What makes a game good is the graphics - NSF56K

Brolo

What's the prettiest image you've ever seen of a video game?

Remember there's a difference between realitstic rendering and art style - Crysis has the former, World of Warcraft has the latter, but either can make a screenshot beautiful.



SotC


Freespace 2


Monkey Island


Gran Turismo 5

darleysam

A quick GIS doesn't really bring up anything that captures the splendour of it, but X3 has some absolutely gorgeous things to see. Just hanging out in space as ships cruise past, going about their duties, as the weather patterns drift across the surface of the slowly rotating nearby planet.

Halo 3 had some stunningly beautiful vistas, helped largely by the brilliant lighting that Bungie have going on in it.

BioShock, obviously. There was a place at the Center Parcs (Longleat, fact fans) I stayed at last week, that had similar art deco stylings to Rapture. Was pretty cool.

Fatty McBeardo

From this gen I'd have to say it's really close between Halo 3, Bioshock, and Mass Effect.

From a few years ago, Half Life 2. Seeing the drones flooding out of the Citadel, far in the distance, was spectacular. And pretty scary, knowing they were all looking for me.

darleysam

Dammit, I need more pretty pictures. Someone impress me with fantastic looking games.

PotU

X3 Reunion.

Raiden333

Easily one of my favorite settings:

Kyougu

The new PS3 Naruto and DBZ game have some of the best use of cel shading ever. The DBZ game looks very impressive, and there's a demo for anyone who really wants to check it out.

randombattle

Spoiler for teh huge.

But yeah. The ship in Crysis. This whole part was just amazing looking.

The_Scarab

Yeah. Crysis is preposterously good looking. Cries of 'realism is boring' are clearly from the people who havent played the game to the parts that show high artistic merit.


Here is my choise. Spoilered for h scroll rape. Halo 3 doesnt have technically the best graphics, but the art is really good in my opinion.

PunkBoy

I love the blue washout the explosion makes.

Raslin

harvest

X3

The_Scarab

I wanna et some direct feed images of COD4 on my hdtv.

Minor technicals aside it looks shit hot.

darleysam

On X3, I remember how I nearly fell out of my chair the first time I undocked from a station. I was sat there, expecting it to take me to some kind of 'undocking' animation showing my ship unhooking and flying away. To see it seamlessly just remove the space station UI and go straight into me directly flying away, that was not what I expected. Doesn't sound like much, but I found it quite something.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is another fine example. Visually it isn't the most stunning, but the atmosphere created by the game is absolutely brilliant. I got a real taste for just how oppressive the world is the first time I stepped out into a rain-drenched thunderstorm, within the first few minutes of playing.

citizen059

I don't play it as often as I used to, but...Guild Wars:

Raslin

Too much bloom in those GW screenies

PotU

darleysam wrote: »

On X3, I remember how I nearly fell out of my chair the first time I undocked from a station. I was sat there, expecting it to take me to some kind of 'undocking' animation showing my ship unhooking and flying away. To see it seamlessly just remove the space station UI and go straight into me directly flying away, that was not what I expected. Doesn't sound like much, but I found it quite something.

Yeah, that actually killed me the first time, but hey. It's my own fault for deactivating the auto pilot.

freakish light

I've been playing through some back PS2 catalogue and I'm amazed I missed out on some truly gorgeous games. Not because of the graphics, which were so-so, but the art direction, style, and animated cutscenes. For instance, the art direction in Mark of Kri (which basically looks like a hand-drawn Disney movie, except with heads popping off and bloody violence) is fantastic, and on loading screens where the opening scene of the next level gets drawn onto the screen line by line is just... Man. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it.

The animated sequences in Sly Cooper are also ace, with the same level of hand-drawn animated style that gets passed over in favor of cel-shading in the current gen.

Oddly, as much as I enthuse hand-drawn animations in games, I could not stand Monkey Island 3. I think it looks like garbage.

ed: it doesn't come across in words look at this shit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7jeUwxLX2s

Flippy_D

Crysis

This is directly from my screen.

