As far as the look goes. I remember when Cakewalk introduced what was it, Session Drummer 3?
 
The feature bullet said "Looks just like real drums", referring to the picture of drums sitting on a rug. At the time, I remember thinking that a lot of people were going to believe that they had something as powerful as Superior Drummer 2, because it also looks just like real drums in the plugin interface.
 
I just did another rescue of a song last night and while working with Superior Drummer 2, got real creative and put a tube drive on the toms. Without making them crunchy, it altered their timbre to a more pleasant place in the mix. Anyway, the depth of Superior Drummer has zero to do with the picture of a set of drums on the interface, and plugins with pretty graphics may be tricking your mind into believing that they are the best because they look the best.

Sometimes looks are strictly for show, but occasionally, an improved gui is more functional. Even something that seems as shallow as a drum looking like a drum sometimes helps a user sort function better. Technically many of these plugins could work with no gui at all and work more efficiently . Nothing is more useless than a plugin that is so poorly designed tjat it frustrates user. I don't think these fall in that category though.