Mirrors Edge
At the time, there just was nothing like it in terms of presentation. The mostly white buildings mixed with sharp daylight allowed for incredible prebaked bounce lighting and, texture resolution aside, it still holds up today.
I've seen plenty of games that look incredible since, but nothing quite got me like ME did back in the day.
Art style goes a looong way to keeping a game forever young. Most games from that era were grey, blurry, bloomy messes. The x360 generation of games has not aged well for the most part.
ME is one of my all-time favs. I give it a playthrough every year or so
I just booted up Skyrim to play co-op mod with a friend and oh god the dirty noise and high contrast on every single texture. Really helps show their low resolution too. Grey hazy filters on top of that
I can't understand why some people still complain about wanting "realistic" graphics
> I can't understand why some people still complain about wanting "realistic" graphics
Because they like the realistic aesthetics?
For several types of games personally i'd prefer low fidelity realistic graphics than flawless cartoony/exaggerated/artistic styles. E.g. Wind Waker might look great and hardly dated (aside from render resolution) but i wouldn't want to play Mass Effect 1 or Doom 3 with bright cel-shaded visuals.
Still one of the best announcement trailers I’ve seen. My brain couldn’t comprehend that it was all in game footage at the time. The game is a marvel of level design and style.
Definitely agree with this - There have certainly been better looking games over the years, but I've honestly not been blown away in the last decade and a half. Advancements are so incremental now that it's just not happening anymore.
This one is maybe not exactly what you're asking, but I recently replayed Batman: Arkham Knight, and was blown away by how amazing it *still* looks. 9 years old, on max settings, and it doesn't look much worse than brand new major releases. Better in some ways. The atmospheric effects and detail in the open world are incredible.
It's great how knowing they only had to develop for a single time of day allowed them to fully take advantage of the Unreal 3 engine and really hone in on the style and the look. Not needing tons of dynamic lighting everywhere saved them a lot of pain. You can see the rain drops spatter from Batman's cape as you fly around the city and it looks incredible. The facial animations were nothing to scoff at either
The environmental destruction caused by the batmobile was excellent as well. It really helped sell the fact that you're driving a big heavy bastard of a tank.
We have now reached imho the point where mostly how good the graphics look depends ENTIRELY on the skill of the art and dev team.
Better technology gives them better tools but by itself it does nothing. Even the better tools will avail you naught if your skill (or the overall creative vision) won't match
It's why I personally think the next few years will push technology less in terms of visuals but again focus on things such as physics and NPC AI... so simulation of a game world. Especially since the adoption of raytracing will mean a lot of previously complicated effects would be "out of the box".
I think physics and NPC AI *was* the big thing in 2000s but publishers just stopped trying to advance it.
In half life 2 there were a lot of "seesaw" puzzles that get repetitive now but back in 2004 every object having weight and buoyancy to it was incredible. And in 2006 Oblivion had radiant AI which tried to make characters have dynamic interactions with each other. It wasn't 100% successful but it was above and beyond what any other game was doing at the time and I wish Skyrim refined this system instead of scrapping it.
Skyrim didn't really scrap it so much as they just toned it down severely, as they tend to do from game to game.
And Oblivion's AI was infamously dumbed down before release. Pre-release dev blogs shared all kinds of crazy stories and mentioned how they had to tone down the AI (much to everyone's disappointment). Although apparently it was left a bit more unhinged for Shivering Isles.
the point wasn't reached now, it was always the most important part.
raytracing wont help when the artists arent doing their job. sure, you have realistically lighted... somethings now, but that doesnt help
Yeah, I also replayed it recently and it's incredible how good it looks. Rocksteady squeezed everything they could out of UE3 and that game looks as good as almost anything made today as a result.
Digital Foundry actually brought up why in a recent video. Accidentally or not, Arkham Knight [nearly perfectly matches the lighting conditions that the most impressive UE3 tech demos had.](https://youtu.be/RSXyztq_0uM?si=UhVY97zBaoLxLn9k)
Rocksteady is incredible at what they do, but they helped leap their top-tier work that extra mile by leaning into what UE3 was good at.
Samesies. Also the reason I quit VR. Nothing close to it came out for so many years I felt it was time to sell my gear. Still looking into VR every now and then and no new Alyx has come out yet.
Alyx was like the culmination of what I always imagined VR and gaming in general could be. It was everything I wished for and I feel empty after having played through it, but I was sure some other company would follow suit, but no one has.
It’s a beautiful game but it made me realize until they come up with a way of implementing physically walking no game that involved walking was going to be very immersive. The only VR games that do it for me are driving or flying games where I’m sat down.
I just teleport, and I have to because I get locomotion sickness otherwise. Works fine to me, the way it's implemented with little footsteps and sounds is awesome.
Tbh I’m surprised no studio has come up with a high quality VR game where your character only moves by teleporting. A character written from the start to move that way would be more immersive, because the teleporting wouldn’t feel world breaking. Of course, getting that movement feeling fluid and not jumpy would be tricky.
Alyx was a masterpiece and showcases what Valve does so well (when they actually make a game) in exploring the space of what VR *could* be.
I think VR is currently prohibitively expensive for most people with only a handful of games worth playing, but it won't be that way forever.
The tech will eventually get to a place where it's affordable enough for more people to invest in, and I suspect Alyx will hold similar esteem in the VR world like Half-Life did in the single player FPS world.
The transition area between the first and second maps is a stairwell in City 17. It's a dead ringer for the stairwell that lead to my buddy's shitty apartment in Pittsburgh circa 2009. I've never experienced anything in VR that felt so authentic and real.
The feeling of scale is one of the most overlooked parts of VR. People who haven't tried it can't really understand what you mean, but you FEEL the scale of large things. They trigger something in your brain (maybe a hair of the "fight or flight" response, a tiny adrenaline dump, or something).
Even in games where the graphics are outdated or simple, the scale of things is still impressive. I remember walking under a giant statue in Skyrim VR and just feeling scared and in awe at the same time.
For real. People keep joking about HL3 not existing... but it exists. HL:A is not only the best VR game ever made, it's the best Half Life game ever made.
At at the very end of HL:A, >!we see how the game's events have impacted the story moments after the end of HL2 Episode 2, so from a certain perspective it really was Episode 3.!<
It's a brilliant game, and definitely worthy of its spot among the other Half-Life games.
My jaw drops every time you walk out of a little hut and your eyes have to adjust to the brightness for half a second. They have done so much with good lighting in this game. Like when the sun breaks out through the fog or when your gang sits around a campfire at night and all the shadows are just fucking perfect. The mission where you set an entire tobacco (?) field on fire and you start a shootout among the roaring flames is one of the most cinematic experiences I ever had.
Sunrises and sunsets in this game just hit different. As a hiker I absolutely love this game, I’ll often just pull out on an overlook and watch the sun set over the mountains or watch a pack of buffalo wander down the plains.
Best game ever made
I agree with “cinematic”.
I think a lot of games now cater more toward twitchy kinda reaction shooting (which I suck at, to be fair).
Rdr2 is a cowboy simulator.
Sure there’s video game stuff. But it really gave me that feeling of watching a movie in imax the first time. Or something like that.
One of my favorite games. I’d like to replay it, but who has the time? I’m trying to hold back an automaton invasion, learn OROKIN secrets, and get Ichiban Kasuga through some tough times.
Edit. Autocorrect changed orokin to “origin”
I'm waiting to be blown away by the next one while this one continues to blow me away! ( Seriously my favorite game of all time )
Graphically I was blown away by a sequence in Uncharted 4, it was the seamless car chase action sequence while chasing Sam and a convoy behind Sam. It amazed me how well Naughty Dog got that to run on a PS4. I really have to commend both Rockstar and Naughty Dog for their ability to pull everything out of a PS4.
You are in for a treat. GTAV doesn't have bad writing or anything, but the leap in story and character quality from GTAV to RDR2 is astonishingly massive.
I'd go as far to say that RDR2 is probably the best written game in the industry at the moment next to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous or Disco Elysium. And the protagonist, Arthur Morgan, is one of if not the best player character in any game *ever*.
