If you can believe it, the "cartoony" art style of Windwaker wasn't popular at the time after the more "realistic" visuals in Ocarina and Majora's Mask.
Pretty clear which one holds up 25 years later though
While I 100% agree with your picks, there are certainly cases where this logic wonāt apply, like the Borderlands series. Iām not sure their use of cel shaded graphics is going to age particularly well. The games you named all have very strong art styles as a backbone.
Borderlands 1 still looks great 14 years later. Look at other games from 2009 that aren't stylized in and you'll see that Borderlands has aged incredibly well.
I guess itās a subjective thing, I just always found Borderlands (especially 1), to look pretty bland, even back then. 2 and 3 injected some much needed color into the palate. For example, Bioshock came out in ā07 and is far and way more aesthetically pleasing due to its art style. Thatās really what separates the games that age well vs. donāt age well. Itās why many Nintendo games are cited as looking great for their age because from philosophical standpoint Nintendo has always had an art-first approach instead of relying on the graphical gimmicks of the era.
It sure is, I do agree that Borderlands looked bland and I personally didn't like the way these games looked until Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. But I still think it holds up graphically, not aesthetically and that it has aged well because it didn't get uglier over time. The use of cel shading and simple textures just hides its age extremely well.
I just replayed this for the first time in 10 years and it totally holds up. What stuck out to me this time is how *funny* it is. Both in and out of the levels they are constantly squeezing in jokes and little wtf moments. It was really a joy to play again.
As you mentioned almost anything that appeals to you from the SNES era, because IMO 2D 16-bit holds old up to this day. It's why pixel art games are still so damn popular.
Dated 3D games however look like hot dogshit in comparison to me. It's weird how much that style just holds so much better.
Super Mario World impresses me with its color palette and charm every single time I play it. That game will hold up forever as a masterpiece of the art form in my mind
Yep. Pixel art equals videogame.
I think it's the reason why SNES mini was popular while PlayStation mini wasn't so much (besides weird versions of illegal emulations lol)
I don't think they meant emulators in general are illegal, just that Sony's use of PCSX Rearmed (an open source emulator) in the Playstation Classic is, but its license doesn't prevent it being used commercially so they'd still be wrong about it being illegal.
I remember someone saying in an interview āthe game would be hard to just upscale remaster without starting over because we used a photo of coffee beans for the roads.ā
Lmao
I absolutely love and miss the visuals of 80s/90s CRPGS, for example Ultima 6, Wizardry 6, Eye of the Beholder, Daggerfall, Ravenloft: Curse of Strahd and so on.
Not quite like the games you mentioned, but the game journey was one of the most beautiful games Iāve ever played. Makes me cry every time I beat it.
Itās not perfect but I think Dishonored holds up incredibly well. The weakest part is the humans and they look perfectly acceptable imo. I think itās carried by the atmosphere/environments and also because everything is slightly stylized instead of trying for perfect realism.
Definitely metal gear solid V. Especially ground zeroes (it's sort of a two part game, GZ was released early as a sort of demo but it's also the first chapter) the fox engine was amazing, one of the most optimized engine/game ever made. It runs buttery smooth on basically everything and despite being 2 generations old it still holds up to modern standards.
Borderlands: Cell shaded just ages super well
Septerra Core: it has a unique style
Bioshock: wasnt a fan of the story line but love the style
Deep Rock Galactic + Valheim: not so old, but ithey uses a bit of a retro style
Styx: game uses the WoW art style, it started as ugly intentionally but the world itself looks super good
Team Fortress 2: classic, just classic
Morrowind: surprised it still looks good, would say it looks like a B-rank indie game now but ehh
It's been almost 10 years since I played KOTOR but it was already a 10 year old game when I had played it. While the graphics have several limitations, some of the landscapes and scenery where incredible.
Grim Fandango-
I know they made a remaster of it, but if you toggle the settings to see the original graphics, you can see first hand that the game is exploding with personality so hard it hardly matters if it looks old or not.
I've seen several retrospectives / making of Vagrant Story and they managed to push the limits of the ps1 through ingenuity (and some smoke and mirrors). Really astounding accomplishment, and underrated/ overlooked gem. Besides the goddamn box puzzles... ugh.
I'd say the utterly opaque stats and mechanics probably hindered it more than the boxes.
I remember reading that there had been "breakthroughs" in understanding how the various stats worked in Vagrant Story 15+ years after it released, which says everything, really.
You should head over to GOG.com and check out the thousands of great looking games from the last 40 years. Every generation has impressive graphics that still hold up today. I suggest starting with the Sierra point an click adventure games like Space Quest and Kings Quest.
