I'd have to say aesthetics in today's age of gaming is far more important than the golden age of gaming personally. What with all the graphical output of new consoles and PC heavily laden with overclocked proc's and juiced up gfx cards - how could the visuals be considered NOT important to today's gamer? If I find something to not be visually appealing it will be hard to push through that facet of the game and simply enjoy the gameplay. To put this into simpler words, "I don't care how much of a freak she is in bed, the bitch is ugly".