Is anyone here a graphics whore?

I do have a co-worker who is frequently planning his next PC hardware purchase. He really likes open world games, and enjoys modding and tweaking things (both the games that he plays and the hardware). So while it is an expensive hobby, it seems to pay off in the amount of satisfaction/enjoyment he gets.

I'm still mainly a console gamer, so I'm okay with a steadily improving graphics experience over the years without needing to be on the bleeding edge. I'm a budget gamer in some ways.

On the technical side of things, I think performance is much more important than graphics - so, for very demanding games (like when I recently played Rise of the Tomb Raider), I'll usually prefer that the game looks slightly worse to keep 60fps than to have a beautiful game that has stutters and slowdowns.

But as long as the game is good I sincerely have no problem either way, and a lot of my pc games are console ports locked at 30fps, 2d games or older 3d games, so I don't really care. Last year, the most fun I had was playing through every classic Tomb Raider.

In general, I'm more impressed by a good art direction than by raw graphics power. I actually think that games like the newer Tomb Raiders have such elaborate graphics that they kind of get in the way of the gameplay: there are too many effects and particles and foliage and shiny things on the screen all the time, so in busy scenes I can barely see what I am shooting at or what platform I'm trying to grab.

I still think Mirror's Edge (just the first one) has some of the best graphics ever made, exactly because it has a perfectly clean art design that is never intrusive and that naturally guides you through the levels. So yes, my "perfect graphics in a game" comes from something released a decade ago. It's a good example because I think it has better graphics than its own sequel, which has a lot of shining elements that are somewhat intrusive and make everything look too "cinematic", fake, instead of real.

stratogustav - Yep, 30fps is certainly fine for most 3d games (for 2d ones, 60fps was always the standard, very few are 30fps, like Metal Slug). But given the option between a higher fps or higher graphical "quality", I always prefer a higher fps - it not only makes the game look "smoother", but also it tends to respond better. That's why every fighting game and character action games (Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta etc.) aim for 60fps: the game literally cuts the delay between input/action on screen in half, so it's just more responsive.

There's one more thing for pc games, though: as you are usually sitting closer to the screen, camera movements in 30fps can give you a headache over time, so I find that even slower, single player games like Dark Souls are much more playable at 60. This video shows a few comparisons to give an idea:



Good call on the pixel count: 4k displays are only really worth it if they are big enough or if you are very close to the screen.

EDIT: The linked website is offline, so I replaced it with a Youtube video.

What really grinds my gears about graphicsfags is that they they make this huge push for things they hear in marketing blurbs. There's this huge push for 4K as if it was actually discernible from 2K outside of VR. Instead of developers creating bigger environments, or making prettier shaders, or adding nice particle effects, we instead get an ever so slightly crisper looking game that otherwise could've been released 6 years ago.

That makes sense because CG movies are a visual art at its core and the prettier it is the more you're going to enjoy it or the imperfections and low quality is going to render your experience. I watched Earwig and the Witch which is studio ghibli's first CG movie and the low quality of the CG made the movie look like claymation rather than CG.

But when it comes to games it makes no sense when the visual (especially the "specks") is the be all end all of what they judge the game by. The Happy Console Gamer said how playing on scart ruined Twilight Princess and Skyward sword for him. like really?, Playing on Scart ruined a Zelda game for this tit wank?.

And you get many of fucktard game reviewers where the specks is all they talk about. 1080p this! and 4K that and HDMI imput this and 120fps that!. I always said if these fuckos get Sonic 06 to run at 4K and 120fps they'll declare it the best game in the series. 

Oh man, I saw this happen recently with Digital Foundry. See, just a few days before the release of Cyberpunk 2077 they were releasing videos non-stop praising every single thing about the game because it was the most impressive 3d world ever with raytracing and materials and every other meaningless shit. If you were following them, it seemed that the game they had already played extensively to make all those videos had no flaws and was the second coming of the gaming gods.

Then the game was released and it was Cyberpunk 2077. You know, one of the most broken releases in every area (including graphics!) we saw in recent years.

The same year they had already praised to heavens Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which not only was very underwhelming but also had, in its pc release (that Digital Foundry touted as if it was the most perfect game ever), a terrible performance and many bugs. And then their list of games of the year were usually terrible games with high-end graphics (except for a few games included by John Lineman, from DF Retro, on his list).

After those snafus, I unsubscribed to Digital Foundry. I can't stand these reviewers that cover games just based on what is its highest resolution while using raytracing or some other shit that I can't even notice while playing.

The mini-documentaries from DF Retro are still really good, though.