Older games that aged well. (strictly talking about graphics)
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Personally I find the Silent Hill series to have aged well. And yes, that includes SH1. Prefer them over the HD remake.
Also Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia The Sands of Time and Warrior Within.
Also Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia The Sands of Time and Warrior Within.
I agree with you about the first Silent Hill game. I only played it for the first time last summer and the blocky graphics and tiny draw distance only serve to make the sense of terror even more palpable than what any of the other games in the series have managed, at least for me.Blue Musician said:
Also, Rayman 2 anybody? I love that game! Fantastic soundtrack too. However, let's all just pretend that versions with voice acting don't exist..
![])rStrangelove](https://eg-forums-escapist-data.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/data/avatars/l/125/125479.jpg?1621029148){kind=avatar}
Also, in my opinion a lot of the N64 games have also aged well, or more specifically the nintendo games, just because it seems the art styles of a bunch of those games were cartoony in way that ages well... or something.
I found the second SH game to be more scary and atmospheric than the first one, but I simply can't deny the huge sense of atmosphere that the original has. To be able to convey that type of feelings is already an achievement of it's own.TheXRatedDodo said:
Usually I tend to find SH2 to convey a feeling of overwhelming melancholy to me more than anything else, but there was a period back in february of this year where I was going through some hardcore sleep madness and decided to play some SH2.Blue Musician said:
I got about 5 minutes in and freaked out so hard I was pacing around my living room and having tics for the next hour or so. SH1 tends to succeed more at scaring me in any state of clarity though.
Ones I've mentioned in another thread about pushing the boundaries - GT2, RR4 and Vagrant Story on the playstation - still look reasonably good despite their attempt to do "real" imagery on a machine that obviously can't do it.
After that, I could rattle off a whole pile of games which decided not to bother attempting that and just went down the stylistic route (including a scad of SNES titles), and that's something which never really ages so much, unless the system you're creating for is hugely limited (say, something like the VCS, Apple II or the Sinclair Spectrum, where it's almost impossible to make things look good unless you're the jammy bugger who got the Trapdoor gig; the C64, Amstrad CPC and EGA-mode PC (or CGA-on-composite-monitor) just about escape this fate with their better made games). You bend the machine's capabilities and limitations to the benefit of your art, rather than its detriment.
Heck, there was a Lets Play of 8-bit Sonic 1 I ran across on youtube recently and it took me a moment to realise... wait, this is the Game Gear version not Master System. You know you've styled your game art well when it's only 160x144 pixels in 32 colours, but still looks good 20 years later. Bold outlines without seeming TOO blocky, good contrast, lots of bright not-quite-primary colours, fluid motion, exaggerated characterisation, and obviously someone on the team with an eye for overall visual flair...
Oddly, one that comes to mind also is Monkey Island, so long as you don't mind PIXELS PIXELS PIXELS
After that, I could rattle off a whole pile of games which decided not to bother attempting that and just went down the stylistic route (including a scad of SNES titles), and that's something which never really ages so much, unless the system you're creating for is hugely limited (say, something like the VCS, Apple II or the Sinclair Spectrum, where it's almost impossible to make things look good unless you're the jammy bugger who got the Trapdoor gig; the C64, Amstrad CPC and EGA-mode PC (or CGA-on-composite-monitor) just about escape this fate with their better made games). You bend the machine's capabilities and limitations to the benefit of your art, rather than its detriment.
Heck, there was a Lets Play of 8-bit Sonic 1 I ran across on youtube recently and it took me a moment to realise... wait, this is the Game Gear version not Master System. You know you've styled your game art well when it's only 160x144 pixels in 32 colours, but still looks good 20 years later. Bold outlines without seeming TOO blocky, good contrast, lots of bright not-quite-primary colours, fluid motion, exaggerated characterisation, and obviously someone on the team with an eye for overall visual flair...
Oddly, one that comes to mind also is Monkey Island, so long as you don't mind PIXELS PIXELS PIXELS
@munx13: I see your Battlefield 1942 and raise you the original Call of Duty.
P.S.
StarCraft hasn?t been mentioned yet?
P.S.
StarCraft hasn?t been mentioned yet?
Graphically?
Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Far Cry (the mighty 2004 triumvirate!) Crysis (this will look modern for years to come) F.E.A.R., Halo, Mass Effect...there are a lot, actually. 2004-05 for the PC pretty much defined what this generation of graphics would like, everything since then has been more about refining than redefining -- except Crysis. That was our last genuine leap forward.
Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Far Cry (the mighty 2004 triumvirate!) Crysis (this will look modern for years to come) F.E.A.R., Halo, Mass Effect...there are a lot, actually. 2004-05 for the PC pretty much defined what this generation of graphics would like, everything since then has been more about refining than redefining -- except Crysis. That was our last genuine leap forward.
Most sprite games still look fine, but everyone else has already said that.
My pick is going to have to be Zone of the Enders 2. The art design was really solid and it managed to get some surprising performance out of the PS2 hardware. Even the slowdown when you fry a million little enemy with a burst of homing lasers comes off looking like a stylistic decision instead of a frame rate problem.
My pick is going to have to be Zone of the Enders 2. The art design was really solid and it managed to get some surprising performance out of the PS2 hardware. Even the slowdown when you fry a million little enemy with a burst of homing lasers comes off looking like a stylistic decision instead of a frame rate problem.
Crysis They kinda sacrificed being able to run it for lots of shiny stuff that now we can all see and appreciate. DEFCON still looks great and so do other sprite based games where design is most important (Terraria falls into this category I would say) than graphics. That also woks for many other games. I think CoD1 and CS Condition Zero still look fine.
They kinda sacrificed being able to run it for lots of shiny stuff that now we can all see and appreciate. DEFCON still looks great and so do other sprite based games where design is most important (Terraria falls into this category I would say) than graphics. That also woks for many other games. I think CoD1 and CS Condition Zero still look fine.
Omega Boost on the PS1 still holds up remarkably well, despite being a 3D game on the original Playstation. Really cool lighting and particle effects in that one.
Also, X-Wing Alliance is still quite pretty, especially with the XWA Upgrade Project models added in -- and Morrowind looks good enough vanilla, but with the right mods, looks better than Skyrim in a lot of ways. And to whoever said KoTOR has aged well: right on, man. Technically, it's nothing too impressive, but that game has some of the best art direction I've ever seen; an absolutely beautiful game.
Also, X-Wing Alliance is still quite pretty, especially with the XWA Upgrade Project models added in -- and Morrowind looks good enough vanilla, but with the right mods, looks better than Skyrim in a lot of ways. And to whoever said KoTOR has aged well: right on, man. Technically, it's nothing too impressive, but that game has some of the best art direction I've ever seen; an absolutely beautiful game.
I'd have to disagree. Half Life 2 did faces VERY WELL(still the best facial movement I've seen to this day), especially the emotions and that's where it surpassed Witcher 2 but the W2(like W1) has created some very memorable protagonists. It's one of the few games where I actually think what effects my choices will have later on and which characters do I care more about. In Half Life 2(and the series overall), the only real interesting characters, that stand out for me is Alyx and perhaps G-Man. Freeman is a non-entity, he doesn't speak, we barely see him. The real interesting thing in the Half Life series is the world.munx13 said: