I’m a firm believer that graphics alone do not make a game good, though I certainly won’t deny they’re a vital part of the equation. That said, I also think that the current industry’s fervent pursuit of “realistic” graphics is kind of pointless. What’s considered realistic and cutting-edge will always look dated in a few years’ time, after all. A game with a truly enduring art style is one stylized and distinct enough that it remains iconic and identifiable, as opposed to all the games whose “realistic” protagonists you can barely tell apart.
10 PS2 Games That Shaped Modern Gaming More Than Players Realized
The sixth generation spearheaded many gaming revolutions.
Case in point, it’s been over twenty years since the PlayStation 2 launched, and while there have been ample strides in raw graphical processing power, if you asked me to pick a game whose art style I liked, there’s a strong chance it’d be a title from its library. The PS2 was one of the last bastions of artistic creativity before the onset of the brown years and until the current indie revolution. There’s a reason that its games get remastered more than remade: because they already looked perfect as they were and still do.
10
Katamari Damacy
The Joy of Weirdness
Something I worry about with the rise of realism in games is the loss of wonder and whimsy in game concepts, as the vibes are more or less mutually exclusive. That ain’t right, because we all need some whimsy in our lives every now and then. I think the original Katamari Damacy taught us that a game can be borderline incomprehensible, and still remain both fun and recognizable.
Katamari Damacy’s visual identity is kind of hard to categorize, but I think I’d liken it to a world set entirely in a very messy child’s toybox. All the people look like angular, slightly pudgy dolls, there are all sorts of random objects scattered all over the place, even when you’re at a substantially larger size, and the color palette is distinctly bright and pastel. This bright and wacky vibe feeds well into the game’s goal of rolling up as much stuff as possible, helping to keep all of your potential Katamari fodder in clear contrast.
I think it’s telling that the broad art style of the Katamari franchise has remained borderline unchanged since the original game. It never needed to get more realistic or higher-definition, because all the extra definition in the world wouldn’t make the game any more or less lovably weird than it already is.
9
Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves
The Series’ Best Locales and Characters
I’ve said this many times, but here it is again: I miss when Sucker Punch did silly stuff. The Sly Cooper series, in particular, tickled something very particular in my young, Carmen Sandiego-loving mind, which I feel like no other series has managed to capture since, combining weird cartoon animal people with a mildly-threatening criminal underbelly.
Sly 3 in particular covers the widest array of locales amongst the original trilogy, from the wet streets of Venice to a rainy bamboo grove in the heart of China. It’s not particularly dark or scary, but there is a certain tense atmosphere to every location, with searchlights shining and guards on patrol, that helps to drive home the fact that you’re not supposed to be there.
Incidentally, either Sly 2 or 3 fit what I’m talking about here, but I like the character designs in 3 a little more. Both the villains, like Octavio and the Black Baron, and the new Cooper Gang members, like Penelope and the Guru, feel fitting to the established setting while still evolving the core “cartoony thief warfare” concept.
8
Jak and Daxter
Colorful and Expressive
Speaking of developers that don’t do silly things anymore, Naughty Dog won’t even go near anything that isn’t Last of Us or Uncharted these days, two franchises debatably at the forefront of the “realism over all” faction of game design. That’s kind of sad to me, because Naughty Dog is the team that gave us one of the most colorful games on the PS2, Jak and Daxter.
While its subsequent games have the edge in gameplay, especially Jak 2, the original Jak and Daxter had an unmistakably… video game-y visual identity, for lack of a better word. It was fantastical, varied, and lush, but with a distinctive otherworldly quality, kind of like a combination between Star Wars and a Studio Ghibli movie. It was the kind of setting that was best suited for a platformer, because you wanted to explore it, immerse yourself in it.
Additionally, since this was before the game got its edgy vibe, the characters are very animated and expressive, with Daxter in particular always mugging at the screen like Timon from The Lion King. Maybe newer games are too serious and realistic to have a mugging sidekick, but I think that’s a drawback, not a plus.
7
Guilty Gear X2
The Definitive Anime Fighter
While fighting games were already making the leap to 3D in the 90s and 2000s, there were plenty of holdouts, not only keeping things in the 2D realm, but working to exemplify 2D styles. Guilty Gear, for example, has always been a standout amongst 2D fighters for its incredibly distinct, anime-styled characters and picturesque stage backgrounds, with Guilty Gear X2 being a work of art.
While I love the 2.5D models utilized in the newer Guilty Gear games like Xrd and Strive, X2 was an animated work of art in more ways than one. Since they were traditionally animated sprites, characters could move with a fluidity that you don’t get from 3D graphics, as well as use animation tricks like smear frames which may look awkward in 3D.
The backgrounds in particular could be in a museum with how detailed they are. If you weren’t so busy playing the game, you’d want to stop and appreciate everything about them, from the colorful locales to the animated effects and NPCs dotting them.
6
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Aggressive and Angular
Many JRPGs have softer, anime-reminiscent art styles. That’s not a bad thing; it helps characters be expressive, makes their worlds colorful. That said, the first 3D Shin Megami Tensei Game, Nocturne, was a major departure from that kind of JRPG norm, opting instead for something more aggressive and angular.
The geometric patterns that cover the Demi-Fiend’s body are kind of indicative of what Nocturne is going for in a broad sense: hard angles, bizarre patterns, and washed-out color palettes all work to depict both the post-apocalyptic Tokyo and the demonic realms existing next to it. As opposed to some of the more fantastical architecture you see in SMT’s own spin-offs like Persona, Nocturne is brutal and barren, more mysterious and oppressive.
