I’m sick of looking at brown, gray, brown, gray, dust, dirt, brown, gray, tan, gray, brown. Contemporary video game designers seem to be, for some odd reason, head-over-heels in love with this ugly color palette. Every game I play nowadays, I’m half expecting to see Viggo Mortensen pushing a shopping cart. I don’t know where this obsession with dull shades of gray and brown came from, but I’m goddamn sick of it.
What are some games on the opposite end of the spectrum: bright, clean-looking, with bold colors and a modern or futuristic vibe?
I can’t actually think of many that fit your particular aesthetic request - though I expect some entries in various Star Wars franchises would do. What about Vanquish? It’s got a shinier art style going on. In fact, most things that are really SCIFI as opposed to this “gritty near future” nonsense that’s all the rage right now, are more likely to put out with some cleaner lines.
Of course, that’s still just taking a very limited view of “art styles other than ‘realistic’ greybrown” but…well, answering the question. Oh, are you interested in game types other than FPS/TPS? That opens up a lot more art too - the FPS/TPS field, being the “genre of the year” more or less, is the most…uhm…creatively barren area of the game industry right now, since most of the entries are all trying to copy a winning formula.
From what I have seen of Alpha Protocol screenshots, that game may also fit the bill. Seems like a unique game. I may get it soon.
I wish to hell this obsession with the “realistic” color palette would die a fiery death; that color palette is NOT realistic! The real world as most people experience it looks nothing like that.
Assassin’s Creed 2 - Lots of bright colours. You’re in reneissance Italy, after all. Of course, during some parts you’re in reneissance Italian sewers. Where colour would probably just be disturbing.
Dead Rising 2 - Lots of colours. True fact: It’s entirely possible to beat a zombie to death with a pink handbag. It just takes a lot of patience.
King’s Bounty: The Legend - Often an explosion of colour. Probably the prettiest RTS I’ve played, in terms of the environment coming to life with lots and lots of details.
Those are from the games I’ve currently got installed. Dragon Age deserves an honorary mention, but does tend to go on (and on and on) with the dark and dreary dungeons or torch-lit massacres in the night.
I can’t help myself - gotta nitpick: it’s not a RTS. It’s completely turn-based, except when you run around the big map, but that’s just moving around and not fighting. Otherwise some RTS-hatin’, turn-based strategy lovin’ guy like me might get the wrong idea from your post. Other than that, it came to my mind as well as a colorful game. It’s not just colorful, it’s also damn good.
Psychonauts is all funky-looking and has has you going into other people’s minds, each of which has a unique and clever visual design.
Ico is very, very beautiful. Here’s another screenshot just to convince you. Its spiritual successor Shadow of the Colossus is kind of brown sometimes, but not in a boring way.
And, um… anything by Vasily Zotov. Your eyes may never be the same.
It’s definitely not bright & modernist, but I was immensely impressed by The Void’s aesthetics: it’s mostly grey, black, dark, dank and depressing, but the splashes of Colour (and the Sister’s levels) become all the more resplendent, which completely fits with the theme of the game. Really unique game mechanics, too.
As for 100% bright & sunny : Heroes of Might & Magic 5. Look it up, play it, love it. Or, you know, don’t. But that would make you a Philistine.
You don’t say what kind of games you like or what system you have. There’s about a million colorful Wii games, so I’m guessing not that one.
If you just want “bright and shiny”, though, your best bet is probably platformers. On the Xbox 360, I’m thinking Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts for a start. In the Live Arcade, there are the earlier Banjo-Kazooie games, plus some other colorful ones like The Maw and Splosion Man. Haven’t played Comic Jumper yet, but it looks similar.
On the PS3, there’s the Sly Cooper games (collection is coming out tomorrow, as I recall), the Ratchet & Clank games, Little Big Planet…shouldn’t be hard to find something there, methinks.
Bioshock has a fairly dark palette, but it isn’t gray and brown - it’s underwater, so there’s a lot of blue. It’s a colorful place, the lighting’s just a little iffy.
For a big-ish game that came out quite recently with a very colorful palette I’d point you towards Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. It’s set in post-apocalyptic New York and the surrounding area, but rather than the standard dull/dark palettes everything has been overgrown by foliage and there are some very pretty vistas.
The Halo series, while I harp on how unoriginal it is, is also rather pretty and colorful.
My understanding is that it’s an attempt to get around the limitations of current-gen graphics cards with regards to lighting—an undersaturated brown and grey aesthetic makes this limitation much less glaring, because you’re expecting everything to be dull. Add in some bloom and, hey, you’re done. On the other hand, since even Nintendo felt compelled to ditch their bright-red logo for that, maybe it’s wider in scope.
The fact that this trend warrants its own page on TV Tropes and has been mocked everywhere from Cracked magazine to VG Cats suggests that you’re not the only one who is “goddamn sick of it” (I am too), but the fact that it sticks around probably suggests that the voices of people who are opposed to the brown-grey palette are in a vocal minority.
One game that I think benefits very strongly from a more oversaturated palette, and which is available on the PC, is Just Cause 2, which is much closer to the first Far Cry than anything I’ve seen in a long while.
Oh, are you interested in game types other than FPS/TPS? That opens up a lot more art too - the FPS/TPS field, being the “genre of the year” more or less, is the most…uhm…creatively barren area of the game industry right now, since most of the entries are all trying to copy a winning formula.