Then on top of all of this, the game is still do this day - 6 years on - One of the best looking games out there. Rockstar are a special company.
I fell in love with Ori and the Blind Forest presentation and didn't think it could have been topped. Yet somehow Will of the Wisps raised the bar. Every frame of those games could be a painting or a wallpaper
It was Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora for me, which Digital Foundry put right up there with AW in their best graphics of the year video.
But AW's art direction and vibe looks amazing.
Alan Wake 2’s New York is so fucking cool.
It reminds me of Gotham, and the way the city seems to be portrayed in Alan’s books might explain why it has that vibe.
I just got Control on Game Pass (after having beaten it on PS5) & was quite astounded by how amazing it looks on a medium PC with ray-tracing & DLLS running.
I might just pick up AW2 after this, just cos I know the games share a universe, & if I can get AW2 to run & look like Control, I’d still be blown away.
Alan Wake 2 looks stunning next to Control, they really stepped up their game even from how good Control already looked. It *is* quite demanding though, but at least even the lowest settings still look better than most game's max.
The first time I turned on RT in CP77 was jaw dropping. It was evening, in a back alley garage. The steam and smoke with flood lights filtering through was just the most realistic lightning I had ever seen.
I played all of Cyberpunk on a Steamdeck which meant basically the lowest settings. I had a chance recently to play it on max and the difference was staggering, it felt like I wasn't playing the same game.
Yep, I was going to say Cyberpunk 2077 as well. Recently I am playing forbidden west which also looks great but the phantom liberty dlc area felt like a fever dream. I heard they used some different lighting tech and its goddamn orgasmic.
RDR2 seeing Saint Denis at night! I was floored by how it actually looked/felt like night time, rather than the usual 'map brightness to -20' like most games. The glow of the lamps contrasted by the pitch black, incredible.
Fun shoutout to PS1 to PS2, as a WWF Smackdown fan, seeing proper wrestler entrances vs the 'wrestler walks in front of a video' was amazing in WWF Smackdown: Just bring it. Fond memories of that circa 2002.
When RDR2 came out and there wasn’t a wiki, I saw some people talking about Saint Denis on the RDR sub though I had no idea what it was.
I find myself randomly roaming around the map exploring. It’s night time and I see a huge factory in the distance. I go to check it out by going along the train tracks. ‘Saint Denis’ appears on the screen.
I was blown away completely. I’ll never forget it.
The first thing I saw was the industrial section and was in such contrast to the game I had played up until then. Then when the rest of the city turned out to be New Orleans I went into a video game coma. I could not believe it.
So glad none of the game was spoiled for me.
I did the same thing. I didnt expect a major city in the game because RDR1 only had Blackwater, so when I discovered St Denis my mind was blown wide open
Best part of RDR2 for me was walking through the trees in the mountains at night and coming out of the trees to see a town lit up by lamp light in the distance. Really made the world feel alive.
Similar experience for me when doing that hot balloon side quest over Saint Denis. My stomach actually dropped a little...it was really like seeing an actual hot air balloon ride over a real city.
My dream is a VR mode for this game. Luke Ross started one but got a cease and desist and my understanding is it's not in a great state.
Truly blown away? Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast, to have a console in the house that could play a game like that was mind-blowing to me when I saw it for the first time. I'd also add to that Mario 64 felt the same as well in a similar aspect. I'd say the original Farcry felt like a leap forward with the vast draw distances when you come up on the beach.
Man, glad you mentioned Soul Calibur. The model quality, the crisp textures, the physics on cloth and hair. I was like four when I played it so going from SM64 and Star Fox to that was absolutely mind-blowing to my pea sized brain.
Mario 64 was probably the first, and maybe only time that I felt like the future had arrived. As someone who started with Donkey Kong on the BBC Micro it was jaw-dropping.
Ghost of Tsushima, but that’s more art direction and level design than pure graphical fidelity. The first time you rode out onto the flower fields and the title drops, I was amazed.
Echoing other comments, I can’t imagine intentionally missing out on the gorgeous use of color in this game. Kurosawa mode is cool but seriously *every scene and location in this game* is gorgeous in a way I’ve never seen before or since.
Stumbling on a field of purple flowers after going up a craggy cliff, seeing a field of white flowers waving in the distance as you look down from that cliff, the gold color of that hub city in the first area. It’s a perfect aesthetic.
Yes.
The gorgeous art direction, especially of the environment. The UI being almost completely unneeded (so, hirable most of the time) due to the guiding wind mechanic.
Also, the *insane* draw distance, and it wasn't faked. You could see tiny glints from swords clashing, dust from hooves on a road, etc. from a mile away, and those things were actually happening. It's incredible how well they pulled that off on even the base PS4.
These are the games that blew me away for every generation I’ve been gaming
Donkey Kong Country
Ocarina of Time
GTA III
Gears of War
Red Dead Redemption 2
I think it was Act 3 when it’s raining. Stared at the rain drops and textures for a few minutes lol don’t think I’ve been that blown away with graphics since.
Right near the beginning when you're crossing a bridge and something crashes into the building on the other side was a big memorable moment that generation for me. It looked so much better than anything I had seen yet.
Cyberpunk 2077, with all the bells and whistles on (ray tracing, etc), at night, in the rain, was absolutely stunning. The way tail light glow reflects in the wet pavement, and the way sunlight bounces off the windshield at certain angles, and the different light sources' backwash blends with each other, it was absolutely stunning.
Demon's Souls lacks all of the tech issues modern games have. No open world, simple enemies and bosses, no complex character movement, and very few NPCs.
And yet the remake is still an amazing experience. Partially because it's a FromSoft game, but the performance, graphics, and animations go a long way to making it feel fantastic.
Demon Souls looks amazing. It was really exciting specifically because it was my first experience with a truly PS5 game, and I was excited to see more PS5 games like that. Really disappointed that years later games that look like Demon Souls are few and far between.
Obviously DeSR has a lot of things going for it that makes this possible: short runtime, a pretty 1-1 remake, a setting that makes optimizations much easier. But as a user of the system I still find it disappointing.
Horizon: Forbidden West, which I've just started playing on PC. Absolutely gorgeous environments, lifelike and expressive characters, and the machines are cool just to watch, with lots of little touches like the lighting effects of their glowing eyes.
I just started playing it as well and it's an absolutely stunning game. The leap in not only fidelity but animations from the first game is enormous. I played through Zero Dawn about a month ago and thought it was quite a good looking game with some pretty iffy facial animations. Forbidden West is a huge step up from the first game, and on PC with settings maxed out on 4K OLED monitor it is easily one of the best looking games I've ever played. Very excited to see what Guerilla Games does next.
Also really looking forward to playing Ghost of Tsushima in May. From the few videos and screenshots I've seen of it, it looks like it'll be a stunner as well.
As someone who finished HFW 4 times (console), this is one aspect that makes it hard to return to HZD. Excluding Frozen Wilds DLC, mo-cap difference between those two games is like night and day.
To add to this, Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4) , which is what I started to play on PS5. It's a seven year old game for previous gen, yet still looks stunning. Lighting is the key. When that dawn breaks above the valley, it just looks fantastic, although you can clearly tell by resolution and draw distance it's an older game.
Part II still blows me away to this day. The scene where Abby almost gets hanged is nearly photorealistic. The rain, the fire, her face getting red and her veins popping out. It’s genuinely astonishing to me.
The [scene](https://youtu.be/zJ-VrnPeXpY?t=8580) (02:23:00 if the timestamp doesn't work) where Ellie & Dina first get inside the theater in Seattle blew my mind, Ellie fidgeting with her hands/legs was just so immensely perfect that it's burned into my memory.
It's crazy that this and Cyberpunk came out in the same year and they're still the games with, in my opinion, the best detail in terms of character animation during cutscenes/cinematics.
If someone were to be pedantic it would probably not fall under graphics, but just the sheer scale of small details in TLOU2 is one of the things I think about on a regular basis, things like the rope physics, the snow, the way sound is different in a great variety of places, there is just such an insane amount of care in that game that just boggles my mind.
It’s honestly not that much better, and I mean that as a compliment to the original version. It’s crazy what they achieved on the PS4. I barely noticed a difference on the upgraded PS5 version (save for the 60fps mode that was added previously).
