GameHot Rant: In Love with UE5

Summary

This is a casual essay from the GameHot Rant column. The author expresses growing fatigue with the recent wave of games touting Unreal Engine 5 (UE5), whose visuals are often stunning at first glance but increasingly homogeneous. While these games push realistic and cinematic aesthetics, the author argues they lack distinctive artistic identity. The author prefers more unconventional art styles and cites the Rusty Lake series as a counterexample. That series has long used deliberately distorted, flat illustrations with mismatched proportions, giving characters and scenes an unsettling, almost childlike creepiness—as if drawn by a troubled kid. The style, though seemingly amateurish, is carefully crafted to be iconic and memorable, and it has been a key reason for the series' enduring appeal. The essay reflects on the value of diverse art directions in games and subtly criticizes the industry's over-reliance on realism powered by high-end tech. It offers players a fresh lens to evaluate game aesthetics and reminds developers that technological progress shouldn't come at the cost of artistic uniqueness. This commentary serves as a gentle pushback against the trend of visual homogenization in big-budget titles.