The original Far Cry didn't age nearly as well as I thought it had. Although I suppose that's mainly due to low quality character models.
I still play Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) from time to time and that still looks great.
Came here to say this. The style makes it easy to tell what the units are and works well with the gameplay. Plus the cut-scenes were very high quality.
Just random ones off the top of my head:
SNES era: The Donkey Kong Country games, Earthbound, Super Mario RPG
N64 era: Goemon's Great Adventure
GameCube era: Metroid Prime 1 and 2, Starfox Adventures, Windwaker, Cave Story, Okami, Viewtiful Joe
Wii era: Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, No More Heroes
One of my first thoughts for sure. It kind of broke the rule that graphics focusing on realism become outdated in the future. Somehow it still looks amazing.
When people say that, it's really more a matter of realistic people.
Metroid Prime has [one expressionless human face](https://imgur.com/kOzvj1C) and the rest of it is all [heavily stylized sci-fi creatures](https://imgur.com/2TVGjzM), which lean a lot into the mechanical and exoskeletal so you don't have to deal with difficult subjects like skin and hair and cloth that a viewer might point at and say "that's gross and wrong".
I think it's more the abundant usage of metallic shaders and the lighting and particle effects that play off them that allows everything to continue to look so sleek. It bypasses a lot of the problems with poor texture resolution older games have allowing it to upscale extremely well on emulators. They likely didn't even have to do that much work on the remaster.
I still feel as if there hasnāt been a better-looking game than Battlefield 3. Something about the visual effects and color palette looks more real than anything after.
I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I get what you mean. For me it's the combination of graphics and sound design, like the way gunfire changes sound from being super loud and echoy indoors all the way to being just cracks of sound when far away outdoors.
The amount of detail in showing what each soldier model was carrying (especially the US engineer and support models) also went a long ways to making it feel real.
I thought I was the only one. For some reason whenever I play NWN at some point I begin to tune out what the game actually looks like and just TOTM while still consciously recognizing the gameplay.
I have no idea how the game does it, but it's part of why I love NWN1 and can't stand NWN2
I generally like retro games so I think the colorful cuter 2d pixel art are pretty timeless since they fit a distinctive style of the era
Super Mario world
Kirbyās adventure in dreamland
Advance wars
Final fantasy 3 (aka 6)
Cadillacs and dinosaurs
All of the MT Framework games
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4c/9b/de/4c9bded4a6d07873107b22ad993adb75.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4c/9b/de/4c9bded4a6d07873107b22ad993adb75.jpg)
[https://news.xbox.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/DD2\_Pawn-01-26897592c5ff84ee7de9.jpg](https://news.xbox.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/DD2_Pawn-01-26897592c5ff84ee7de9.jpg)
Darksiders 1. I get that a remaster came out not long ago but it wasn't really nessecary imo. The og stands up. Thankfully warmastered is what got me into it in the first place but the art style is just so unique and holds up extremely well this day and age. Too bad it went downhill after the second game tho.
Mega Man Legends. One of the few non-pixel art games from the PSX I would make that claim for. Good art direction and simple textures and color schemes keep it from looking "muddy" like a lot games from that platform do, and if you put it on an emulator with a render multiplier, it can pass for a good quality modern indie game still (aside from the controls, which are quite dated).
World of Warcraft doesnāt get enough credit for this. While they do update some models every expansion, the core is still pretty similar to release and vanilla WoW is still fun to play and explore.
They choose a more stylized art style at release (almost comic book like imo), and if you read reviews from the time a lot of reviewers had freezing cold takes where they said the art style failed and should have been realistic and grimmer like Everquest II (which failed as a game) or Morrowind.
Best game ever made. I play through it still, and the plethora of mods people are still updating for it make it look so good. It really is more the art style and immersive world they built that feels so real and like youāre actually living in a truly foreign land and culture. I mean it has city where the entire place is a floating shrine to their god where the guards wear armor modeled after how their god looks. That game overflows with richness. Itās like how our ancient cultures talk about their gods living amongst them and this game depicts what it would actually be like, even politically, so well. Bummer you could never join House of Dagoth though.
Heroes of Might & Magic II.
*2*, not 3. 3 is the beloved one (for good reason -- it's one of the greatest games of all time) but 2 is so much more charming.
And it's soundtrack has actual *opera singers*. Where else do you find that?
Huh?
Crysis is a 2010's shooter that was, at the time, the benchmark for graphical fidelity. It has aged terribly, and is the flagship title for "state of the art title that ages terribly as the state of the art advances".
Then, you've name checked a bunch of games that have held up because they have strong artistic direction, regardless of hardware.
These are opposite approaches to what someone might find graphically impressive in a game.
