Curse of Monkey Island

[Robot_Maker20]

however the models are *the* single worse piece of 3D anything ive ever seen, it looks like your playing with a bunch of 99p wood carvings

Of course, in Grim Fandango they were supposed to look like simple puppets (They're actually called calaveras), it was part of the artistic style of the game, and so the engine was originally designed to deal with such models. No wonder at all, then, that MI4 looked so awful when they built the game with an engine expressly designed to use deliberately crude models, especially after the sumptuous, high detail visuals of MI3. I was briefly amused, though, by what Elaine's hair looked like in 3D.

[eriktorbjorn]

Of course, in Grim Fandango they were supposed to look like simple puppets (They're actually called calaveras), it was part of the artistic style of the game,

I agree that neither the models from Grim Fandango nor Escape from Monkey Island look particularly pretty today. Though as you say, the ones in Grim Fandango are supposed to look a bit lifeless, so in that case they picked a good application for the technology they had.

Then again, looking at screenshots from other games from that era, like Gabriel Knight 3 (1999) or Simon the Sorcerer 3D (2002), doesn't impress me much either... I haven't played either of these two games, however. Maybe they look better in motion.

[spacetroll]

Gabriel Knight 3 is not the prettiest game, and one that was hampered by design concepts that exceeded the budget and technology of the team. As such, it has a lot of good ideas and some so-so execution, especially in the visuals department.

I agree with the statement that Grim Fandango made great use of the technology available at the time. I still think Grim holds its stylized quality today and has not suffered as badly as most games made nearly a decade ago.

EMI, on the other hand, did not look particularly good given the technology and other games at the time, so it's not really an issue of not aging well -- it didn't look good to begin with.