Have you tried updating your
DirectX and video card drivers? (You can find out what type of video/graphics display driver you have by going to
Start => Run, typing
dxdiag in the "Open" box, and after the DirectX Diagnostic tool finishes loading, click on the "Display" tab and the driver details should be in the box to the upper left-hand corner.) Once you find out the maker of the display card, you can go to their official site and look up driver updates.
If that doesn't help, then your video card probably doesn't support the type of graphic effects like water, the sky, etc. On the official site, it suggests having a video card with at least 32MB of video RAM in order to get better quality graphics.
(Even better would be 256MB or 512MB video cards. I'm not sure which ones are pretty good now... many usually people go with Nvidia graphics cards for the quality, but I'm sure some people can shoot out a few good suggestions on what type of graphics card to get should you decide to buy a new one.
)