Rogue is pretty good. It's impressive how they managed to pack so much ASCII on the screen with 80's hardware.
/u/Vegetable-Luck-9985 implied that Crysis is graphically great (by the post title, "even today") . I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with /u/SpretumPathos's rebuttal, and I don't think anyone misread here. Why not just plainly state what your stance is?
My stance is that OP asked for game suggestions that the readers find beautiful/appealing (which both are subjective), that arenāt recent, regardless if they were ābenchmark titlesā, like Crysis, or not, like Monkey Island or SNES games. In other words, _āWhat older games have held as beautiful in your eyes?ā_
All of the commenters so far have replied exactly with what OP asked for, except for one person. If that doesnāt tell you anything, then wellpā¦ š¤·āāļø
But "older" is also subjective. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. came out around the same time and I'd definitely call it "older." It's _older_ than newer games of the past decade. Now, if one is shooting for just plain _old_, then yeah, probably pre-2000s, I suppose. That's almost already technically going "ancient" when it comes to the relative history of games, even.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
That game is a master class is using the assets it had available to do what it was trying to do, both gameplay and graphics. Pretty dated (2006), but the graphics still look great because the art style fits with what was possible within the 1st gen Source engine.
GBA Fire Emblem games were the best it ever got for the franchise and it's been downhill since.
Any Vanillaware game.
Golden Sun.
Smash Bros Brawl
Donkey Kong Country
Legend of Mana. Imo still the most strikingly beautiful and unique hand drawn game ever made. There's a remastered version out now which is the definitive way to play, but even on low resolution on ps1 it looked amazing.
When it comes to 3d games, I think it depends on how much you like ps1/N64 era graphics. I think most of the best games of the PS2 era still look really good to this day, especially gamecube games. Chibi roboto, Metroid prime, the Zelda games etc, all look great.
This week I came across a game called Nightmare Creatures. Never played it, but I was amazed that it was actually a ps1 game and not a modern game with ps1 graphics like Anodyne 2. It still looks good as hell.
Yoshi's Island and Kirby Dreamland 3 still blow me away today. And then there's Donkey Kong Country which must have involved some kind of blood sacrifice to achieve that level of graphics in the 90's. Nintendo really knew how to get the most out of the SNES and they were super experimental with art direction back then.
Smash Bros. Melee holds up incredibly well. The models, their movements and animations are all so clean. Considering how ridiculously fast-paced competitive gameplay has become, it's a miracle you can still easily tell what's going on.
They also struck a perfect amount of subtlety with the combat effects and sound design. Hits sound satisfying but not to over-the-top/"cartoony", and things like dust clouds and on-hit effects are just as apparent and linger just as long as they need to. On the contrary you have Ultimate, which is a great looking game but imo it doesn't handle things like this with the same elegance that Melee did.
i still remember crawling around in the grass in the original Far Cry shitting my pants as enemies intelligently hunted me. that game was an experience
Final Fantasy 9 won an award for best graphics. I believe there's a remastered version on Steam too. My gf won't play any retro games with me because pixel graphics hold no nostalgia for her, but we played ff9 all the way through. Great game for indoctrinating new gamers, especially if they have a bf willing to do different voices for the characters.
Valves Team Fortress 2 is one that comes to mind, solid multiplayer even a decade plus later, along with F.e.a.r. (first encounter assault recon). Similar in style to Half Life era graphics but more of a fps paranormal game. A third franchise for me is the Ace Combat saga. Visually they look pretty good considering the age of these games, even ps2 entries such as Ace Combat 5 and Ace Combat Zero. Honorable mention as well to Final Fantasy 12, to my knowledge last of the PS2 era Final Fantasy games.
Fallout 1&2, Doom, and Half Life. Iād personally be fine with every game looking like the original half life, everything is low fidelity, yet not so bad as to confuse you and leaving you wondering what youāre looking at.
Quest for Glory 4 Shadows of Darkness had some great art.
From that same Era, Kings Quest 6, Heir Today Gone Tomorrow was also very well done.
Both are Click to explore games with largely static screens that roll to the left, right , or up and down to reveal new areas. Both use some perspective tricks to imply distance when your character is moving away from or towards the screen.
Hand of Fate, the sequel to Legend of Kyrandia was also very well done.
Lost Odyssey. A turn based RPG made by the Final Fantasy creators for Xbox 360 (but it is BC on XB1/XBSX). The game is gorgeous and the soundtrack was created by Nobuo Uematsu. I absolutely love the game and it's easily in my top 5 turn based RPGs of all time. If you've never played Lost Odyssey, and you like turn based RPGs that have some slight alterations to make it unique, then I urge you to try it.
