History SpecialEffectFailure / VideoGames

* In ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl'''s ''Subspace Emissary'', Pokémon Trainer is not CG-rendered like the other characters and instead just uses his ingame model. As a result he looks extremely out of place in the otherwise very well-designed cutscenes.

* ''VideoGame/WanganMidnight Maximum Tune 3'' and its two {{Updated Rerelease}}s have notoriously short draw distances coupled with no fog to mask them. As a result, bridges and buildings just materialize out of nowhere as you drive towards them.

** However, the game also takes the liberty to avert a failure from [[VideoGame/DreamfallTheLongestJourney the previous title]]: NPCs would vanish after they enter a door. ''Chapters'' made sure to have them walk around the doorway until the protagonist leaves.

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[[AC: Specific Examples]]
* Two shots in ''VideoGame/AceCombat 7'' show a [[https://kotaku.com/ace-combat-7s-most-lovable-character-is-a-picture-of-a-1831875794 dog]] that is a [[StockFootageFailure pair of badly cut out stock images]] of two completely different dogs.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Anachronox}}'', on Sunder's starport you can see ships landing and taking off regularly through the windows. Moving even half a metre reveals these ships are actually miniatures flying a few metres behind the windows.

* Opening Remake 101: When remaking the ''Manga/DragonBall Z'' opening in CG, there's three things one should '''''never''''' do--make the characters look like arthritic Lego people that barely emote convincingly; have Chaozu look like he stepped out of the UncannyValley; and make sure that when Gohan flies past, not to 'noclip' through his head. Sadly, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FmKGZZNggI the opening to Budokai does all three]].

* In ''VideoGame/DJMAXTechnika'', if you fail a song by way of emptying out your LifeMeter, the game momentarily pauses before suddenly transitioning into the GameOver screen. This is corrected from ''Technika 2'' onwards, where, upon failure, shutters seamlessly come down on the screen without delay to show the "YOU FAILED" screen.
* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'' has a good example: the cheap, looping fire animations on the sides of the bridge between Skingrad and Skingrad Castle. It's made even worse by the fact that there's two rows of about twenty of them, all identical and looping in sync.
** For that matter, ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'' has a similar problem with the glowing weapons that look more like they're wrapped in saran-wrap, and enchanted robes that look as though you're dressed up in Christmas wrapping paper.
** In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', to become a werewolf, you have to undergo a ritual where you drink a werewolf's blood. The werewolf has her arm cut... [[http://youtu.be/uo2efCOzkqo?t=4m9s and the knife goes straight through her wrist, as blood just suddenly appears in the ceremonial bowl.]]
** Blacksmith forges usually have a water trough nearby. The water looks as if it were frozen in time.

* ''VideoGame/TheForceUnleashed 2'' has amazing graphics for the most part. Of course, if you start blowing up barrels, the barrels in the three-dimensional world look like some two-dimensional thing out of the UsefulNotes/Nintendo64.

** Thera are so many clipping glitches that listing all of them would break this wiki in half.

* One stage late in the original [=PS1=] ''Medal of Honor'' features a curator trying to reason with the player character over an intercom, who is eventually shot by his Nazi captors. It would be an effective KickTheDog moment if it were a single scripted occurrence, but instead the audio-only scene is part of the BGM, so every time the soundtrack loops you'll hear the poor guy fussing over stolen artwork and getting killed again.

* ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' features non-interactive doors on various walls throughout the game in an attempt to make the game world seem larger without wasting cartridge space on additional rooms. This would have worked better if the "dummy" doors weren't of vastly lower detail than real ones, lacking tidbits such as door frames or 3D doorknobs, and they end up looking exactly like fake doors painted on a wall.

* Some levels of ''Star Wars: VideoGame/JediKnightDarkForcesII'' render the sky by drawing a cloud/star-textured ceiling not even very far from player's camera.

