi's
Not a Bethesda fanboy at all abd the character models for Elder Scrolls Oblivion are not good. But I do believe the environment should be cut some slack. Personally I like the bloom effect of the overworld and liked the flora / trees (felt less 'plastic' than ES5 and felt more lush. Also the cities are way better looking than ES5 (again my opinion and VERY subjective.
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Not a Bethesda fanboy at all abd the character models for Elder Scrolls Oblivion are not good. But I do believe the environment should be cut some slack. Personally I like the bloom effect of the overworld and liked the flora / trees (felt less 'plastic' than ES5 and felt more lush. Also the cities are way better looking than ES5 (again my opinion and VERY subjective.
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Tim
Practically every early Bioware game. KOTOR with its very dated graphics and odd pseudo dice rolling mechanics. Dragon Age Origins with its brown color filter and unique but odd combat style. Mass Effect with its dead empty planets and performance issues. They're all classics and each added something great to the art form, but they can sure be hard on the eyes today.
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Practically every early Bioware game. KOTOR with its very dated graphics and odd pseudo dice rolling mechanics. Dragon Age Origins with its brown color filter and unique but odd combat style. Mass Effect with its dead empty planets and performance issues. They're all classics and each added something great to the art form, but they can sure be hard on the eyes today.
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