A few minutes later I was killed by a sniper because I was busy staring at a wet rock.

e: Looks even better in motion. Falling leaf matter; real-time shadows flicking across the bump mapping. Gorgeous. Go youtube some shitz if you like.

Oh, and the underwater stuff is near photo-realistic.

Graviija

There's a part in Mario Galaxy that always gets me. It's a very small section of a single level, but it just looks so cool.

Spoilered for h-scroll:

Wonder_Hippie

The first time I stood on top of the tallest mountain in Dun Morough in WoW was a pretty impressive moment for me. I did this on the launch day, so the graphics were decent for the time. I've since switched completely to Horde, and there just aren't that many terrific vistas available in the Horde starting areas.

Cowbomb

The lava room in Resident Evil 4 (the one with the fire breathing statues) still blows me away every time I get to it.

Actually, that whole game still looks fantastic, even with today's HD sorcery.

Peen

I can't find a good screencap of it, but in the first Devil May Cry game, when you start the final boss stage and you walk through the door into the black and white cathedral and it's got that amazing lighting? Yeah, I just about crapped my pants.

cj iwakura

I'd have to say the Tower of Kagatsuchi in Nocturne. 666 floors high, and it's definitely obvious from the scope of it. Especially the top floor.

I don't think a screen shot that does it justice is out there.

citizen059

Raslin wrote: »

Too much bloom in those GW screenies

Oh, right, I forgot to say OLOL BLOOM.

Because, you know, olol bloom?

I also enjoyed Mafia.



Great atmosphere in that game.

Fireflash

I stopped playing WoW a long time ago but Zangarmarsh was one of my favorite zones in the game:

Evangir

From Mass Effect (lawl major spoilers, not a screenie):

The game is rightfully dinged for having some shockingly uninteresting gameplay areas, but the Citadel really makes up for it. Particularly the near-end sequence where you're rushing towards the council chambers through Geth reinforcements, with the Sathan... errr... Sovereign doing whatever it is that its doing during this sequence. Just so epic and beautiful (in a horrible kind of way).

Cherrn

Man, Aquaria is such a pretty game.

King of Fighters XII:





sprites

Davoid

harvest

Davoid wrote: »

something terrible

You...

You are bad and you should feel bad.

Sorenson

STALKER by itself is rather nice, but STALKER with the Oblivion Lost mod and something that can run the game full-blast? Ho-lee shit. It can't beat Crysis in terms of sheer detail, but the lighting effects are absolutly breathtaking, better than Crysis' own, IMO, and it works extrordinarily well with the ambiant noise to create this awesome sense of immersion.

I'll see if I can grab the appropriate screens for it.

AbsoluteZero

I always really liked the floating city in Metroid Prime 3 but I can't find a decent screen shot of it so... use your imagination.

Davoid

JRosey

Cannot wait for this to come out, if it ever does.

Pancake

Company of Heroes is pretty great for an RTS. Especially when it's raining.

And while amazing graphics might not be that important in an RTS, they sure don't hurt the experience.

Muramasa18

Just picked up Lost Odyssey, some amazing visuals in places in that game.

RainbowDespair

Couldn't find a screenshot, but the Ice Cave early on in Blue Dragon blew me away. Very pretty.

UnbreakableVow

Mirror's Edge

Spoilered for h-scroll

The game has a retro-futuristic look to it, I really love that style. The movie Speed Racer had the same feel to it (and I suggest you all see it, even if just for the looks, it's amazing).

Sorenson

Ah, here we go, some Oblivion Lost shots.

Sunset

Lightning shots

Moonlit road

Early morning on the surface

Sewer enterence. This is actually probably my favorite spot in the whole game between the lighting and the ambiance and some of the things you run into down here.

More of the sewer

More sewer lighting

Last sewer shot

ToyD

How old is X3? I've somehow not heard of it and yet those screenshots look GREAT!

exis

UnbreakableVow wrote: »

Mirror's Edge

Spoilered for h-scroll

snip

The game has a retro-futuristic look to it, I really love that style. The movie Speed Racer had the same feel to it (and I suggest you all see it, even if just for the looks, it's amazing).

Wow, that looks absolutely amazing. I can't wait.