Topic: Best Looking Wii Game

[Ian Sane]

Wii Sports is not nearly blurry enough to look like an N64 game.  It's more like a Dreamcast game where they took the polygons from an N64 game and replaced them with smoother textures.

Is Wii Sports have simplistic graphics as a marketing tool because casuals would be more attracted to it or is it that casuals will put up with simplistic graphics and it's an excuse to cut corners?  But Wii Sports and its ilk are not merely simplistic in terms of graphics.  The gameplay is equally simplified.  The whole design intentionally is unambitious.

It isn't necessarily the example set by Wii Sports that made the Wii underperform in terms of graphics potential.  Due to the huge gap between it and the other consoles any third party developer that wanted to push the envelope in terms of graphics and presentation was never going to bother with the Wii in the first place.  There's a reason the best looking games are all made by Nintendo themselves.

[Ceric]

I have to disagee a bit here.
While all the Wii* games are simplistic in nature there is a saying:

"Programmers strive to make the Idiot Proof Progam.
The Universe strives to make the Better Idiot.
The Universe is Winning."

There are a lot of special cases that gamers will chock up to being "part of the game" and tolerate that non-gamers will not.  Getting all those cases in even a simplistic game can really be hard.

[broodwars]

It's interesting seeing how the voting is going on this.  Yeah, the game I thought would win this poll is so far (the Mario Galaxy games, and incidentally why are they combined?), but the voting's been pretty diverse.

My problem with declaring one of the 2D-based games like Kirby or Murasmasa the best-looking game is that compared to the 3D games they're really not pushing the hardware quite as much.  Muramasa looks as good as it does because there's only seemingly a dozen different backgrounds in the game, and probably about the same number of character sprites (not counting bosses).  Yeah, it's a great-looking game, but the game design's really not pushing the game to have to do all that much (and from what I remember, the game has some of the usual Vanillaware slowdown when things start getting hectic).

Kirby's a great-looking game as well, but it only has to portray things from a singular angle with a very simple art style that's not all that detailed, and even then it's pretty light on the particle effects, character counts, and whatnot.  DKCR by comparison has a lot of movement and different layers of characters and environments working in the background, so I'm a lot more impressed at what that game accomplished visually.  And I'll admit from a personal standpoint, Kirby's art style never really did much for me, as interesting a concept as it is.  If you want to label it as the game with the best art style on the Wii, I can't really disagree with you there.  But as for "best looking"?  That wouldn't really be my choice.

[Ceric]

Seems everyone has a different opinion of what "Best Looking" Means.

Does it mean how it looks as an entire package?
Does it mean how much its doing?
Does it mean how it looks when caught in a still Screen?
Does it mean how it looks in motion?

Without agreeing on what "Best Looking" really means then this will be up for a wide variety of interpretations.

[broodwars]

Seems everyone has a different opinion of what "Best Looking" Means.

Does it mean how it looks as an entire package?
Does it mean how much its doing?
Does it mean how it looks when caught in a still Screen?
Does it mean how it looks in motion?

Without agreeing on what "Best Looking" really means then this will be up for a wide variety of interpretations.

Yeah, for me it would be "All of the Above" on those qualifications.  But that's just me.

[Luigi Dude]

Having spoiled myself on every trailer for Skyward Sword Nintendo has released, my vote easily went to Skyward Sword.  The amount of detail that went into every area shown so far is just increadible.  Can't really say anything else since most of the members here don't want to be spoiled, but it's just f*cking amazing.

[Ceric]

Having spoiled myself on every trailer for Skyward Sword Nintendo has released, my vote easily went to Skyward Sword.  The amount of detail that went into every area shown so far is just increadible.  Can't really say anything else since most of the members here don't want to be spoiled, but it's just f*cking amazing.

I'm Curious to compare Skyward Sword during play to Monster Hunter.  There are times in Monster Hunter that you swear its just a photo of an event but, those aren't always.

[Chozo Ghost]

Having spoiled myself

I misread that as you saying you soiled yourself.

