Before I start, I just wanna let you know this rant is available in video form.
Giant Bombers, I think more particularly on the west coast, are getting far more picky about not just what "good" graphics are, but what "acceptable" graphics are. Frankly, the graphics between all of the major platforms are getting so similar these days that there are very few games that are "unplayable" or "unacceptable" graphically outside of the demo scene and maybe some indie games (Soda Drinker Pro, I love you, but I'm looking at you).
But as Louis C.K. once said "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy."
For years, Giant Bomb, especially Jeff, has become particularly presumptive that everyone just has a good PC with a 1080Ti lying around to play games in their graphically optimal format when that couldn't be further from the truth. That's why we have fanboyism for the most part: people can afford one console, they have one, maybe the second, and they fight for what their first choice was. It's economic realism. Also: the vast majority of us aren't paid to play video games and/or have an expense account to get new hardware and games.
Watching Jeff play the Saints Row the Third Quick Look, which looks just as smooth and high-fidelity as it ever has been, even with all of the upgraded graphics, then go on the Bombcast to say that the framerate was "unacceptable" and "doesn't run super well" when it clearly is not either of those things is just ridiculous. This alone might be like "Oh, NPfeifer, what are you ranting about", but then you start digging into Digital Foundry videos where they nitpick every last thing and they essentially make a living clowning on graphical performance. And suckers like us keep giving them attention.
20 years ago, I played Deus Ex on my 533MHz Celeron Pavilion with integrated graphics. This was a game that launched exclusively on PCs and wouldn't run on a lot of them because the game was so technically intense with its vast open spaces, even though it didn't look great. Settling for 16-bit color where you had splotchy colors (that also, ironically, seemed to enhance the atmosphere of the game) but also gunshot decals on surfaces had faintly visible squares around them because the game couldn't render transparency quite right was one thing. But on my machine, once an enemy "activated", my frame rate fell through the floor, usually pulling a "full stop" for up to two or three seconds before I could respond where sometimes I would just die because I couldn't aim and fire back. And then there were the 45-60 second saves/loads/reloads that really killed the flow of the game. And yet I loved it. That was a new game for new hardware exclusively on the PC and it was literally unplayable for a lot of people. It still wound up being my favorite shooter of all time. These days I get angry if I'm running it at 4K and I *can't* replicate the splotchy look it originally shipped with.
Giant Bomb, all graphics are amazing and you're not happy and that makes no sense whatsoever.
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