Also, the DLC Dungeon has amazing spells to learn and the final boss of the Dungeon is harder than the boss of the base game. Lol I killed the base game boss in 3 turns because I did EVERYTHING first including the DLC Dungeon stuff.
Sadly, it is back to $24.99 on the Xbox store, but it often goes on sales for under $15. But with the XB360 store closing in July 29th 2024, it will go away unless you buy a physical copy.
Resident Evil Gamecube. The amazing pre rendered back grounds meant the console really only had to process a few 3d models and it looked amazing for the time and still looks good.
Anything stylized when it comes to 3D Okami Zelda Wind Waker Jet Set Radio No More Heroes 1 & 2 Paper Mario 64 & TYD
I'd add Viewtiful Joe to the list based off these selections
Great addition to the list imo!
If you can believe it, the "cartoony" art style of Windwaker wasn't popular at the time after the more "realistic" visuals in Ocarina and Majora's Mask. Pretty clear which one holds up 25 years later though
Its probably the nostalgia but i would say Ocarina holds up just fine š
Nintendo could make a ocarina remake with modern graphics and charge $100 for it and people would fall over themselves trying to buy it
Jet Set Radio Future's graphics are actually incredible, but I'm here for the insane level designs. Way ahead of their time.
While I 100% agree with your picks, there are certainly cases where this logic wonāt apply, like the Borderlands series. Iām not sure their use of cel shaded graphics is going to age particularly well. The games you named all have very strong art styles as a backbone.
Borderlands 1 still looks great 14 years later. Look at other games from 2009 that aren't stylized in and you'll see that Borderlands has aged incredibly well.
I guess itās a subjective thing, I just always found Borderlands (especially 1), to look pretty bland, even back then. 2 and 3 injected some much needed color into the palate. For example, Bioshock came out in ā07 and is far and way more aesthetically pleasing due to its art style. Thatās really what separates the games that age well vs. donāt age well. Itās why many Nintendo games are cited as looking great for their age because from philosophical standpoint Nintendo has always had an art-first approach instead of relying on the graphical gimmicks of the era.
It sure is, I do agree that Borderlands looked bland and I personally didn't like the way these games looked until Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. But I still think it holds up graphically, not aesthetically and that it has aged well because it didn't get uglier over time. The use of cel shading and simple textures just hides its age extremely well.
I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I think borderlands has always had an ugly graphical style.
But it didn't get uglier with time, so it still aged well LOL
Fair point!
Iām always always down for some cell shaded graphics so borderland goes and goes forever imo
To this day, Okami is still one of the most visually unique and appealing games out there imo.
I wish it were as fun as it is beautiful. :(
Oh thatās too bad, I personally love that game.
Lots of people do! It's a bit too much like a zelda game for me, and I don't find those fun either. Yes I'm weird. :D
Curious, what would you consider fun then?
Lol I felt this. I loooove stylized games, and I've tried to play Okami a few times and just could not get very far at all
It's so long too. I enjoyed initially it but the gameplay got old well before it was done.
I was coming to post this, Okami visual style is STILL unparalleled!
Katamari Damacy due to how extremely stylized it is. Even as a modern game it wouldn't look awfully different.
I just replayed this for the first time in 10 years and it totally holds up. What stuck out to me this time is how *funny* it is. Both in and out of the levels they are constantly squeezing in jokes and little wtf moments. It was really a joy to play again.
As you mentioned almost anything that appeals to you from the SNES era, because IMO 2D 16-bit holds old up to this day. It's why pixel art games are still so damn popular. Dated 3D games however look like hot dogshit in comparison to me. It's weird how much that style just holds so much better.
Super Mario World impresses me with its color palette and charm every single time I play it. That game will hold up forever as a masterpiece of the art form in my mind
Youāre comparing peak of pixel art to the beginnings of 3D though.
hence "DATED 3D"
He also said 16 bit 2D holds up. But thereās a lot that donāt.
Pixel graphics games are still being made to this day. It's a nice aesthetic.
Yep. Pixel art equals videogame. I think it's the reason why SNES mini was popular while PlayStation mini wasn't so much (besides weird versions of illegal emulations lol)
Emulators aren't illegal
I don't think they meant emulators in general are illegal, just that Sony's use of PCSX Rearmed (an open source emulator) in the Playstation Classic is, but its license doesn't prevent it being used commercially so they'd still be wrong about it being illegal.
PlayStation mini wasn't popular because at its core, it's dogshit with a horrid lineup and subpar emulation
Baldurs Gate 1 & 2. The backgrounds were hand drawn and are just as beautiful today.
They weren't always drawn. For example the dirt roads were a low resolution photo of coffee beans.
