I know that fighting games don't focus on visuals alot, but...

[Syril]

I wish every fighting game took this approach with loose articles of clothing and hair. Screw "realism" make things look clean, cool, and good

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Yeah half the reason Makoto is my #1 favorite of all time sprite character is because of how well her gigantic neckband emphasizes the power of her motions and the force of her attacks

and to a lesser degree, her fighting spirit; the only time it's ever completely still is at the end of a round. Even when she's crouching it gets a breeze every few moments keep it moving.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

he said injustice and mortal kombat tho

 

[hibikase]

MK and Injustice have higher budgets.

They still manage to have worse animation though.

 

[Hanbei]

Tekken 7 looks very good to me, so I disagree, OP. So will Soulcalibur VI, I think.

Just because they're not aiming at a realistic approach doesn't make them ugly, or less good looking than Injustice 2. They're just different.

 

[En-ou]

I see you state injustice in your pool of good looking fighters...i...don't know if you know what you're talking about...

 

[Deleted member 17952]

Lol at Injustice and MK. I'd rather play KOF14 than either of those two.


Dragon Ball FighterZ is actually pretty low effort when you compare it next to GGXrd. It looks good enough, but you can easily find flaws in the character model or the light placement. GGXrd is generally flawless, and I can say with complete confidence that Dizzy is currently the pinnacle of fake 2D.

 

[Deleted member 5127]

I was hoping we'd have better looking hair with good physics by now in fighting games.

 

[Deleted member 13560]

The funny thing is that when Injustice 2 came out everyone was flipping out about how good it looked, specially the faces with all the motion capture and such.
But now the cool thing is to shit on netherrealm fighters.
Yes they have (mostly) bad animation, but if you put a Tekken 7 character model near an Injustice 2 model they look a generation a part in terms of rendering for skin, materials, facial expressions, etc.
But no, let,'s all shit on it becuse it's a netherrealm fighting game and not even aknowledge what they do right.

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When people were complementing Injustice 2 on facial animations they were still cracking up about how bad the animations were and how the overall character models looked.

Here's a closer look at character models from the 2 games.

 

[Murdamonk]

I think it is a personal preference.

I don't find Injustice or MK looking good at all. I much prefer SFV graphics to MK or Injustice. I also prefer DOA graphics to Tekken.

I only with you OP on DBFZ and Guilty Gears... Those games look amazing.

 

[Extreme Tactician]

Ken looks fine there. In fact he looks better than the SFV Fake Ken version. Dunno how Capcom made Ken look worse on a more powerful console.

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He looks fine?

Dude, SFXT's artstyle was bad. How is Ken fine? Bevause his eyebrows don't look weird?

 

[QisTopTier]

Yeah half the reason Makoto is my #1 favorite of all time sprite character is because of how well her gigantic neckband emphasizes the power of her motions and the force of her attacks

and to a lesser degree, her fighting spirit; the only time it's ever completely still is at the end of a round. Even when she's crouching it gets a breeze every few moments keep it moving.

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Yup exaclty. It ends up looking a billion times better.

 

[D.Lo]

Capcom simply chooses to neither commit to anime or realism, suffers because of it.

GGXrd's techniques applied to putting the SF Alpha or MvC1 sprites into 3D would be amazing, and so would having Injustice's level of fidelity applied to an MvC game that looked like you were playing the MCU.

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nailed it. As a result we get Street Fighter EX5 which looks like gross claymation.

 

[Deleted member 44960]

Yup exaclty. It ends up looking a billion times better.

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I need to hurry up and buy Dizzy.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

Tekken looks very underwhelming to me. Generally new iterations of Tekken would raise the bar, but T7 didn't look like much of a change.

I think SFV looks fantastic, although backgrounds are a bit drab.

Neither have the production values of Injustice 2. Not just graphically, but aurally.

 

[Dark Ninja]

Tekken looks good but its too old already. The destructible parts of the game being the worst parts literal triangles appear when you damage the floor. The hair and the custom costume things are also abysmal. The destruction part was fixed in the Soul Caliber demo I played it looks pretty good now. Soul Caliber in general does look good although it could look better, reminds me of Soul Caliber 2 presentation wise.

