At least in most cases they shouldn't.
 
Some games have a very strong engine and can come up with the most lifelike and realistic cutscenes ingame like on demand.
Look at Mass Effect, there's a lot of choices in that game and none will have you question the visual flair you experience.
It totally fits too, that's half the idea, it's one big streaming story.
 
So why do you punks even get the guts to complain about other games?
For most of you gaming started way back when you were looking at a couple of pixels.
Hell you were jumping your way through Mario World, sidescrolling in Ganbare Goemon or playing insanely long RPG's.
Why do you feel entitled to lifelike graphics? Does the gameplay not satisfy you anymore?
Do graphics really matter if you're into a game?
 
I don't think there's much ways to prove yourself to be a real gamer...
But if you hate on games because they're on the Wii, or of an older generation or such, you need to shut up and keep your opinion to yourself.
Just because you dislike the graphic quality/style/whatever does NOT make it a bad game.
Maybe for you it does, but seriously, we spend years playing previous generations and now it suddenly hurts your eyes? Boo,fucking, hoo.
 
Go make a topic about it, go hate on me.
I'll be playing on my gamecube meanwhile, you know, doing what a gamer should do.

I like pretty graphics and I always look foreword to new technological advancements, but as long as the presentation is reasonable then I do not mind. 
I really actually don't get it when somebody can't go back, its the quality of the game that matters. 
I think graphics are important though, I think developers should always try to make their games pretty, I would be put off if there is absolutely no effort put into the graphical presentation in a game. 
Nintendo are a really good example of making the most of slightly less powerful technology, there is stuff on the Wii like Super Mario Galaxy that is statistically worse than the games on the Xbox 360 or the PS3 but Super Mario Galaxy 2 looks way better than some of those other games. 
Also, i love my GameCube, it is a great console.

As with all mediums of entertainment what is "a good" or "a bad" game is not set in stone, it's all about peoples' opinions and the ever-advancing graphics we see in modern video games are an indication that people do care about graphics. While I personally would rather have a game with good gameplay or story than one with good graphics, the visuals of the game are part of the experience for me and while I'd encourage people who place heavier value than I do in the graphics of a video game to look at substance over style, I can't say their opinion "wrong". I believe that good graphics are part of the experience, just look at the artistic use of visuals in Limbo or the beautiful quality of the world of Crysis.
 
I also don't think the previous-generations argument works either. For most people gaming didn't start back when they were staring at a handful of pixels, the audience out there for video games has expanded vastly since then and I understand why people find it hard to deal with old-school graphics. While it may be hard to understand for those who have been with video games right from very early on in the medium's existence people become used to what they first experience within an entertainment medium. Some people don't like retro graphics for the same reason that a lot of people can't watch silent movies. All things become out-dated and this doesn't just apply to graphics either; the sound effects, narrative and gameplay of games become out-dated too.
 
Personally I'll happily play an 8-bit game like Super Mario Bros. that is well before my time and I'll always be a style over substance gamer but I believe that graphical quality has its place in video games and that no one person can declare what a gamer "should do" or what makes a "real gamer". Whether a game is bad is a subjective issue, not an objective one and even though I may disagree strongly with the opinions of those who evaluate a game heavily on it's graphics I have to grudgingly admit that they are entitled to their opinion and they are entitled to voice that opinion.

I agree, nothing is set in stone or can be judged with a certain standard. I can understand people liking or disliking games only because of the graphics, that's their shortsighted problem, but what I don't understand is all the hate. People go to great lengths to kill off others fun.
Go enjoy Crysis, I'll enjoy Zelda, go play anything, I don't care. Just have fun and be nice to others!
 
And while maybe not everyone started out where I did, I'm pretty sure that's not an excuse to be such an asshole like most gamers are.
Classics are classics for a reason, people don't need to worship them, but let people be, the constant bickering.
That also goes for people complaining everything used to be better...life goes on, deal with it!
 
And that's my exact point, people pick fights over non sense and insult each other, deciding who is or isn't a real gamer.
Just, have, fun.