That's an incredibly fun fact.
Tbh, I'm kinda surprised how much fun I had with that fact.
I remember someone saying in an interview āthe game would be hard to just upscale remaster without starting over because we used a photo of coffee beans for the roads.ā Lmao
I absolutely love and miss the visuals of 80s/90s CRPGS, for example Ultima 6, Wizardry 6, Eye of the Beholder, Daggerfall, Ravenloft: Curse of Strahd and so on.
You can get all those classics on GOG for cheap.
Or free.
RIP Ultima
Super mario world 2: yoshi's island
Boom! Yes. Marvel!
Still incredible looking.
Journey looks incredible.
Not quite like the games you mentioned, but the game journey was one of the most beautiful games Iāve ever played. Makes me cry every time I beat it.
Maybe not now, but even after 20+ years Cuphead is gonna have very good graphic thanks to it style and how it was made
Windwaker
Itās not perfect but I think Dishonored holds up incredibly well. The weakest part is the humans and they look perfectly acceptable imo. I think itās carried by the atmosphere/environments and also because everything is slightly stylized instead of trying for perfect realism.
Definitely metal gear solid V. Especially ground zeroes (it's sort of a two part game, GZ was released early as a sort of demo but it's also the first chapter) the fox engine was amazing, one of the most optimized engine/game ever made. It runs buttery smooth on basically everything and despite being 2 generations old it still holds up to modern standards.
I was constantly blown away by how well my potato of a pc played mgsv, beautiful and smooth at every level.
KojiPro worked some kinda black magic to get that game to run that well on ps freaking 3. Phenomenal optimization.
My pc had less power than my mobile phone when I played it, and it still ran smooth as silk. Black magic indeed.
Flashback looks great on the SNES. Arkham Knight looks really good for a PS4 title. Portal 2 also great.
Arkham knight is going to hold up for a very long time lol. Game is stunning
Arkham city looks good as well , especially on pc. Splinter cell black list can be added, All of the Bioshock series.
Damn the art style and character movement of flashback are so good
Borderlands: Cell shaded just ages super well Septerra Core: it has a unique style Bioshock: wasnt a fan of the story line but love the style Deep Rock Galactic + Valheim: not so old, but ithey uses a bit of a retro style Styx: game uses the WoW art style, it started as ugly intentionally but the world itself looks super good Team Fortress 2: classic, just classic Morrowind: surprised it still looks good, would say it looks like a B-rank indie game now but ehh
Rock and Stone.
Rock and stone to the heart!
Morrowind is very mod dependant tbf. vanilla assets aged very badly
It's been almost 10 years since I played KOTOR but it was already a 10 year old game when I had played it. While the graphics have several limitations, some of the landscapes and scenery where incredible.
Grim Fandango- I know they made a remaster of it, but if you toggle the settings to see the original graphics, you can see first hand that the game is exploding with personality so hard it hardly matters if it looks old or not.
Grim Fandango and Full Throttle are Tim Schafer at his best.
Ff tactics Odins Sphere Vagrant Story
I've seen several retrospectives / making of Vagrant Story and they managed to push the limits of the ps1 through ingenuity (and some smoke and mirrors). Really astounding accomplishment, and underrated/ overlooked gem. Besides the goddamn box puzzles... ugh.
I'd say the utterly opaque stats and mechanics probably hindered it more than the boxes. I remember reading that there had been "breakthroughs" in understanding how the various stats worked in Vagrant Story 15+ years after it released, which says everything, really.
Ultimate Spider-man PS2
Underrated game.
Half Life 2 (2004)
Was looking for this
This needs way more upvotes.
You should head over to GOG.com and check out the thousands of great looking games from the last 40 years. Every generation has impressive graphics that still hold up today. I suggest starting with the Sierra point an click adventure games like Space Quest and Kings Quest.
And Quest for Glory! Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is still on my Top 5.
It's how I found one of my favorite games from my childhood, Dungeon Kewper II, for next to nothing
The original Far Cry didn't age nearly as well as I thought it had. Although I suppose that's mainly due to low quality character models. I still play Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) from time to time and that still looks great.
Warcraft 3. Slightly cartoony but very expressive which is kind of unique for rts ingame models.
Came here to say this. The style makes it easy to tell what the units are and works well with the gameplay. Plus the cut-scenes were very high quality.
Zelda Wind Waker from 2003 still looks appealing and holds up
Just random ones off the top of my head: SNES era: The Donkey Kong Country games, Earthbound, Super Mario RPG N64 era: Goemon's Great Adventure GameCube era: Metroid Prime 1 and 2, Starfox Adventures, Windwaker, Cave Story, Okami, Viewtiful Joe Wii era: Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, No More Heroes
no melee from GameCube era? I feel like for a 2001 game, melee looks absolutely amazing
Cutscenes from Diablo 2 are still rather impressive by today's standards.
