Game that blew you away most, graphically

For me it was the intro sequence of MGS2 when Snake was walking across the rainy bridge, smoking a cigarette. I couldn't tell it from reality; or at least at the time. :)

Being the poor kid that I was I was stuck with a ps1 for far longer than some, and the first ps2 game I saw was Final Fantasy X and I thought it looked incredible, and in a lot of ways it still does.

Another one I have to mention now that I think about it is Rome Total War. The series moving to 3D, with all those units on screen and all. That was mind blowing.

Halo 4. For a 7 year old console. JUST fucking gorgeous

For this generation probably the 1st Assassins creed or even the 1st Gears of War. Oddly enough the 1st game that I can vividly remember blowing me away was command and conquer, which in hindsight seems bananas given all the FMV, but there was something about that terrain and those sprites.

I don't remember ever truly being blown away by graphics by anything pre-PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era. In the back of my mind I always knew they could make it look so much better.

But I remember seeing a Rogue Squadron 2 demo at a Kmart around the time the Gamecube was first releasing, and thinking, "Whoa. I have to buy myself a Gamecube. This is so pretty." So I saved up some summer job money and bought one. At the time I didn't think games could look any better than that.

Zelda: A Link to the Past, Terranigma, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, DOOM 3, BioShock, Journey, Xenoblade, Metroid Prime, Half Life, Half Life 2, Dead Space, Resident Evil REmake, Uncharted 1, 2, 3, The Witcher 2, Spec Ops: The Line.

Those were games where I specifically remember those "whoa" moments because they were either big "firsts" or just phenomenally gorgeous artistically. There are of course many more games that I think look absolutely fantastic but the ones listed definitely resulted in multiple wow moments at the time I first played them (or saw them, in the case of DOOM 3 and HL2).

doom 3, my father built a PC to play it, that was a wow moment

One of the first I can remember is seeing screenshots of Mega Man 2 on the NES in magazines. Some of the stuff looked near cartoon quality to me (giant fish / shrimp in Bubble Man's lair, etc).

The part where you run (or cartwheel jump) down the snowy hill in the second level of Strider on the Genesis was probably my first "holy shit this is so much better than Nintendo" moment. The fire level on Thunder Force III, as well. Both were at least partially due to the scrolling backgrounds & background effects.

Tekken 3 (PS1) seemed pretty amazing when it came out.

The visuals of Jet Set Radio knocked me on my ass when I played the demo on the Dreamcast.

Not really at the same level, but since it's top of mind for me right now - Halo 4 looks REALLY fucking good. Doubly surprising for me since the previous games looked fine, but never really pushed it like this one does.

I remember that Virtua Fighter 5 on the PS3 really blew me away

@jsnyder82 said:

But I remember seeing a Rogue Squadron 2 demo at a Kmart around the time the Gamecube was first releasing, and thinking, "Whoa. I have to buy myself a Gamecube. This is so pretty." So I saved up some summer job money and bought one. At the time I didn't think games could look any better than that.

This is a great call. I remember the same thing, seeing it at a store, and it was what made me get a Gamecube. That Death Star trench level was god damn gorgeous.

For consoles, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory was amazing at the end of the Xbox cycle. It was better looking than 360 games for a while I think.

I remember Black being really good looking at the time, especially for a PS2 game. Looking back, it is still really good looking for a PS2 game.

@punkxblaze: Black does look amazing. I would say it's on par with graphically with the first Resistance game.

@ArtisanBreads said:

@jsnyder82 said:

But I remember seeing a Rogue Squadron 2 demo at a Kmart around the time the Gamecube was first releasing, and thinking, "Whoa. I have to buy myself a Gamecube. This is so pretty." So I saved up some summer job money and bought one. At the time I didn't think games could look any better than that.

This is a great call. I remember the same thing, seeing it at a store, and it was what made me get a Gamecube. That Death Star trench level was god damn gorgeous.

For consoles, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory was amazing at the end of the Xbox cycle. It was better looking than 360 games for a while I think.

Another good call. The lighting in that game, and the way light shined on objects, was amazing. Definitely pushing the Xbox to its limits.

@punkxblaze said:

I remember Black being really good looking at the time, especially for a PS2 game. Looking back, it is still really good looking for a PS2 game.