I pretty much agree with you on every point, but I do have some tendency to nit-pick about the appearance of a game. A really good example is P3 and P4 (especially because most of the people on these boards have seen one of the two games thanks to the ER.) P4 is a game that graphically doesn't hold up against others made at the same time of its release, but the graphics are consistent, and the game has a wonderful style to it. And that's really all that I ask; make the game aesthetically pleasing, not engine-defining. The graphics in a game will bother me when there are significant drops of quality in certain areas when the rest of the game looks fine. When a game can't be consistent, then the appearance will bother me. Of course, we don't see this probably with older games because it's really a newer problem that exists with 3D.
 
Other than that, I could care how a game looked. I really enjoy the Trauma Center games on the Wii, and stacked against most games, those titles looks like garbage. But it's about me cutting open his or her yellow intestines looking for tumors, right? Right.

While I agree in general principle, sometimes changing the art design of a game can severely affect not just the aesthetics, but the very way the game feels and is designed.  Take the Gabriel Knight series, which underwent drastic visual changes by the end of the series.  Now, granted, it was the gameplay mechanic changes that ultimately ended up hurting that series, but the game's visual style took a distinctive change that I'd argue ultimately affected the series to a negative degree.  King's Quest: Mask of Eternity is another fine example of a game where visual and gameplay changes together made for a pretty craptacular sequel.  
 
Of course, in both those cases, the games would have turned out much better had there just been visual changes.  But still, comparing the visual styles of the older games of these games and their eventual sequels makes me realize that the art direction and styles of games can ultimately mean quite a bit to a game's longevity.

When it comes to visuals art style > graphics every day of the week. If you've got planned and boring art direction, it doesn't matter how much hard ware you've got pushing it, it's still going to look like garbage. On the flip side, if you have great art direction you can make a great looking game with very little power.

So I came in with the hope of bringing a fresh opinion to light, but my position is pretty well covered already. While graphics don't necessarily make or break a game, a beautiful looking game isn't usually a bad thing, provided that the gameplay doesn't suffer for it. 
 
One of the better examples, in my mind, have already been brought up with the Persona series. While not necessarily the most beautiful of games to have been created, it is graphically consistent and delivers a wonderful experience to the player through the combat system, story and other game mechanics. 
 
One the other side of the spectrum, sometimes a gorgeous looking game can help to make up for some less than stellar gameplay. I remember that I was having a hard time enjoying my first playthrough of FarCry 2 until I hit a point where I just slowed down and started gawking at the world and the lighting effects. 
 
I can most certainly understand where you're coming from though. There are some youngins in the family tree that seem to not appreciate older games as they've been raised on sharp looking polygons, refusing to play anything before the last-gen of gaming. Personally, I still like sitting down with the 2600 every now and then or digging through my stash of old computer games. 

I used to care a lot more about graphics when I was growing up, mainly because graphics were improving by orders of magnitude that don't really compare to now (now it's like, more lifelike eyeballs or whatever, when for me it was the difference between being a single blob of pixels and HAVING eyeballs). Graphics are pretty, and if they fit the game all the better.
 
You don't need to go retro to get stuff that doesn't concentrate on polygons, but appreciating gameplay and graphics/mechanics synergy means that folks that would have ignored primitive-looking games from olden times might get up the nerve to try stuff out.  Games in general, I think, ARE getting better; they're much more user-friendly than when I was a kid, so it's less about struggling with the game and more about exploring it.  It's just that, yeah, graphics drive the industry forward, and it's easy to go all left-brained and look at the numbers, rather than how the graphics actually serve the game.

As I said, the focus was more on the graphics (which would include the jump to 3d since that had better graphics they believed) and less on the design or the gameplay.
Sure a lot of games need 3d but most of the popular games on the xbox arcade etc are 2d sidescrollers or 2.5d.
Or look at Metroid Other M for example.
There's ways to do this right, but I feel like all games are like this:
"Ok so, we tape a chainsaw to a stick, now that's cool"
"Ok, but what else?"
"What do you mean what else? Put some graphics on it, a half assed story about revenge and multiplayer! They will love it!"
"Good plan boss."
 
Games used to be bundle of ideas, nowadays its one idea they take and build a pretty frame around.

I agree! Boob physics on the other hand..