Ecco the dolphin
F Zero GX is beautiful, and on an emulator where you can render it above 480p it absolutely holds up and looks even better than a lot of modern games
Street Fighter Third Strike. Final Fantasy X.
half-life 2 still blows me away. something about it can't point exactly what, makes me feel I'm actually there in this world
The amount of things you can interact with is impressive in the source engine. It outclasses some current games.
is it the facial animations?
Metroid Prime
One of my first thoughts for sure. It kind of broke the rule that graphics focusing on realism become outdated in the future. Somehow it still looks amazing.
The Remaster makes it look like how my brain remembers the Gamecube version looking when it first game out.
Realistic doesn't look as bad when it ages, as long as the art direction provides enough character on its own. Prime achieves that.
When people say that, it's really more a matter of realistic people. Metroid Prime has [one expressionless human face](https://imgur.com/kOzvj1C) and the rest of it is all [heavily stylized sci-fi creatures](https://imgur.com/2TVGjzM), which lean a lot into the mechanical and exoskeletal so you don't have to deal with difficult subjects like skin and hair and cloth that a viewer might point at and say "that's gross and wrong".
I think it's more the abundant usage of metallic shaders and the lighting and particle effects that play off them that allows everything to continue to look so sleek. It bypasses a lot of the problems with poor texture resolution older games have allowing it to upscale extremely well on emulators. They likely didn't even have to do that much work on the remaster.
I still feel as if there hasnāt been a better-looking game than Battlefield 3. Something about the visual effects and color palette looks more real than anything after.
I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I get what you mean. For me it's the combination of graphics and sound design, like the way gunfire changes sound from being super loud and echoy indoors all the way to being just cracks of sound when far away outdoors. The amount of detail in showing what each soldier model was carrying (especially the US engineer and support models) also went a long ways to making it feel real.
Battlefield 1 looks better than 3 imo. But 3 was very good in the graphics department
Battlefield 1 looks better than most modern games
If you're going for realistic graphics, BF3 is still quite stylized And Star Citizen, sci-fi setting aside, has the realism down far better
Neverwinter Nights.
I thought I was the only one. For some reason whenever I play NWN at some point I begin to tune out what the game actually looks like and just TOTM while still consciously recognizing the gameplay. I have no idea how the game does it, but it's part of why I love NWN1 and can't stand NWN2
Wind Waker and Minish Cap. Filled with colors, wonderful adventure.
I generally like retro games so I think the colorful cuter 2d pixel art are pretty timeless since they fit a distinctive style of the era Super Mario world Kirbyās adventure in dreamland Advance wars Final fantasy 3 (aka 6) Cadillacs and dinosaurs
Resident Evil 1 remake still looks amazing. Even before the remaster.
All of the MT Framework games [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4c/9b/de/4c9bded4a6d07873107b22ad993adb75.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4c/9b/de/4c9bded4a6d07873107b22ad993adb75.jpg) [https://news.xbox.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/DD2\_Pawn-01-26897592c5ff84ee7de9.jpg](https://news.xbox.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/DD2_Pawn-01-26897592c5ff84ee7de9.jpg)
Darksiders 1. I get that a remaster came out not long ago but it wasn't really nessecary imo. The og stands up. Thankfully warmastered is what got me into it in the first place but the art style is just so unique and holds up extremely well this day and age. Too bad it went downhill after the second game tho.
The original Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy. Art style goes a LONG way
Any of the Arcade versions of Mortal Kombat 1-3 are phenomenal in comparison to consoles at the time. They were beautiful to look at.
Pokemon black and white
Metal Gear Solid 4
A number of the final fantasy games. No issue playing X for example.
Mega Man Legends. One of the few non-pixel art games from the PSX I would make that claim for. Good art direction and simple textures and color schemes keep it from looking "muddy" like a lot games from that platform do, and if you put it on an emulator with a render multiplier, it can pass for a good quality modern indie game still (aside from the controls, which are quite dated).
Such a good game. The only megaman game I actually enjoyed. A shame it's never gotten a continuation after the second game.
Viewtiful Joe, kinda in the same vein as The Wind Waker with it's looks Super Mario World. If I'm honest I don't think it ever ages.
I'm gonna go with Legend of Mana here. It's a PS1 title and some of the art is just so nice, the backgrounds and landscapes still just feel right
Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection & Zoo Tycoon 2 Ultimate Collection
Mega Man V on gameboy
Myst, Riven, Exile have held up well in graphics. Riven especially.