* TheXFilesGame is a FMV game, thus everything uses real life scenery and actors. When observing your surroundings, some areas have background events going on like a car going by. Said car can be seen going one way and then mysteriously going in reverse before going forward again. The backgrounds were clearly put on an endless loop, making it look painfully obvious.
* [[spoiler: Chitose's death]] in ''VideoGame/TalesOfInnocence R''. In the original, she [[spoiler: takes out her knife and stabs herself]], conveyed in the limited model rather well - a simple "Fall down" animation plays. It was perfectly fine, but the Vita version changes this by [[spoiler: making Chitose's model explode into a million pieces by pixellating]]. The fact that this happens for ''no apparent reason'' makes it [[{{Narm}} unintentionally funny]].
* ''VideoGame/Left4Dead2'' has several quirks that can break the immersion of the game. The pistols have no walking animation in first person view, which makes them look like they're just floating in the air when equipped. The hunting rifle has a strange bug where if you play with a high field of view and aim up or down, the survivor's left wrist warps and twists to the point of being broken. When the survivors from the first game was ported over to the sequel, their arm models in first person view were never updated, thus their textures look plain and less detailed compared to the new survivors. On top of this, the bone rigging of the old survivors are still used from their home game and don't quite work with the new guns and items, which causes them to clip into the survivor's hands and fingers.
* Sometimes in ''VideoGame/DivinityOriginalSin'' or its sequel ''VideoGame/DivinityOriginalSinII'', a character might die and their body falls against something... prompting them to literally have their bodies ''lie on thin air''.
** Both games are not very "cinematic", and use LimitedAnimation. This has the result of characters having conversations or even giving items where they are halfway across the room. Since talking is not a free action, this can also result in characters having a conversation when they are ''on fire'' (or even lying down) and are going just fine.
*** The LimitedAnimation even renders the climactic end scene of ''VideoGame/OriginalSinII'' unintentionally hilarious because [[spoiler: your character doesn't even ''walk'' to the throne to make their choice, they simply ''teleport'' there, and a text box promptly blocks them.]]
** When the "wet" status is put on, it gives a "sheen" to the character models. The problem is, it appears even if you step in ankle-deep water, making the character look like they're wrapped in saran wrap or made out of rubber.
* Done intentionally in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2''. When Fortune blasts the [=SEALs=] with her railgun, they come flying up in a manner animated to look like a bad stunt shot from a conventional movie, and one subtly [[FalseCameraEffects collides with the 'camera']].
* Mario's fireballs in the 2D games are usually colored red, orange, and white. When Mario is fighting a Koopaling in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'', his fireballs are a gray and light blue instead, giving them a silver look. This is either a glitch in the graphics or limitations of the NES's color palettes.
* ''VideoGame/MarioKartWii'' has all the characters look like they are very shiny as if they were plastic dolls or were dipped in grease. Likewise, the HD remaster of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' gives all the character models a very noticeable shiny look to them, which even applies to their skin.
* The ''VideoGame/MarioKart'' series typically handles its secret Mirror cup class by simply flipping the screen horizontally (except for HUD elements), instead of rendering the track models in reverse, which would take up more space on the disc/cartridge. This has predictable effects on not just course elements, like starting banners or roadside advertisements, but also on character models, like Lakitu's signs or the L on Luigi's hat.

* Two shots in ''VideoGame/AceCombat 7'' show a [[https://kotaku.com/ace-combat-7s-most-lovable-character-is-a-picture-of-a-1831875794 dog]] that is a [[StockFootageFailure pair of badly cut out stock images]] of two completely different dogs.

* The early ''VideoGame/BreathOfFire'' games are particularly egregious in this regard. Some characters will just disappear, and it's unclear whether they're actually defeated for good or merely wounded, since some of them will show up later on.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' has so many clipping glitches that listing all of them would break this wiki in half.

* An example of this is one of the reasons Creator/DeepSilver's "[[https://youtu.be/YngbHOz--oc Masterclass]]" trailer for the ''Franchise/MegaMan'' SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/MightyNo9'' quickly became infamous and {{memetic|Mutation}}: single-sprite "explosion" effects that look more like pizzas, complete with a carpet bombing scene to draw attention to them. The [[VideoGame/MegaManClassic original]] ''VideoGame/{{Mega Man|Classic}}'' [[VideoGame/MegaManClassic games]] ''for the UsefulNotes/{{N|intendoEntertainmentSystem}}ES'' have better-looking explosions than this.

** In the lava stages, beginning with Hot-Head Bop, the kill barrier is located at the bottom of the screen, but the surface of the lava isn't, allowing you to pass below the surface of the lava without getting hurt. It's especially noticeable in the stage Red Hot Ride, which has slowly descending hot-air balloon platforms. Of course, no one's complaining from a gameplay standpoint, as it makes this already NintendoHard game somewhat easier, but it still looks weird.
** The GBA port has the new boss [[https://www.mariowiki.com/Kerozene Kerozene]]. While the idea of having a new boss for the port sounds like a good idea, Kerozene ends up looking very out-of-place. Not only do his sprites manage to be ConspicuousCGI thanks to being poorly modeled (in a game that ''already'' has CG sprites), his animations are incredibly choppy and lifeless. He ends up looking very hastily thrown together just to add more content to the GBA version.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts'' has one at the very end. As the party is walking through the green meadow, they receive a missive from Pluto, who tears away with the party in pursuit. Look closely, and it's revealed that Pluto is clearly just sliding along, translating up the hill with no animation. This happens any time the scene appears (the beginning of ''Chain of Memories'', the static-y memories of ''Kingdom Hearts 2''), and even came back in the HD remakes.

