i consider halos level design bland because there are a dozen rooms that all look the same. thas nut impressive thats cheap.

also, metrid is year solder than turrican

back to topic. id like to bring up the wind waker here, for i love the art style on that. in fact, this was the game that made me fall in love with toon shading. yeah, i go there.

take the wind waker today. it still holds up nicely in terms of graphical quality because of the style. and now compare it to any other game from 2001. yeah...

you can achieve good visuals with a matching stle even without hard tech. the more real it gets, the harder it is to do. uncanny valley, believability and money are to blame. i find it frustrating that the broad masses have accepted CGI and hand drawn artwork in movies, but still struggle to accept an artstyle in games.

yesterday i witnessed it myself. i was out, having good fun, when i overheard two people talking about games. and then they agreed that theyd never play anything besides PC or PS3 because of the bad graphics and such. then the mentioned modern warfare 2 as the prime example of graphics.
and i hate it when that happens. not that the game is bad, but this mindset just ingores all the amazing art found in non realistic games. and thats basically the target audience for "hardcore" game developers (although i HATE that term).

and as indie, you simply cant reach that, you you aliante those people because you cant reach that quality and you alienate everyone else because the rest is not too fond with brown as a color. lucky us your gameplay sucks or else it would be really frustrating...