Graphically Greatest game you've ever seen?

[Bucket]

I can recall a few times when I told myself, "This is just like real life! Graphics aren't going to get any better than this!"

 

- Myst

- Far Cry

- Unreal Tournament 3

- Uncharted 2

[Redneckerz]

15 hours ago, Ar_e_en said:

Mirrors Edge

 

It's beauty stems not from the technology behind it, but from the art style.

One of the games that still holds up 13 years later. All thanks to Illuminate Labs's Beast lighting, custom made for DICE using Illuminate's LiquidLight tech. It still ooks absolutely amazing, if not static.

 

It required a huge render farm (400 cores) to compute the lighting. Mirror's Edge Catalyst manages to achieve a very similar look, but in real time - Thanks to Enlighten.

 

Lighting middleware in general is just fascinating. Lights and shadows are such a detrimental part of how to form or shape a scene.

[snapshot]

19 hours ago, Ar_e_en said:

Mirrors Edge

Love Mirror's Edge, nothing beats the thrill of parkouring across the rooftops of a utopian/dystopian city, even Catalyst doesn't look too bad with it's little futuristic touches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[wallabra]

6 hours ago, Bucket said:

I can recall a few times when I told myself, "This is just like real life! Graphics aren't going to get any better than this!"

 

- Myst

- Far Cry

- Unreal Tournament 3

- Uncharted 2

 

Do you think they're going to bamboozle you yet again?

[seed]

For me, Arkham Knight, Crysis 3, Unreal Tournament 3, HL2/L4D and Source 1 games in general, old and new NFS games.

 

Funny how MW2005 is 16yrs old now, almost, and the X360 version is still gorgeous, the car reflections still make me drool.

 

 

 

 

 

[jupiter_ex]

On 2/2/2021 at 7:14 PM, Endless said:

Dead Space 2 is, surprisingly...

I think the levels load while you get the doors to open. Another, older game with no loading screens and amazing engine: Soul Reaver

 

On 2/3/2021 at 6:00 PM, Ar_e_en said:

Mirrors Edge

 

It's beauty stems not from the technology behind it, but from the art style.

ME uses frostbyte with the renderer replaced IIRC. Same as Battlefield 3. That + the art direction makes both games stunning.

 

On 2/4/2021 at 6:37 AM, Bucket said:

I can recall a few times when I told myself, "This is just like real life! Graphics aren't going to get any better than this!"

 

- Myst

:D :D :D

 

I gotta say Doom 3 looked amazing. And that "the order 1886" or so thing is the latest I remember I saw some footage and was pretty stunning

[HLRaven]

Dishonored, Doom 2016, Doom Eternal, Half-life Alyx, Half-life 2 Episode 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, SWAT 4, Portal 2, all 3 s.t.a.l.k.e.r games, and Left 4 Dead 2

[Taw Tu'lki]

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

Nice RPG with nice graphics.

[dew]

To this day nothing shocked me as much as walking out of Vortex Rikers and seeing NyLeve's Falls in Unreal. It certainly shocked my computer too. The hw-accelerated graphics race was already on in 1998, but Unreal humiliated the other competitors.

[Stupid Bunny]

Definitely TekWar, William Shatner never looked so good

[Denim Destroyer]

Kingdom Come Deliverance, instead of having simple slopes in forest and plains, the developer went through the effort of creating realistic topography by using satellite data. Plus I have a soft spot for late medieval aesthetics so that might influence my opinion just a little.

Edited March 14, 2021 by Denim Destroyer

[Aaron Blain]

Metroid: Rogue Dawn is maybe the most masterful use of the NES graphics hardware I've ever seen. Watch this teaser to the end for some beautiful rain effects.

 

I still pop Final Fantasy XII into my PS2 from time to time and never cease to marvel at its artistic and technical excellence. I have never seen textures used so effectively to create intricate detail and depth on low-poly models.