Definitely a beautiful game. Looking at the way the enemies are animated, how they run and how they react when you hit them, we've definitely made quite a lot of progress since 2005.

Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, Metal Gear Solid 2, and Oblivion showed me what to expect from their respective generations.

The E3 Demo for Everquest 2 was stunning, I thought they had made a giant leap in gaming graphics after viewing it

• F-Zero (Those Mode 7 graphics)
• Star Fox (Super FX Chip! 3D models)
• Virtua Fighter 2 (Detailed, textured models at 60fps)
• Panzer Dragoon 2 (Flying and shooting through a detailed, textured 3D environment)
• Super Mario 64 (A 3D world to explore)
• Star Wars Shadows of the Empire (Battle of Hoth, space battles)
• Final Fantasy 7 (CG cutscenes)
• Ridge Racer Type 4 (Better looking than any Playstation 1 game had a right to be)
• Soul Calibur (Models, lighting tricks)
• Shenmue (Full realized city, amazing character models and facial animation)
• The Bouncer (Too bad the actual game sucked)
• Grand Theft Auto 3 (Massive city to explore)
• Project Gotham Racing 3 (Never had racing games looked so good)
• Halo 4 (The full power of the X-Box 360)

Doom

Kings Quest 5

Wipeout HD, haven't played a racing game with quite the amount of polish and detail, still is amazing.

A couple of older games come to mind:

- Mortal Kombat 3

- Quake (the first one)

- Final Fantasy VIII

- Unreal Tournament

- Final Fantasy X

- Devil May Cry

-Super Mario World

-Black

-Motorstorm.

Definitely Half-Life 2. Whenever a video or screenshot would make it's way onto the internet or a magazine I would damn near have a heart attack from the excitement.

I still remember seeing and playing Gran Turismo 3 and Final Fantasy X when I was six. It was mind-blowing.

Dead of Alive 3 on the original Xbox. It was just the most amazing thing I'd ever seen back then. The backgrounds, the characters, the stage design, it looked awesome to me.

I doubt it's aged well, but a decade ago it was enough to motivate me to buy an Xbox.

@PenguinDust: Actually, I still think it looks really good.

Donkey Kong Country. Everything looks great in that game and those fish... they're real.

Final Fantasy VII. Those CG videos!!!

Gran Turismo. Those replays looked exactly like real racing on TV.

Resident Evil 2. Those pre-rendered backgrounds totally looked like real places back then.

Parasite Eve/Final Fantasy VIII. Those CG videos!!!! (one more ! then for FFVII)

Metal Gear Solid. It looked so good and IN engine all the time. Just that much more immersive than games using CG videos.

Metal Gear Solid 2. One of the last time i was truly stunned by how realistic visuals had become.

And Half-Life 2. For the same reasons as Metal Gear Solid 2.

Everything else since then just doesn't leave a lasting impression like those games did, not even games looking as good as Crysis or Uncharted 2.

Gears of War when I first played it was pretty incredible looking for its time. FF13 had an art style for sure but the graphics were amazing nonetheless on 360. That 12 min. pc trailer for BF3 was drool worthy for sure. Red Dead was no slouch either, especially the environments and weather effects. Both Dead Space games looked incredibly sharp to me, especially 2. And finally, DiRT 2 looks fucking amazing still, both the car models and the scenery.

It might be Kingdom Hearts 2 for me...not that they were supper amazing, I just remember anticipating the game a lot, and being excited particularly about the graphics when I saw them, playing the game for the first time. Now I wouldn't even be phased by the visual transition from the first to the second game, to the point where I don't know why I was so struck by the graphics when I first saw them when it came out. I suppose as a kid it had a greater affect on me, and my excitement for the game made them seem better than they actually were.

More recently Journey would be that game for me.

Back when GTA 3 first game out. No open world game before came close.

i had a good amount of games for the ps2, so it surprised me how great halo looked when i finally bought an xbox. that's really the only game that seemed a lot better than other stuff at the time. i might be misremembering.

@zombie2011: i completely forgot about kameo! that is definitely my pick. it was the first game i played of that generation and it looked insane.

@NyxFe: Yeah, the witcher 2 has to be one of the most compelling examples of where modern machines and great artists combined can bring landscape art in games. Added with a brilliant weather cycle and beautiful lighting, it remains, to my mind, the game that "most blew me away" graphically when it came out.

