When I watched a video on the Youtube channel Extra Credits, who are 3 game designers, and they say "I'm glad we aren't restricted by past gen video cards and we can finally move forward from the poor graphics we had to settle with"...I think that I'm just agreeing with the consensus. 3 years ago we could have had current gen graphics but 360/PS3 were not up to speed.
Remember when MK4 came out? Everyone was like "Wow, MK in 3D! There's no way graphics can get better than this!" Now we see it and we can see how poor the graphics are. Stop, for some reason, defending poor graphics. It doesn't have feelings, it won't cry.
This seems like a completely understandable response to the sorts of graphics we get in games like MK9 and MKX.
There are games that age very well. That still look amazing years after they came out. Usually its because they pick an art style that is completely achievable on the hardware it was originally released on.
MK9 and MKX both strive for reality. Not in character proportions or in how everybody that ever appeared in MK is basically immortal. But in the sense that the clothes they wear are supposed to look like real cloth or the dirt on the ground is supposed to look like real dirt. The bark on the trees is supposed to look like real bark.
That is attempting to make something look real. But its not going to look real. When a new game comes out and pushes the limits, its the most real looking thing we've seen yet and its impressive. But next generation, when its replaced, its not impressive any more because we've gotten even closer to reality.
I still think ChronoTrigger looks gorgeous. I think TF2 aged fantastically. But MK9 doesn't look good any more.
