MiguelItUp
Member
Quake 1 (especially with Open GL)
Shenmue
DOOM 3
Resident Evil ReMake
Half-Life 2
Metal Gear Solid 2
Silent Hill 2
Shenmue
DOOM 3
Resident Evil ReMake
Half-Life 2
Metal Gear Solid 2
Silent Hill 2
-
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Excluding Crysis name one game graphically ahead of it's time.
- Thread starter Alphagear
- Start date
digoutyoursoul
Member
Resident Evil 4 on GameCube
darrylgorn
Member
Soapbox Killer
Grand Nagus
I would say the specifics of "fur shading" in Star Fox Adventures on Gamecube felt like something from the Next Gen.
VF3 in the Arcades legit felt like CGI when I first saw it.
And still looks outstanding 20 plus years later.
VF3 in the Arcades legit felt like CGI when I first saw it.
And still looks outstanding 20 plus years later.
Trogdor1123
Gold Member
What makes something “ahead” of its time? Is it that it pushes way too many polys and then runs bad or just introduces a new tech never before seen? I ask as it seems like we are mistaking revolutionary stuff vs evolutionary. I’m probably splitting hairs though
spartan30gr
Member
brian0057
Banned
The Wind Waker to this day still looks amazing.
There hasn't been a single photorealistic game (Crysis very much included) that hasn't aged like warm milk on a summer day.
Stylized > Realism.
Sygma
Member
Mercenaries on Xbox was something else
DrAspirino
Banned
Doom 3
Flight Simulator 2020
.kkrieger (2004). That game was so resource intensive that even the best graphics cards of the era couldn't handle it over 15 fps, because of how it was written and optimized for space (it uses ONLY 96 KB).
Try it. It will make your CPU/GPU scream in pain.
Flight Simulator 2020
.kkrieger (2004). That game was so resource intensive that even the best graphics cards of the era couldn't handle it over 15 fps, because of how it was written and optimized for space (it uses ONLY 96 KB).
Try it. It will make your CPU/GPU scream in pain.
fart town usa
Gold Member
Starfox Advetures.
Just realized that the game also runs at 60fps.
Just realized that the game also runs at 60fps.
Trogdor1123
Gold Member
I loved the way it looked too. It raises a good question too, is art style something to consider?
Punished Miku
Human Rights Subscription Service
Ninja Gaiden Black
Soul Calibur
Soul Calibur II
Soul Calibur
Soul Calibur II
El Pistolero
Banned
The first Donkey Kong Country...
El Pistolero
Banned
Probably not the most popular choice but Infamous Second Son on OG PS4 felt like true next-gen when it was first released.
Sucker Punch are up there with the best of the best, graphics wise. Infamous SS still looks amazing to this day...
brian0057
Banned
I think art style should be considered first and foremost before you even start counting the amount of polygons you can push.
SJRB
Gold Member
Remember me
It used material based shaders a lot, which is a big reason games looked a lot better on PS4/X1 compared to the 360/PS3.
One of the most underrated, underappreciated games ever, written off by press and gamers alike because of its meme-worthy name and unfortunate gameplay demos.
While moment-to-moment gameplay may be generic, its artstyle and world design was incredible and looks amazing even today. The visual style is top-notch with incredible world building.
Diamond in the rough, but still a masterpiece.
I love this game and will defend it until the day I die.
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Alphagear
Member
Could be anything provided it looks better than the competition and how long before other games emulated it.
Scud Race was released during the 32/64bit era in arcade in 1996. Not only looks a generation ahead of other games but runs at 60fps too.
Personally only when Gran Turismo 3 was released in 2001 was it overtaken.
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kyliethicc
Member
Knack
Nikana
Go Go Neo Rangers!
blastprocessor
The Amiga Brotherhood
Far Cry 1
Starbuck2907
Member
Lots of good mentions here. While unfinished, I’d also say that Star Citizen is easily ahead of it’s time already.
itsjustJEFF
Member
Yea, it looked amazing. This was the quintessential PC look, when I thought about PC games... very good textures with lower polys. The poly counts had not caught up yet.And for all the incredibly impressive feats that they each brought to the table, nothing blew me away like seeing Doom 3 in action for the first time:
The lighting, textures and shading were just that far ahead. You needed a monster PC to see it - or a friend with one, like I had - but there was simply nothing else on that level.
Redneckerz
Those long posts don't cover that red neck boy
Severance: Blade of Darkness accomplished much of the same and without having to use ARB assembly shaders back in 2001, 3 years before Doom 3.And for all the incredibly impressive feats that they each brought to the table, nothing blew me away like seeing Doom 3 in action for the first time:
The lighting, textures and shading were just that far ahead. You needed a monster PC to see it - or a friend with one, like I had - but there was simply nothing else on that level.
If we are time frame specific, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay accomplished much of the same in the same year and for Xbox (Arguably it looks better than the Doom 3 port Vicarious Visions made a year later) and stands as one of the best movie-tie in games of all time.
What Doom 3 was impressive for was its Ultra Quality mode that demanded a GPU with 512 MB VRAM. Nothing like that existed back in 2004 safe for the 3D Labs Wildcat line.
Doom 3 also still holds up in 2022 because of its unusual rendering approach - Still not many games attempt stencil shadowing as their primary means of lighting.
That's quite literally not why graphics card couldn't handle it - In fact a Geforce 3 or Radeon 8500 can run that. What .kkrieger does is procedural generation of textures and even music - Instead of having a texture asset, it has something akin to a text file with a description of said texture and how to make it. The result is a vastly smaller executable.
