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Is there a particular art style or aesthetic that completely turns you off to a game, regardless of its other merits?
- Thread starter ScOULaris
- Start date
Anything that looks like an NES game or worse. I grew up on the NES, but I just don't like the look. I'll probably never play Shovel Knight or The Messenger (I'm aware of it's twist) because of how close they emulate it.
I think Akira Toriyama is a fucking shit artist and I hate everything he has ever designed. I'm glad that Dragon Quest movie on Netflix didn't have his stupid fucking character faces.
I love Toriyama's artwork in Dr. Slump and OG Dragon Ball. But with Dragon Quest and especially Dragon Ball Z Super he just comes up with the most bland and generic designs imaginable.
Cuphead - the art style and way it animates absolutely gives me the creeps.
It has a lot of hate in here but personally I love the 'anime' aesthetic. And as someone with problems telling faces apart giving characters different colour hair helps me a lot.
It has a lot of hate in here but personally I love the 'anime' aesthetic. And as someone with problems telling faces apart giving characters different colour hair helps me a lot.
Any thin, spindly sprites that should be full of detail, but they have a pixel for a head, and everything is completely unreadable.
Yeah, Gears of War. Everything about it from soldier designs, dull colors, can't stand looking at it so I don't play it.
The only styles I'm not a fan of are the "hardcore punk" ones, like Rage 2 or Bleeding Edge (sort of in that realm).
It always hurts my heart to see people talk down on retro-inspired stuff. For a lot of developers, pixel-art as an art-style is what helps them be able to manage making their own art as well as design and program the game despite their artistic talent and have it still look decent enough.
I'm the asshole that likes Nidhogg 2's style more than 1 though.
It always hurts my heart to see people talk down on retro-inspired stuff. For a lot of developers, pixel-art as an art-style is what helps them be able to manage making their own art as well as design and program the game despite their artistic talent and have it still look decent enough.
I'm the asshole that likes Nidhogg 2's style more than 1 though.
This is the biggest one for me. "But they all have different art styles!" There are some basic design consitencies across a lot of them that are extremely off-putting to me to the point where I won't touch them. I would at least give ARMS and Splatoon a try otherwise(I do like 3 of the ARMS characters though). Not all colorful Nintendo games fall into this category for me, but certain ones that remind me of Nickelodeon cartoons plus Animal Crossing do. Also the "Mii" aesthetic such as Tomodachi Life.
There are many anime styles that I can't stand and many that I'm okay with, but Neptunia's is an instant no for me, as is whatever is going on with the Atelier series.
Whatever you call Astral Chain's style.
Darkest Dungeon.
Tearaway.
It's so on-brand for so many posts to say things like "hyper realism" and then go on to cite Naughty Dog. Uncharted is stylized, it's not a realistic looking series. Gears, Assassin's Creed and many others get quoted a lot, and very few are actually going for realism. It's just a veiled jab against AAA games. Senua's Sacrifice never gets brought up. With respect to environments, almost every game has fantastical looking environments or elements mixed in, besides some "modern combat" military shooters. Saying realistic is just as broad as saying anime.
Edit: also Shin Megami Tensei 4
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Western RPGs.
A lot of them just look so... Brown. Bland to me. I don't know how to explain it. Also, very white washed. To me at least.
One reason I couldn't get into Dungeons and Dragons.
A lot of them just look so... Brown. Bland to me. I don't know how to explain it. Also, very white washed. To me at least.
One reason I couldn't get into Dungeons and Dragons.
That's what Takahashi was asked when he finding who will doing Character design in XC2.
The answer is nope because XC doesn't have any.
Not to mention the Legendary Blades having extremely inconsistent art.
Moe anime. Not moe anime is great though. Except the Dragon Quest/Dragon Ball style. For some reason I can't stand it.
We need more like these:
We need more like these:
Most jrpg aesthetics make me cringe. Sometimes its because of the actual on screen content such as huge eyes or crazy hairstyles & outfits, other times is by association as I simply cannot stand that saturday morning cartoon dialogue and that 1990's take on on "cool/edgy/quirky" that should have died with Sonic.
Whatever the hell you call shit like Sword and Sworcery. It looks like literally nothing. I cannot tell what I'm supposed to be looking at, ever. Risk of Rain managedot get me enough that it didn't bother me, but holy shit that super minimalist single pixel as legs and arms and shit art style is just godawful. I can't tell if it has no personality or the wrong kind.
The rest of #1 I'll give you because a few of them just look like crud, but Shovel Knight pulled off its throwback/8-bit style pretty much perfectly. #2........ there's already enough anime hate in this thread, I'm not going to try and defend any of it because nobody will ever like it who already hates it.
I'm kind of on board, though for the 2.5D thing I think it's more that I don't care for prerendered art/sprites in most games that do them. DKC on SNES did them fine for the time. KI too. But then some of the characters from Angel eyes are just awful. Thankfully the PS1 port of the game lets you unlock proper sprite version of those same characters.
I... you hate Nier's art style... but then praise goddamned Naruto games..? I'm confused.
YOU DID NOT JUST THROW SHADE AT SHOVEL KNIGHT, GODDAMMIT.#1.Meatboy, Celeste and Hotline Miami are the exceptions. Otherwise, stop with this faux-retro shit.
#2.
No. Literally never, ever.
