Old games that aged well visually

I started playing Doom 3 for the first time earlier today and I was really surprised at how well it holds up visually. And I do mean VERY surprised. It basically looks like an early XBOX 360 game. So I am curios if you can recommend me some older games (PC mostly) that hold up well visually. They can be older then Doom 3, but games that you think still look nice.

I am not obsessed with graphics, but I haven't played games on PC prior to the PS3/X360 era and I want to play some older games that hold up well.

Now back to Doom 3, that game looks so good! I took a few screenshots it's just so impressive for the time. I didn't install any mods, it's all original graphics including the 4:3 resolution.

Obviously it will look dated compared to modern games, but I guess I am so surprised because I was gaming on a PS2 during that time and didn't know much about PC games (or this game) back then. But it seems that Doom 3, Half Life 2 and Far Cry pretty much had next-gen visuals a year before the Xbox 360 was out.

The jump from PS2 to PS3/360 was HUGE, but I guess PC had it first.

Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, Jak and Daxter, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, SMT Nocturne, Silent Hill 3...

Half Life 2 is obvious but you mentioned Far Cry and I was going to say that. To me that was the most impressive looking game for a long time after it came out. In general, good game too. I didn't like the monsters but the rest was outstanding.

It's probably the worst out of the games you mentioned looks wise but I have to recommend Max Payne 2 as its one of my favorite games. I have replayed it more than any other game (and did very recently) and it still looks pretty good and plays well. And the story and everything still shines and that's its best aspect. If you've never played it, worth a shot for sure.

Call of Duty still should look pretty good. CoD 2 as well though that was an early 360 release.

If I can think of some others I'll return.

As someone who has played PC games alongside console for his whole life I can say that yes PC looked really good up to 360 but then I personally was really impressed with console games when they came along. Perfect Dark Zero was mindblowing (which is funny to think now... but I think the high review scores back up my feelings).

Full Throttle

Well, a ton of stuff from the 16-bit era still looks great due to art, and Genesis collections are available on Steam.

But 3D games? My mind went straight to any Kojima game, but they're not on PC as far as I know. Other than that, a lot of older games have mods available to make them look better than they should.

Age of Empires II!

Comanche from 1992. Sure, it's incredibly low res, but holy fuck, it took more than ten years before other games started catching up, especially the reflective water.

I also think many of the early home computer 3D games from when VGA/MCGA 256 color displays had been established, but before textures was much of a thing still look pretty striking, there was just a great use of color and specifically gradients back then (and early textured games generally look like shit):

All these images look a little squished though, since they were made for 320x200 in 4:3, but 320x200 is technically a 16:10 resolution, so the games were intended to be stretched vertically.

I played through Symphony of the Night for the first time last year. I half wrote a review and one of my lines in it notes how it is the beneficiary of both new hardware and 20 years of 2D games that came before it.

A lot of SNES era stuff. Super Mario World, Super Metroid, Link to the Past. Stuff still looks good!

However, you wanted PC stuff. Modded or unmodded?

Unmodded, Baldur's Gate 2 has really lovely map art and large monsters. The smaller creatures/humanoids though don't have any detail.

Freespace 2 still looks pretty good. And if you mod it up a bit, it looks very lovely.

Vampire the Masquerade had some spooky areas and in general, is a game worth playing.

Even without any of the graphical upgrades they've made in the past 10 years, World of Warcraft still looks phenomenal, texture resolution be damned. Carried solely by that fantastic art style, it is really something. That game did zone transitions so well back in 04', it was really breathtaking. I still think the transition from Elwynn Forest to Westfall, into Duskwood is one the most smooth and impressive atmospheric transitions I've ever seen in a game.

Any good looking 16 bit game still looks great. Mario World, Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid, Link to the past, ETC.

I second this. Glad I played a human first because I got to do those zones. Sadly redridge was awful. Those zones were so good, my friends who played other races made the long trek into Human zones.

I think cybernator on the snes still looks pretty bad ass.

halo ce, duh

Prince of Persia The Sands of Time. Character models look a bit rough but the artistic design of the environments are straight out of Arabian Nights.

I think few games have matched the scale of Shadow of the Colossus, and that PS2 version still looks pretty good. It just doesn't play very well with the bum framerate. Thankfully there's the HD version for that.

Total Annihilation is from 1997 and I still think it looks better than most other strategy games since, including greats like StarCraft (which came out the following year) or even modern imitations like Supreme Commander or Planetary Annihilation.

