From the mid-’00s until around 2013, most games, especially AAA, featured a mandatory color filter so maligned that gamers often refer to it by much less charitable synonyms for “urine.” That was likely the ugliest era of gaming, and I actually miss it.
Nostalgia cycles are a thing, and they last about 20 years. So, just like our parents somehow started feeling nostalgic for the ’80s by the year 2000, we’re about to start getting nostalgic for the games of ’06, regardless of how bad they looked.
If you don’t much care for color, or are too young to know what I’m talking about, Resident Evil 5, Fallout 3, Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto 4, Gears of War, Metal Gear Solid 4, Red Dead Redemption, and Far Cry 2 are the main “offenders” I can remember off the top of my head.
Though the colors actually varied a bit from game to game, there was a clear unifying yellow/brownish look to these titles, and the “urine filter” became infamous because games simply lacked variety in their art. Also, if you’re going for a visual standard, it probably shouldn’t be that one.
Still, I do miss it, but that might have less to do with the actual look and more with the games it was tied to. Never in history has such a, ugh, urine-poor look been so tied to greatness. Did you see the amount of absolute classics listed above? We never got such an outpouring of quality in such a short timespan again.
Naturally, players have even taken to disabling the filter in certain games, and the results are pretty surprising.
Surprising in the sense that I actually prefer them with the filter. Maybe it’s because it’s tied to my memories with these games, or even with all of my memories from this time in my life. Maybe it’s because the brown filter actually showed the true artistic intent of the people behind the game, which will always beat the lack of one, a complaint I had with Metal Gear Solid Delta long before I even saw the unfiltered MGS4 screens above.
If that’s the case, I hope any exec intent on coasting on our Nostalgia will refrain from putting it in loads of new games, because it just won’t be the same.
Where does the filter come from?
RE5 might just be the yellowest AAA game ever, so it’s the one we most commonly associate with the trend, but chances are the original perpetrator was actually Resident Evil 4, simply for being so successful that other titles copied it down to its lack of color variety.
Maybe we just don’t associate RE4 with the brown filter because it came out long enough before the tsunami of urine-tinged games it ended up inspiring. And maybe because those colors actually felt unique and made sense there—though in my countless visits to Spain I’m yet to encounter a zombie that looks like that.
