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[MasterDerico]

Tekken 3 ps1, Soul Calibur (dc), Shennue (dc), Virtua fighter 3 (arcade)...etc etc

 

[Ezquimacore]

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Don't know if you can count it as graphics but Final Fantasy 10 FMVs were peak PS2 boom excess.

 

[jigglet]

OP you got that right. Scud Racer - I remember looking at that in awe.

 

[yurinka]

Knack

 

[GeekyDad]

^This

 

[k_trout]

farcry

 

[Redneckerz]

• Strike Commander: 1993 DOS game that brought advanced texture mapping, a custom Realspace Engine and demanded a Pentium.
• The Gift: A PC/PS2 game that did Doom 3 stencil shadows before Severance/Blade.
• Severance/Blade: The Edge Of Darkness: Doom 3 style lighting and stencil shadows, context aware animation, physics.
• Outcast: uses the Paradise Engine, being software rendered mean't it had soft shadows, depth of field, motion blur, shaded water. It looks a bit like X360's Kameo
• Transformers PS2: Melbourne House's outing rendered huge draw distances, massive tree rendering, bloom and more. It looks more like a low res PS3 game.
• Shrek Xbox: Pioneered deferred shading and lighting
• SWAT: Global Strike Team: 2003 like Mirror's Edge but earlier, had pre-baked global illumination (or attempted), gave it a unique look.
• Stolen: stencil shadows.
• Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict: Using a custom fork of UE2, it had highly advanced shaders for a OG Xbox game.
• Wreckless: 60 fps and advanced post-processi g
• Manhunter: post-processing
• Star Wars Episode 1: Battle For Naboo: 2000/2001 N64 game utilizing custom microcode for enhamced draw distances and colored lighting
• The World Is Not Enough N64: Looked like a Gamecube FPS at times
• Quake 2 PSX: Custom engine in assembly allows almost full Quake 2 to be played at a stable 30 fps with colored lighting.
• Mirror's Edge: 2008 game with Beast pre-baked global illumination which still looks good.

 

[Damigos]

Gran Turismo
Gran Turismo 3
MGS2
Driveclub
God of War 3

 

[Oddvintagechap]

Im drawing blanks but…

The Shadow of the Colossus.
God of War 2
TLoU1
The Order 1886
TLoU2

 

[Chris_Rivera]

Killzone SF is still pretty advanced in my opinion. The Infamous PS3 games were great looking.

Played most of my games from the those two eras on 1:1 pixel mapping displays, so I could experience the game in its truest form.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Still looks great, the lighting and materials are very good.

Pre calculated global illumination. Same as AC Unity. Lighting in these games is super gorgeous. I prefer this solution over dynamic day and night cycle. I wish more games opted to use it.

 

[Trunx81]

Uncharted 2, dashing through the snow.
It felt like a freaking movie when I played it back in the days.

 

[Three]

Probably been discussed a dozen times but what game was graphically ahead of the competition during it's release. Excluding Crysis of course which is probably THE ultimate game ahead of it's time.

Yes it's an Arcade game but for me personally it is Scud Race. Game released in 1996 during the 32/64-bit era.

Not until the DC/PS2/GC/Xbox era did we see this graphical fidelity.

I was always amazed seeing this at the arcade.

 

[Fluo]

Water in Morrowind.

 

[samoilaaa]

this game looked amazing , though you needed pc from the future to play it smooth

 

[b0uncyfr0]

Definitely Unity. Don't give two sh*ts about the pre-baked lighting argument. It looks glorious.

 

[Alphagear]

I was always amazed seeing this at the arcade.

Yes me too.

Jaw dropped seeing it considering what we were playing on PS1, Sega Saturn and N64.

For me no racer came close until Gran Turismo 3 released on the PS2.

 

[jufonuk]

Super Mario bros.

Could the PC do scrolling like that ? Not until Carmac figured it out and tried to port SMB3 to PC

 

[Sygma]

Max Payne, RE 4, F E A R, giants citizen kabuto, sacrifice, homeworld, unreal

 

[Business]

Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast outright shit on the arcade games of the time.

Gran Turismo 3 was a massive leap in visuals over any other racer on the market and even GT4 wasn't quite as good looking.

Rogue Squadron II on Gamecube was bananas for a launch title. People were comparing it favorably to the movies.

Those are super solid picks.

 

[Tschumi]

Really though this has to be mgs2 the thread

 

[ClosBSAS]

Killer instinct arcade was beast.

 

[darrylgorn]

Half Life 2 springs to mind.

This one seems a good choice. You can play that or Black Mesa today and not feel any disparity in immersion or gameplay.

 

[Sygma]

This one seems a good choice. You can play that or Black Mesa today and not feel any disparity in immersion or gameplay.

I wished this was true. Gave black Mesa a spin a couple of months ago and forced myself to finish it. Didn't age well at all compared to what the fans are saying

 

[Star-Lord]

This game looked amazing , though you needed pc from the future to play it smooth.

