DELETED

[Canadamus Prime]

Most games with a stylized/cartoonish art style tend to age well.

 

[Hero of Lime]

Super Smash Bros. Melee, still looks great today. Actually all the big Gamecube launch titles still look great today. Luigi's Mansion, Rouge Leader, and Pikmin 1 still look great today.

Obvious one being the original Wind Waker, will hold up for many years easy.

Also, Super Mario Sunshine still manages to look good regardless of being about as old as Wind Waker

Agreed, Sunshine still looks great too, the water effects were so well done for their time, even modern games don't have water that looks as good as the Sunshine water.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Anything that bothered to have a unique aesthetic instead of just mashing all the latest and greatest graphics. Obviously Okami, that goes without saying. I will say BlazBlue because I really like anime artstyles in general and it is really well done. Some of the stages are excellent, Mu has the best one of course, followed by Makoto then Hazama.

While we're on fighting games, Skullgirls' art is fantastic. I could watch Peacock's level 3 forever. Cool girls don't look at explosions.

Persona 4 counts, because Persona 4 does it all. With style.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I also agree about Wind Waker. The cartoony style has a timeless charm to it. And I think sprite based games in general have aged really well. Games like Super Mario World, Super Metroid, A Link to the Past still have a distinct retro charm that make them appealing even today.

Agreed when it comes to sprite-based graphics in games. The only time I think digitized character/background graphics really nailed it and, still looks good (if not great) to this day would be Donkey Kong Country and, Diddy Kong's Quest. Another World (or Out of This World) is...I have no idea if it's digitized but it also looks really good despite its age.

 

[Headsprouter]

Considering it's a PS1 game, and taking into account possible nostalgia goggles, I think Crash Bandicoot 2 still looks kind of nice. The graphics still manage to bring the awesome art style across.

Spoiler

We can all see Killing Floor of today was made in 2009, but I still feel its graphics have a sort of gritty charm to them...

Spoiler

 

[Requia]

Most of the 2D games from the end of the era hold up pretty well, minus the problems with trying to get them to show right on a HD TV.

 

[Dragonbums]

Any game that used simple but graphically beautiful graphics.

The only games I can think of are Okami, LoZ: Windwaker, Viewtiful Joe, and the Paper Mario series.

Oh, Super Mario Sunshine still looks pretty decent for it's age.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

First thing that came to mind are the Metroid Prime games and the Bioshock games, the first ones because I know Infinite is too recent although I think Infinite has a stylized enough look to last through the ages as well.

 

[Brian Tams]

Bioshock has aged extraordinarily well, considering it was release over six years ago.

Wind Waker looked much better before HD ruined it with way too much haze.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

I noticed that pretty much NO-ONE in this thread named a game from pre-1996. So let me point out the one game that OWNS this topic.


SUPER MARIO WORLD 2: YOSHI'S ISLAND.

/thread

 

[Sack of Cheese]

I can think of a lot.

Spoiler: Syberia

Spoiler: Republic commando

or fighting games, obviously!

Spoiler

Fight Night Round 3

Dead or Alive 4

Garou

The Last Blade

KOF99

 

[Tanis]

It really depends if the game was going for realistic or stylized.

Klonoa 2, I'd say, STILL looks great (for the most part).

 

[Juan Regular]

Believe it or not I think every Silent Hill has aged well (with the exception of the very first game). I know there're HD remakes of SH2 and SH3, but I always found both games to age graciously.

Absolutely, SH 3 in particular still looks amazing in places. I remember how Douglas' character model blew me away back then:

Not bad for a ten year old game.

 

[AuronFtw]

Honestly? World of Warcraft.

They went for a very unique aesthetic style, one that never really lost its charm; it was certainly cheesy the first time I encountered it, but unlike pretty much every other MMO striving for maximum graphical quality of the time that all get outdated in 2-3 years, WoW has stayed "fine" for 8+. It's blocky, especially with lower graphical settings, but considering the game's age, it's not hard at all to crank it up to Ultra with a massive view range, and entire zones become absolutely mind-blowing. Vashjir has long stretches of bright, vibrant colors, Tanaris gives a great feeling of a desert stretching into the horizon, Jade Forest is just... damn. They're pretty amazing, even though the graphics are "dated."

Also helps that all the gear and mounts post-BC have been really high quality as well, unlike the polygon-o-rama of the original stuff.

Spoiler: WoW pics

Vashjir, an entire zone at the bottom of an ocean

Pureblood Fire Hawk mount added in Cataclysm

Jade Forest, Pandaria

Vortex Pinnacle, a dungeon in the skies above Uldum

Games like Rift and Aion are pretty at launch, but very quickly become dated, and end up looking plain ugly. Every time I've gone back to WoW, it only takes maybe 15 minutes to re-adjust to the aesthetic and I'm enjoying it all over again. Blizzard struck a goldmine with that look.

 

[thehorror2]

Everything around the end of the lifecycle of the Xbox/PS2/Gamecube era still looks alright to me; developers really milked that console gen's hardware for all it was worth before they moved to the next one.

 

[WendelI]

The metal slugs series? they still have some of the best pixel art ive ever seen.

Spoiler

 

[Saltyk]

I still think the original Wind Waker looks better than most games coming out, even if it is over ten years old:

Cell shaded games will always look up to date graphically, because they look like cartoons and cartoons never really go outdated.

If Borderlands 2 came out next gen rather than current gen and used the same graphics nobody would have complained it looked old.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. And that's one reason I do enjoy Cell Shaded games. They always look beautiful. They age really well graphically. Plenty of games that I once thought were amazing, look bad, even a few years later. But I can always boot up a Cell Shaded game and it will always look good. At least, so far.

 

[lacktheknack]

Myst IV went for the "Ultra-Realistic Globe Environment with Live Actors" approach.

http://www.adventuresplanet.it/public/images/img/mystiv62.jpg

In 2004.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/myst/5-%20RevelationImages/Revelation(52).png

2004.

http://www.gamezone.de/screenshots/original/2004/11/Myst4PCGMyst492.jpg

2004.

http://www.cdn.actiontrip.com/images/reviews/myst4revelation1.jpg

Just... just...

http://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/15/14385/revelation_09.jpg

And it's all fully animated.

Utterly flabbergasting. Possibly the prettiest game ever made, really.