What makes a game's visuals truly great isn't just the graphics, it's the game's aesthetics – the artwork that gives a game its appearance and identity. How a game makes us feel when we look at it is more important than what resolution it runs at. Graphics come and go. What's hot today is cold three years from now. Aesthetics are timeless – they're the creative engine that drive how a game feels.
Here are five games with great aesthetics.
#5 World of Warcraft (Classic)
WoW has practically lived and died off of its art. Well, mostly lived. And that's mainly because of it's ability to retain the great quality of its art on a variety of graphical settings. Which means that no matter what your system specs, you'll still get that great Warcraft feel. But, what WoW really does well is this: from zone to zone, there are so many different moods telegraphed by Blizzard's spectacular art department. For instance, Elwynn Forest is lush and inviting. It feels like a safe-haven – somewhere to carry out as happy a living as is possible in a perpetually war-torn world. There's a lot of green everywhere, and warm, light colors like splashes of yellow, red and blue.
In contrast, The Barrens are rugged, dry and dangerous. You can almost feel the sun beating down the crown of your head, cracking and peeling the skin on your shoulders. There's a lot of yellow and brown – colors that are typically used in video games. But what sets The Barrens apart from the innumerable other examples that use similar palates is Blizzard's ability to sneak other colors in without ruining the mood. Look around the barrens and you'll see a couple small oases (composed primarily of green and blue) there are some large hills which are the color of red Georgia clay, and various wildlife that are an amalgamation of orange, purple, green and brown, among many others.
World of Warcraft, during the classic era, is the single best example of Blizzard's mastery of color. Even to this day, their ability to create a setting through use of color is nearly unmatched.
#4 Shadow of the Colossus
If games are the evolved descendants of film, Shadow of the Colossus is the missing link. There is no game that is more cinematic in presentation than this one. The aesthetics in this game seem to have been heavily influenced by Hayao Miyazaki's Japanese animated films like Princess Mononoke (perhaps the fact that a main character is named “Mono” is a nod to this influence). At times it looks like Studio Ghibli's fingerprints are all over this game, as it seems like each colossus has come lumbering out of Miyazaki's most demented nightmares. What's more impressive is each one is artistically distinct from the others, while maintaining a unified color palate between all of them – not an easy thing to do.
As bright and colorful as Miyazaki's work at Studo Ghibli is, Shadow of the Colossus is every bit as dark and moody – everywhere there are hints of a ruined civilization, creating the feeling of foreboding while exploring the Forbidden Land. All the while, the undercurrent of life-altering adventure that permeates throughout Miyazaki's body of work is also present in Shadow of the Colossus. While the art of the game plays a large part in this, the cinematography in this game is leagues beyond anything else in any other game. I dare you to look at nearly any landscape in Shadow of the Colossus and not be awestruck by the beauty and scale looking back at you.
#3 Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2's aesthetics most notable feature are the aggressive use of shapes. The way Valve created each character class with a unique profile for easy identification was a stroke of genius – and it changed the debate surrounding useful presentation of information in games. Rarely before had gaming message boards talked about something like a “unique profile” for a particular character, or class. But once TF2 came out, and Valve explained exactly how they conditioned players to subconsciously recognize the difference between a Medic and a Soldier in a split second, it all became so obvious. Suddenly, artists and developers across the industry are talking about the importance of giving each character a unique shape.
Also, like Shadow of the Colossus, Team Fortress 2 has a distinct influence from a particular film. Ever notice how the Heavy has a strange likeness to Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles? There's a reason for that. Valve has admitted before that the music and art in TF2 was swayed by a love for Pixar's stylish 1950's spy-meets-superhero tale – and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Pixar should be blushing.
But that's not to say that TF2 ripped off of the Incredibles – because it doesn't. It take its influences from that movie and brings it up to the next level. Every character has personality through their movements, and through the various colors applied to them. You almost get a feel for the Demo's inexplicable love of bombs by looking at his outfit – you can tell that the Scout is a hot-head just by looking at his face.
Valve could run a masterclass on stylized art in video games (I really wish they would), because they're able to create personality through art in nearly every single game they've produced – Team Fortress 2 is just the best example of it.
#2 Super Mario Bros. 3
If a Mario game wasn't included on this list, you all should be burning me at the stake. It's tough to choose just one, as every Mario game has iconic artwork that influences entire generations of games – but Super Mario Bros. 3 is chock-full of instantly recognizable style, and it has completely dictated the visual style of the rest of the series.
What gamer today wouldn't be able to instinctively recognize the box art of Mario 3? The fact is, Mario 3 took the series, and the NES, to an entirely new level. Much of that is thanks to great art design. Shigeru Miyamoto and Tekashi Tezuka's direction of the game created a bright, colorful palate full of cartoonish, yet original, character designs. You know that a Koopa is a stooge just by looking at one, and that a Thwomp has anger issues.
Mario 3 was a remarkably ambitious artistic undertaking because it would have been way cheaper and easier to re-use assets from previous games. From a business standpoint, there was absolutely no reason not to do that, in fact. It would have helped people recognize the brand, as well as minimize risk associated with selling the game, as there isn't nearly as much cost in creating a game with little to no new art.
Taking that into consideration, what Miyamoto and Tezuka did with Super Mario Bros. 3 is exceptional. They took what was already iconic art, and re-imagined it into some of the greatest pixel art ever to exist.
#1 Final Fantasy 7
For its time, Final Fantasy 7 had excellent cut-scenes. I dare to say that FF7's cut scenes probably had a greater influence on modern game design than they're given credit. However, they haven't aged well. They suffer from the same problem that nearly any game's graphics suffer from – they age, and they look comparatively quaint to modern games.
That said, this game still has some of the best aesthetics ever.
Final Fantasy 7's penchant for visual flair has no better examples than during the first few hours of the game. The city of Midgar, with its depressing post-industrial exterior mixed with the neon colors that light up the night of any real-world metropolis, embodies some of the best artistic work ever done in that series of games. Few games are able to create the sense of what it must feel like to live in a certain place at a certain time. Half-Life 2 did it with the numerous environmental breadcrumbs that tell the backstory of a culture subjugated by the horrors of an oppressive regime. Final Fantasy 7 did it through its use of color, and backgrounds. Every color is so drab and depressing beneath Midgar's giant disc, and every background hints at the absolute squalor of day-to-day existence there, that you can't help but empathize with Barrett's desire to create a better life for Marlene – even if that means blowing the whole damn place up.
Final Fantasy 7's ability to create empathy through its art has never been matched by another entry in the series. It remains one of the strongest examples of how to create a setting in a game through art.
