Last time you were impressed by graphics?
- Thread starter floppylobster
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Rage was amazing. Before that? Crysis. Before that? F.E.A.R. Before that? MGS2. Before that? MGS1. Graphics sometimes take massive leaps from where the current standard is. And between Rage and Crysis, everything just looked slightly better than the last game.
Of course, I think Graphics are one of the least important things about a game (like nultiplayer). Id' rather replay Crash Bandicoot than any new CoD or Assassins Creed or Halo game. I play my games to be entertained, not not visually eye-raped.
Of course, I think Graphics are one of the least important things about a game (like nultiplayer). Id' rather replay Crash Bandicoot than any new CoD or Assassins Creed or Halo game. I play my games to be entertained, not not visually eye-raped.
Last time graphics/design impressed me:
blah blah AMALUR: the blah
I got it on PC the moment I learned that I could use my non-upside-down gamepads with it, and the design of both the world and the monsters blew me away. Sure, there are gripes with some design choices, such as the camera hovering behind and above your character, making discovering things other than the floor somewhat tedious and annoying, or the camera opting to crash through the floor during battle - and staying there just to troll you to death.
But the gameplay and monster design was splendid. That's MONSTER design, not necessarily AVERAGE ELF DUDE CLONE design. After finishing it, I also wouldn't so much consider it to be an RPG, more like random loot bonanza (akin to Borderlands) cross-dressing in a pink RPG tutu frock and pimped up Legend of Link stilettos. But the graphics and effects look sweet, be it on a proper 16:10 (smaller) computer screen or a silly vertically deficient 16:9 'TV' panel, where the whole camera issue seems to be significantly more prominent (and annoying).
RAGE also did impress me lots on PC, after I was utterly underwhelmed by the PS3 version with its delayed texture buildups. You cannot unsee the overall grey texture-less versions of things, they look too much like PSX vistas of days long gone by, on a quite modern machine much more powerful (and expensive) than the granddaddy of optical-disc-reading gaming consoles.
The last time I properly forgot about the game and spent way too much time tinkering with and tweaking the graphics settings was CRYSIS. That was a proper amazing piece of artistry, wizardry and work there.
Since I've been fumbling around with emulators a lot lately, mainly because soldering wires with custom plugs and repairing consoles with custom screws gets frustrating and old eventually, I noticed that the much-loved games of old need some severe help looking 'proper' (fake aperture grille overlays, fake scanlines, fake everything to make the games look as they were intended on 4:3 CRT screens), I noticed that a lot of the games of old were what can legally be considered 'fugly' nowadays, but we still just got hooked for hours on end on Wipeout XL, Rollcage 2, a bunch of Street Fighter 2 'whatevers' and even Yoshi Story last weekend. The sheer blow of fun to the face, fingers and synapses from those dusty titles is amazing. Now, if only we would find proper ways of connecting our NeGcons to the dedicated Windows gaming box and making them work in all their analog perfection.
I think I understand what OP says about Rez, Shadow of the Colossus, Parappa the Rapper and Katamari Damacy for their unique and artsy nature (while still being splendid fun games) but I totally do not feel any sympathy for Halo, Battlefront II or Mass Effect (whichever). Yes, I did finish ME3 and I think I understand what the outrage is about, but I plain didn't really expect any better. Way too many folks involved, no coherent vision, too many brains and brainstorms and hands involved, and some folks were clearly more playing poker, dazzling folks and trying to live their dreams well out of their line of work, in professions they had either no experience in or no clue about what to do and how to do it. Back in the days, when proper games were made by one to maybe half a dozen folks, that could constitute an expensive death blow to a developer, a team and/or a publisher. These days, where hundreds of professionals from all schools, from the mundane to the arcane arts are involved, something like the ME3 ending controversy are the equivalent of Nuclear War and the Ice Age rolled into one. Heads must roll, history must be rewritten, the Men in Black must zap the fan base hive-mind into blissful forgetfulness.
Oh, to second the notion of Dexter111: Aye, once you go Dolphin you absolutely must dump all your Wii titles onto the PC. There's no going back. The Wii still serves good purpose as a family gaming wart hooked up to some non-expensive TV the kids might break eventually, but for serious one-player experiences, it's got to be Dolphin all the way, plus sensor bar and original input devices for the proper feel. Without Dolphin, we'd have bought an average two controller sets, but thanks to Dolphin, we go about eight now. I do hope Nintendo eventually sees the sheer ingenuity and beauty of it. It makes Wii games so pretty and impressive I really hope at least they themselves know what they're rambling on about that Wii U project of theirs.
blah blah AMALUR: the blah
I got it on PC the moment I learned that I could use my non-upside-down gamepads with it, and the design of both the world and the monsters blew me away. Sure, there are gripes with some design choices, such as the camera hovering behind and above your character, making discovering things other than the floor somewhat tedious and annoying, or the camera opting to crash through the floor during battle - and staying there just to troll you to death.
But the gameplay and monster design was splendid. That's MONSTER design, not necessarily AVERAGE ELF DUDE CLONE design. After finishing it, I also wouldn't so much consider it to be an RPG, more like random loot bonanza (akin to Borderlands) cross-dressing in a pink RPG tutu frock and pimped up Legend of Link stilettos. But the graphics and effects look sweet, be it on a proper 16:10 (smaller) computer screen or a silly vertically deficient 16:9 'TV' panel, where the whole camera issue seems to be significantly more prominent (and annoying).
RAGE also did impress me lots on PC, after I was utterly underwhelmed by the PS3 version with its delayed texture buildups. You cannot unsee the overall grey texture-less versions of things, they look too much like PSX vistas of days long gone by, on a quite modern machine much more powerful (and expensive) than the granddaddy of optical-disc-reading gaming consoles.
