http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/8701-Dragon-Age-II-Review

I trust reviews... or not. Sometimes reviews get my opinion right however, and I look at them to see the general quality of something. This review sounds just like a paid off advertisement. No way is Dragon Age 2 a perfect 100/100. If Dragon Age 1 looked like a 2002 game, as he says in the review, how does Dragon Age 2 look like one of the best games of the decade? I don't see that... at all. I see more clunky animations, and the use of the Mass Effect dialogue system, which isn't new. Oh well, I'll just pass on Dragon Age 2 and wait for Bioware's next good game.

I have heard DA: Origins seriously looked like shit on consoles, which is probably where he is coming from. I personally had no problem with the technical graphics on PC, but the design was pretty boring and cliche... I like DA2's graphics a lot more just because they have some style and flair.

I like escapists' articles, but I don't rely on them for their review.

That said, it strongly seems like you had a preconceived opinion on the game, and are falling into the same line of thinking for which you're criticizing the reviewer.

And whoever said that was wrong, the game wasn't eternally gorgeous but it still shat over a great many console titles and most importantly, the graphics were appropriate for the game

Why cant people just enjoy games for the experience anymore, and considering your posting on a sites forum where EVERY game here looks like shit compared to now-a-days standards. I mean really...we all buy from here because we remember the EXPERIENCE not because it has l33t graphics. Why do the games now make any difference? You'll find your a much happier gamer when you play games for the experience and not for graphics or some other crap excuse one can come up with besides the graphics.

DA:O of course looked the best on the PC

The console version that came the closest to the PC one was the PS3 version

the 360 version looks the worst

Visual quality is part of the experience. And I'm pretty sure games have been advertised as having "lifelike graphics" for the last fifteen years at least.

I do agree, however. Fitting graphics are much more important than polygon count and texture size, as long as it's recognisable. In some cases, I even think that too high polycount and high-res textures can be detrimental for the experience - and not due to decreased frame rates.

Bioware just buttsexed all its fans with DA2.

That's my review.

I agree completely. I just had a conversation with my dad (who is a gamer himself) about the same thing yesterday. Game developers are way too concerned with making the game's graphics look good that they don't focus enough on the gameplay. Most people nowadays would rather play a beautiful but shitty game than a graphically middle ground but awesome game.... & that is a crying shame.

Giving any game that isn't Fantasy Land Dizzy a 100/100 is just purely ludicrous.

Not many graphically middle ground but awesome games being released lately. People need to be given the choice in order to make it. If the market is over-saturated with beautiful but shitty games then that's what they will play.

And besides there is no reason to drop graphics all together. I mean just take a look and what moders did with the UT engine in these past years. Some very good mods or stand alone games. If a developer studio can't even match what some independent moders are doing ( and some can't) are we really supposed to give them the benefit of the doubt and buy their games?

Bottom line is that gameplay wise the quality of games has gone down a lot these past years to a point where there is little choice for gamers, graphics or no graphics. I think the best summary would be that we've gone from playing a game to acting in a movie which is basically what playing ME (or now DA2) means. And while you will replay games, that's less true when it comes to long movies with bad acting even if the story is great.

The issue I personally had with DAO's art design was that they seemed go with a semi-realistic look and then felt the need to suddenly add stuff on top, like the heavy chainmail: it looked rather nice, especially the female one, but for the male one they shoved a set of giant plate armour on the left arm for no reason whatsoever that constantly clipped with the torso, while the mage hoods were not only terrible looking they didn't go wtih the rest of the mage outfit imho. It was almost like they had a sudden change in style and went through the game adding stuff to things... That was the real problem in my eyes anyway.
Let's be fair now, comparing any game to Dizzy is just going to be unfair on the game being compared. How do you compete with perfection?

This is nonsense.

They didn't give the game 100/100, they gave it 5/5.

That means the following, according to their scoring guidelines:

"Five stars. This is as good as gaming currently gets, the crème de la crème. This doesn't imply perfection, merely that the experience you'll have will be exceptionally enjoyable."

Notice the "doesn't imply perfection"-part.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/7149-What-Our-Review-Scores-Mean

Sorry if I sound harsh, but there's little that annoys me more about review discussions than the idea that a full score implies perfection - especially when we're talking about sites that don't have the moronic idea that they need 100 different points on their scale. Unless a site tells you that 10/10, 5/5 or whatever means "this game is perfect", it doesn't. It just means that the game is extremely good.

I think you mean Treasure Island Dizzy ...

EDIT: No, I've changed my mind. Fantasy World Dizzy is the greatest game of all time.

I'm doing game development right now, having finally fleshed out the full complement of my team (5 individual human beings, woohoo!) and we're using the UDK with PhysX and various other middleware I'm paying for primarily out of pocket. (PhysX is thankfully free!)

I've been messing with shaders and physics code off and on while my other team members make assets and concepts, and I find it to be extremely simple to make a game hit or surpass AAA graphics quality. Models that are blocky can have that easily hidden by masterful texturing, look at the Quake 1 modding community and their monster skin packs.

It's not hard to make what would be considered top-of-the-line graphics today, especially because 90% of the time you actually don't need to worry about things like polycounts anymore, filling the screen with tris will barely knock the frame rate.

Animations are harder to do, but considering you don't have to worry about optimizing much of anything else (unless you're working with retardedly detailed stuff to begin with) you have all the time you could ever need to make your animations at worst passable and at best lovely.

Know what I think bogs down commercial AAA game development? Massive teams and feature creep. The more people you pack into a room to work on something, the more time it will take you all to shut up and start doing the work -- and this is even more obvious in polarizing things such as game development, where your idea of "good game" will 100% certainly deviate in some measurable way from that of any other person you will ever meet, and nobody is going to back down on their opinions about games.

Feature creep, well.. I don't see it occur often in AAA studios because they tend to have deadlines and such. But I'm sure it's a serious consideration, especially because of how many independent games fail due to it. "let's add this, and this, and this, and this" -- even I'm guilty of that. Currently I'm culling stuff I'm unlikely to implement in my work, and that's one hell of a lot harder to do than add more bullshit you do not have the time or experience or manpower to see through to completion.