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Even the varied designs of the many demons and fae folk you encounter don’t detract from this distinctive style, thanks in part to their own washed-out colors and odd behaviors. They look otherworldly, like they don’t belong, which really brings home just how messed up the world has gotten.
5
Rez
Polygons Never Died
Many of the earliest 3D video games didn’t have much in the way of details or textures, since computers couldn’t really handle that kind of thing back in the day. Logic dictates that a game with this kind of visual design would be obviously inferior by today’s standards, but that’s not quite true. Rez showed us just how much you can do with simple models and polygons, transforming them into a remarkable audiovisual experience.
Rather than depicting anything in particular, Rez uses its geometric shapes to conceptualize the inside of a malfunctioning computer system, with your player character being either a vaguely humanoid polygon or just a series of sandwiched lines, depending on how much damage you take. It’s kind of like a laser-light show you see at an observatory; rather than using its art style to tell a particular story, the visuals are the draw in themselves.
Rez is meant to be a sensory experience over all else, using its music and visuals to draw you into its rhythm. You could argue all games are sensory experiences, but rather than trying to tell you a story with realistic characters, Rez merely presents its entire vibe upfront and leaves you to feel out your own experience.
4
Resident Evil 4
Has a Certain Something the Remake Lacks
Okay, I know someone’s about to yell at me, so a quick clarification: the 2023 Resident Evil 4 remake is a fantastic game on all accounts, gameplay and visually, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. That said, there was a certain… something that the 2005 original had that the remake seemingly lacks. I could go in-depth on it, but a big part lay in the game’s art style and presentation.
Both in a vacuum and in comparison to the remake, Resident Evil 4’s setting and monsters feel uniquely gross and disturbing. I think it may be that, compared to the newer Resident Evil games, the Ganados and assorted Plaga mutants in the original Resident Evil 4 seemed like they were designed less with biological feasibility in mind, and more with just being striking and intimidating.
Additionally, the characters, despite being less detailed, ironically feel a little more expressive. That may be because the original was a lot cheesier in tone, leading to more exaggerated expressions. I like the original Saddler’s little smirks and hidden tendrils over the remake’s more overtly-mutated, white-eyed depiction, for example.
3
Shadow of the Colossus
Sheer Scope Realized
Scope is one of those stylistic elements that gaming has generally gotten better at harnessing as hardware has improved. It’s not that surprising; a giant monster whipping its arms around is going to look better in high-definition. However, Shadow of the Colossus was the game that really set the standard in harnessing scope, ironically by making its titular monsters slower and less detailed.
Part of the distinctive mystique of the Colossi is that they’re kind of hard to make out at a glance, even when they’re right in front of you. Their dark fur obscures their physical features like eyes and stone accouterments, at least until you’re already climbing up their backs. Similarly, their slow, lumbering gaits help to make them feel appropriately large, like something that needs to put a lot of physical effort into dragging itself around.
The large map of Shadow of the Colossus does feel very empty compared to a lot of contemporary open-world games, but that’s kind of the point. It’s a no-man’s land, somewhere Wander isn’t supposed to be. It informs a lot about the setting without having to beat you over the head.
2
Kingdom Hearts 2
The Perfect Mix of Cartoony and Emotive
As a series that has been protracted over the course of multiple console generations, Kingdom Hearts has gone through its fair share of art shifts and evolutions. The original game was a little too stiff in its characters and uniform in its world layouts, while Kingdom Hearts 3 looks kind of… plastic-y, with environments that are too large for their own good. The game that really hit the magic middle, one that even current JRPGs can’t quite dupe, was Kingdom Hearts 2.
Compared to the first game, the characters in Kingdom Hearts 2 are much more expressive, at least in cutscenes where they’re actually talking and emoting. However, that expression doesn’t come at the cost of maintaining an appropriately cartoony vibe, which is necessary since, y’know, Disney stuff. Animation is also a lot more dynamic, best exemplified in Sora’s Limit moves performed in tandem with his many teammates.
Compared to something like the most recent Final Fantasy games, Kingdom Hearts 2 achieves a comparable degree of setpiece spectacle without drawing too much focus away from Sora and his own capabilities. We want to see his high-flying escapades and acrobatic key-slinging, not get submerged in particle effects.
1
Okami
Art as Gaming, Gaming as Art
There have been plenty of games over the years that use art and its creation as a major gameplay and/or thematic element, though not all of these games fully commit to this idea. If you want your game to be about art, you need to go the extra mile and model the entire game after the art style it’s trying to depict. Okami is one of those rare few games that went that extra mile, which is one of the main reasons we held out hope for a sequel all these years later.
While the creation of traditional Japanese art isn’t a major plot element in Okami, that style’s norms inform just about every element of the game’s visual identity. Characters are deliberately simplistic and angular, enemies and bosses have swooping, exaggerated proportions, and elemental effects are massive and magnificent. It’s a visual style reminiscent of something you’d see on an old scroll, carefully brought to life in 3D.
Amaterasu’s Celestial Brush techniques also do something very special visually that only a few other games can do: turn seemingly normal shapes into distinctive hallmarks. If I drew a straight line over a screenshot of a random realistic game character, it’d look meaningless to anyone who doesn’t know how to perform a Power Slash in Okami.
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If style is a science, the PS2 had a PhD.