[Cosmos Of Kings]

I've played many games over the years, but very few have impressed me. There are a lot of games that look great or have graphically aged well, like Doom Eternal or Half Life 2. But I can only think of three games that have truly left me astonished.

1. The new Microsoft Flight Simulator had me in awe. It's the only game that properly felt "hyper-realistic" with its whole weather system, lighting, and world generation. The planetary tech is amazing.
2. Hitman 2016, specifically the Paris level, impressed me a lot. The immense detail put into the enormous buildings was exhilarating to uncover. Even the tutorial levels had a lot to see.
3. Manifold Garden's visual style is simple and yet very artistic. It's graphics are what I consider to be genuinely mind-bending and unique among video games.

 

 

 

[DJVCardMaster]

The upcoming Gran Turismo 7 sure has some mindblowing graphics, but I'll have to go with RDR 2 or Assassins Creed Valhalla.

[Sotenga]

Relevant since it's getting remastered, but El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron may be the most gorgeous art-student-as-all-hell game I've ever witnessed. It gets bonus points for standing out during the brown-and-grey palettes dominating the seventh console generation at the time. I'm glad it's getting on Steam so a wider audience can behold this visual feast of a game.

 

I'm also a sucker for great sprites, but I think Snark nailed it with Metal Slug. I can't think of any sprite-based game and/or series that's as lovingly detailed as MS, but I will say, I love the Caldecott Medal stylings of Yoshi's Island on the SNES.

 

Other games I visually dig include Jet Set Radio, Hollow Knight, both Ori games, Killer 7, From's recent action-RPGs but especially Sekiro, Katamari Damacy, and... damn, I thought I had more, but I'll say Breath of the Wild for now.

[DJVCardMaster]

bumping this again just to say the PS5 version of Crash Bandicoot 4 is the best looking game so far, realistic or not. Nuff said.

 

 

[spineapple tea]

The last two chapters of Half Life 2 just make me beg for a remaster with higher quality textures and models.

 

(spoilers for Half Life 2)

Spoiler

 

[Serum]

30 hours into Destiny 2 & it has to be the prettiest sci-fi/space game I've ever played

[snapshot]

@Serum Destiny 2 is a real looker with its fantasy/sci-fi aesthetic, still have some screens of some of the planets they vaulted. Infinite Forest was one of my favorite locations before the vaulting. Those colorful islands. still playing it.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 13, 2021 by sluggard

[Serum]

29 minutes ago, sluggard said:

@Serum Destiny 2 is a real looker with its fantasy/sci-fi aesthetic, still have some screens of some of the planets they vaulted. Infinite Forest was one of my favorite locations before the vaulting. Those colorful islands. still playing it. 

 

It's nice to see Bungie still on the absolute cutting edge of the sci-fi aesthetic just like they were back in the Combat Evolved era

[Dwimepon]

Death. Fucking. Stranding.

This game is simply jaw-dropping, especially when you have a PC able to run it with full specs.

 

[zzzornbringer]

the first thing ever that blew me away was sonic 2 for the genesis. it was the first game i put into this console and it was amazing. before that i only played the master system which was fun, but graphics weren't impressive, even back then. sonic 2, rocket knight adventures, contra 4 and earthworm jim followed. on the next console, the saturn, it was panzer dragoon zwei that blew me away.

 

then the pc era started and i freaked out when i saw quake for the first time. many years passed and another id game impressed me most. it wasn't quake 3 though, even though it looked really good. no, it obviously was doom 3. holy fuck, do you remember the first presentation when steve jobs welcomed john carmack to the stage who presented this per pixel lightning engine? doom 3 still looks awesome, even by today's standards.

 

in terms of modern games, i must say that the tomb raider reboots look really good. the 2013 reboot did age a bit. but rise and especially shadow of the tomb raider looks fantastic. wolfenstein new collossus was amazing also. i don't play many other modern games. horizon zero dawn is on my list and it also looks quite beautiful.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Nothing beats this!