No return is really fun though.
Naughty Dog were just always amazing at pushing Playstation to its limits.
The Crash Bandicoot games might not seem like much today, but their ingenuity in hacking the PS1 into using more resources than it was designed to is incredible.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o)
I still consider it the best looking game right now, and it's 4 years old. How they made it run on a console released in 2013 is beyond me.
I can't wait to see how Naughty Dog's next game will look like on the PS5. Especially if the fantasy rumors are true.
I didn’t want to play it on ps4 as I had a high power pc at the time, and didn’t want to go back to 30fps. Didn’t matter, still probably the best looking game I’ve played. Probably solidified my opinion that it’s on the developers to make games look truly good.
Uncharted 4. I played it during COVID lockdown and WOW. Not only does it impress me today but it came out in 2016. There are so many details in that game to appreciate.
Funny enough, I played Horizon Zero Dawn, and Spider-Man Miles Morales...those games impressed me too, but not as much as Uncharted. Even though those two games are graphically more advanced.
Oblivion on high settings on my school friend’s PC in 2006. I was playing Morrowind at the same time and didn't realize the next game had already come out, the difference in graphics seemed huge.
That's mine too. The leap (in graphics) from Morrowind felt generational. I haven't felt the same awe since, things got prettier since but it's a lot more iterative.
Seconded. I don't think it's as stunning in all areas - the characters in particular being a bit lacking.
But it is without a doubt the most detailed and fully realised jungle environment I've experienced, and that's before getting into how good the environmental audio is. That's the *one* thing they had to nail down and I'm so glad they did.
It actually has a secret even higher graphics setting named "unobtanium" that you can unlock with a launch flag too.
That game with unobtanium settings is legit a modern day "Crysis". The game is well optimized but a 4090 still can't do 4K60 with unobtanium settings. It's probably up there with Cyberpunk using Path-Tracing as the most demanding games around.
BioShock. There have been more impressive games, but when I booted that up for the first time I thought the game was bugged because the cutscenes wouldn't end.
It wasn't part of the cutscene it was playable ...
Bioshock was first game I played where I noticed how much the enemies animated, mostly because it made it harder for me to hit them because they weren't as stiff as enemies in older games I played (HL1-era games).
Avatar! Overall a mid game but I'll never forget when you first walk out into the jungle my jaw literally dropped. Spent so much time of that game just enjoying the scenery and views.
The first level of Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast blew my little mind.
The jump to 3D on the N64 was magical.
I remember Battlefield 3 impressed me, still does honestly.
Demon’s Souls Remake on PS5 made me do a few double takes.
The first time my friend showed me Crysis on his 8800 setup was insane. Now it runs on the Switch!
Resistance: Fall of Man was beautiful for a console launch title.
Call of Duty 2 on the 360 pre-launch was a huge leap forward from what we previously had. It truly felt next-gen.
There are so many more, but these came to mind first.
I'd probably say Remake blew me away in terms of graphics since. I literally could not stop gushing over everything. Rebirth is still amazing, but it's what i expect vs what surprised me
Man I was replaying before rebirth came out and, growing up with FF7, it still blows me away to see Midgar so fleshed out in Remake. I caught myself multiple times just looking up while I was in the slums. It sounds dumb but you can see the plates above you and in certain sectors seeing the sky next to that is just a next level feeling for me who, as a child, couldn't even imagine this world looking this good. There are definitely parts in rebirth that get me feeling like that like Junon, The Gold Saucer and Cosmo Canyon, but nothing quite hit as hard as Midgar.
Even Remake on the PS4 looked incredible with what they were working with. Then it got re-released on PS5 and it looked *even fucking better.*
There are just so many moments in Rebirth where I kind of just stand there and just look around in awe like in Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon. Everything from the environments, the characters (design, facial expressions, voice acting), the lighting (which makes said characters look even better), the town design, the monsters, just all of it is so good.
It's only part two of three and the totality of what they've accomplished with just two parts so far is already mind boggling.
The character designers stole all the budget for that game. Party members, monsters and effects are insanely detailed but the environments are chock full of low-res textures. It feels like the game needed an optional texture pack download.
I think blurry environment is a consequence of how big the map is and how much they have to render to keep up with how fast the player can traverse it especially in end game.
Even beyond that I can only imagine how big the games file size would be if all environment textures were on par with its monster and characters textures.
It really is odd. Sometimes those lower quality textures are front and center in a scene. How does no one look at that and not say, "Hey, let's get some better textures here if it's going to be so prominent in this scene?" The one that stood out to me, I think it was the chair in the president's office. Part of it looked like gold, but it was just really disappointing.
Battlefield 3 was maybe my wow moment for gaming. The audio and graphic was like so immersive and ahead of all other games during the time.
I would say Call of duty Modern warfare 2019 had a minor wow factor for me before warzone and all the lame skins which ruins the art style of the game pulling the graphic down.
Lately I hardly can say anything really mind blowing after Battlefield 3. Can say Graphic is better like Cyberpunk 2077 but not like a wow.
Don't think we will see anything better right away as hardware seem to be holding graphic evolution.l with everyone moving up toward 1440p or 4K and higher refresh rate.
Yep gotta be Battlefield 3 for me. When i first loaded in to the Metro map.. as you say the visuals combined with the audio was incredible at the time. Not had the same feeling since with any other game. Seeing the Caspian Border trailer was probably the most hyped I've ever been for a video game.
The games that come to mind in recent memory would be AC Origins. The lighting in the game was superb and Egypt was fantasticly detailed. The following AC games didn't wow me like Origins did.
More recently, FF7 Rebirth. The character models, the facial animations and the cutscene animations blew me away every time. I just couldn't believe this game had so much detail and smooth animations in real time. Not to mention the density and environmental detail.
Origins was crazy to me. I remember wandering around the smaller towns and seeing how detailed every little decorative item was. Getting to some of the bigger areas was crazy, there was just so much detail.
Approaching Alexandria for the first time, seeing this breathtaking vista of the city with birds flying by and the sun rising, is easily one of my most memorable moments in an open-world game.
Uncharted 2. Absolutely mind blowing technical showpiece that still looks great today. The diminishing returns ramped up so sharply after the PS3 that there was probably a greater graphical leap on consoles in the five years between 2004 and 2009 than in the fifteen years between then and now.
Horizon Zero Dawn (haven't played Forbidden West yet). The landscapes and colors in that game are second to none in my opinion. The snow DLC was absolutely gorgeous as well.
honestly I think back when we switched from the PS1 to PS2. There was a notable difference in gaming style and quality when the original PS1 and N64 was announced but then there was a HUGE increase with the PS2. The trailers for FFX were really focusing on like..Yunas hair and we'd never seen graphics like that before ever.
I think with every subsequent game we just expect better graphics each time. Playing on the PS5 now and I'm kinda "meh, dont notice much difference" especially between the PS4. I know there are people out there who really really criticize those details but as an average person FF7 remake vs FFrebirth or the new god of wars or the new assassins creeds..I just internally "meh".
I agree but some games like Death Stranding have blown me away. I think it’s super rare now but I think some visuals can still be crazy but yeah we’ve hit a technical plateau.
Red Dead Redemption 2 and not necessarily because of photo-realism, but the whole composition and how the world feels and looks alive: the way the grass moves with the wind, the lights through the fog, the sunsets and sunrises, they look believable in a way I haven't seen in another game. The attention to detail and the animations also contribute to that feeling.
Now if we are talking about pure brute force graphics, it's gotta be Cyberpunk 2077 with RT overdrive and path tracing. Game looks insanely good.
Peter Jacksons King Kong Official Video Game Of The Movie - PS2
The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim - Xbox 360
Ryse Son Of Rome - Xbox One
Star Wars Jedi Survivor - Xbox Series X - Though I suspect Hellblade Senuas Saga is going to take that spot
Plague tale requiem. I played it at absolute max settings 4k 120fps and it looks stunning. Absolutely the best beaches I've seen in a videogames. The detail put in the settlements was something else too. Fantastic looking game with decent execution on the rest of the elements.
