I think this is because Yoshi and Toad, while absolutely gorgeous aesthetically, (both rank among the best looking games I have ever played) aren't as balls-out technologically ambitious as some of the other nominees.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll put off trying the game until Januari. With the stupid data cap on my bandwidth I don't know if I can afford to download the extra 10GB atm. Why is that not on the disc... Anyway I'm not even going to try it without the data packs if it's that bad with them already.

I did download Fast racing Neo since it's only 500mb total. I also don't understand why that gets praised so much. Sure it looks flashy in small screenshots, yet when it does it's extreme zoom out boost thing I can hardly see the track in the distance at a pixelated 640x720. 22% of Wipeout HD's resolution 6 years ago. I can live without motion blur and physically based rendering if that means you can see where you're going.

Anyway MK8 best graphical showcase, next to Super Mario world 3D. So smooth, clear stable image, perfection.
(I don't even like MK8, yet it always grabs my attention when my kids put it on, so pretty)

MK8.

I haven't had a problem seeing where I'm going while playing.

As for WipeOut HD, it uses a dynamic framebuffer setup that drops well below 1920x1080 when the engine is under load. It also screen tears and has much, much simply textures and shaders than FRN. 

FRN is only 640x720 in the same way that Killzone Shadowfall's multiplayer is 960x1080. The final framebuffer in both cases is reconstructed to native resolution, while interlacing one axis. The image is not actually 640 pixels wide.

I didn't had any problem with the resolution of FRN. Yes it has jaggies, and I have noticed some artifacts here and there, but everything else looks fine, the postprocessing effects make it look great, if wasnt because Digital Foundry I would have never though this was not a full 720p, I would have though it was just lack of antialiasing like so many other WiiU games like MK8 and Splatoon.

Yes I know. However wipeout without weapons, I don't see any drops. The shaders are a lot more simple (it has excellent anisotropic filtering though) but I can always clearly see the track in the distance. The reconstructed frame buffer of FRN makes it look less smooth (fps wise) and more pixelated when looking at the distant track while boosting. I played them both after one another today, FRN flashy but messy, Wipout HD clear and stable.
It's cool racing through the rainstorm in FRN, I just wish it looked a bit more solid.

Anyway KZ SF got plenty flack for 960x1080 covered by heavy motion blur. Reconstructing even and odd frames in a game that moves 100 times faster is an odd decision.

Oh WipeOut HD definitely has better image quality, I'm not contesting that at all, I'm just calling FRN graphically better as an entire package. Though if one is a stickler for image quality I can certainly understand finding WipeOut more visually appealing.

I presume the framebuffer reconstruction was done for much the same reasons as Shadowfall; they wanted to hit 60fps without cutting down on their textures/shaders/effects. 

Pokken tournament

I guess I was expecting too much. It looks good on a small screen, yet I like these kind of games supersized. On my 92" projector screen FRN looks like a mess. It's still fun to play it at that size, yet graphical showcase it is not.

This topic is full of bias: people vote the games they love without decent / objective graphical analysis. I love bayonetta, but the game shouldn't even be in this poll; same for half the games. By this logic, I can't see why Splatoon isnt in there...