Okami and Wind Waker are lovely and all that, but I was just blown away by Final Fantasy XII - I think FFXII is definately much more visually appealing than anything on PS3, 360 or, indeed, Wii

To me, Okami, Wind Waker, Viewtiful Joe, etc, the more animated style, I guess you can add Odin Sphere to that as well, is the best graphics of the previous gen.

And yeah, so far the art design on the next-gen has been really meh.

I know this game will probably look really incredibly, but at the moment the screens just remind me of Virtua Fighter.

I’m kind of tired of things like Okami and Wind Waker being brought up as comparisons to 360/PS3’s graphical strengths. These are two of maybe, what, several games on several year old systems that really are interesting artistic wise? Do we just forget the mounds of generic stuff because of them?

I think, automatically, with a surge of power in a new generation the first thing most any company is going to do is make stuff more “realistic”. When the PS2 rolled around, this was certainly true. It was more true of most early GCN games. The fact is, you can be more “realistic” than the past generation and there’s a rush to take advantage of that.

Most artistically loved games last generation did not release in the first year or even two years. Okami and Shadow of the Collosus are prime examples of that. Hell, I’m not even sure what the Wii would have that’s actually out if Super Paper Mario wasn’t completely moved over.

My point is mostly that as the market gets more crowded for these systems, that is when these types of games tend to become more prevalent. There will have to be things done to set them apart and interesting art styles are probably the main thing that will be changed. None of the previous generations were exempt from this trend, so I’m not sure why something else would be expected. I think partially, it’s just a talking point Nintendo fans like to use to downplay the benefits of the power of 360/PS3 because anything could have a game with good art. People still make cool looking pixel games that could probably run on my SNES, for example.

As for art styles, I don’t know. Despite people wanting to attack Gears of Wars a lot of the time, if you’ve actually played through the whole thing the game has an excellent sense of scale and some wonderful architecture. Of course, it’s attacked for being more soliders versus aliens and other people assume that since it’s pretty it’s gameplay is lame. Funny enough, no one saying that seems to have thought that about RE4… which in some ways is a very similar title.

Clearly stuff like Crackdown and Viva Pinata come to mind, but even if I bring those up I’m quickly told “That’s only two games!!” as if it’s some sort of liability.

Do I see the SMAS SMB brick tiles on the walls there? Copyright infringement?

By looking at the screen shot above, this thing looks like REZ (mainly the boss of level 4 or the boss rush in level 5).

tony, i agree with you on the GOW front — that game has some really incredibly visuals, and not only technically. I don’t exactly love all the designs, but still, good art direction is good art direction.

Yeah, great graphical prowess + lousy art direction = uncanny valley or worse, but great graphical prowess + great art direction = Gears or RE4.

They’re certainly not mutually exclusive, but it’s a lot more common to use great graphical prowess as a substitute for great art direction than the other way around.

Interesting, I was not aware of this map. Looks pretty cool, reminds me of XII in a way.

They should of called the map Retro Tech or something else though.

Artistic beauty huh? What about…

Genji Dawn of the Samurai-PS3

Flow-PS3

Viva Pinata-360

Overlord-360

Those games sport some very artistic graphics quality.

Is it just me, or do the boxes look like they came from ‘Rumble Box’?

http://phackett.com/rumblebox/