Before I begin my rant, I'm going to give a little background. Over the years that I've played games, and since I've been on this site and expored offical game forums here and there, I've come across so many people who think that if a game has good graphics, it'll be a good game and the opposite is true therefore and nothing else matters. With that out of the way, here I go.

The first time I encountered this was when Lego Battles was announced for the DS. A few of us were quite looking forward to it with a small amount of apprehension because of how the RTS genre would work for a handheld system. I was browsing a few videos on it and came across a comment that said "Bad graphics=bad game lol." I sat there for a few secondsand said to myself"Just what are you thinking?! Just becasue a game does not have clean cut-every-pixel-showing-graphics does NOT imply that the game will be bad. (It got panned somewhat because of some poor pathfinding that happens every now and then which is understandablebut its still one of my favorite RTSs).

Another game that I REALLY enjoy, but haven't played in awhile is Frozen Synapse. It has bad graphics, but do you know what Gamespot said about it? "This game proves that graphics don't matter when the gameplay is this good."

Stronghold 3 is another game that has suffered pre-release hate for having "bad graphics" which is absolutely hilarous becasue they used an up to date 3rd party engine which allowed them to do a extra things with it that work really well. They also went for a grittier look, but in no way does it look anything like Stronghold 2 except for the design of some units and buildings.

May as well get something else off my chest while I'm here that's along the same lines: the M rating. Regardign the same game Stronghold 3, one comment went "If they went for a NC-17 reating it would get more sales." Where in tarnation does that kind of thinking come from?! Look at Mario! It doesn't get M ratings yet it always sells well. Then orginal Stronghold sold over a 1000 000 units; outselling GTA 3 in Germany. Know what its rating is? T.

So again, I close my rant with this question: Why has graphics and graitous violence become to mean that a game will be good?