The first images of Max Payne blew me away. Also the first time you step outside the prison in Oblivion, the first time a 360 game truly felt nextgen instead of Xbox games running in HD. However, al that was trumped by Uncharted in 2007. That moment where you see the U-boat... made me realize how much potential the PS3 had.
Duke Nukem 3D, at the time, was amazing. You could duck! And the pig cops could duck! That was incredible to me at the time.
Half Life looked pretty incredible at the time it came out. F.E.A.R. Uncharted 2. Skyrim. Blood. The first Jedi Knight game (the sequel to dark forces). Sorry I'm trying to think of games across all periods, not just modern ones. It's a lot easier to just name newer games that impress me as they are in the forefront of your mind more often.
But ya I've seen all the changes in gaming and I always end up seeing something impressive at some point. Even this year, Far Cry 3 looks gorgeous.
@Revan_NL: Yeah it's probably Max Payne's first trailer for me. It came on a disc from a games magazine, which also included Duke Nukem Forever's 1998 trailer. But damn, after seeing Max Payne's first trailer, I honestly couldn't sleep that night.
This would probably be the most current, but Max Payne 3. The physics of being able to dive into walls, the gun attention and detail, the way the glass shatters when you shoot it.
I was in tears of joy the first time I pumped 5 bullets into a goon's head. The slow mow, the gore, the physics... it was just beautiful.
My answer is and probably will always be Wind Waker. That game was beautiful then and it is still now. It will be prettier then any current gen game in a couple years. You just can't beat great art design. Plus I have finally gotten around to playing it in HD and Nintendo needs to get to work on an HD remake NOW!
This Gen: Assassin's Creed, Wipeout HD, Final Fantasy 13 - and FF13-2 recently stepped it up a gear with how good they made the long grass look in wind especially for a console that has become so old (the three main turning points for me in this generations fidelity).
Memorable Others: Wind Waker, Final Fantasy X (and then again FFXII for the more open world aspect)
Those first Half-Life 2 gameplay videos definitely. Was the craziest and most insane thing I had ever seen, I have never been that impressed by any new technology ever since...
Kinetica was the first PS2 game I ever saw and back then it looked amazing to me.
I never owned a PS2 so I didn't even know that this game existed but that looks awesome.
The 32X was kind of a bummer but there were a few really interesting games on it. Two in particular really felt like advancements, both in design and graphics, over what the Genesis and SNES were capable of pulling off. They look old now but at the time these games looked really good. I think they look on par with early (emphasis early) Playstation games. Which is incredible because the 32X was so hard to make games for and wasn't up to snuff with the Playstation or Saturn.
EDIT:
These were released in 1994 by the way and the Playstation came out in 1995.
Main reason was a buddy of mine had a 50+ inch hd tv. Up to that point I hadn't seen a console game running in hd or a gaming pc of any real merit running at all. I couldn't get over how amazing the highlights on the dude's armor looked as well as the character models in general.
I'm going to go with Half Life 2. That is the first one that comes to mind. I'm sure there were other games before that but I don't remember, though I do remember being pretty impressed by Socom at the time.
Recently though I booted up Metro 2033, I had played it on 360 back when it came out but I got it in the humble THQ bundle and put it on Direct X 11 and I was blown away. It looks better than most games coming out now. Of course my computer couldn't handle that so I had to bump it back to DX10 but it still is really impressive.
Final Fantasy VIII and subsequently Final Fantasy X, the characters and environments were so detailed and they felt like real human people, not small chibi characters. Uncharted 1/2 as well for the obvious wet clothing effects and just the expansive environments. Heavy Rain was pretty good as well for human figures and faces.
i was pretty amazed when i saw GTA IV for the first time, and freaked out when i saw an explosion. it looked like the greatest thing ever, but probably only since it was the first current gen game that i played for myself. i also remember being really blown away the first time i played Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. more recently though, games like Odin Sphere, Muramasa and Okami have some superb art styles.
there are still little things here and there that blow me away. seeing Drake's clothes get wet for the first time in Uncharted was something unimaginable for me. i'm still impressed from time to time when playing Sleeping Dogs and Wei's clothes get wet in the rain. it's like the future of video games.
When Valve first showed off CS:S I can still remember seeing CT's run accorss the bridge in Aztec and being blown away at the water reflections and just how good the game looked...
The original Far Cry on PC comes to mind for me, back when I had a really high end rig. Playing it, looking out over the island... wow. That was so impressive.
Star Wars Rebel Assault was my first experience with seeing the power of the CD-ROM, and FMV in general. That was a pretty ground breaking moment. I also remember how blown away I was playing the demo for FFVIII on PC, which featured the ballroom scene in it.
@Zelyre: Ring of Red is so great. I keep hoping that Konami will revisit that formula one day. Valkyria Chronicles, which is great in its own right, scratches that itch pretty well, but it's not quite the same.
The two that stick out the most are MGS2 and Gears of War. Conker: L&R also really got me. I think it was the combination of buying my first ever HD TV and playing Conker with component cables that gave me that feeling.
I remember being blown away by Battle Arena Toshinden but it was more "I can't believe they got this to work in the home" instead of anything beautiful.
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