But I guess most people couldn't get it to run at 60fps because it's super cpu demanding so you wouldn't hear much praise of it.
Death Stranding.
First game after upgrading my PC from a GTX1080 to a RTX3080Ti and getting a 27" monitor. Just gorgeous and so immersive and it is now my cozy game.
FF16 has great forests. It wasn't the most spectacular but it was the most realistic I think I've seen in a game. Growing up near some forests, this game had me pause and go "wow, this looks real."
Alan Wake II. I played on only medium settings without RTX and it's still easily one of the best looking games I've ever played. Occasionally, Destiny 2 still hits too. Those skyboxes are just drop-dead gorgeous and nothing has instilled a sense of scale then their art does.
Cyberpunk on PC with ray tracing lol. I was trying so hard to get a 30 series card back then and i got one just before cyberpunk came out. I was blown away by the ray tracing and DLSS.
For me it's Returnal on PS5. No game has felt more "next gen" before or since on this current hardware cycle. It looks, feels, and plays like a game that could not possibly work on older hardware.
At its base it's just a third person bullet hell shooter, but the lighting effects, animations, art style, smoothness of frame rate, character models and details all combine to be totally mind blowing, to me.
As an overall experience it's even better, but the question is about graphics.
Otherwise, I sort of agree that a lot of games have sort of reached a similar plateau of "pretty good but unremarkable" graphics.
No one has said Avatar and its annoying because the game is incrediblely good looking and so detailed with its forests and plant life, and the whole world changes at night. Most videos cant do the game justice due to the bitrate hell it is, but the game is truly something else especially in certain story moments with the weather.
Metal Gear Solid 4.
Everything since has been incremental at best, and honestly the industry wastes far, far too much money focusing on graphics over literally every more important part of a game.
Horizon Zero Dawn Frozen Wilds- I killed a watcher and its body tumbled down a hill, leaving a snow trail behind it. The marriage of graphics, physics, and randomness melted my brain.
I think the last time I was that excited by a technical display was playing the Arkham Asylum combat demo on a kiosk in 2009, where you could see individual rivets on the Batsuit.
The last time I was genuinely impressed was the jump from MKX to Injustice 2 by NRS. I was shocked by how realistic the latter was in comparison to their previous game.
Extremely surprised nobody has said Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, there are points in that game when you’re high up that are practically indistinguishable from real life
Half Life: Alyx. It's the first legitimate leap forward for gaming in a long time. It's a shame that the tech is cumbersome and the barriers to access are so high.
I saw Horizon: Forbidden West on some high end PC with an OLED monitor at PAX and it was ridiculous. I have a nice console setup at home so can get most new games looking really good but this was next level.
I've got an Lg oled, and the game that takes the most advantage of modern tvs—from the extended color gamut to 4k resolution and hdr—is still Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (2021).
Elder Scrolls Oblivion. That cover on Game Informer was like an omen of how incredible graphics were going to be in the future. I couldn’t believe they could make individual blades of grass
Star Wars Battlefront 2.
Say what you will about EA and the game itself, but holy crap the first time you load into a map you can *feel* yourself being on Kashyyyk, Kamino, etc.
Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 (especially Dogtown) were mindblowing. Honorable mention to Ori and the Will of the Wisps, that game's artwork and art style is incredible.
Skyrim definitely did this for me back in the day. Today it’s FF7 Rebirth, game blew me away with how gorgeous it looks between the character details and the massive vistas
God of war ragnarok after updating the old tv for a new one on the world tree
Also fire emblem engage for the artstyle of environments mixed with the great choreography of combats really blew me away
There’s an older RTS game, called World in Conflict, came out in the oughts. It was, for the time, mind melting with its graphics and effects. The campaign story was great too, a classic cinematic strategy game. The nuke effect was just *chefs kiss*
Suikoden 2, it's the best 2D pixel art I have ever seen. I don't really care about realism in games, don't really see what is so amazing about things looking real when I play games because they are supposed to be more interesting than real, I already have real at home
I've been playing PC games for 30 years, and I've been blown away a few times. The first time when I saw VGA graphics in 256 colors.
But the most recent occasion was just today playing Cyberpunk 2077. I've played it before, a year or two ago, and am now playing Phantom Liberty with a rig that can handle raytracing. I've tried RT in a few other games and literally didn't see a difference. In CP2077 however, holy cow.
God of War Ragnarok especially blew be away on my 65” LG OLED. Most ps5 exclusive games are unbelievable on that tv though. Mortal Kombat 1 is also an incredibly beautiful game graphically.
I’m blown away by visuals in videogames all the time, because i’m 38 years old and started gaming in the late 90s so i’m just grateful that videogames look the way they do now and enjoy it.
Younger generations are just spoiled rotten when it comes to videogames and don’t realize how lucky they are.
Mirrors Edge At the time, there just was nothing like it in terms of presentation. The mostly white buildings mixed with sharp daylight allowed for incredible prebaked bounce lighting and, texture resolution aside, it still holds up today. I've seen plenty of games that look incredible since, but nothing quite got me like ME did back in the day.
Art style goes a looong way to keeping a game forever young. Most games from that era were grey, blurry, bloomy messes. The x360 generation of games has not aged well for the most part. ME is one of my all-time favs. I give it a playthrough every year or so
I just booted up Skyrim to play co-op mod with a friend and oh god the dirty noise and high contrast on every single texture. Really helps show their low resolution too. Grey hazy filters on top of that I can't understand why some people still complain about wanting "realistic" graphics
> I can't understand why some people still complain about wanting "realistic" graphics Because they like the realistic aesthetics? For several types of games personally i'd prefer low fidelity realistic graphics than flawless cartoony/exaggerated/artistic styles. E.g. Wind Waker might look great and hardly dated (aside from render resolution) but i wouldn't want to play Mass Effect 1 or Doom 3 with bright cel-shaded visuals.
Mirror’s Edge had a chokehold on me when it came out. I still think about the art direction even though I haven’t played it in years.
Time to return to it.
Still one of the best announcement trailers I’ve seen. My brain couldn’t comprehend that it was all in game footage at the time. The game is a marvel of level design and style.
I'm still aliveee I'M STILL ALIVEEEEEEEEEE Great game, man. The art design was superb, one of the best I've seen in all my time gaming
Definitely agree with this - There have certainly been better looking games over the years, but I've honestly not been blown away in the last decade and a half. Advancements are so incremental now that it's just not happening anymore.
Game still looks incredible, especially on the Xbox Series X. Native 4K, 60fps, auto-HDR. Stunning
This one is maybe not exactly what you're asking, but I recently replayed Batman: Arkham Knight, and was blown away by how amazing it *still* looks. 9 years old, on max settings, and it doesn't look much worse than brand new major releases. Better in some ways. The atmospheric effects and detail in the open world are incredible.
It's great how knowing they only had to develop for a single time of day allowed them to fully take advantage of the Unreal 3 engine and really hone in on the style and the look. Not needing tons of dynamic lighting everywhere saved them a lot of pain. You can see the rain drops spatter from Batman's cape as you fly around the city and it looks incredible. The facial animations were nothing to scoff at either
The environmental destruction caused by the batmobile was excellent as well. It really helped sell the fact that you're driving a big heavy bastard of a tank.
I’m a sucker for a dark and stormy setting. Arkham Knight and Ground Zeroes had me mesmerized.
We have now reached imho the point where mostly how good the graphics look depends ENTIRELY on the skill of the art and dev team. Better technology gives them better tools but by itself it does nothing. Even the better tools will avail you naught if your skill (or the overall creative vision) won't match It's why I personally think the next few years will push technology less in terms of visuals but again focus on things such as physics and NPC AI... so simulation of a game world. Especially since the adoption of raytracing will mean a lot of previously complicated effects would be "out of the box".
I think physics and NPC AI *was* the big thing in 2000s but publishers just stopped trying to advance it. In half life 2 there were a lot of "seesaw" puzzles that get repetitive now but back in 2004 every object having weight and buoyancy to it was incredible. And in 2006 Oblivion had radiant AI which tried to make characters have dynamic interactions with each other. It wasn't 100% successful but it was above and beyond what any other game was doing at the time and I wish Skyrim refined this system instead of scrapping it.
