What do they mean by graphics?

[RCBH928]

yes, I am kind of embarrassed to ask this question at my age but I do not think I am sure what they mean when they say "graphics" in reviews.

I have seen many games that look pretty well and eye appealing but its graphics would be criticized , yet another game that sometimes might be just black and white with very simple shapes have "AMAZING" graphics .

Can one explain to me , how are graphics measured? What are they look for exactly?

[AppleQueso]

Art direction is probably the biggest one I think, followed by detail/realism/etc.

[Menegrothx]

I have seen many games that look pretty well and eye appealing but its graphics would be criticized , yet another game that sometimes might be just black and white with very simple shapes have "AMAZING" graphics

They compare the visual look of the game to the technical limitations of the hardware and to what other previously released games on the said platform looked like. With computers it's a bit more complicated.
In other words, a PS2 game that looks absolutetly stunning would have sloppy, poor graphics if it was a PS3 game. A bunch of ugly to look at pixels on Atari 2600 can be more amazing and impressive from a technical point of view than seemingly realistic looking and flawless graphics on a modern gaming PC.

[Cronozilla]

Yeah, when people say "graphics" they usually mean art direction. It's the overall visual appeal, more than the technical competency of what you're seeing (which is what graphics would entail)

It's more about how much they liked the whole visual package more than anything else. If you side by side compared most games people argued about looking better than one another, you'd be able to see all sorts of problems with the "better graphics" games.

There's a lot of technical aspects people ignore, like low model resolution, low texture resolutions (not just ones you see as colors), and thousands of things in between. If they were actually talking "graphics", they would not ignore these issues.

[Curlypaul]

Agreed - most reviewers actually mean art style when they are rating the graphics.

If I was rating graphics I would be taking about resolution, number of colours on screen, and some things that might effect the game play such as frame rate or animation.

[Erik_Twice]

I'm going to go against what is said and make the claim that most reviewers do only care about technological advances, not art direction.

[D.D.D.]

It's really all up to the person reviewing the title. While art direction and technological proficiency are both qualities that I regard in terms of graphics.
Examples: Wind Waker - art is great, and technologically still sound today. GTAIV - I like the style of the game but it's not as pretty as the PC version but it doesn't distract me from enjoying it. Xenoblade - love the art but at first I really had trouble with the pop-up but I had to just tell myself to not focus on it.
Everyone has their preferences and I think reviewers tend to find flaws a little too easily because well, they grind through so many games so quickly that they just have to find issues and just get it done.

[dtrack]

Agreed - most reviewers actually mean art style when they are rating the graphics.

If I was rating graphics I would be taking about resolution, number of colours on screen, and some things that might effect the game play such as frame rate or animation.

This.
Back in the 70s 80s and 90s graphics meant in a technical way. Like graphics still scored in the demoscene (see wikipedia if you have no clue). The more onscreen polygons and the more the resolution means "better" graphics. One of the reasone i bored of the demoscene when my interesd moved towards _art_ and not technology.
This tradition started to change the recent years, but art direction is still not the key.

[Menegrothx]

This tradition started to change the recent years, but art direction is still not the key.

I think we've gone partially backwards in this aspect, first we got 3D and now we are trying to have photorealistic 3D.
For example
Monkey Island 3 (and various other point and click adventures of it's time) - perfection.

Monkey Island 3.jpg (91.03 KiB) Viewed 1049 times

Monkey Island 4 (and most other 3D adventure games): Ugly and dissapointing

[isiolia]

I think we've gone partially backwards in this aspect, first we got 3D and now we are trying to have photorealistic 3D.

I would say more in the sense that games have a tendency to tackle technical limits first, and later branch into deliberate aesthetic choices. Maybe it's less that things went backwards and more that 3D is a lot more complicated to pull off. Still, to me, the greater techology gets, the more the look/feel of a game is based on the designer's intentions, not simply what they could manage to do with the hardware.

There are still 2D games being released, games that do better at making 3D elements look 2D or otherwise stylized, or combinations of the two (for example Time and Eternity/Toki to Towa which uses hand-drawn animations on 3D backgrounds).

I'd say most games are at least somewhat stylized anyway, but I tend to see more games now as looking how they do because that's what the devs want it to look like.

For the original topic, to me, reviewers are usually referring to end results in relation to the hardware, genre, and time period.