For me it's that tween-heavy, skeletal 2D animation applied to segmented 2D character sprites. People often lazily refer to it as the "Flash animation" look, but that's certainly apt given how the online Flash explosion of the early 2000's certainly gave rise to countless tween-based animations.
Even if the game has otherwise quality art assets, if they are mostly static segments animated skeletally like paper dolls then I want nothing to do with it. Period. I hate it that much, truly.
Two examples that come to mind are:
Both of those games feature an illustrative art style that I think looks wonderful in stills. I'm a huge fan of hand-drawn art in games, but in motion the heavy reliance on skeletal or otherwise tweened animation techniques just ruins the entire aesthetic for me.
Some games manage to strike a perfectly acceptable balance for me between using tweened animations and hand-keyed ones in unison. Rayman Legends and the works of Vanillaware come to mind. So it's not like the time-savings of skeletal 2D animation can't be achieved without cheapening the look of the game.
And then you've got something that eschews them completely like Cuphead and looks absolutely incredible, but of course I understand that most developers couldn't even attempt that.
Even if the game has otherwise quality art assets, if they are mostly static segments animated skeletally like paper dolls then I want nothing to do with it. Period. I hate it that much, truly.
Two examples that come to mind are:
Both of those games feature an illustrative art style that I think looks wonderful in stills. I'm a huge fan of hand-drawn art in games, but in motion the heavy reliance on skeletal or otherwise tweened animation techniques just ruins the entire aesthetic for me.
Some games manage to strike a perfectly acceptable balance for me between using tweened animations and hand-keyed ones in unison. Rayman Legends and the works of Vanillaware come to mind. So it's not like the time-savings of skeletal 2D animation can't be achieved without cheapening the look of the game.
And then you've got something that eschews them completely like Cuphead and looks absolutely incredible, but of course I understand that most developers couldn't even attempt that.