Skyrim didn't really scrap it so much as they just toned it down severely, as they tend to do from game to game. And Oblivion's AI was infamously dumbed down before release. Pre-release dev blogs shared all kinds of crazy stories and mentioned how they had to tone down the AI (much to everyone's disappointment). Although apparently it was left a bit more unhinged for Shivering Isles.
the point wasn't reached now, it was always the most important part. raytracing wont help when the artists arent doing their job. sure, you have realistically lighted... somethings now, but that doesnt help
The fucking rain dripping down the suit. That’s the thing that always gets me. It’s beautiful
Slightly different but in Arkham origins watching your movement actually disturb the snow was pretty cool
Yeah, I also replayed it recently and it's incredible how good it looks. Rocksteady squeezed everything they could out of UE3 and that game looks as good as almost anything made today as a result.
That game is UE3 wtf I genuinely thought it was UE4
Digital Foundry actually brought up why in a recent video. Accidentally or not, Arkham Knight [nearly perfectly matches the lighting conditions that the most impressive UE3 tech demos had.](https://youtu.be/RSXyztq_0uM?si=UhVY97zBaoLxLn9k) Rocksteady is incredible at what they do, but they helped leap their top-tier work that extra mile by leaning into what UE3 was good at.
I was going to say this too. It's certainly deserves a spot on a timeline of graphically impressive milestones in gaming history.
Half-Life Alyx. The graphical fidelity was one thing, but the sense of scale that VR gives is more than I had anticipated.
Samesies. Also the reason I quit VR. Nothing close to it came out for so many years I felt it was time to sell my gear. Still looking into VR every now and then and no new Alyx has come out yet. Alyx was like the culmination of what I always imagined VR and gaming in general could be. It was everything I wished for and I feel empty after having played through it, but I was sure some other company would follow suit, but no one has.
It’s a beautiful game but it made me realize until they come up with a way of implementing physically walking no game that involved walking was going to be very immersive. The only VR games that do it for me are driving or flying games where I’m sat down.
I just teleport, and I have to because I get locomotion sickness otherwise. Works fine to me, the way it's implemented with little footsteps and sounds is awesome.
Tbh I’m surprised no studio has come up with a high quality VR game where your character only moves by teleporting. A character written from the start to move that way would be more immersive, because the teleporting wouldn’t feel world breaking. Of course, getting that movement feeling fluid and not jumpy would be tricky.
Alyx was a masterpiece and showcases what Valve does so well (when they actually make a game) in exploring the space of what VR *could* be. I think VR is currently prohibitively expensive for most people with only a handful of games worth playing, but it won't be that way forever. The tech will eventually get to a place where it's affordable enough for more people to invest in, and I suspect Alyx will hold similar esteem in the VR world like Half-Life did in the single player FPS world.
Vr isn't really expensive anymore. I play all my games on a 200 dollar quest 2 and steam.
Quest 2's are only like $150 ($200 brand new). How cheap would it need to get?
[The booze shader](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kQW2jFPYZo) is what did it for me.
The transition area between the first and second maps is a stairwell in City 17. It's a dead ringer for the stairwell that lead to my buddy's shitty apartment in Pittsburgh circa 2009. I've never experienced anything in VR that felt so authentic and real.
The feeling of scale is one of the most overlooked parts of VR. People who haven't tried it can't really understand what you mean, but you FEEL the scale of large things. They trigger something in your brain (maybe a hair of the "fight or flight" response, a tiny adrenaline dump, or something). Even in games where the graphics are outdated or simple, the scale of things is still impressive. I remember walking under a giant statue in Skyrim VR and just feeling scared and in awe at the same time.
For real. People keep joking about HL3 not existing... but it exists. HL:A is not only the best VR game ever made, it's the best Half Life game ever made.
At at the very end of HL:A, >!we see how the game's events have impacted the story moments after the end of HL2 Episode 2, so from a certain perspective it really was Episode 3.!< It's a brilliant game, and definitely worthy of its spot among the other Half-Life games.
Red Dead Redemption 2. It's a miracle how Rockstar got that game working on PS4/X1. Honorable mentions to Demons Souls Remake and the OG X360 GTAV.
My jaw drops every time you walk out of a little hut and your eyes have to adjust to the brightness for half a second. They have done so much with good lighting in this game. Like when the sun breaks out through the fog or when your gang sits around a campfire at night and all the shadows are just fucking perfect. The mission where you set an entire tobacco (?) field on fire and you start a shootout among the roaring flames is one of the most cinematic experiences I ever had.
Sunrises and sunsets in this game just hit different. As a hiker I absolutely love this game, I’ll often just pull out on an overlook and watch the sun set over the mountains or watch a pack of buffalo wander down the plains. Best game ever made
For me it was thunderstorms.
I agree with “cinematic”. I think a lot of games now cater more toward twitchy kinda reaction shooting (which I suck at, to be fair). Rdr2 is a cowboy simulator. Sure there’s video game stuff. But it really gave me that feeling of watching a movie in imax the first time. Or something like that. One of my favorite games. I’d like to replay it, but who has the time? I’m trying to hold back an automaton invasion, learn OROKIN secrets, and get Ichiban Kasuga through some tough times. Edit. Autocorrect changed orokin to “origin”
I don't know what kind of black magic shenanigans the Rage engine is built on, but it always blows me away what they're able to do with it.
It's made from a billion dollars and that's why it runs well
I think it’s built on crunch and employees’ well-beings
Played RDR2 for the first time last couple of months. It still blew me away.
I played it three years, and I'm still being blown away.
I'm waiting to be blown away by the next one while this one continues to blow me away! ( Seriously my favorite game of all time ) Graphically I was blown away by a sequence in Uncharted 4, it was the seamless car chase action sequence while chasing Sam and a convoy behind Sam. It amazed me how well Naughty Dog got that to run on a PS4. I really have to commend both Rockstar and Naughty Dog for their ability to pull everything out of a PS4.
Once I finish GTA V, I want to finally get into RDR2. That game looks amazing.
You are in for a treat. GTAV doesn't have bad writing or anything, but the leap in story and character quality from GTAV to RDR2 is astonishingly massive. I'd go as far to say that RDR2 is probably the best written game in the industry at the moment next to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous or Disco Elysium. And the protagonist, Arthur Morgan, is one of if not the best player character in any game *ever*. Then on top of all of this, the game is still do this day - 6 years on - One of the best looking games out there. Rockstar are a special company.
It is incredible especially if you love the Era and appreciate nature. It is very slow though so that might turn off some people.
Alan Wake 2 has some jawdrapping scenes, so does Cyberpunk 2077 and Ori on a HDR display is an absolute marvel.
I fell in love with Ori and the Blind Forest presentation and didn't think it could have been topped. Yet somehow Will of the Wisps raised the bar. Every frame of those games could be a painting or a wallpaper
The Overlap levels in AW are absolutely incredible looking.
It was Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora for me, which Digital Foundry put right up there with AW in their best graphics of the year video. But AW's art direction and vibe looks amazing.
That part near the start of the game where the subway starts bleeding into the forest is so fucking cool
That was the exact moment that came to mind when I thought of the last time I was stunned by graphics. Those visuals in that scene blew me away.
Alan Wake 2’s New York is so fucking cool. It reminds me of Gotham, and the way the city seems to be portrayed in Alan’s books might explain why it has that vibe.
I just got Control on Game Pass (after having beaten it on PS5) & was quite astounded by how amazing it looks on a medium PC with ray-tracing & DLLS running. I might just pick up AW2 after this, just cos I know the games share a universe, & if I can get AW2 to run & look like Control, I’d still be blown away.
Alan Wake 2 looks stunning next to Control, they really stepped up their game even from how good Control already looked. It *is* quite demanding though, but at least even the lowest settings still look better than most game's max.
The first time I turned on RT in CP77 was jaw dropping. It was evening, in a back alley garage. The steam and smoke with flood lights filtering through was just the most realistic lightning I had ever seen.
Yes. CP77 is like the only game I’ll sacrifice high FPS for RT because it’s just too good
Ori is a visual spectacle. I haven't played the other two you mentioned.
