[General Discussion] The use of colour. Or how earthtones are next gen.

I was reading Margaret Robinson's blog last night, and in her most entry - Monotony, a very worthy read - she talks about there should be more games that use simple black and white colour schemes.

I think there's a bigger topic here though: the use of colour in games. Some titles make incredibly use of colour, or the lack-thereof, to give them fantastic looks. Recent games like Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Sega Superstars Tennis and Patapon actually caught my attention because of their use of vibrant, playful colour palettes - the latter mixing colours brilliantly with a strong black and white component.

However, there seems to be a lot of games these days have adopted these rather ugly dirty brown/grey colour themes running through them. It's all too easy to cite Gears of War as a pinnacle of that, but I can think of a whole bunch of examples off the top of my head. That's not to say brown or grey can't be used effectively: I'd point to Professor Layton, which is bathed in a sepia tone that enhances the feeling of the setting. It's all about how the colours are used.

So the question is: what games do you think make particularly good use of colour, or the lack-thereof, and why? Perhaps there are some hidden gems out there to be discovered.

Conversely, any examples of games with terrible colour palettes?

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I seem to have my tv set to a much lower colour setting than most people I know. I'm amazed how garish some games look at other people's houses so I guess I prefer duller colour schemes.

I was personally struck by how well Shadow of the Collossus used a realtively drab colour scheme. It's a very muted pallete throughout, mainly greys, browns and pale greens but the washed out colours reflect beautifully the generally mournful air of the whole game. Also, with each guy you fight, the colours and areas generally get gloomier and gloomier. Awesome game all round but especially visually.

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I don't know if these are moreso a product of the art style, but:

Katamari Damacy - The entire colour scheme was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! It definitely worked to give the whole game a hyper psychadelic feel and simply would fail to invoke the same drugged-up feel if a less vibrant array of colours were used throughout the world.

Okami - Sepia for celestial brush usage, and black for ink strokes and outlining everything were two significant colours. Colour does play a heavy role as you can see Amaterasu physically drained when she runs out of ink, or when you bash the enemies up enough they show muddy colours. Of course, whenever you restore beauty to a land, everything explodes in a vibrant burst of pink sakura and blue skies, contrasting the black clouds of yami zones, blatantly showcasing the difference in atmosphere and overall mood, as intended.

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Epic agree with Okami. That's one of the coolest uses of coloring in a game. The watercolor, papyrus paper backgrounds made that game stand out so much more than if it would've been in 3D as originally planned. The thick, black outlines were also a big part of Okami's unique artistic style.

While on the topic of Clover-produced games, I can't imagine Viewtiful Joe being anything other than it was, and the use of comic-shading (someone coined that term, can't remember who though) helped give VJ the feel it was looking for. Bringin' back the old-school side-scrolling brawlers.

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Its a practical tip for games to adhere to a color scheme if possible. The limit often allows the developers to explore every possible avenue in using the selected colors for their title.

One older example I can think of is Secret of Mana, where supposedly the game was made without actually using the color Black... any dark areas were dark purples and blues, but no actual black color.

Another example I can think of is the Metal Gear Solid series of game's pretty obvious use of a specific color: In Metal Gear Solid it seemed to be a sort of "Depressed Blue". There was this blue tint that was evident throughout the entire game, with certain areas being of a different color scheme, notable Psycho Mantis's chambers (A sort of Yellow-Green that gave off a unsettling sense of being in a 'normal' location, of being in a home, which was thematically separate from the military nature of the game & its location: cold, un-civilized Alaskan wilderness) the Nuclear Storage Facility (A puke green color to not only indicate danger, but to reflect on the POISONOUS gas that might come out if you're found out).

In Metal Gear Solid 2, that color was adjusted to a more relaxed... I want to say Electronic Green-Blue. It was a very careful balance of green and blue hues, which again, was counterparted by the various locations: The opening sequence on the Cargo ship explored this color scheme deeply, and the Big Shell being a very obvious Warning Orange, which in a subtle way was a small hint of the change in the game that was to come, it was on a very small level, a clue that the experience in the Ship would not be the same as the experiences felt then and to be experienced later.

Metal Gear Solid 3 had a much more obvious Green and Brown color scheme, befitting of its location and setting once again, this time in the Jungles and Forests of the USSR.

Metal Gear Solid 4 seems to be expanding the dual-tone colors found in the previous title, blending the Electronic Green-Blue of MGS2, a new dark, almost black theme for an undertone, and an overlay of the MGS3 "Green".

Its an abstract comment I know, but its little touches like these which often get unnoticed, but they are fun to discover.

For a bit more down to earth example, take Jet Grind Radio / Jet Set Radio Future. The game has a very obvious cell-shaded look to itself, and while you might think its all comical, the surprising level of violence lends itself well to a dynamic pull between the music, the very vivid and expressive areas of Tokyo seen in real life, and the 'fight' your character takes on against the "Man", which are shown in darker, duller colors, as a contrast against the inherently vibrant world you're set in. Its another even more accessible example.

Of course as others have said, Okami is DRIPPING with this sort of thing. Its overall thematic color seems to be White, or a Parchment Paper off-white, but rather then take the route of being restricted by the color choice for the underlaying expressive setting, it uses that color as a general, light-felt guide, so that no one area feels too disconnected from the overall overlapping themes. So in this case, where-as some games design themselves at a certain level around maintaining the elements by restriction, Okami goes the opposite direction and uses the elements by exploration. The game's opening cut scenes are a great example: The character's outlines are all that are seen, and to this effect the story is easier to understand and it lets the player accept the ideas of the characters before being introduced to the reality. A two step process which is disolved away as the game begins and the true nature of the game unfolds.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Would we really have wanted a GoW game in pastels? I dig when they use bright colours for games where it fits, see Okami, see Unlimited SaGa, See the Monkey Island games, See SaGa Frontier and other such things. I'm glad people have mentioned SoM and their ilk, though I'd toss in Joe and Mac too as a game that really jumped from the colours.

That being said, some of the more drab games have impressed the hell out of me with HOW they used it. Super Metroid, Persona, Fallout, stuff like that. I think it's a matter of using the colours -well-, not just saturating with different tones.

Edit:

And Rotor is a bastard.

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I wasn't saying Gears of War should have been in pastel colours, the style they went with suited the story and feel of the game, I was just pointing to it as the prime example of a palette quite a few games have adopted recently (not all with good reason, or done anywhere near as well).

I agree, it's using colour correctly. I'm loving the look of Valkyrie of the Battlefield and that wouldn't look at all right as anything other than nice soft pastels.

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