いただき FORUMS - Itadaki

What would you consider to be some of the games that just absolutely blew you away with their art direction? It can be the use of the graphics, the way everything just seems to come together, whatever. Why do you like it? These are mine, in order from most awesome to less awesome.


DOOM 3 - Nauseatingly repetitive gameplay and far too much punishment for finding hidden caches of goods (find a hidden gun, spawn some demons...) are all negatives in an otherwise solid game that are simply crushed by the amazing artwork in this game. The art team simply kicked ass every step of the way. The Mars facility is awe inspiring: beautiful, creative, functional, and always, unrelentingly, scary as... well... Hell. Massive fusion chambers, teleport labs, tram rides that show you the exterior of the facility, catwalks, mining facilities, ancient alien chambers, interactive in-game monitors... The amount of detail is overwhelming and all of it is quality. Then there's the level where you go to Hell, and I have yet to see anything in any game since come even close to the sheer amount of awesome that that level represents in the artistry and presentation. If you don't mind being scared out of your mind and have a computer or console that can run it, its a visual trip worth taking. The sound effects are amazing too. Now if only we can make it a slightly better game...

Kingdom Hearts 2 - Need I say more? Sora's character design is not only spot-on, but serves as the perfect unifying bridge between the many different world designs we come across. Somehow, even the realistic Pirates of the Caribbean world, he doesn't seem out of place. The black and white era stylizings are also epic win unto themselves. The attack animations are a real joy, as are Sora's forms. Final Form is just cool looking, period. (Look ma, no hands!) The Disney worlds look terrific, too. Everything is just wonderful looking, even on the comparatively weak PlayStation 2.

World of WarCraft - This is a graphics engine that is over eight years old. When you look at it, considering that by today's standards that game is churning out abysmally low polygon counts on just about everything it features, you just can't bring yourself to care about that. It looks beautiful. Living proof that amazing artistry can trump all shortcomings, its astounding what Blizzard's team of artists manage to pull off on such an old engine. This is especially evident in their dungeons and raids, where some of the visuals flat-out blow you away. There are some bad eggs in the bunch, which is to be expected in such a massive game, but overall this game's style is just not done justice by the engine running it.

Metroid Prime - Ooooh, pretty pretty zones. Not to mention one of the, if not the, most badass HUD and menu system in any game ever. Seeing Samus' eyes reflected in the Combat Visor was the final straw, after that I was immersed in this game like few others. The enemies were pretty pimpin' too, as were the special effects at work in a fire-fight. This game just reeks of cool.

Half-Life 2 - I'm in a dystopian future where the Earth has been conquered by extra-dimensional aliens and I believe it. So much so that I literally try to duck for cover behind my keyboard every now and then. There is so much detail in this game, everything has been painstakingly put together so that it makes sense and fits into the world. Everything feels like it belongs there. The Synths are also the coolest things ever: Are they machines? Living creatures? Both? You can't really tell, and that's awesome. Also, my sniper rifle is a makeshift crossbow that fires battery-heated rhubarb pipes into people. That's just AWESOME.

Okami - The use of Sumi-e style painting make this old world Japanese game just breathtaking. I love how flowers grow amongst Ammy's feet as she runs around the screen. And when flowers and trees blossom after saving an area from darkness, who wouldn't be amazed to see that?! By far one of the most beautiful and fun games out there.

Street Fighter: 3rd Strike - THE SPRITES. The way they move is so smooth and full of life. All 2D fighters should do their sprites like this. Just awesome work overall.

Odin Sphere - Beautiful, lush, hand drawn backgrounds, and amazing animation work on the characters. There should be more hand-drawn games like this. It's like watching a painting come to life.

Persona 3/4 - I love the hip/Neo Tokyo style of this game. The music really adds to it's artistic value. It's like really being in Japan, without the arduous task of travelling there, at least to me. The designs are top notch.

Phantasy Star - I'm a little bias when I say this, but I think PSO has some of the best designs for an MMO out there. An awesome sci-fi fantasy game with wonderful worlds. The music also adds to it.

I'm sure I'll think of more later on...

Variis wrote:Metroid Prime - Ooooh, pretty pretty zones. Not to mention one of the, if not the, most badass HUD and menu system in any game ever. Seeing Samus' eyes reflected in the Combat Visor was the final straw, after that I was immersed in this game like few others. The enemies were pretty pimpin' too, as were the special effects at work in a fire-fight. This game just reeks of cool.

Metroid Pime 3: Corruption capitalizes on that even more: as Samus becomes more corrupted by Phazon, her eyes grow an eerie glowing blue-green, and blue veins sprout not only along the right side of her nose, but along her cheeks and forehead as well. A very neat effect. :3

Shadow of the Colossus - I think the graphics in this game were fantastic. Some people seemed to have a problem with how little story there was to it, but I think there's something great about being able to play a game and just be completely immersed in the atmosphere and environment.. also, the music was just wonderful imho :)

Flower - I suppose the same can be said for this game, its a small one released for the PS3 in which the player soars through a flower's dream. It uses the sixaxis controls and the accuracy of it only adds to the seamless whimsical dreamlike feel of the game. Graphically, story-wise, and length, it's much more "simple" compared to standard games.. but the visuals are breathtaking & emotionally its one of the most uplifting enjoyable games I've played.

Little Big Planet - I cannot rave enough about how much I love the art direction of this game.. not only is it very fun and challenging to play, but the crazy music, creative themes, and vibrant interactive platforms work in harmony to make a hell of a fun game.

It may be old, but Claymates was quite an artistic game. Overly colorful at times, though.

Here's some footage of the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC0P-Wkq6cw


I can't think of any other games that haven't been posted already.

