The new trailer for Splinter Cell 4 looks pretty hot, but it nags me on one front. It was the one thing that bugged me a little about Condemned.

Why does everyone look plastic?

I mean seriously, everything has an artificial “sheen” to it. Why? Real people don’t shine like that unless you take a can of turtle wax and a power-buffer to their face. Trust me on that one.

Is the mark of “next-generation”? The “hey look, we’re all shiny too, our games are next gen” trend? I hope not.

Maybe I’m missing something. How hard is it to have the shiny filter on, say, a leather jacket, or a metal pipe, but not on someone’s forehead? I used to work with game mod teams, level builders, etc, so I have at least some tiny idea of how these things work. Maybe it only bothers me. Maybe everyone else likes plastic people.

But if Call of Duty can have outstanding graphics without shiny people, it’s obviously possible. So why choose shiny people? I don’t get it.