Washed-out colours/bad lighting?

[Ilean]

are you playing the game in windowed mode? if so, check your wallpaper, the game tends to look not so dark if it's behind a dark wallpaper. Also, I would try messing with your graphic settings a bit.

What type of monitor do you have? Is it more recent? and does it have a higher brightness/contrast ratio? The game looks just fine on my monitor, even in the dark... but i'm also using digital output via HDMI.

Messing with the videocard's control panel image settings should be a last resort thing, only when a poor quality or dying screen won't let you adjust the picture to acceptable levels.

Also the game is naturally not very colorful so...