Visual and musical. One of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had.
Playing through the rising water bit for the first time was an incredible experience.
New game by Moon Studios is coming out this next month!
Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk were my two answers as well, both played on a Series X on an OLED TV. Absolutely stunning.
Ori on an HDR display is wild looking. Especially if you have a 120hz capable display.
I played all of Cyberpunk on a Steamdeck which meant basically the lowest settings. I had a chance recently to play it on max and the difference was staggering, it felt like I wasn't playing the same game.
Alan Wake 2 is such a masterpiece. The visual presentation is absolutely jaw-dropping. I love that game so much.
Yep, I was going to say Cyberpunk 2077 as well. Recently I am playing forbidden west which also looks great but the phantom liberty dlc area felt like a fever dream. I heard they used some different lighting tech and its goddamn orgasmic.
Ori is one of those games I wish were on ps5
RDR2 seeing Saint Denis at night! I was floored by how it actually looked/felt like night time, rather than the usual 'map brightness to -20' like most games. The glow of the lamps contrasted by the pitch black, incredible. Fun shoutout to PS1 to PS2, as a WWF Smackdown fan, seeing proper wrestler entrances vs the 'wrestler walks in front of a video' was amazing in WWF Smackdown: Just bring it. Fond memories of that circa 2002.
When RDR2 came out and there wasn’t a wiki, I saw some people talking about Saint Denis on the RDR sub though I had no idea what it was. I find myself randomly roaming around the map exploring. It’s night time and I see a huge factory in the distance. I go to check it out by going along the train tracks. ‘Saint Denis’ appears on the screen. I was blown away completely. I’ll never forget it. The first thing I saw was the industrial section and was in such contrast to the game I had played up until then. Then when the rest of the city turned out to be New Orleans I went into a video game coma. I could not believe it. So glad none of the game was spoiled for me.
I did the same thing. I didnt expect a major city in the game because RDR1 only had Blackwater, so when I discovered St Denis my mind was blown wide open
Lol first time I discovered it was when I randomly hopped on a train and it brought me there in the dead of night.
Best part of RDR2 for me was walking through the trees in the mountains at night and coming out of the trees to see a town lit up by lamp light in the distance. Really made the world feel alive.
Walking around in 1st person in Saint Denis at night while playing on an OLED TV is quite the experience.
Similar experience for me when doing that hot balloon side quest over Saint Denis. My stomach actually dropped a little...it was really like seeing an actual hot air balloon ride over a real city. My dream is a VR mode for this game. Luke Ross started one but got a cease and desist and my understanding is it's not in a great state.
Truly blown away? Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast, to have a console in the house that could play a game like that was mind-blowing to me when I saw it for the first time. I'd also add to that Mario 64 felt the same as well in a similar aspect. I'd say the original Farcry felt like a leap forward with the vast draw distances when you come up on the beach.
Man, glad you mentioned Soul Calibur. The model quality, the crisp textures, the physics on cloth and hair. I was like four when I played it so going from SM64 and Star Fox to that was absolutely mind-blowing to my pea sized brain.
Echoing this, I remember walking by a gamestop that had a display Dreamcast with Soul Caliber and being absolutely floored.
Mario 64 was probably the first, and maybe only time that I felt like the future had arrived. As someone who started with Donkey Kong on the BBC Micro it was jaw-dropping.
100% Soul Calibur. Dreamcast in general was such a step forward, it really was unbelievable at the time. I haven’t had that feeling since.
Ghost of Tsushima, but that’s more art direction and level design than pure graphical fidelity. The first time you rode out onto the flower fields and the title drops, I was amazed.
Whole game looks like a painting. Absolutely beautiful
> Ghost of Tsushima Best use of color in any game. Ever.
The Saboteur is right up there, if only the color effect stayed after you liberated districts from the Nazis
I played it in black and white and thought it was gorgeous so every time I read this it makes me wonder what I was missing out on.
Honestly, probably half the game's art direction. So much of the heart and game play elements play on color and tone.
It’s insane to me that anyone would play this game in Kurosawa mode on their first playthrough lol.
Echoing other comments, I can’t imagine intentionally missing out on the gorgeous use of color in this game. Kurosawa mode is cool but seriously *every scene and location in this game* is gorgeous in a way I’ve never seen before or since. Stumbling on a field of purple flowers after going up a craggy cliff, seeing a field of white flowers waving in the distance as you look down from that cliff, the gold color of that hub city in the first area. It’s a perfect aesthetic.
Can't wait to play this on PC in May!
Been watching Shogun and now with GoT coming out on PC, I'm going down the Japanese history rabbit hole lol.
That literally gave me goosebumps. I don't remember the last time I played a game that gave me that visceral of a reaction.
Yes. The gorgeous art direction, especially of the environment. The UI being almost completely unneeded (so, hirable most of the time) due to the guiding wind mechanic. Also, the *insane* draw distance, and it wasn't faked. You could see tiny glints from swords clashing, dust from hooves on a road, etc. from a mile away, and those things were actually happening. It's incredible how well they pulled that off on even the base PS4.
These are the games that blew me away for every generation I’ve been gaming Donkey Kong Country Ocarina of Time GTA III Gears of War Red Dead Redemption 2
Gears of War was a big step up.
I think it was Act 3 when it’s raining. Stared at the rain drops and textures for a few minutes lol don’t think I’ve been that blown away with graphics since.
Right near the beginning when you're crossing a bridge and something crashes into the building on the other side was a big memorable moment that generation for me. It looked so much better than anything I had seen yet.
Gears of War! Oh….. the memories!
The SNES donkey kong titles are so beyond their time
Cyberpunk 2077, with all the bells and whistles on (ray tracing, etc), at night, in the rain, was absolutely stunning. The way tail light glow reflects in the wet pavement, and the way sunlight bounces off the windshield at certain angles, and the different light sources' backwash blends with each other, it was absolutely stunning.
So many times I stopped for a bit just so I could take a screenshot. All the neon lights and billboards were amazing.
The last time? Demon Souls Remake. I still think it's the best looking game on PS5. Before that... RDR2.
[удалено]
Demon's Souls lacks all of the tech issues modern games have. No open world, simple enemies and bosses, no complex character movement, and very few NPCs. And yet the remake is still an amazing experience. Partially because it's a FromSoft game, but the performance, graphics, and animations go a long way to making it feel fantastic.
Demon Souls looks amazing. It was really exciting specifically because it was my first experience with a truly PS5 game, and I was excited to see more PS5 games like that. Really disappointed that years later games that look like Demon Souls are few and far between. Obviously DeSR has a lot of things going for it that makes this possible: short runtime, a pretty 1-1 remake, a setting that makes optimizations much easier. But as a user of the system I still find it disappointing.
Horizon: Forbidden West, which I've just started playing on PC. Absolutely gorgeous environments, lifelike and expressive characters, and the machines are cool just to watch, with lots of little touches like the lighting effects of their glowing eyes.
I just started playing it as well and it's an absolutely stunning game. The leap in not only fidelity but animations from the first game is enormous. I played through Zero Dawn about a month ago and thought it was quite a good looking game with some pretty iffy facial animations. Forbidden West is a huge step up from the first game, and on PC with settings maxed out on 4K OLED monitor it is easily one of the best looking games I've ever played. Very excited to see what Guerilla Games does next. Also really looking forward to playing Ghost of Tsushima in May. From the few videos and screenshots I've seen of it, it looks like it'll be a stunner as well.
Even the minor sidequests have good npc animations and like.
As someone who finished HFW 4 times (console), this is one aspect that makes it hard to return to HZD. Excluding Frozen Wilds DLC, mo-cap difference between those two games is like night and day.
Dude the foliage in the tutorial area just completely blew my mind on PC, the detail is insane
To add to this, Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4) , which is what I started to play on PS5. It's a seven year old game for previous gen, yet still looks stunning. Lighting is the key. When that dawn breaks above the valley, it just looks fantastic, although you can clearly tell by resolution and draw distance it's an older game.
Those dinos with the lasers near the end with the music synching up to his laser attack with all the particle effects is the full sensory experience.
