True, they were trying to make the Grid look like more of a real environment, but I don't have a problem with that. It still feels very much like a completely new and different world, and you can only go so abstract before you lose the audience completely.
Plus even in the all-digital world of the Grid, I still want to see characters that look like they're actually existing and interacting with the world around them, and not just superimposed over it like in much of the original.