A good runner up is 2004's Dawn of War. Its effects, models, and animations still look kinda impressive by modern standards if you crank the settings up

The oldest game I can think of has to be Dragon's Lair...

Another is The Chaos Engine (but really, most things by The Bitmap Brothers...and by extension, Dan Malone):

Total Annihilation had a kinda uneven art style though, I think. The polygon unit models didn't quite mesh with the prerendered landscapes, especially since the landscapes used dithered 256 color images, while the units had anti-aliasing.

Mortal Kombat III, Ultimate and Trilogy.

Resident Evil 0

The rain, the glasses bouncing over the tables, the lighting effects... it's still one of the most beautiful Resident Evil games, and arguably the best looking survival horror Resident Evil.

Fable: The Lost Chapters

Good 3D graphics plus a quirky artstyle went a long way to make this game still good visually.

I think an obvious pick is Halo. But, I still think the two N64 Zeldas hold up well.

I really, really, really want to see Final Fantasy XII get the HD treatment. That game is incredibly impressive for the PS2. God of War is as well. God of War: Ghost of Sparta, the PSP game, also looks pretty great even when blown up for the PS3.

I think the only game I'd like to see get the HD treatment more is Metroid Prime. Now that game looks fantastic.

All the Halo games look pretty good still. I can play them without even noticing the graphics. The Wind Waker looks gorgeous still, but the HD version looks even better. I didn't think it could look better, but it does.

Snatcher.

Castlevania 3 to me still looks awesome.

I know it's not on PC but whatever this game is gorgeous

Games don't "age". If they looked good then, they look good now. If they looked like ass then, they look like ass now.

Wind Waker.

Super Mario World.

Most Nintendo stuff on the Wii.

The Metal Slug games are still some of my favourites, visually. The quality AND quantity of the animation etc is still impressive.

The reason Doom 3 (for example) holds up ("visually") is because of it being on PC. While it was released on console (XBOX) the PC version was on par with the PS3 or maybe 360 because PC has always been far far ahead of consoles. Developers only started focusing on consoles mid last gen some time (or started making phone/tablet games), but when they actually focused on PC the games they made were a couple generations ahead of anything the consoles were doing. For a long time the gap was very large- it's super weird how quickly the world seems to be forgetting about that.

Anyway, there's a lot of older games that still hold up visually as well as just playing them. Especially from the 2D era. A lot of those games especially hold up visually because of their simplicity. Genesis and SNES will probably be timeless because, on the good games made for those systems, the art was and will always be fantastic (even if playing on a modern TV actually lowers the quality for various reasons so playing on an old CRT TV is actually recommended when playing those games on their original consoles).

When you get to polygons and 3d animation there's a whole generation that may not hold up (with a few exceptions like Metal Gear Solid and some others which were actually pushing what was possible on consoles at the time), but there are still games even then that hold up and probably always will (although controls on any early polygonal game- even on PC- often do not hold up).

I was going to list games that I think hold up, but that would take forever.There are a lot, though. Hundreds of games.

Video games made to the best ability of any time will hold up in general (yes, you can even argue for some Atari 2600 games). Main reason being not a whole lot has actually changed that much- beyond the obvious visual upgrades.

These are mostly opinions and should not be mistaken for facts.

This is the opposite of what you're asking, but:

I'm trying to burn through my PS3 backlog. I just started playing through the God of War collection and the first game looks like fucking ass for a PS2 game that came out in 2005.

Halo 3. Just finished up the MCC version tonight. Game seriously looks incredibly on a 1080p display, of course it was still a far cry from that E3 2006 trailer.

Chronicles of Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay looks pretty incredible.

@bigboss1911 said:

Halo 3. Just finished up the MCC version tonight. Game seriously looks incredibly on a 1080p display, of course it was still a far cry from that E3 2006 trailer.

Halo 3 was a Far Cry?!?!?!

Oh yes, I played through that game in 1080p 1 year ago. It already supports widescreen, so it looked really good in HD.

Unlike the original PS2 version, I can re-map the stick controls, so the left and right axis won't be inverted. I normally play with the y axis inverted, but that game having the x axis also inverted was crazy!

Resident Evil Remake and Resident Evil Zero still look really good for games that came out in 2002.