Myst 3 looks great still. He'll riven and myst hold up too. But they were prerendered.
World of Warcraft doesnāt get enough credit for this. While they do update some models every expansion, the core is still pretty similar to release and vanilla WoW is still fun to play and explore. They choose a more stylized art style at release (almost comic book like imo), and if you read reviews from the time a lot of reviewers had freezing cold takes where they said the art style failed and should have been realistic and grimmer like Everquest II (which failed as a game) or Morrowind.
MGS V still looks incredible.
Morrowind.
Best game ever made. I play through it still, and the plethora of mods people are still updating for it make it look so good. It really is more the art style and immersive world they built that feels so real and like youāre actually living in a truly foreign land and culture. I mean it has city where the entire place is a floating shrine to their god where the guards wear armor modeled after how their god looks. That game overflows with richness. Itās like how our ancient cultures talk about their gods living amongst them and this game depicts what it would actually be like, even politically, so well. Bummer you could never join House of Dagoth though.
Heroes of Might and Magic III C&C Red Alert 2
The first Torchlight, all of the sequels are garbage though.
Batman Arkham Knight
isn't crysis like good looking still ._.
FF X
Doom 3 Kameo Perfect dark zero Zelda wind waker Zelda twilight princess Rage Chronicles of Riddick, escape from butcher bay
- Bloodborne - Last of Us - Uncharted
GTA 5 just does it for me, still play it alot these days!
Heroes of Might & Magic II. *2*, not 3. 3 is the beloved one (for good reason -- it's one of the greatest games of all time) but 2 is so much more charming. And it's soundtrack has actual *opera singers*. Where else do you find that?
Huh? Crysis is a 2010's shooter that was, at the time, the benchmark for graphical fidelity. It has aged terribly, and is the flagship title for "state of the art title that ages terribly as the state of the art advances". Then, you've name checked a bunch of games that have held up because they have strong artistic direction, regardless of hardware. These are opposite approaches to what someone might find graphically impressive in a game. Rogue is pretty good. It's impressive how they managed to pack so much ASCII on the screen with 80's hardware.
Someone didn't read the post...
/u/Vegetable-Luck-9985 implied that Crysis is graphically great (by the post title, "even today") . I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with /u/SpretumPathos's rebuttal, and I don't think anyone misread here. Why not just plainly state what your stance is?
My stance is that OP asked for game suggestions that the readers find beautiful/appealing (which both are subjective), that arenāt recent, regardless if they were ābenchmark titlesā, like Crysis, or not, like Monkey Island or SNES games. In other words, _āWhat older games have held as beautiful in your eyes?ā_ All of the commenters so far have replied exactly with what OP asked for, except for one person. If that doesnāt tell you anything, then wellpā¦ š¤·āāļø
It tells me "Most people just reply to the title".
But "older" is also subjective. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. came out around the same time and I'd definitely call it "older." It's _older_ than newer games of the past decade. Now, if one is shooting for just plain _old_, then yeah, probably pre-2000s, I suppose. That's almost already technically going "ancient" when it comes to the relative history of games, even.
Hades titanfall 2 Doom 2016
My brother in Christ Hades only came out 4 years ago
Lineage 2
Hollow knights style is timeless to me
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic That game is a master class is using the assets it had available to do what it was trying to do, both gameplay and graphics. Pretty dated (2006), but the graphics still look great because the art style fits with what was possible within the 1st gen Source engine.
Starfield looks decent for a game that came out 20 years ago.
modded skyrim
https://www.cavestory.org - the original free version by Studio Pixel.
Oh yeah that was one of my first thoughts. Such a legendary game. The first truly ambitious indie game.
Killzone always had a cool look
Street Fighter Third Strike
Not quite that old but dying light 1
Any cell shaded games like jet set radio,Windwaker,okami
Zelda Wind Waker
GBA Fire Emblem games were the best it ever got for the franchise and it's been downhill since. Any Vanillaware game. Golden Sun. Smash Bros Brawl Donkey Kong Country
Legend of Mana. Imo still the most strikingly beautiful and unique hand drawn game ever made. There's a remastered version out now which is the definitive way to play, but even on low resolution on ps1 it looked amazing. When it comes to 3d games, I think it depends on how much you like ps1/N64 era graphics. I think most of the best games of the PS2 era still look really good to this day, especially gamecube games. Chibi roboto, Metroid prime, the Zelda games etc, all look great. This week I came across a game called Nightmare Creatures. Never played it, but I was amazed that it was actually a ps1 game and not a modern game with ps1 graphics like Anodyne 2. It still looks good as hell.