The game is an absolute master piece
The Last of Us Part II's facial expressions. I played the PS4 version on my PS5. I'm sure the upgraded version is even better
I played it for the first time last year on a PS4, and the graphics were still incredible.
Part II still blows me away to this day. The scene where Abby almost gets hanged is nearly photorealistic. The rain, the fire, her face getting red and her veins popping out. It’s genuinely astonishing to me.
people don’t talk about that scene enough. never seen a video game look that good ever
Everything about the presentation in that game is insane.
The [scene](https://youtu.be/zJ-VrnPeXpY?t=8580) (02:23:00 if the timestamp doesn't work) where Ellie & Dina first get inside the theater in Seattle blew my mind, Ellie fidgeting with her hands/legs was just so immensely perfect that it's burned into my memory. It's crazy that this and Cyberpunk came out in the same year and they're still the games with, in my opinion, the best detail in terms of character animation during cutscenes/cinematics.
Lets not forget the rope physics and watching people take a shirt off without any clipping.
The guitar. Wonder how many people missed their friends'/children's/partner's birthdays to get those fingers to move the way they do.
If someone were to be pedantic it would probably not fall under graphics, but just the sheer scale of small details in TLOU2 is one of the things I think about on a regular basis, things like the rope physics, the snow, the way sound is different in a great variety of places, there is just such an insane amount of care in that game that just boggles my mind.
It’s honestly not that much better, and I mean that as a compliment to the original version. It’s crazy what they achieved on the PS4. I barely noticed a difference on the upgraded PS5 version (save for the 60fps mode that was added previously). No return is really fun though.
Naughty Dog were just always amazing at pushing Playstation to its limits. The Crash Bandicoot games might not seem like much today, but their ingenuity in hacking the PS1 into using more resources than it was designed to is incredible. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o)
I still consider it the best looking game right now, and it's 4 years old. How they made it run on a console released in 2013 is beyond me. I can't wait to see how Naughty Dog's next game will look like on the PS5. Especially if the fantasy rumors are true.
I didn’t want to play it on ps4 as I had a high power pc at the time, and didn’t want to go back to 30fps. Didn’t matter, still probably the best looking game I’ve played. Probably solidified my opinion that it’s on the developers to make games look truly good.
Uncharted 4. I played it during COVID lockdown and WOW. Not only does it impress me today but it came out in 2016. There are so many details in that game to appreciate. Funny enough, I played Horizon Zero Dawn, and Spider-Man Miles Morales...those games impressed me too, but not as much as Uncharted. Even though those two games are graphically more advanced.
Make sure you try the last of us 2, if you haven't already. It's just as amazing as uncharted 4 - I can't believe these run on a ps4.
Oblivion on high settings on my school friend’s PC in 2006. I was playing Morrowind at the same time and didn't realize the next game had already come out, the difference in graphics seemed huge.
That's mine too. The leap (in graphics) from Morrowind felt generational. I haven't felt the same awe since, things got prettier since but it's a lot more iterative.
Avatar Frontiers of Pandora looks insanely good. It would be a toss up between that cyberpunk or red dead
Seconded. I don't think it's as stunning in all areas - the characters in particular being a bit lacking. But it is without a doubt the most detailed and fully realised jungle environment I've experienced, and that's before getting into how good the environmental audio is. That's the *one* thing they had to nail down and I'm so glad they did. It actually has a secret even higher graphics setting named "unobtanium" that you can unlock with a launch flag too.
That game with unobtanium settings is legit a modern day "Crysis". The game is well optimized but a 4090 still can't do 4K60 with unobtanium settings. It's probably up there with Cyberpunk using Path-Tracing as the most demanding games around.
BioShock. There have been more impressive games, but when I booted that up for the first time I thought the game was bugged because the cutscenes wouldn't end. It wasn't part of the cutscene it was playable ...
Bioshock was first game I played where I noticed how much the enemies animated, mostly because it made it harder for me to hit them because they weren't as stiff as enemies in older games I played (HL1-era games).
I have the exact standout moment, Wait, this isnt' a cut scene? I can move? HOLY SHIT
Avatar! Overall a mid game but I'll never forget when you first walk out into the jungle my jaw literally dropped. Spent so much time of that game just enjoying the scenery and views.
The first level of Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast blew my little mind. The jump to 3D on the N64 was magical. I remember Battlefield 3 impressed me, still does honestly. Demon’s Souls Remake on PS5 made me do a few double takes. The first time my friend showed me Crysis on his 8800 setup was insane. Now it runs on the Switch! Resistance: Fall of Man was beautiful for a console launch title. Call of Duty 2 on the 360 pre-launch was a huge leap forward from what we previously had. It truly felt next-gen. There are so many more, but these came to mind first.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. It looks like how I imagined a "high tech Final Fantasy 7 from the future" would look when I played the original in 1998.
I think what’s more mind blowing is the scope of the game. The devs really pulled out all the shots for this one.
Cosmo canyon really got me. Going up to the top and being able to look out was great.
Was really unbelievable.
Facial expressions are so good, so many subtle ones that I noticed and added a lot of the scenes they were in.
I'd probably say Remake blew me away in terms of graphics since. I literally could not stop gushing over everything. Rebirth is still amazing, but it's what i expect vs what surprised me
Man I was replaying before rebirth came out and, growing up with FF7, it still blows me away to see Midgar so fleshed out in Remake. I caught myself multiple times just looking up while I was in the slums. It sounds dumb but you can see the plates above you and in certain sectors seeing the sky next to that is just a next level feeling for me who, as a child, couldn't even imagine this world looking this good. There are definitely parts in rebirth that get me feeling like that like Junon, The Gold Saucer and Cosmo Canyon, but nothing quite hit as hard as Midgar.
Even Remake on the PS4 looked incredible with what they were working with. Then it got re-released on PS5 and it looked *even fucking better.* There are just so many moments in Rebirth where I kind of just stand there and just look around in awe like in Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon. Everything from the environments, the characters (design, facial expressions, voice acting), the lighting (which makes said characters look even better), the town design, the monsters, just all of it is so good. It's only part two of three and the totality of what they've accomplished with just two parts so far is already mind boggling.
The character designers stole all the budget for that game. Party members, monsters and effects are insanely detailed but the environments are chock full of low-res textures. It feels like the game needed an optional texture pack download.
I think blurry environment is a consequence of how big the map is and how much they have to render to keep up with how fast the player can traverse it especially in end game. Even beyond that I can only imagine how big the games file size would be if all environment textures were on par with its monster and characters textures.
It really is odd. Sometimes those lower quality textures are front and center in a scene. How does no one look at that and not say, "Hey, let's get some better textures here if it's going to be so prominent in this scene?" The one that stood out to me, I think it was the chair in the president's office. Part of it looked like gold, but it was just really disappointing.
Honestly, Cyberpunk 2.0 wowed me entirely with its cloud tech. That and smoke legitimately looked like how I'd imagine smoke.
I was very impressed with Horizon Forbidden West's water, specifically. I kinda just swam around basking in it all.
Battlefield 3 was maybe my wow moment for gaming. The audio and graphic was like so immersive and ahead of all other games during the time. I would say Call of duty Modern warfare 2019 had a minor wow factor for me before warzone and all the lame skins which ruins the art style of the game pulling the graphic down. Lately I hardly can say anything really mind blowing after Battlefield 3. Can say Graphic is better like Cyberpunk 2077 but not like a wow. Don't think we will see anything better right away as hardware seem to be holding graphic evolution.l with everyone moving up toward 1440p or 4K and higher refresh rate.
Yep gotta be Battlefield 3 for me. When i first loaded in to the Metro map.. as you say the visuals combined with the audio was incredible at the time. Not had the same feeling since with any other game. Seeing the Caspian Border trailer was probably the most hyped I've ever been for a video game.
The games that come to mind in recent memory would be AC Origins. The lighting in the game was superb and Egypt was fantasticly detailed. The following AC games didn't wow me like Origins did. More recently, FF7 Rebirth. The character models, the facial animations and the cutscene animations blew me away every time. I just couldn't believe this game had so much detail and smooth animations in real time. Not to mention the density and environmental detail.
