Probably Morrowind. The game is ugly and the mechanics are a bit clumsy, but damn did I love it. Prolly clocked over 3,000 hours in Vvardenfell man.
I love Morrowind so much that I refuse to admit to its ugliness. I will choose to believe that the less-than-perfect graphics simply enhance the alien look and feel.
Same with the fog to cover up draw distance issues.
"It's called an art direction sweetie, look it up." But without any sarcasm.
The game mods that increase the view distance take something away from the games magic, IMO. To this day I remember walking down the road and seeing Vivec city suddenly appearing in front of me from the fog.
Understandable. It's such a good game.
I think because I played so long ago, that for that time it looked to me fantastic.
such a cool game, i would love to play the whole series!
They're all definitely worth playing.
Kenshi. It's simultaneously janky and beautiful.
oh lord, i need to know more about this game immediately! going to find playthrough on youtube hahaha
This was what I immediately thought of.
Oh my god. It's beautiful.
Nidhogg 2 - I love the first game and the second game is fun, but I honestly hate the art.
yeah i love the first one. i have heard the second one is worse, what do you think?
I assume we are only talking about games that looked ugly pretty much upon release, and not games that look really bad now but are still really fun.
In that case starting with the most recent:
Save Room - Puzzle game that is just the inventory management from survival horrors like Resident Evil. Might be just a simple joke game, but I had a lot of fun with it.
Outcast - The voxel tech just wasn't ready. Amazing game, one of the best of the era, but it its visuals left a lot to be desired. Modern updates have greatly improved its look.
Eradicator - This one was looking out of date when it came out, but its a surprisingly awesome and deep 90's era shooter.
For me, it has to be Dragon Age Origins. I love the brains out of it, but it is as ugly as you can get. Thankfully the rest of the game is fantastic.
Minecraft
Seriously how the hell? It's fairly basic and unless you have the chops and patience to rebuild a minecraft new york city, not much else going on
But then I fire that pixelated crap up again and off i go trying to recreate a giant tower that looks like a penis.
Honestly, just how damned ugly minecraft is puts me off every time I think about trying to play it!
Mods, friend! There is some very pretty minecraft out there!
I have seen it being played with apparently higher res graphics packs and... just, wow it's still ugly! I mean I haven't exactly looked deeply, but...
Honestly, fair. What counts as pretty to minecraft people is still probably objectively a bit jank. That, and you can make builds and lighting and textures that are truly beautiful at a distance, but minecraft gameplay is usually not at a distance. Gameplay is you standing half a meter from an ugly tree so you can punch it to death.
My mommy group had a minecraft server when all our kids were potato stage and it was mostly a few very talented redstone builders, a few people collecting resources, and my husband in the corner building a penis castle with penis fountains overlooking our little town.
The penis is inevitable.
aw. your husband is also a man of culture i see!
Probably Risen, I'm a Pirahna Bytes fanboy.
Pathologic is a pretty ugly game, but, if anything, it adds to the charm and atmosphere of the game.
“Charm.” Yes. That is the word for Pathologic.
Does Old School Runescape counts? Cuz damn do those graphics have aged but I still love it to bits.
definitely hahaha even though they created a new one, people still prefer the old. Unfortunately i never played it growing up, I feel i missed out
Old school RuneScape still is alive! It actually has more active users than RuneScape 3. It's a ton of fun!
Hogs of War.
I'm sure I'm doing it something of a disservice here, but even at the time I remember thinking it looked pretty grim.
Lots of browns and greens, lots of repeated textures and lots of pretty clumsy animations.
And you know what? None of that mattered in the slightest.
I loved hogs of war as a kid. I think they did what they could with the limitations of the time. There was a ton of voice acting in that game and that's probably what ate up the disk size.
Gaming