Shadow Aliasing. As great as a game like Mass Effect is, the "shadow crawl" across the faces is horribly annoying. MotorStorm is another where the shadows is just horrible.
Lack of Self Shadows. Self Shadows give a lot of depth to characters and look fabulous. Comparing a game like VT3 to Madden, and the self shadows just pop out in VT3. I love them and cringe when I don't see them. Don't ask me to choose between no self shadows and self shadows with aliasing... grrr!
Dynamic Shadows. See a trend? Having dynamic objects both cast and receive shadows to/from other dynamic objects isn't too much to ask... is it?
Bloom. Some bloom is good, but the constant glow some games have on every lit edge is very, very annoying. I love HDR effects but bloom is one that must be handled with care.
Flat Textured Grass, Sprite bushes. Games that feature a lot of grass really need to put some effort into it. Trackmania and BF:V had decent grass a while ago and a number of launch titles also had solid grass (like Kameo). Even if you cannot go all out on 3D grass, some sprite grass is better than horribly flat... textures. But for bushes... no. You better make those 3D. If I see another bush that looks the same from every angle and has no lighting or shadowing... grrr! MotorStorm, looking at you!
Non-interactive Worlds. Boom! That was a huge bomb! Oh, and the half decayed brick wall... isn't scratch. Yawn. If I hit something in the world, I want to see some input. Part of immersion is showing the gamer they DO make an impact in the world.
Animation. Great visuals with poor animation make average, at best, graphics. Graphics is equal parts visuals and animation, and without the later the title suffers. I am tired of LOOOONG unbreakable animations, especially ones that where you run into an object (wall, another player, NPC, etc) and it just continues as if they are not there. Classic examples abound in Madden. Jump into a tackle animation... and you do a super jump suspended in the same spot in the air. Too Human also has some of those looong unbreakable animations where you do a special move and some enemy may be walking into you (moon walk of course because you cannot be moved!) but you keep going as if no one is touching you.
Texture Flicker and Pop-in. Nothing worse than seeing a texture flicker (texture/black/white/repeat) because it is on a seam or somesuch. Likewise pop-in. You have 512MB of memory so use it wisely. Yes, DOF can help but it is still noticable.
Last Gen Particle Effects. When your smoke or fire looks like a pixelated and static mess then you need to redo it. Lost Planet really showed us what we should expect from game particles, RFoM has some great snow effects and Kameo a lot of nice particles all over the place. They go a long way to give the world life. Lifeless last gen particles make a title looked dated. No real grey area here.
Body / Facial Animation. HL2 was 2004. We are now in 2007. When only a handful of games can claim parity that is not a good sign. Valve really nailed the "life" expressed in the characters not only through excellent facial animation (and acting) and lip sync, but also body gestures. Few things bore me more than really, really bad character animation.
Unbreakable Lights. If I can shoot them I want them to go out. Totally destroys immersion for me--and getting to break them is waaay up on the cool factor. This alone could add a TON of replay to games, especially MP. Take any FPS... you wander into a room and are being chased... hide in a corner, shoot out the lights. When the enemy comes through the lit door (and the HDR iris effect hits him) you have him nailed! Or better yet, he turns on his flash light. Bang!
Dishonorable mentions: Repetitive Textures, Edge Aliasing, Texture Aliasing, Low Poly, although I can excuse some of these depending on the circumstance.