I love the fact I'm not the only one saying Half Life 2. When I sat down and played that game at a friend's I just could not believe my eyes, especially the physics.

I also think that that game has held up really well.

Just Cause 2 was the first game I played on my gaming PC. Was fucking blown away.

A few games come to mind.

Giants:Citizen Kabuto: I remember being fucking blown away at this game. It had these huge environments and looked just crazy. For a game back in 2000 it was intense looking.

Sonic Adventure (1): This one I remember being blown away seeing the whale scene. The Dreamcast was such a huge leap forward in technology.

Nights into Dreams: Maybe this one isn't very justified, but I remember it being one of the first 3D games I saw that just amazed me at the time.

Those first Gears of War trailers, specifically the one of the multiplayer on that rainy mansion level. I remember downloading them from GT in HD and rewatching them over and over, showing them to everyone I knew.
 
Also Crysis.

Lost Planet was the first time i was ever blown away by something on a visual level. I remember seeing it on display for the Xbox360 at an EB games, and the game just looked unreal. The animation priority was unheard of at the time, and i felt like i was watching something similar to a Pixar movie.

First times being properly blown away by graphics, taken a back and gone all whoa?
 
2D: Art of Fighting on the NeoGeo. Scaling graphics, huge sprites, superb animation and sound. It started that train of thought that led to be becoming an arcade collector. No arcade title before that had the same impact.
 
3D: Virtua Fighter (the second Sega Model1 hardware title apparently) in a standard upright cabinet, high resolution shiz reminding me of airforce flight sims I had seen and sure enough, it was a co-op with Sega and Lockheed Martin for hardware. Daytona USA, Ridge Racer blew me away even better but a proper wheel and seat helped those.
 
 
I had an Amiga and Psygnosis had many games of fancier design but never something that knocked me back in awe.

Crysis, not because it blew me away but because it blew me away when I first played this fucking year.

Jesus.

I'll throw another one out there that I don't think I've seen anyone mention, but seems like an obvious choice: Metroid Prime. Consider the fact that MP1 came out in 2002 and is still, in my opinion, a wonderful game to look at. The atmospheric effects, art design, it was all worthy of a knocked-on-my-ass "Holy crap, video games can look this good". moment.

Also Windwaker. No, it's not the most graphically advanced thing ever-- far from it, but I had never seen anything like that art style in a video game before. Plus, when upscaled to HD (through *cough cough* means.), it holds up due to its accommodatingly simple style.

Probably FFX, FF7 and 8's cutscenes were pretty awesome, but X looked pretty fucking good out of cutscenes when it came out.

Ocarina of Time

Uncharted 3 as a more recent example

When I first played Grim Fandango back in 1998, I thought the graphics were beautiful and very artistic. It did a great job of introducing you to the macabre world the game was set in, and the story and voice acting also helped immensely. I still think it's one of the most original adventure games I've ever played, and I will miss it because I recently gave away a lot of my old PC Games to Goodwill.

As for games of this generation, I think the games I thought looked the most amazing were the first Assassins Creed, and the first Mass Effect. Each games in the two series became more visually stunning than the last one.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World. The art by Paul Robertson is incredible. Doubt anyone else would have posted that.

Crysis, The Witcher 2, and Battlefield 3. The only older game that really impressed me was Unreal Tournament 2004, but then again I have a shitty memory.

MDK when it came out. I had never seen glass/reflective surfaces that looked like that before and it was amazing to me.

The original Assassins Creed. Really hammered home the generational shift for me.

• Doom
• Half Life 2
• Crysis
• Witcher 2

On consoles I remember Dead Space really leaving an impression, especially some of the atmospheric lighting and just the design of the ship interiors. Gears of War convinced me I needed an Xbox.

Okami, Wind Waker, and Viewtiful Joe all amazed me and still look fantastic today. I'm a sucker for cel shading and whatnot and those games are beautiful.

Halo 3 really impressed me. First 360 game I got and it was real pretty what with all the funky lighting and colours and explosions and stuff. Most recently Uncharted 2 really blew me away. The animation quality, art, the environments...damn, son. Uncharted 3 looks just as good, if not better, but 2 was the one to make an impression.