[HQDefault]

I mean these days I feel like I could just answer any AAA release because they all look friggin fantastic to me.

 

Although I was very impressed with how immersive the people in Half-Life: Alyx looked. I feel like even today, games struggle to make people look very convincing. The problem isn't a lack of detail, we have plenty of that. Mostly the issue is that the skin looks a bit plasticy and fake, like it feels a bit too inorganic. But Alyx actually looks like people are made of flesh.

 

I'm typically most impressed by how well you can use your graphics to support your art direction. The Far Cry games have all been great at this, Far Cry 4 especially had these gigantic looming vistas that looked spectacular from any angle. Really the only issue with that game's graphics was when you shoved your face into a plain cliff. I also remember getting the PS3 for christmas as a kid and playing the copy of motorstorm that came with it, thinking I was witnessing some kind of revolution.

[Kute]

4 hours ago, HQDefault said:

I also remember getting the PS3 for christmas as a kid and playing the copy of motorstorm that came with it, thinking I was witnessing some kind of revolution.

I had never heard of this before, and looked up a video - very impressive, wow. If I walked by someone playing it on a PS4 today, I wouldn't think twice. It's rare you can say that about a 15 year old product.

 

I will say though, from PS3 to 90% of PS4 games, which is like 15 years of gaming - it all looks pretty similair to me. It's only Ps4-Pro and 4 GB and up PC graphic cards that produced visuals I'd deem too much for me to believe were on PS3

[MFG38]

On 2/3/2021 at 12:14 AM, Endless said:

Unreal still has, tbh, some of the coolest graphics and artstyle.

 

Agreed. That and the game's atmosphere is truly something else - the aesthetics and music in particular, I feel, make Unreal stand out among its peers and are part of the reason I love the game as much as I do. I've been wanting to see a new FPS game that takes after Unreal for years, but then, that magical atmosphere the game has isn't something that's easy to replicate.

[Ofisil]

I'm more of an aesthetics/atmosphere kind of guy.

 

Don't really care about how good a game from a technical standpoint, or whether it implements some new fancy visual trick or whatever - I want games to have that special sth that endure no matter how many decades pass.

 

Doom (obviously), Silent Hill, Metroid & Super Metroid, ECCO The Dolphin, the NES Super Mario Bros trilogy, Sonic The Hedgehog, Hollow Knight, Myst/Riven, Dark Souls, Diablo I & II, ECHO (Check it out!), Fallout (the first), Morrowind, Grim Fandango, Syberia, Haydee (check it out too!), Unreal, Quake, and many, many more...

[wallabra]

I think the atmosphere in Unreal was at least in part thanks to the awesome music from Alexander Brandon et al, I love it so much I still listen to it occasionally. Also, the ingenuity of the mappers; it has one of the first instances of actually scripted events in levels in an FPS, and you'd think that would be a bad thing, but they really knew what they were doing! Or maybe it was just that it was in first-person, i.e. not a cheesy cutscene.

 

Quake doesn't count, its scripted events, if any, were mostly just for the sake of gameplay flow. The closest to Unreal's standards that I am aware of would be in the very final level of Quake: Scourge of Armagon, with the dramatic entrance of the final boss and whatnot. But of course a final boss would warrant dramatic explosions and flashy visuals and whatnot. Unreal did things like that a lot, even in the beginning of the campaign; the ambush in the Rrajigar Mines level, where the player first meets the Skaarj in battle, is, I still think, the best example, ever, of atmospherics in a video game! Truly a masterful craft.

[ax34]

I don't know... maybe one of latest Final Fantasies? Though i didn't play it and hardly will.

[incel]

I think three games impressed me the most:

 

Max Payne blew me away with it's realism (hi-res photo textures).

 

Serious Sam offered some eye candy (fog, mirrors, flares).

 

Arkham Asylum - first game to look like a cg cut scene.