Shadow of the Colossus

Metal Gear Solid 4 (graphics in general blew me away)

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence

I was gonna go with Symphony of the Night due to its highly detailed backgrounds and sprites, amazing graphics (considering the age and medium), memorable score, and attention to the little things.

Many enemies have been adapted from folklore and literature from around the world. One such creature is the Alraune (and Blue Alraune). In literature, Alraune is the name of a novel where a scientist takes the semen of a hanged man and impregnates a prostitute with it (and later wins the Nobel Prize for being Arbitrarily Psychotic). The result was a girl which he named Alraune, whom despite a happy and proper upbringing turned out to be pure evil.

These creatures are a beautiful naked girl in the middle of a large rose. All around her shifts writhing plants that move around and shoot up spiked vines at you, while she throws a number of rose projectiles at you. Both instances can be very deadly if you're unprepared at the levels you'd encounter them, since if you're forced to retreat from them they can be difficult to reproach.

But my point behind this is the little, subtle, and very obscure detail Konami put into this game. Each version's descriptions mention its an evil rose fed with blood (the blue one fed with demon's blood). All of her attacks are piercing so hits make Alucard bleed. If you get hit enough times by the ground-vines, you may notice that the girl's rose gradually starts turning red, and will so until its a perfect blood red.

Such a small detail based solely on adapted lore. Now THAT'S art.

visually artistic games

there are games that are more artistically visually oriented and games based more on tech.

in the end all games have artistic direction so the question is which games appealed to you artistically.

a lot of games have great concept art, but that's very different from the actual art in the game. this is based on the in game art.



my games:

Final Fantasy XII
Everything from background to character design to textures

Shadow of the Colossus
cinematic presentation, mood,


Final Fantasy VII
environment artistic direction

Street Fighter III
Style that the characters are drawn in, and the fluidity of the animation.

Katamari Damacy
Artistic direction and presentation. Makes me feel like I want to live there for a short time.

Marvel Super Heroes, MvC2 and all Capcom games with Marvel characters in it.
The style and the design of the Marvel characters are so attractive. They stay difinitive Marvel characters and take it to a whole other level with that particular 90's style anime influence. Psylock looks soo hot and Spiderman looks spectacular (pardon the pun). I don't think I can describe how well the characters are done.

TvC (Tatsunoko vs Capcom)
From what I've seen the Tatsunoko characters look awesome.

Honorable mention
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
The first MGS game gets an honorabel mention because although the art direction as a whole didn't strike me too much I have to give MGS kudos for making me attracted to a faceless block, I'm talking about Meryl. Is it wrong that I get turned on when I see a cardboard box now?...


the list so far...

Oh, addition

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

I loved the game because it did everything people didn't expect. Even if it had an Evangelion ending that you had to play the game three times to even remotely begin to understand.

Pinhead wrote:Oh, addition

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

I loved the game because it did everything people didn't expect. Even if it had an Evangelion ending that you had to play the game three times to even remotely begin to understand.

I know this is off topic but I just wanted to say it real quick. I'm a late comer to the MGS games, I just started messing around with trying to get MGS1 rom to work and before I knew it I had played through the whole game. This was last year. Ok, maybe this will save me from being off topic...most likely not, but I was jaded by how MGS played on emulator. It practically looked like a PS2 game, all the colors were more vibrant. The textures were clearer. The polygons were clearer which made the textures stand out more. When I played it again on my PS1, I was like awww what's this shit =(, lol. Then I played Sons of Liberty, pretty damn good game as well. I'm about to start on Snake Eater soon here. I'm definitely going to be playing them all. Games this good these days are a rarity. After playing games like MGS it's like having a really satisfying amazing meal.

Maybe this might save me from being off topic too...maybe not. Yoji Shinkawa's art I adore. I like the really rough, sketchy look. The pen and ink, brush and ink, sumi-e painting like style of his is gorgeous. Again, that's not in game art, just concept art.

Street Fighter 3 Third Strike / New Generation - Awe-inspiring character design. Also the presentation is inspiring.. the sound effects and announcer and the sounds for super arts and round wins... just greatness. Also the music fits in excellently with the game in Third Strike. Also, the best sprite animation ever in a game. (maybe KoF 12 will top it)

Mega Man 8 - awesome crazy storybook/anime vibe

Super Metroid - great, thick atmosphere, sense of fear, also Samus's sprite is epic. She seems to glisten/wiggle or something even when standing still. What's the deal? It's awesome.

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence - sick atmosphere, lush graphics, the soundtrack is unbelievable, very eerie game, great use of sound, the sound for entering a door (complete with echo) is very cool. This game is ALL atmosphere. I even think the gameplay is artistic, the game goes for brutally simple, fixed camera, no leveling up, and a "literal" feel to gameplay such as being able to place marker stones on the map and being forced to use items in real time without pausing.

Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) - This is ultra cool incarnate. Great atmosphere, romantic environments, environments and music that mesh perfectly, great character animation (except Elise) Sonic is an animal and super fun to watch, slick and colorful robots, super immersive free-form level design, and if not the best soundtrack in a videogame, ever.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 - One word: SOUNDTRACK. Super expressive almost Disney-esque (KH-ish?) characters and vivid storytelling and presentation. The DMW slot wheel is used surrealistically as a limit-break-inducing storytelling device.

added:

Castlevania Symphony of the Night - No side-scrolling Castlevania has been able to really capture the ornate quality of the visuals in this game.. .so fundamentally none of them really succeed as Castlevania games. =P Also, Alucard's cape turns into wings when he double jumps, that's what gaming is about, frankly. Lastly, the intro cutscene the "what is a man?" scene is pure art and pretty much iconic of what gaming is.

Mario Paint

Camo wrote:Mario Paint

Dude...