* In ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Brawl'''s ''[[VideoGame/TheSubspaceEmissary Subspace Emissary]]'', Pokemon Trainer is not CG-rendered like the other characters and instead just uses his ingame model. As a result he looks extremely out of place in the otherwise very well-designed cutscenes.

* ''Franchise/AloneInTheDark'': In the 2008 reboot, there's a gameplay mechanic that shows scratches and wounds on Edward's body the more he gets hurt. The problem is that the wounds look like they're just glued onto Edward's body, which makes it look incredibly fake. And in some cutscenes, wounds will sometimes glitch and hang off of Edward's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5VimZkkPvU#t=9m50s character model.]]

* The first three games in the ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' games look fine, but the immersion can be broken if you kill a monster next to a wall. Because all the backgrounds are pre rendered, any enemy body that goes limp on top of the wall look like it's phasing into the wall.

* The VisualNovel adaptation of ''Anime/CrossAnge'' is probably the prime example '''''against''''' using CGI in these kinds of games (and it's not like the anime had [[OffModel particularly nice animation]] either). Hands are almost always hidden; heavy amounts of DullSurprise; characters often return to default positions and/or expressions; [[NoFlowInCGI hair physics are uneven]]; and there's a ''terrible'' case of SpritePolygonMix gone wrong. About the only praise you can give it is that the CelShading used for the CG models is accurate to the show itself.

** Likewise, the remaster of ''VideoGame/GrimFandango'' doesn't even bother to re-render ''any'' of the backgrounds, instead upscaling the 640×480, ''256-color'' images to cover the probably-1080p screen. This despite a concerted effort to update the character models, add realistic lighting, and even re-record the entire soundtrack from scratch.

[[AC: In General]]
* Clipping through objects is one of the most common failures to see when playing a game, more so if it's a 3D game.
* EverythingFades is a common bad special effect. Rather than dying or leaving even a pile of bones, the character just winks out. This can be confusing if he instead flees, joins the party, etc.
* Loading the game's world and assets is either done via loading screen or is procedurally loaded in as the player moves around in the game. If the loading glitches out, fails, or is not coded correctly, you can see assets either pop into view from nowhere. For loading that is streamed, not only pop in can occur, but textures can look blurry, have worse colors, or no colors at all while the game tries to load the textures in.
* Many HD ports or enhanced ports of older games like ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'' and ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' look great with the touch ups, but sometimes other effects are lost in the transition. For example, ''Silent Hill 2'' is known for having very atmospheric fog effects, but the HD port loses most of the fog effects, causing the game to lose its creepy atmosphere. This may be because most of the fog in the original game is due to the [=PlayStation=]'s low draw distance prompting the developers to put the fog in to hide it.
* Stairs in 3D games can cause a character traversing up or down them to look a bit wonky if the collision box isn't made properly. Because the collision box is usually made as a single ramp, you can sometimes see your character hovering above the steps and move up/down the stairs in a smooth motion instead of a jerky motion that one would expect when going through each step.
%% * Playing a PC game with a screwy graphics card can cause this.