 

[Durden]

Wtf is this thread. If anything, visuals are extremely important to fighting games. Why do you think shit like MvC:I failed so hard? It wasn't the fighting system. If that game would have looked as beautiful as UMvC3, SFV, or pretty much any other game ypu listed in the OP, it would probably still be getting support.

 

[Rhaknar]

I am truly baffled when animations aren't considered part if graphics

 

[A Strong Latte]

I can't believe there's someone on earth that thinks the new DOA looks worse than MK and injustice

 

[HardRojo]

Street Fighter V looks great, you can find some really amazing high-res pics that highlight how good it looks. It doesn't need a realistic artstyle or anything like that, plus it animates well like 95% of the time. I'm not too big on realistic-looking fighters such as MK and Injustice anyway, I'd much rather have something like Xrd and FighterZ. KoF XIV is definitely not a good compromise when you take roster size vs graphics into consideration though, it looks really bad and kind of off-putting, I wonder how great it'd look in the Xrd style, but that'd take a lot of effort give the roster size.

Edit: Ah yeah, if anything needs fixing when it comes to graphics in SFV, it's the fucking stages with 30 fps NPCs and that horrible filter that doesn't let them pop, there are some beautiful stages like Metro City Bay Area though and I wish we had more like that one.

 

[RM8]

SFV is a mixed bag, some character models and stages are very unfortunate but the animation is generally top notch. Tekken looks good except for the customizable t-shirts, they look horrible. Animation is the weakest point, but MKX and I2 are great looking games. DOA and SC look good to me. Maybe KOF is the ugliest current fighter, but that's it. ArcSys stuff looks anime - that's not objectively a good thing if you ask me :P

Yup exaclty. It ends up looking a billion times better.

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I don't want SF or any other game to look like this :x

 

[Deleted member 25108]

I don't know if I'm more confused by the thread title or the idea that DOA, Tekken and SoulCalibur look bad.

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This.

Just because something looks like hand drawn 2D doesn't give it a graphical crown.

And injustice 2 looked like a 30+ Cosplay party. Pretty much the only people who looked good were Supergirl and the turtles.

 

[Trickster]

NRS games look terrible to me. They have good tech, but holy shit do I not like the visual style of their games. Give me SF5 and DOA visuals over it any day of the week

Arc's current visual style is pretty god tier though.

One thing I will say though, is that I would love to see what SF5 would have looked like if it had been made once Capcom started getting their shit back together.

 

[QisTopTier]

I don't want SF or any other game to look like this :x

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They dont need to look like this, it's an example of prebaked animations for hair and loose bits that sf just throws a random ass physics engine at

 

[A Strong Latte]

SFV would look 100x better if stuff like mika's hair, ed's jacket were keyframed instead of cloth physicsed. Seeing as they mocapped clothes in DMCV i'm hoping capcom learned their lesson

 

[RM8]

They dont need to look like this, it's an example of prebaked animations for hair and loose bits that sf just throws a random ass physics engine at

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Okay yeah that'd be preferable.

 

[Rickenslacker]

Seriously? One character invalidates every other one?

He doesn't even look that bad.

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It's just a thing with some people. Once you point out Alpha Ken exists in the game and looks like traditional Ken they suddenly stop posting until another thread comes out where SFV gets brought up and they can mention Ken again. It would be nice if they had something better to do, but alas.

 

[Crayon]

Those mk games look hilarious.

 

[Iori Loco]

I don't want SF or any other game to look like this :x

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Me neither. Fighting games are cool because they have a huge variety of artstyles and Guilty Gear is special for being the best anime looking game to date. I certainly would never want to go back to the era of every fighter trying to be Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, spawning a million bootleg games that ended up blending together.

 

[bunkitz]

I don't get it... All those games you listed, Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, Tekken, and Dead or Alive, they all look great. I think this is just a matter of personal taste, OP?

 

[QisTopTier]

Okay yeah that'd be preferable.

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Yup there is no downside to doing it besides cost/time it only makes things look better and consistent

If SFV could have just went the extra mile and applied all those animations to every part of the character it would undoubtedly been the best looking fighting game period.

Gotta sell those costumes tho :P

 

[Normal]

He looks fine?

Dude, SFXT's artstyle was bad. How is Ken fine? Bevause his eyebrows don't look weird?