[Ceric]

Having spoiled myself

I misread that as you saying you soiled yourself.

That can be very HD.  It is brown mostly.

[Stogi]

Like Luigi Dude, I'm pretty sure Skyward Sword is going to take the cake simply because of the in-game cut-scenes that are so spectacular and enchanting. Not to say that the graphics during game play are less sufficient, but I really haven't seen a Zelda like this yet. Wind Waker, my favorite of all the graphic styles in any game, might be dethroned once SS is released.

[Ian Sane]

If I was to define "best looking" I would say it's whatever impresses me the most visually when I'm playing it.  That's not going to just be artistic design and not going to just be technical wizardry.  It would be both.

Technicalities like a 2D game being "easier" to make look nice don't matter to me, because so many of that best looking games from the past used clever tricks to gain a visual edge.  In the 16-bit era fighting games often were some of the best looking titles.  They had somewhat of an unfair advantage because they used only one background at a time and only had to animate two characters, allowing for huge sprites.  But as kids did we think of that?  Did we care?  No!  We just saw Street Fighter II and thought it was better looking than Super Mario World.  Then DKC came out using another "trick" and we didn't think about that.  It was just "Holy ****!  Look at those graphics!"

Finding something attractive to look at is largely instinctive and emotional to begin with.  Do you really need to stop and think about what sort of effort was required to achieve a certain look?  Your initial feeling of awe will just come without thinking about it in the first place.  Do you look back and think about the games or your reaction to them?

[Mop it up]

Without agreeing on what "Best Looking" really means then this will be up for a wide variety of interpretations.

It's pretty easy to interpret, it's simply what looks the best. The reasons behind why someone thinks a game looks the best can be anything someone wants it to be as long as the end result is what looks best, so if someone finds something like a lot of moving objects to look the best then there is nothing wrong with that. The question isn't "Which game pushes the hardware to its limits" and so we have a wide variety of answers that show that a game doesn't need the most technical prowess to have the best look. Besides, pushing the hardware doesn't always equal good graphics; the Call of Duty games appear to utilize the Wii near its limits, yet in my opinion those games look ugly.

[UltimatePartyBear]

This argument reminds me of the aesthetics vs. graphics episode of Extra Credits, and it's really great to see that most of the options really do have good aesthetics, even if some of the arguments reference graphical capabilities, too.  Maybe that's because the Wii's lackluster 3rd party support meant we didn't get all the real-is-brown titles the other consoles did.  Or maybe it's because this forum's regulars don't need Extra Credits to tell us that graphics aren't everything.

I have to vote for Skyward Sword.  It's the first 3D Zelda to remind me of LttP in its appearance.  I can't put my finger on how exactly, but I just get that feeling from it.  At the same time, it's beautiful in its own right.  It's a culmination of every game leading up to it.  You can see how the character designs in particular have evolved through the 3D Zelda games to get to this point, starting with those odd body shapes that were probably due to the N64's limitations, zigzagging into outright cartoonishness via Wind Waker, and picking up just enough realism since then to become something uniquely Zelda.  I just love it.  All of it.

Kirby's Epic Yarn is a close second because the yarn and fabric look isn't just pretty to look at.  It's interwoven (Ha! I kill me.) with the gameplay.  I daresay say that makes it unique.  Only the Paper Mario series comes to mind as a counterexample.

[Kytim89]

I messed up when I put the date for expiration of voting and would like to extend it until the first of next month, or thirty days.

[broodwars]

I messed up when I put the date for expiration of voting and would like to extend it until the first of next month, or thirty days.

Why? I think it's only fair to close the poll before Zelda comes out (which will dominate the voting almost solely because it's the newest game), or else give us the option in the poll to change our vote like RFN does for the RetroActive polls.

And incidentally, if we're looking at games that aren't even out yet, I wonder if we're perhaps snubbing Rayman Origins in all this.  That game's been looking pretty impressive whenever I see it in motion.

[Kytim89]

I will add it to the poll, Broodwars.

[Chozo Ghost]

I haven't played or seen about half the games on this poll, so I don't feel qualified to vote.