The resource intensive part is that it has to precalculate everything to make the game run as intended - Which means decompressing assets, stuff done on the CPU utilizing the compressor .kkrunchy. As such .kkrieger liked Pentium 4's at the time.
Technical details of .kkrieger:
The Procedural World, Part 1 - Twenty Sided
www.shamusyoung.com
Interview: Frugal Fragging with .kkrieger
Howard Wen interviews Fabian Giesen to get the story behind .kkrieger, an impressive FPS game prototype that won a contest category for a game no larger than 96KB at 'demo-scene' gathering Breakpoint 2004.
Ran fine on a Geforce 6150SE IGP and Athlon X2.
Try it. It will make your CPU/GPU scream in pain.
Its also ahead of its release date.
Ulysses 31
Member
Metro 2033
Kagey K
Banned
Calling 911 Melts Beams
Banned
primal rage on the atari jaguar cd
RydonStarLives
Member
Can't believe no one mentioned Alone In The Dark yet. First 3D commercial game? I am assuming there was something else before it, but it was one of the first, and the first one that I ever played. Scared the pants off me as a kid. Anyone else here still have a fear of werewolves jumping through the window of their attic?
Fare thee well
Neophyte
Rainbowsix 3 Ravenshield, but few had the computer to run it well at the turn of the 2000s. It still looks sleek enough today for a game that came out in fucking 2003 
. I'd say not as many people were pc gamers at that time either.
. I'd say not as many people were pc gamers at that time either.
Marvel14
Banned
Gonna focus on 16 bit and 64 bit
Dragon's Lair. Cartoon graphics on 16 bit systems. Poor gameplay and load times though.
Secret of Monkey Island- beautiful to look at.
Shadow of the Beast - gorgeous 16 bit visuals.
Yoshi's Island...lovely crayon style art that hadn't been done before.
DK Country...more realistic visuals than ever before.
Mario64, Virtua Fighter and Ocarina of Time - hello to early 3d art styles in a platformer, brawler and action rpg.
Warcraft 2 and Star Craft? It was the attention to detail that was impressive.
Windwaker-.First time you could play a fully fledged cartoon natively?
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Squarehard
Member
Wind Waker brought the cel shading craze to the forefront.
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Original Far Cry on PC.
Kagey K
Banned
It really wasn't. The graphics were OK, gunplay sucked and there were multiple games that did exploration better.
Indiana Jones and the Emporers Tomb was better in almost every way (and they aped most of thier game from it)
Tschumi
Member
I was only talking about the graphics, that's what this thread is about isn't it? The foliage, the flooded city, just a number of moments that showed a real understanding of the ps3 before many other titles.. every subsequent release looked better, this one was just a solid start on a tough platform.. i guess your Indiana Jones thing is about gameplay, my narrative was just about graphics yeah
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Unknown?
Member
I disagree. Silent Hill 3 looked just as good if not better. Granted it was just small corridors whereas RE4 had much larger stages and was technically more impressive.
amigastar
Member
Ultima 6: False Prophet
This opening scene cinematic was mindblowing at the time.
Also....
Have you tried Benchmarksims BMS mod for Falcon 4.0? Unbelievable what they managed to squeeze out for the old falcon.
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Topher
Gold Member
Wow.....that looks amazing. No, I haven't played the game in years. Maybe I should do that....
SF Kosmo
Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Model 3 hardware was definitely one of those moments. Virtual Fighter 3 I think came out a little bit before Scud Race/Super GT but both were mind blowing and were my go to reference points when explaining the new wave of PC 3D accelerators coming out around that time.
I can think of a bunch of other moments like this, and most of them are either Sega or id:
Daytona USA -- first use of texture filtering in an era where texture mapping at all was very uncommon. It was also higher res and faster framerates than anything similar at the time.
Quake -- the use of static lightmaps to do shading on the environments was revolutionary. Terminator Future Shock had beaten id to the punch on things like mouse look and 3D characters but the lighting and the raw speed of the Quake engine made it a milestone. And GLQuake made it the standard bearer for a new gen.
Ultima Underworld -- This one arrived so ahead of it's competition at a time when everything moved somfast it's hard to process how far ahead it really was. Fully texture mapped environments with atmosphere and interactivity, like holy shit. Doom raised the bar and was also mind blowing about a year later by doing it all faster and crisper and smoother, but they were iterating on Looking Glass' breakthrough.
Space Harrier -- Ok, Hang On rocked this hardware first, but Space Harrier was the one I saw first as.a.kid and it also took it to another level. The amount of crazy action on screen, the forward scrolling, the raw speed of it, the giant sprites that never pixelated as they got closer... Perfection.
Blue Lightning -- OK, sure there were better looking games that this in the arcade but the fact that this little handheld system was doing a forward scrolling super scaler game better than the consoles of the day could was utterly mind blowing.
Hard Drivin' -- Like many kids, this game was my first experience with true polygonal 3D. It wasn't actually the first, but it was way ahead of anything that was out at the time, and unlike games like I, Robot, it gave your a world you could actually negotiate in 3D and it was so incredibly different than anything in the driving genre at the time.
Rescue on Fractalus -- I still don't get how this kind of 3D graphics with complex terrain was possible on 8bit Atari hardware.
Starglider II -- This arrived before Hard Drivin' but I played it after. One of the first games to use filled polygons at home, and it wasn't just stuck in the depths of space, it gave you worlds to fly around. Played great too.