This is fantastic because he’s completely removed one whole colour channel, and yet Gears of War looks almost identical. It’s not far off needing yet another channel removed. It’s practically already greyscale.

I’ve long been against the way that games are visually presented these days: low contrast, flat, dull, grey, brown, boring. Everything just looks so God-damn bland that looking at games like Gears of War or Fallout 3 make me want to rip out my eyes in frustrated rage.

Obviously in the case of those games the art direction is focussing on a wrecked, post-apocolyptic world. Naturally it’s going to be mostly shattered concrete and rusted, twisted metal. However, I think there are still some great opportunities to splash some colour in there. Bright colours makes the game much more visually appealing, and it also helps gamers establish a vivid memory of the things they saw. Have you ever thought that games were more memorable several years ago?

It bothers me so much that art direction has changed in this way lately. Even Quake, while also mostly green and brown, was contrasty enough to make it look vivid and fantastic. Gears, on the other hand, is so low contrast that I can barely make out what the hell is going on half the time. All the colours are so subdued I can barely tell red from green unless they’re on top of eachother. And no brown-and-grey game ever, ever deserves to use bloom as well.

I’d better stop here before this becomes a 3,000 word rant.