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[Thanati]

Possibly the first open world game and running on a 48K machine. The graphics for its time were amazing.

 

[Halo2redvsblue]

Halo 4 looked like it was a Xbox one game yet it ran on the 360

 

[BusierDonkey]

PGR4 on XBOX 360

I'll second that. The environment capture teams were in a different league. In the New York track building miles away lined up exactly like in the real city. It's too bad they never got a shot with newer hardware and the added geometry they'd have access to. I took about half of these and lined them up with Google street view. The rest were iirc posted on GTPlanet back in the day.

 

[PSlayer]

Tekken 3 on PS1 was a shower.

Silent hill 3 was insane on PS2.

Final fantasy 13,despite all its problems, was also a very good looking for an early PS3 game.

 

[BigTnaples]

I'll second that. The environment capture teams were in a different league. In the New York track building miles away lined up exactly like in the real city. It's too bad they never got a shot with newer hardware and the added geometry they'd have access to. I took about half of these and lined them up with Google street view. The rest were iirc posted on GTPlanet back in the day.

Yeah these games were fucking amazing. They never got BC Team updates for new consoles? Shame. I’d kill to play these in 4K60/120 and 16xAF on XBSX.

 

[rolandss]

In my life? Mario 64 has to be a contender for the greater picture.

But my #1 will forever be this:



Killzone 2 From e3 2007.

For those not familiar with PS back then. In 2005 Sony showed off a KZ2 trailer that looked PHENOMENAL. New CEO Jack Tretton mistakenly said at the time in an interview post conference that it was in game footage. This ended up not being true. There are several accounts of what happened, but I believe officially he said later in a separate interview he thought they were referring to Resistance (iirc), and confused the titles.

This was one of many PR hits the ps3 took early in its cycle. People mocked Sony for this, saying it would never be possible.

Guerilla took that personal.

In 2007, news broke that they had finished KZ2 and the graphics would be earth changing. Much skepticism occurred, naturally, culminating to a secret pre-event that was invite only before e3 2007, and didn’t allowed recording.

Now, flash back to message boards at the time. I frequented the official PS boards mainly. The hype was brewing. N4G, a website at the time that was heavily Xbox skewed (in modern gen that has virtually flipped) was flooded with leaks and news. The official PS forums - I remember the official thread getting massive, and finally a grainy sneaky recording came out showing a brief bit of the rag doll mechanics in a Helghast being shot.

Holy. Crap.

E3 2007 was, IMO, the turning point for Sony. Their conference came with massive hype, trailer after trailer and industry speak. Then… the last segment came. “We have one more thing”…

Then the trailer starts… which starts off the same way as the CGI trailer from years earlier. And then what we saw afterwards became a major gear in turning Sony in the direction that has led them back to the forefront today.

That was the first of 2 major “mic drops” from Sony (the no DRM e3 being second) and my favorite e3 of all time. I will never forget the applause at the Sony conference afterwards and how much the talk shifted regarding what the ps3 was capable of following.

Epic.

So yeah, KZ2 is mine. Still my favorite shooter of all time.

I found a PS3 in my apartment's trash room with a copy of KZ2 and a few other games with a note "working and free to good home". Took upstairs, fired up KZ2 for the first time in like 12 years or more. Man that game holds up well even now once you get used to the slow ass film-like frame rate.

 

[Scotty W]

Og Super Mario Bros looks better than almost everything released for years afterward, and still looks fine in motion.

 

[Alphagear]

As usual for these topics, people lose the plot and post games that they liked or are advanced compared to its predecessor. The topic is about which game left a graphical mark at the time as Crysis did.

- Silent Hill 2 was never considered a graphics powerhouse. It looked miles better than the first but its not a graphical benchmark...at all.
- Turok....what has Turok done better than Goldeneye?
- Sacrifice... I played this day one, the world is intriguing but to say this is next gen graphics that pushed the envelope, game looked weak even on release but it was a creepy story.
- Dead Space 2 .... Its just another TPS, what is so graphically amazing about it in that period beside the fact you just remember it as a great horror game? Its was never pushing unseen graphics like Crysis.

I can go on forever with other examples. IMO as far as memmory serves, these games were "WOW" at the time and considered the best of its time that everyone needed to catch up to:

- Unreal 1
- Outcast 1
- Gears of War 1
- Mario 64
- Gran Turismo 3
- The Order 1886 still looks insane today. If you have it, use photo mode and zoom into some far off place away from your character and it will be perfectly modeled.

Completely agree. That was my main point of the thread. Not just great looking games but ahead of its time. Reason I mentioned Scud Race excluding Crysis which is universally regarded as the most graphically advanced game ahead of its time.

Also agree with the games you mentioned.

 

[Represent.]

Cant believe theres been nothing like Crysis ever since. Love me some consoles but youre damn right I would have built a monster PC had ANY DEV been taking exclusive advantage of superior hardware.

 

[Krappadizzle]

HOD is amazing, but it only shines with the open source reimplementation HODE. The original game on Playstation, Saturn and PC had really downgraded colors (probably because it was gonna be released like 3 or 4 years before), slow framerate and crappy aspect ratio. HODE allows interpolated animations and better aspect ratio + PSX assets on many platforms.

I actually still have this game on PSX and was wanting to do a playthrough again and I didn't know about HODE. I'm def. gonna check it out.

 

[Futaleufu]

F-15 Strike Eagle arcade looked pretty good

 

[Knightime_X]

Donkey Kong Country - SNES

 

[JMarcell]

Resident Evil 4 when it first came out for Gamecube in 2005.

 

[Romulus]

Half Life Alyx. 2 years old and still not matched.

This actually exceeded the tech hype for Crysis imo. On top of that, Alyx is a far superior game

 

[CRAIG667]

Halo CE.

I remember going to a friend's house and my eyes almost popping out, then they popped out again when he handed me the Duke controller