Games that will always look good to you

[josemlopes]

This is basicly for all those games that no matter what they never seem to age poorly, its like everytime you think of them in your head they look miles ahead from what they actually look like and even when actually looking at the game you still think they look awesome.

So here are mine:

Timesplitters 2, Timesplitters: Future Perfect and Second Sight

All 3 games by Free Radical and they look great especially in motion, such simple models and textures with very basic architecture but my god, its like if you added more detail it wouldnt look as clean and crisp as it is.

Spoiler: Example

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Again, simple models and simple textures that create a nice image to look at, no clashing colors or anything, just a nice image simple in the eyes.

Spoiler: Example

Crackdown
It all looks so smooth and the colors are so vivid, to me it looks just as good as it did when it came out.

Spoiler: Example

Now for contrast lets take a look at some games that looked amazing at the time of release and now look like crap

Spoiler: Crap

What other games do you think still look just as good? (I know someone is going to say Okami)

 

[OneCatch]

Morrowind
Yes, the graphics themselves weren't technically impressive then and are crap now, but whoever did the concept art and design work of it was a genius.

Rogue Squadron: Rogue Leader
Was absolutely mindblowing at the time, and it's aged pretty well.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

Yoshi's Island will always be beautiful, and Tetris Attack too by extension.

Final Fantasy 6, Soul Blazer, Chrono Trigger, A Link to the Past, and Super Metroid as well.

As for even older games, Kirby's Dreamland and SMB2 are still great. Mega Man 2 is immortal in my book.

 

[VanQ]

All of th Crash Bandicoot games on the PS1 still play and look fantastic. Playing Crash on the OLED screen on the Vita makes it look like the game got a HD remake but it's the same old game it ever was.

Oddworld: Abe's Oddyssey and Exoddus also still look great if you play them on the resolution they were intended for. And Oddysey is actually getting the HD treatment.

The mechanics of both may be a littleold school but are still solid and fun today.


And Morrowind will always be gorgeous for all the reasons in the video + nostalgia.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Oddly enough, I really like the way Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines looks.


Sure the models are pretty bad and the textures aren't great either, but the entire aesthetic of the game, the atmosphere it gives off, it's something I haven't found since.

 

[IndomitableSam]

Final Fantasy Tactics. That game can do absolutley no wrong in my mind. The sprites are also adorable.

And the horrible translations for the spells and some speeches... I'm not kidding when I say they're just beautiful.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

Hmmm. Any GBA Fire Emblem game. I'm quite fond of the sprites. Bioshock's moody palette hasn't aged for me, either. Battlefield 2's graphics are clean and slick and haven't really changed. Warcraft 2's cartoony sprites also click.

I still like the look of Fallout 1 and 2 but that's probably because of the higher resolution patches and mods.

The winner for me would be Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. The art style resonates with a pleasant air of melancholy.

 

[sextus the crazy]

Hmmm. Any GBA Fire Emblem game. I'm quite fond of the sprites.

Seconded. I actually prefer the fun, over the top animations to the more recent ones.

OT: Company of Heroes. 7 years on and it's still one of the best looking games I've seen; the animations, physics and other such things all make the game work. Bioshock's art still looks good as well. Most JRPGs in general still look nice.

 

[Fireaxe]

Warcraft 2 -- distinct looks for each unit, distinct colours for each team, 2D graphics that understood their limitations and did the best possible within them.

 

[Hero of Lime]

The original Ocarina of Time- Even if I love the new visuals in the 3D version, the original will always look great to me.

Sprite based Pokemon games- Even if X and Y's battle visuals are my new favorites for Pokemon, I still love the sprites in Black, Platinum, HeartGold, Emerald etc. Simple sprites usually age well.

Metroid Prime- That game looks great even today, you don't see environments that have so much detail very often even in a modern game without sacrificing the graphical fidelity.

Wind Waker- Again, I love the HD visuals for Wind Waker HD, yet the original game will age very well in the coming years. It still looks great plain and simple.

 

[tilmoph]

Castlevania: Symphony of the night. The sprites are lovely, the colors are solid a contrast from each other so nothing just kind of blends into anything else, there's a pile of unique looking enemies (and yes, some recolors), and the animations are fluid. I personally think it might have the best 2D sprite based graphics in any game.

 

[The Wykydtron]

The Ace Attorney games, they are static backgrounds with character sprites with about 6 or so animations each and only three voiced statements between all characters. It looks great and I suspect no amount of increasingly swag modern graphics can make it look any worse.

This should be true for anything that bothered to go for a proper aesthetic design instead of just going for the latest graphics that will be fucking mauled by better ones within the next few years.

 

[Weaver]

To me things in the 16bit graphic style still look really good, and I imagine will continue to do so even into the future.
Chrono Trigger still seeps atmosphere in places to me, despite being so old.

 

[R4ptur3]

Mario kart 64. I don't know why, but I just really like the colour and contrast of it. Also even though its been said, company of heroes. To me, it's graphics are still up there with the most recent RTS'.

 

[Clowndoe]

crusader no remorse/no regret still look good.

That's kind of a funny place to go, but I'll second that. Crusader series is rad as shit.

I have a theory that tells me what games are always going to look good. If it was never meant to look realistic, and its aesthetic was good to start with, this game can never look bad. Holds up so far for me: Super Mario Bros. still looks fine, so does WoW thanks to its cartoony style, and same with Atari games even, because they were always just abstractions. The games that age are games from circa 1996-2002 era, games like Deus Ex, Half-Life, Daikatana. They make a good effort, but the characters tend to look plastic-y and gross if you focus on them too much. Also, PS1 games, sharp elbows creep me out.

If I had to name a standout: Um... Blood? Despite the low-tech and relatively sparse environments, what is there never fails to give the same creepy vibe that it did in 1996.

 

[Adamantium93]

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Picked it up for the first time in 10 years and it still looks beautiful. As much as the cartoony style was criticized when it was first realeased, it holds up amazingly well a whole decade later.

The decision to do something simple and just do it really well rather than try to make a "realistic" looking Zelda definitely paid off.

Compare it to Twilight Princess, a more recent Zelda game that looked bad only a few years after its release.

 

[hermes]

Okami:

Spoiler

Having a distinctive style goes a long way into that. Photorealism gets old fairly quickly in the lifespan of a console (a couple years later, it will look a lot less impressive), while an intentional artistic style can look great for generations.

What other games do you think still look just as good? (I know someone is going to say Okami)

dibs