As much as I don't care for the games, the cartoony days of Sierra's King's Quest and Space Quest games were pretty great looking. I just finished playing through Final Fantasy IX this last year too and I think that game's visual style definitely holds up today.

Also, old games weren't afraid of big, actually readable fonts, which sounds likea joke, but when you're blind as a bat, pausing to zoom in with your iPad's camera gets old really fast.

The Paper Mario games still look great, even the N64 one (although the resolution isn't so hot)

I also second Okami, that game is beautiful

Definitely this. Side note: Pretty excited for the re-release of REmake on the 20th.

Other than that, I always loved the look of the Sly Cooper games. Also, the last time I played Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth I remember thinking it still looked good considering its age (really good atmosphere in that one).

@fisk0: Wow, the first game looks surprisingly good for 1992.

Not a PC game but I feel like Metroid Prime still looks pretty good. I haven't gotten to the 2nd or 3rd one yet so don't quote me on those ones holding up. Also anything MGS looks great and all run at 60 FPS as far as I know.

World of Warcraft, hell, millions still play the game. Granted it doesn't look exactly the same as when it launched, but it still aged pretty good.

Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 hold up surprisingly well in my opinion. Likely because the focus is more on atmosphere than sheer graphical fidelity. Almost anything by Kojima looks good to this day. If you're a fan of sprite-based art there are nigh limitless options from the SNES and Gameboy eras. (I personally think the first two, maybe three generations of Pokemon still look nice, but it's hard to tell if that's just nostalgia coloring things for me).

Thx for your recommendations. I will try some of the games, starting with Cthulhu and Chronicles of Riddick. ( @redbullet685)

I played Okami back on PS2 and that was indeed a fantastic looking game (I think there is an HD release on PSN). It was a great game too even outside of the visuals. (@viciousbearmauling )

I am also curios to try the games that @fisk0 recommended, the screenshots look very interesting especially Inferno.

At the moment I am playing Far Cry alongside Doom 3, and for me personally I like the way Doom 3 plays more. I know people had split opinions on it when it originally launched but I like it's fast paced gameplay, and having to switch between the flashlight and guns creates some tense moments.

It's interesting to see how both of them excel visually at different things. Doom 3 looks really good when you are inside the base, but when you go outside on Mars the hills look pretty blocky, and the harsh lighting doesn't look realistic. Also I have to say that it was a real dick move of that guy to send me on the surface without a space suit; so I shot him.

Far Cry on the other hand looks really good when you are outside, and it has the best foliage I've seen of that era, but inside areas don't look nearly as good as the ones in Doom 3. I'll leave you with this screenshot of the first level, probably the most iconic scene in far Cry (yes, I like posting screenshots)

Road avenger on the mega cd was amazing at the time.

heres me playing the first couple of levels this was amazing back when it first came out !

Road avenger

• Dragon Quest VIII Journey of the Cursed King (most cell shaded games)
• Okami (again, just awesome style)
• Shadow of the Colossus (still impressive)
• Fatal Frame (ghosts are still scary as hell)
• Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance
• Jak and Daxter games
• Silent Hill 3 deserves a mention, characters look better then in Homecoming.

Doom 3 with or without mods still looks quite good yea. Some really good visual level design with all the little details and machinery and HD texture packs with some other mods bring it up to date.

I think the Homeworld games from 1999 and 2003 still look stunning today. Following a little fighter through a full blown battle is still a blast.

Ewwww wow, I thought Doom 3 was butt-ugly when it came out, forget now.

Easily the game that's aged the best for me where 3D graphics are concerned (ok ok, so it's kinda cheating) is Resident Evil on the Gamecube. That game looked phenominal back then and still looks really REALLY good now. In terms of visual coherency it looks much better than 99% of things that come out now, and was probably the best set of graphics to ever grace standard definition. With Ninja Gaiden on original Xbox coming a close second.

In terms of 2D graphics I think a lot of games have aged incredibly well, old Zelda games, old Mario games, Contra 3 looks incredible still, so does Super Metroid, etc. A lot of the classic 2D SNES-era games still look amazing now imo.

Pong

You can't improve on two lines and a dot. Plays just as fast (or as slow) now, as it did then.

@ezekiel: there are a host of ps1 games that would argue with you

@bigboss1911 said:

Halo 3. Just finished up the MCC version tonight. Game seriously looks incredibly on a 1080p display, of course it was still a far cry from that E3 2006 trailer.

When I think of old games I dont typically think of last generation games...