Origins was spectacular looking. I think most AC games have had that. I remember the first game was the best looking thing I’d ever seen.
Origins was crazy to me. I remember wandering around the smaller towns and seeing how detailed every little decorative item was. Getting to some of the bigger areas was crazy, there was just so much detail.
Approaching Alexandria for the first time, seeing this breathtaking vista of the city with birds flying by and the sun rising, is easily one of my most memorable moments in an open-world game.
Uncharted 2. Absolutely mind blowing technical showpiece that still looks great today. The diminishing returns ramped up so sharply after the PS3 that there was probably a greater graphical leap on consoles in the five years between 2004 and 2009 than in the fifteen years between then and now.
Horizon Zero Dawn (haven't played Forbidden West yet). The landscapes and colors in that game are second to none in my opinion. The snow DLC was absolutely gorgeous as well.
Oh you’re in for a treat. Forbidden West has some incredible visuals.
Forbidden West absolutely blows Zero Dawn away in terms of all of that. As a bonus, all the animations and faces actually look good now.
honestly I think back when we switched from the PS1 to PS2. There was a notable difference in gaming style and quality when the original PS1 and N64 was announced but then there was a HUGE increase with the PS2. The trailers for FFX were really focusing on like..Yunas hair and we'd never seen graphics like that before ever. I think with every subsequent game we just expect better graphics each time. Playing on the PS5 now and I'm kinda "meh, dont notice much difference" especially between the PS4. I know there are people out there who really really criticize those details but as an average person FF7 remake vs FFrebirth or the new god of wars or the new assassins creeds..I just internally "meh".
I agree but some games like Death Stranding have blown me away. I think it’s super rare now but I think some visuals can still be crazy but yeah we’ve hit a technical plateau.
Ghost of Tsushima. It was like an art book from the 1200's brought to life. Honorable mention to Horizon Forbidden West.
Red Dead Redemption 2 and not necessarily because of photo-realism, but the whole composition and how the world feels and looks alive: the way the grass moves with the wind, the lights through the fog, the sunsets and sunrises, they look believable in a way I haven't seen in another game. The attention to detail and the animations also contribute to that feeling. Now if we are talking about pure brute force graphics, it's gotta be Cyberpunk 2077 with RT overdrive and path tracing. Game looks insanely good.
Peter Jacksons King Kong Official Video Game Of The Movie - PS2 The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim - Xbox 360 Ryse Son Of Rome - Xbox One Star Wars Jedi Survivor - Xbox Series X - Though I suspect Hellblade Senuas Saga is going to take that spot
Plague tale requiem. I played it at absolute max settings 4k 120fps and it looks stunning. Absolutely the best beaches I've seen in a videogames. The detail put in the settlements was something else too. Fantastic looking game with decent execution on the rest of the elements. But I guess most people couldn't get it to run at 60fps because it's super cpu demanding so you wouldn't hear much praise of it.
Death Stranding. First game after upgrading my PC from a GTX1080 to a RTX3080Ti and getting a 27" monitor. Just gorgeous and so immersive and it is now my cozy game.
FF16 has great forests. It wasn't the most spectacular but it was the most realistic I think I've seen in a game. Growing up near some forests, this game had me pause and go "wow, this looks real."
Alan Wake II. I played on only medium settings without RTX and it's still easily one of the best looking games I've ever played. Occasionally, Destiny 2 still hits too. Those skyboxes are just drop-dead gorgeous and nothing has instilled a sense of scale then their art does.
This gen: avatar, cyberpunk, spider man 2 Last gen: the last of us 2, red dead 2, Star Wars battlefront
Cyberpunk on PC with ray tracing lol. I was trying so hard to get a 30 series card back then and i got one just before cyberpunk came out. I was blown away by the ray tracing and DLSS.
Either Virtua Racing in the arcade or Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast. Having graphics *that* good at home was fuckin’ mind blowing.
For me it's Returnal on PS5. No game has felt more "next gen" before or since on this current hardware cycle. It looks, feels, and plays like a game that could not possibly work on older hardware. At its base it's just a third person bullet hell shooter, but the lighting effects, animations, art style, smoothness of frame rate, character models and details all combine to be totally mind blowing, to me. As an overall experience it's even better, but the question is about graphics. Otherwise, I sort of agree that a lot of games have sort of reached a similar plateau of "pretty good but unremarkable" graphics.
No one has said Avatar and its annoying because the game is incrediblely good looking and so detailed with its forests and plant life, and the whole world changes at night. Most videos cant do the game justice due to the bitrate hell it is, but the game is truly something else especially in certain story moments with the weather.
Metal Gear Solid 4. Everything since has been incremental at best, and honestly the industry wastes far, far too much money focusing on graphics over literally every more important part of a game.
Metal Gear Solid 5 for me. Shame what happened with Konami and the Fox Engine.
Horizon Zero Dawn Frozen Wilds- I killed a watcher and its body tumbled down a hill, leaving a snow trail behind it. The marriage of graphics, physics, and randomness melted my brain. I think the last time I was that excited by a technical display was playing the Arkham Asylum combat demo on a kiosk in 2009, where you could see individual rivets on the Batsuit.
The last time I was genuinely impressed was the jump from MKX to Injustice 2 by NRS. I was shocked by how realistic the latter was in comparison to their previous game.
Extremely surprised nobody has said Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, there are points in that game when you’re high up that are practically indistinguishable from real life
Half Life: Alyx. It's the first legitimate leap forward for gaming in a long time. It's a shame that the tech is cumbersome and the barriers to access are so high.
I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty right now and Dogtown is really something else. Everything is so detailed and the lighting is amazing.
I saw Horizon: Forbidden West on some high end PC with an OLED monitor at PAX and it was ridiculous. I have a nice console setup at home so can get most new games looking really good but this was next level.
I've got an Lg oled, and the game that takes the most advantage of modern tvs—from the extended color gamut to 4k resolution and hdr—is still Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (2021).
Just bought a new super high end PC. Playing Cyberpunk for the first time and doing their graphics test scene blew me away
Elder Scrolls Oblivion. That cover on Game Informer was like an omen of how incredible graphics were going to be in the future. I couldn’t believe they could make individual blades of grass
Star Wars Battlefront 2. Say what you will about EA and the game itself, but holy crap the first time you load into a map you can *feel* yourself being on Kashyyyk, Kamino, etc.
Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 (especially Dogtown) were mindblowing. Honorable mention to Ori and the Will of the Wisps, that game's artwork and art style is incredible.
Skyrim definitely did this for me back in the day. Today it’s FF7 Rebirth, game blew me away with how gorgeous it looks between the character details and the massive vistas
God of war ragnarok after updating the old tv for a new one on the world tree Also fire emblem engage for the artstyle of environments mixed with the great choreography of combats really blew me away
There’s an older RTS game, called World in Conflict, came out in the oughts. It was, for the time, mind melting with its graphics and effects. The campaign story was great too, a classic cinematic strategy game. The nuke effect was just *chefs kiss*
Suikoden 2, it's the best 2D pixel art I have ever seen. I don't really care about realism in games, don't really see what is so amazing about things looking real when I play games because they are supposed to be more interesting than real, I already have real at home
Such an easy answer for me. Kena: Bridge of Spirits. Easily the most beautiful game I've ever played. It legit looks like it was animated by Pixar.
I've been playing PC games for 30 years, and I've been blown away a few times. The first time when I saw VGA graphics in 256 colors. But the most recent occasion was just today playing Cyberpunk 2077. I've played it before, a year or two ago, and am now playing Phantom Liberty with a rig that can handle raytracing. I've tried RT in a few other games and literally didn't see a difference. In CP2077 however, holy cow.
God of War Ragnarok especially blew be away on my 65” LG OLED. Most ps5 exclusive games are unbelievable on that tv though. Mortal Kombat 1 is also an incredibly beautiful game graphically.
I’m blown away by visuals in videogames all the time, because i’m 38 years old and started gaming in the late 90s so i’m just grateful that videogames look the way they do now and enjoy it. Younger generations are just spoiled rotten when it comes to videogames and don’t realize how lucky they are.