Can we really count this? That video is showcasing a mod. Unity still looks good unmodded, but nowhere near that good.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Shenmue - DC

Elite - BBC

Knight Lore - ZX Spectrum

Doctor Hauzer - 3DO

VF3 - Arcade

F29 Retaliator - Atari St

Tomb Raider - Sega Saturn

Star Blade - Arcade

 

[Sygma]

Thinking about it it's literally super safe to throw in any game made by Massive entertainment. Ground control was so ahead of everything, they did it again with world in conflict and after that they just taught studios how to make an insanely detailed and cohesive always online open world which basically is still the best looking online game

 

[Belthazar]

Final Fantasy XII definitely wowed me on the PS2, from the amazing character models to the dense and complex environments. It's no wonder the HD remaster still looks so good even today. Was also way ahead of it's time gameplay wise too.

 

[Fredrik]

The Last Ninja - C64 1987
Shadow of the Beast - Amiga 1989
Donkey Kong Country - SNES 1994
Soul Calibur - Dreamcast 1999
Gears of War - Xbox360 2006
Uncharted - PS3 2007
The Matrix Awakens UE5 Demo - PS5/XSX 2021

 

[Martinski43]

Outcast from 1999

 

[spyshagg]

Driveclub






Killzone shadow fall



Motorstorm

 

[tkscz]

Conker's bad fur day

By the time the game came out the PS2 was on its way and the Dreamcast was a few months in and this N64 game somehow managed to stack up to several of the games released for far more powerful hardware.

I don't know how Rareware did it, but they managed to pull off something I didn't think the N64 was capable of. Texture that didn't look like straight mud, insane draw distances, crazy good lighting and real time shadows. Yeah, frame rate would take a real hit at points but the majority of the game stuck to at least 20fps (that's good for the N64).

 

[darrylgorn]

I would say a lot of titles on the original XBOX would be most representative of a leap in graphical fidelity that wouldn't be matched for a long while after.

Halo, Forza, Battlefront, Splinter Cell, Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive are some that come to mind.

 

[SpongebobSquaredance]

the Dreamcast

 

[nothing]

Doom 3
Farcry

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Driveclub






Killzone shadow fall



Motorstorm

The fact that 2 out of 3 games of your post are Evolution Studios makes me depressed.
If someone would give me back one Sony studio, this would be it...that's the one i'd choose (yeah not Sony Japan...Evolution Studios would be it)

 

[samoilaaa]

Can we really count this? That video is showcasing a mod. Unity still looks good unmodded, but nowhere near that good.

non mod gameplay , for a 2014 game it looks amazing

 

[assurdum]

Doom 3, Half life 2, Splinter Cell Chaos theory drops my jaw at the time. Also Killzone and Infamous on PS4. Just The Matrix with UE5 give me the same this generation. Though I hate the reconstruction method, it's really visible around the character head in gameplay and cause a similar artifacts which remind a lot the interpolation setting of the TV.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

Physics would have to be GTA IV & Red Faction Guerrilla, Still don't see games that level of physics with character animation other than RDR2 and Max Payne 3. As for Red Faction and environmental destruction. No game has tried or come close to it. Maybe Crackdown 3 MP but even that was a locked down map not an open world like RFG was.

Visuals at the time for EA's Black on PS2 & Xbox. was crazy good looking by the folks who worked on the Burnout games.

 

[tommib]

Resident Evil 4.

 

[Esppiral]

Shenmue

 

[MilkyJoe]

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Quake. There was nothing like it or even remotely close.

I don't even like including Crysis mainly because the game was so poorly optimized. The original still struggles to hit 60 fps.

 

[Star-Lord]

Non-mod gameplay, for a 2014 game it looks amazing.

I never said it wasn’t a looker, but the difference between the unmodded and modded versions is night and day. And although it does look good for a 2014 game, I think describing it as amazing is a bit of a stretch.

 

[Nikana]

I was going to saw Baten Katos but then I googled it. Kid Goggles there.

I remember playing Prey at the time and thinking it didnt get nearly enough love in the graphics department but i had an obsession with ID Tech at the time.

Rage had its issues, but that game running at 60 FPS on xbox 360/PS3 was nuts at that fidelity.

 

[Roufianos]

Killzone 2 and Gears of War looked significantly better than any other games on console when they released, in my humble opinion.

 

[Dust-by-Monday]

Silent Hill 3 constantly comes to mind. Everytime I play it, I think to myself... this is the freakin PS2!!! It looks good for it's age.

 

[Altares13th]

Tomorrow children used voxel cone tracing. Which is what UE4 had promised before Epic changed their mind ( consoles being too weak).

 

[nemiroff]

Comanche Maximum Overkill (1992, MS DOS). First game (well before Outcast btw) to use a fully fledged voxel based 3D world.