The last time I properly forgot about the game and spent way too much time tinkering with and tweaking the graphics settings was CRYSIS. That was a proper amazing piece of artistry, wizardry and work there.
Since I've been fumbling around with emulators a lot lately, mainly because soldering wires with custom plugs and repairing consoles with custom screws gets frustrating and old eventually, I noticed that the much-loved games of old need some severe help looking 'proper' (fake aperture grille overlays, fake scanlines, fake everything to make the games look as they were intended on 4:3 CRT screens), I noticed that a lot of the games of old were what can legally be considered 'fugly' nowadays, but we still just got hooked for hours on end on Wipeout XL, Rollcage 2, a bunch of Street Fighter 2 'whatevers' and even Yoshi Story last weekend. The sheer blow of fun to the face, fingers and synapses from those dusty titles is amazing. Now, if only we would find proper ways of connecting our NeGcons to the dedicated Windows gaming box and making them work in all their analog perfection.
I think I understand what OP says about Rez, Shadow of the Colossus, Parappa the Rapper and Katamari Damacy for their unique and artsy nature (while still being splendid fun games) but I totally do not feel any sympathy for Halo, Battlefront II or Mass Effect (whichever). Yes, I did finish ME3 and I think I understand what the outrage is about, but I plain didn't really expect any better. Way too many folks involved, no coherent vision, too many brains and brainstorms and hands involved, and some folks were clearly more playing poker, dazzling folks and trying to live their dreams well out of their line of work, in professions they had either no experience in or no clue about what to do and how to do it. Back in the days, when proper games were made by one to maybe half a dozen folks, that could constitute an expensive death blow to a developer, a team and/or a publisher. These days, where hundreds of professionals from all schools, from the mundane to the arcane arts are involved, something like the ME3 ending controversy are the equivalent of Nuclear War and the Ice Age rolled into one. Heads must roll, history must be rewritten, the Men in Black must zap the fan base hive-mind into blissful forgetfulness.
Oh, to second the notion of Dexter111: Aye, once you go Dolphin you absolutely must dump all your Wii titles onto the PC. There's no going back. The Wii still serves good purpose as a family gaming wart hooked up to some non-expensive TV the kids might break eventually, but for serious one-player experiences, it's got to be Dolphin all the way, plus sensor bar and original input devices for the proper feel. Without Dolphin, we'd have bought an average two controller sets, but thanks to Dolphin, we go about eight now. I do hope Nintendo eventually sees the sheer ingenuity and beauty of it. It makes Wii games so pretty and impressive I really hope at least they themselves know what they're rambling on about that Wii U project of theirs.
Crysis. That was the last time I was seriously impressed by graphics. Before that, probably Half-Life 2.floppylobster said:
I'm primarily a PC gamer. When Crysis was released, and it's still the case now, many titles were/are developed for consoles and then ported over to PC, or just developed for cross-platform from the word go. Crysis was developed for PC and it showed. It also showed us how far we've come since the days of HL2 and Doom 3. Crysis was, and still is, very impressive graphically.
To be fair, The Witcher 2 and Battlefield 3 are both very impressive graphically, although that wasn't a main draw for me in either case.
A month back actually. getting the new SSX game, put it in and was really impressed with how the game looked. It has real atmosphere, the environments are wonderful and beautiful. The whole game is great to look at as a whole
Probably Journey or Bastion.
Journey is a freakin' beautiful game. Hands down the best looking PS3 game since Uncharted.
Seriously though, don't be so jaded. There are great looking games being released all the time.
Journey is a freakin' beautiful game. Hands down the best looking PS3 game since Uncharted.
Seriously though, don't be so jaded. There are great looking games being released all the time.
I was in the Guild Wars 2 beta (SHH!), and I was able to run it on my 3 year old computer and the graphics still impressed me a lot! 
edit: not because the graphics are better than present titles, but the fact that I was able to run it on the old computer impressed me (and it's still not optimized).
edit: not because the graphics are better than present titles, but the fact that I was able to run it on the old computer impressed me (and it's still not optimized).
I'm still impressed every time I see the water effects of the rivers in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I want to jump and swim into these waters, and drink a little bit of it.
Team Fortress 2
Why such a game you ask?
Because I recently went from PS3 to PC with a 23 inch LED full HDMI screen
Yeah, that shit looks amazing
Why such a game you ask?
Because I recently went from PS3 to PC with a 23 inch LED full HDMI screen
Yeah, that shit looks amazing
The last time I was impressed was God of War 3 - but generally, I have the feeling that I either lost the ability to distinct between different graphics levels or they just don't differ so much any more as they used to. Which is a good thing, because now we can focus on art design more than pure technical power (looking at games like Gears and Killzone: art design is the one lacking in the past few years, but that's apparently changing now).
Seeing half the map of Skyrim on a "clear day" from the top of a mountain is absolutely spectacular, in my opinion.
The last time i was truely impressed by graphics was when i first played Dragon quest VIII: Journey of the cursed king on PS2. That game was a truely magnificent spectacle to behold and the sheer sites in it were breathtaking to me.
God of War III, then Mortal Kombat, then FFXIII. Maybe its just the 1080p PS3 games look better than the 720p ones, although FFXIII looked so awesome all the time. There was never dull or neglected visual space in that game.
Skyrim as I expected a game that size to be only a bit better than oblivion and it was hugely better was very surprised by that fact of the game apart from that probably the first halo game as it was the first game that I played with "HD" graphics