The rest of #1 I'll give you because a few of them just look like crud, but Shovel Knight pulled off its throwback/8-bit style pretty much perfectly. #2........ there's already enough anime hate in this thread, I'm not going to try and defend any of it because nobody will ever like it who already hates it.
No.
I've had fun with even ugly games. The only thing that really turns me off is those 16 bit RPG remasters with terrible fonts. Not sure that's an aesthetic choice as much as a quick hack to have these games work for phones.
I've had fun with even ugly games. The only thing that really turns me off is those 16 bit RPG remasters with terrible fonts. Not sure that's an aesthetic choice as much as a quick hack to have these games work for phones.
The entire art style just seems incredibly creepy. Basically everything has an enormous mouth with a massive evil grin and giant teeth. And then on top of that the animation means they move about in a really unnerving way.
Extreme straight-down vertical perspective where you just see people's heads and shoulders. It gives me vertigo.
Harsh high-contrast visuals, e.g. stark black and white. It hurts my eyes.
Game Boy-esque resolution. I like pixel art just fine, but I don't understand the appeal of deliberately squeezing a modern PC game into a tiny, cramped 9x9 tilespace. Make the field of view bigger, jeez.
Harsh high-contrast visuals, e.g. stark black and white. It hurts my eyes.
Game Boy-esque resolution. I like pixel art just fine, but I don't understand the appeal of deliberately squeezing a modern PC game into a tiny, cramped 9x9 tilespace. Make the field of view bigger, jeez.
-Modern moe-influenced generic anime style, with garish overly bright digital coloration, surfer haircuts everywhere and all the usual stuff. Also i don't necessarily hate sexualized designs, i just can't stand them when they look stupid and trashy.
-Tumblr art.
-Modern western cartoonish artstyles.
-2d high-res sprite based games that rely too much on skeleton/deformation/tweening techniques for their animations.
-Realistic looking western games that love to show off how much "unconventionally beauty" their protagonists are and how much splotchy/greasy their skin is.
-Trashy dudebro aesthetic.
-Tumblr art.
-Modern western cartoonish artstyles.
-2d high-res sprite based games that rely too much on skeleton/deformation/tweening techniques for their animations.
-Realistic looking western games that love to show off how much "unconventionally beauty" their protagonists are and how much splotchy/greasy their skin is.
-Trashy dudebro aesthetic.
Maybe there's an exception somewhere, but I can't think of any sub-240p pixel art indie games that I can stand to play.
There just aren't enough pixels there to be legible, and it makes me feel like I should be 6ft away from my monitor. Are they made for phones or something?
And Dust: an Elysian Tail.
There just aren't enough pixels there to be legible, and it makes me feel like I should be 6ft away from my monitor. Are they made for phones or something?
And Dust: an Elysian Tail.
Chibi is ugly as fuck to me.
I don't understand how can these devs turn this beautiful art:
To this ugly chibi hell hole
I'm not skipping this game tho.
In a more extreme chibi cases such as World of FF I did skip it even tho the combat was great based on the demo
I don't understand how can these devs turn this beautiful art:
To this ugly chibi hell hole
I'm not skipping this game tho.
In a more extreme chibi cases such as World of FF I did skip it even tho the combat was great based on the demo
Actually I forgot but I literally can't get myself to play Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night because of the aesthetics. I absolutely hate those cheap looking, bland backgrounds.
When the sprites are puppet animated... I simply cannot play games where the characters are animated like this
I think most of his main character designs are pretty bland, but the NPCs are usually wonderful varied for RPGs, whereas in a lot of other games all the NPCs look like clones. Fat people! Moustaches!
Yes.
"Mobile" style
Also that generic anime style in Japanese gacha games
I didn't like Guilty Gear XX's sprite work for the longest time due to how few animations their attacks were. It's since been alleviated with Blazblue and the jump to 3D but it really turned me off.
Historical or Modern Realistic Militarism
Power-Fantasy "Realistic" Modern Warfare Militarism
Basically if it falls along the spectrum of looking like an ad for the US Army at first impression, keep that.
Power-Fantasy "Realistic" Modern Warfare Militarism
Basically if it falls along the spectrum of looking like an ad for the US Army at first impression, keep that.
"Mobile" style
This is it. This is the worst.
I'm fine with chibi, but Bravely Default II's weird compromise between chibi and realistic proportions is just ugh.
You're confused why I would prefer Cyber2s art style compared to Nier? They are nothing alike and the naruto looks just like the anime just in a 3D video game. What's so confusing about that?
Similar ugly designs to battleborne, cant stand this edgy style.
I can't stand this Over Designed Punk shit.
Im not trying to Jab at you ,but after reading this I'm curious what artstyles do you like cuz I'm sure this probably eliminates half of gaming XD
On topic tho ,I'm not very big on Chibi Artstyles outside Zelda : The Wind waker
Hyper realistic greyish artstyles I'm not too big on either.
One artstyle that completely turns me off tho is retro 8-bit graphics. I hold no nostalgia for the era and prefer 16 bit +
Oh and the Borderlands/Rage2 style of comedy and aesthetic turns me off
I didn't play any of the 'silhouette' based games from 2010 or so. They always screamed of being cheaply made and weirdly derivative.
Nidhogg 2 always reminds me of Gilbert, a snotty alien puppet TV host from 1990. This guy was a celebrity in the UK. Weird times
Nidhogg 2 always reminds me of Gilbert, a snotty alien puppet TV host from 1990. This guy was a celebrity in the UK. Weird times