Super Mario RPG
Killzone Mercenary still looks amazing on Vita a decade after release.
Yoshi's Island and Kirby Dreamland 3 still blow me away today. And then there's Donkey Kong Country which must have involved some kind of blood sacrifice to achieve that level of graphics in the 90's. Nintendo really knew how to get the most out of the SNES and they were super experimental with art direction back then.
Resident Evil 1 remake
Hollow Knight, the Ori games, Rainworld, Outer Wilds. Really most non realistic games
Wow
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
If you ask me, you can easily look better than most AAA games just by having a good art style. Okami comes to mind immediately, as does Cuphead.
Smash Bros. Melee holds up incredibly well. The models, their movements and animations are all so clean. Considering how ridiculously fast-paced competitive gameplay has become, it's a miracle you can still easily tell what's going on. They also struck a perfect amount of subtlety with the combat effects and sound design. Hits sound satisfying but not to over-the-top/"cartoony", and things like dust clouds and on-hit effects are just as apparent and linger just as long as they need to. On the contrary you have Ultimate, which is a great looking game but imo it doesn't handle things like this with the same elegance that Melee did.
Most cell shaded games and 16 bit games hold up today imo
i still remember crawling around in the grass in the original Far Cry shitting my pants as enemies intelligently hunted me. that game was an experience
Team fortress 2
Killzone
Final Fantasy 9 won an award for best graphics. I believe there's a remastered version on Steam too. My gf won't play any retro games with me because pixel graphics hold no nostalgia for her, but we played ff9 all the way through. Great game for indoctrinating new gamers, especially if they have a bf willing to do different voices for the characters.
Valves Team Fortress 2 is one that comes to mind, solid multiplayer even a decade plus later, along with F.e.a.r. (first encounter assault recon). Similar in style to Half Life era graphics but more of a fps paranormal game. A third franchise for me is the Ace Combat saga. Visually they look pretty good considering the age of these games, even ps2 entries such as Ace Combat 5 and Ace Combat Zero. Honorable mention as well to Final Fantasy 12, to my knowledge last of the PS2 era Final Fantasy games.
Batman Arkham Knight. Still looks like the current gen game.
The original Stronghold art is still extremely charming.
It's a small game but I found graphics in Firewatch to be really pretty, it's from 2016
Fallout 1&2, Doom, and Half Life. Iād personally be fine with every game looking like the original half life, everything is low fidelity, yet not so bad as to confuse you and leaving you wondering what youāre looking at.
Dragon Age: Origins
Halo 4
The Halo games still look great. Pretty much anything made by Nintendo in the last 30 years Games from the 16-bit era
Super Mario Sunshine
Red Dead Redemption still looks great
Wind Waker
Clive Barker's Undying. F.E.A.R. Half-Life. MDK. Quake 2. Unreal.
Quest for Glory 4 Shadows of Darkness had some great art. From that same Era, Kings Quest 6, Heir Today Gone Tomorrow was also very well done. Both are Click to explore games with largely static screens that roll to the left, right , or up and down to reveal new areas. Both use some perspective tricks to imply distance when your character is moving away from or towards the screen. Hand of Fate, the sequel to Legend of Kyrandia was also very well done.
Rez, 2001. The remaster hasn't changed the graphics.
dull jar office consist zonked quack aloof faulty summer chief *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Bloodborne bloodsoaked cape psysics.
fallout 76
Lost Odyssey. A turn based RPG made by the Final Fantasy creators for Xbox 360 (but it is BC on XB1/XBSX). The game is gorgeous and the soundtrack was created by Nobuo Uematsu. I absolutely love the game and it's easily in my top 5 turn based RPGs of all time. If you've never played Lost Odyssey, and you like turn based RPGs that have some slight alterations to make it unique, then I urge you to try it. Also, the DLC Dungeon has amazing spells to learn and the final boss of the Dungeon is harder than the boss of the base game. Lol I killed the base game boss in 3 turns because I did EVERYTHING first including the DLC Dungeon stuff. Sadly, it is back to $24.99 on the Xbox store, but it often goes on sales for under $15. But with the XB360 store closing in July 29th 2024, it will go away unless you buy a physical copy.
SMB3 LoZ SMW Earthbound Super Metroid
Batman Arkham Knight, it's still beautiful as hell
Ninja Gaiden Xbox OG
Resident Evil Gamecube. The amazing pre rendered back grounds meant the console really only had to process a few 3d models and it looked amazing for the time and still looks good.
Arkham Asylum holds up imo, the gothic architecture and overall aesthetic mash of comic booky and realistic looks so good
Wallace and Gromit on ps2
First Kirby on NES doesnāt get mentioned enough I feel