* Cutscenes in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' tend to shift between low-poly models and CGI movies. Needless to say, it's pretty jarring. As if this weren't bad enough already, half of these movies render the characters with realistic proportions, whereas their field models use, by contrast, a SuperDeformed style. So you see Cloud randomly shift between his short, low-polygonal field model with Popeye arms and cube-shaped hands and his detailed CGI rendition that actually matches his character artwork in the middle of cutscenes.
* The 3D versions of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' have the characters swing in the direction of the other side to attack. During one particular encounter with Dr. Lugae and Barnabas, Barnabas attacks Dr. Lugae after misinterpreting his orders. The 2D versions have the same attack animation regardless of who is getting hit, but the 3D version shows Barnabas swinging in the direction of your party... yet Dr. Lugae, who is ''right next to Barnabas'', is the one who gets hit. This makes the scene even funnier for [[NarmCharm all the wrong reasons]].
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2'' both received HD remasters and the visuals are absolutely stunning. The player character models were rebuilt from scratch instead of simply upscaling the textures on the old models, so that the character models can be consistent throughout the game. [[note]]The original game swaps between the default models and higher quality models when it's called for, and you can easily spot the differences when it happens, such as Tidus' hands having individually rendered fingers in one scene and "mitten" hands in another.[[/note]] However, the transition to the new models isn't quite smooth, since a some of characters' facial animations look incredibly stiff (especially Yuna's expressions). Tidus' blue eyes can look a bit ''too'' blue in certain scenes due to the improved lighting and color correction, while Yuna's eyes look bigger than they originally did. There's also some minor glitches with the animations; one example is Auron pushing past a Guado guard as the party flees, and said guard gets knocked over about one second after Auron pushes him instead of falling down immediately.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' has a lot of cutscenes, and they're all pretty. Most of the plot-important ones are rendered in FMV, but the rest are regular engine-rendered. In Bevelle, there's a long series of plot-important cutscenes back-to-back. Some are in FMV, some aren't. The difference is very noticeable.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' was ported to Steam and Android/[=iOS=] and all the character models were given much higher resolution textures that make everyone look smooth and crisp. However, the texture improvements also work against themselves due to the pre-rendered backgrounds still using the same low-resolution, blurry assets that the original Playstation version uses. It is believed that a fire that happened in the Square Enix offices some time ago destroyed a lot of the company's video game assets, which is why the developers couldn't use the original assets when it came to the backgrounds. You can see the worst of it when controlling Vivi for the first time in Alexandria, where his high-res character model sticks out a ''lot'' compared to the moving characters in the animated background as the game transitions from FMV to actual game; the characters in the FMV transition are hard coded within the FMV itself, therefore they're a low-res, blurry mess until you meet [=NPCs=] with their higher res models once the game begins. The sound effects also took a hit by having them compressed so that the game could fit on smartphones, but they're left compressed on the Steam version; many sound effects sound a bit lower or muffled, and the pitch for certain sound effects is higher than the original.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV'' is a ''very'' beautiful game, but unfortunately it has a few instances of this:
** Early on at Galdan Quay, the water's waves sometimes don't render - which makes the water look like saran-wrap. It happens with most water bodies such as lakes, but it's ''especially'' notable at the Quay.
** Prompto might take pictures of something, but plantlife gets in the way. The result is just about always a pixellated mess.
** Lighting sometimes accidentally displays seams that should be invisible
** [=NPCs=] sometimes just look off. Key [=NPCs=] like Cid, Cindy, or Ardyn are gorgeously animated... random shopkeepers? Not so much.
** The game is designed for daytime lighting. This results in the open world being absurdly ugly during the night.

** Non water surface reflections were added in the first expansion pack for ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''. While it looks great, any character or object that is moving has the reflection move with nearly 80% of the frame rate missing on the reflection. While this was likely done to keep resource use down (being an MMO, dozens of enemy and player characters with active reflections could be problematic), but it makes the effect look completely terrible. Similar to the ''Divinity Original Sin'' example, player characters that enter water or get hit with a water spell will have their models look wet and the entire body will also become wet if a player only steps into the water at the ankles.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'', due to a possible glitch, has Vaan's abs look ''really'' off to the point where people thought he looked anorexic. Luckily, this was corrected in the HD remaster. The game also has the background near zone borders look like cheap flat background as if it was green screen, which you can see when moving the camera. It's not too noticeable on the Playstation 2 version due to the lower resolution, but the HD remaster makes the effect a lot more obvious due to the higher details.

* Any PC game that tries to make a smooth transition to or from the desktop as it quits or starts is going to fail the moment the screen blinks as the video drivers are loaded. In egregious cases, it becomes even more obvious the game took a screenshot of the desktop when the player tabs out of the game and moves windows around.

* The ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer'' series usually has decent cutscenes, despite them being largely {{FMV}}s on a greenscreen. But in ''Tiberium Sun'', there are scenes where real actors are talking to noticeably CGI armies of soldiers.

* In ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl'''s Subspace Emissary, Pokemon Trainer is not CG-rendered like the other characters and instead just uses his ingame model. As a result he looks extremely out of place in the otherwise very well-designed cutscenes.

* Many HD ports or enhanced ports of older games like ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'' and ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' look great with the touch ups, but sometimes other effects are lost in the transition. For example, ''Silent Hill 2'' is known for having very atmospheric fog effects, but the HD port loses most of the fog effects, causing the game to lose its creepy atmosphere. This may be because most of the fog in the original game is due to the [=PlayStation=]'s low draw distance.