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Because his face looks normal, and his hair doesn't look garbage. SfxT art style isn't bad imo, and I think Ken looks a lot better in both SFIV/SfXT than the SFV counterpart.

 

[DanteMenethil]

Havoc physics are horrible on clothes on fighters, especially SFV where they didn't even bother to do basic cleanup so Cammy's hair don't clip through her shoulders, etc. Keyframe all the things

 

[Crayon]

They made ken look like a douche on purpose and I'm loving every minute of it.

 

[RM8]

Yup there is no downside to doing it besides cost/time it only makes things look better and consistent

If SFV could have just went the extra mile and applied all those animations to every part of the character it would undoubtedly been the best looking fighting game period.

Gotta sell those costumes tho :P

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It's also maybe less taxing, right? These ArcSys games run great on even low end computers.

 

[QisTopTier]

It's also maybe less taxing, right? These ArcSys games run great on even low end computers.

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It would still be taxing just because of the model quality. Taking a bit away from having to do physics engine stuff might help a bit tho but not that much
Xrd is an Unreal engine 3 game and SFV is an unreal engine 4 game

 

[Snormy]

KOF, graphics was not on the high end of the priority list for sure. They aren't all that familiar with 3D fighter dev but put in effort to make it feel and play as good as the 2D games and for the most part I think they did that very well. The roster is also very fitting for the next mainline entry to the franchise and is in no way a disappointment. I think in this particular case it was a design choice to limit the focus on this and work on it over time as they become more comfortable and familiar with doing things in 3D.

As for MK and IJ. I do not like their art direction at all. I think their graphics are fine but it is difficult to appreciate when it looks so uncanny and unnatural in motion. I know you say your point isn't about animations but to me looking good still and in motion go hand in hand.
Dead or Alive's art style was focused on their new engine that showed off the doll like characters, sweating and dirt. I don't think that has changed but it seems they have improved in stages at least which is nice.
Soul Calibur has always looked quite nice to me. Certainly not bad. It also has some other things going on such as the character creator, breakable armor and what not.
Street Fighter I dislike the art direction but don't think it looks bad per se.

I also want to say that I think each fighter sort of goes for its own identity in visual style. This is sort of one of the selling points for those who aren't big into fighting games. Dragonball works so well I think partly because of how awesome it looks but also how close it is to the anime.

Of all the 3D fighters I'd say the most disappointing in terms of overall aesthetics when excluding animation/motion is probably Dissidia 2 for me. I'm not sure why but I just expected a bit more from it. It seems to lack some kind of coherency perhaps because the fighters come from different games as well but you would think there is some way to make them fit in more. I also feel a lot of the characters have too similar looking faces.

 

[Ryuhza]

The problem with Tekken 7 and especially Soul Calibur VI's graphics is that they lack in areas that people tend to look at for detail. Namely the head zone. I've noticed a lot of games that do a little trick where they put extra detail in the faces compared to the outfit, armor, or even the skin elsewhere on the body, as that's where most eyes are going to travel. T7 and (again, especially) SCVI are still a generation behind in that aspect.

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That's to say nothing of the facial animations, which are even further behind.

 

[J_ToSaveTheDay]

How does SF5 not look good?!

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This is exactly how I feel, and I adore the way the games in the OP look, too. Street Fighter V looks great.

 

[Deleted member 13560]

Aside from the banana hair, Ken has a pretty handsome looking face in combat.

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It boggles my mind that Capcom hasn't done much to fix his face up a bit more on the character select screen. They've got to know that it's a laughing stock in the FGC.

Yup there is no downside to doing it besides cost/time it only makes things look better and consistent

If SFV could have just went the extra mile and applied all those animations to every part of the character it would undoubtedly been the best looking fighting game period.

Gotta sell those costumes tho :P

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Capcom cheaping out on clothing and hair animations to sell costumes was probably worth it to Capcom in the end. The downside for us is we get wonky clothing physics, but the upside to it is that we get a boat load of costumes per characters.

While ASW made Guilty Gear look even better with their clothing having prebaked animations... it was damn near impossible for them to even attempt making new costumes. Designing Elphelt's new costume alone was probably pretty time consuming. Even with DBFZ's lower quality animztions, they still probably won't release any costumes any time soon or if at all.

It's also maybe less taxing, right? These ArcSys games run great on even low end computers.

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Prebaked physics is less taxing and the design style of the models allow for very low end systems to run it and very high end systems to run it at absurd resolutions like 5K and 6K without too much of an issue.

Another good thing about this running on toasters, is that even a lower resotuions the game's aesthetics allow for something that looks sprite based which is still pleasing to the eye.

Those mk games look hilarious.

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Watching MK and Injustice in motion is very comedic to me as well. The animations make those games look like slap stick comedy. You could probably put some of that old silent comedy music in the background and it would fit right in with the game.

 

[Deleted member 13560]

**double post**

 

[Playsage]

The problem with Tekken 7 and especially Soul Calibur VI's graphics is that they lack in areas that people tend to look at for detail. Namely the head zone. I've noticed a lot of games that do a little trick where they put extra detail in the faces compared to the outfit, armor, or even the skin elsewhere on the body, as that's where most eyes are going to travel. T7 and (again, especially) SCVI are still a generation behind in that aspect.



That's to say nothing of the facial animations, which are even further behind.

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If you told me that was SCII HDO Kilik, I would almost believe you

It "hurts" even more thinking at how great looking SCV was on last gen hardware

 

[Deleted member 1656]

In terms of graphics style, which is entirely subjective. I like MKX and Injustice 2 much better than SFV and Tekken 7. As for much of the animation, I would agree that NRS has a lot of work to do but I also feel that the corny, stiff animation works better in MK than it does Injustice.

 

[TwoCoins]

SFV has some weird hair modeling issues but the game itself looks great. The only thing that looks truly awful is the low-res background NPCS look like PS2 models to me. The best stages are the ones that are empty.

 

[Deleted member 364]

SFV looks terrible smh

 

[NekoNeko]

Injustice looks horrible.

 

[jett]

I respect the extra mile ArcSys goes to with hand-animating fabric, seems like a totally maddening idea. it's just unfortunate that mile has so few keyframes. In general I have zero interest in their low-framerate aesthetic to be honest.

What SNK did with Rock Howard was crazy though. They even animated his shirt. All by hand and at high quality.

Keyframed 3D clothing is not something that is ever going to come to Street Fighter anyway (costume DLC is just too worthwhile for Capcom). Some people act like the cloth physics in that game is a disaster but it works fine for the most part.

Maybe next-gen they can get more accurate cloth physics with the advent of non-trash console CPUs.

 

[Extreme Tactician]

Because his face looks normal, and his hair doesn't look garbage. SfxT art style isn't bad imo, and I think Ken looks a lot better in both SFIV/SfXT than the SFV counterpart.

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Why do you think SFxT's artstyle isn't bad?

 

[LightEntite]

Things that make you irrationally angry

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when a thread OP says something really crazy and we all have to sit and debate dumb ass things

like whether or not SFV or DOA is a good looking game or not

just because one person made a thread suggesting that it isnt

 

[Skelepuzzle]

LOL wtf is up with Sak's face in this

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Holy shit her eyes are looking in two different directions, I'm cackling

 

[Ryuhza]

The other issue with SCVI is that the Soul series developed a reputation for looking cutting edge, and they seemed to have stagnated a great deal. Again, consider the progression of Kilik.

Soul Calibur III (2005)

Soul Calibur IV (2008, 3 years later)

Soul Calibur VI (2018, 10 years later)

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The main improvements from IV to VI are better anti-aliasing, higher resolution, and PBR, thanks to Unreal Engine 4 and the higher powered consoles/commonplace PCs of today. However, some of those new features have backfired a bit when used with assets and techniques built around a different engine. Kilik's skin looks glossy and has lost almost all of its visible texture. His eyes are far too bright and look cartoonish. His hair is sharper at the edges, resembling paper more than hair. It also suffers from a similar glossiness as his skin.

There are reused assets all over the place. His head is possibly 1 to 1 down to the polygons in his chin. That includes the hair with the addition of a ponytail. By comparison, everything in SCIV is clearly brand new, a mere 3 years after SCIII (and likely working with a bigger roster, but that's tbd).


Tekken 7 is a similar situation, though not as extreme or obvious. Lots of shiny filmic post-processing effects to hide the blemishes or lack of convincing improvement in the base assets.