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Forums - Gaming - Games that were graphically well ahead of their time

curl-6 on 08 October 2020
KratosLives said:

The post is graphically ahead of its time, not what was most technical. You could have a game with a real life rendered object and it would be boring to look at and no one would think twice about it. Graphically, we are talking overall visual pleasing taking into consideration tech and artistic design.  The screenshot of crysis put up was boring, heaving use depth of field , blurred backgrounds and the same greenery. Uncharted will always look better due to the variety of assets and little details used, and the range of colors which made it feel more alive and dynamic. Also what they achieved on the ps3 for that game is more staggering considering the specs they could work with.

You're talking about art direction now which is completely subjective. Like Pemalite says, by that standard I could claim anything looks better than Uncharted. Hell, I grew up with the SNES so I could just say that because I prefer pixel art, A Link to the Past looks better than Uncharted.

Crysis is much more dynamic than Uncharted with much more interactivity and destructibility in the environment, more emergent and open-ended encounters in terms of AI and physics, more effects done in realtime rather than baked.

Uncharted and Crysis released just 6 days apart, and Crysis is much more technologically advanced, therefore it is much more ahead of its time.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 08 October 2020

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Leynos on 08 October 2020

If this was an art direction thread then every game looks worse than every single Vanillaware game to me.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

curl-6 on 09 October 2020

Virtua Racing

Might not look like much today, but this came out in 1992, when gaming was still firmly in the era of 2D sprites. 



Vinther1991 on 09 October 2020

Ridge Racer (1993):

Winning Run 1988:



HoloDust on 09 October 2020
curl-6 said:

Virtua Racing

Might not look like much today, but this came out in 1992, when gaming was still firmly in the era of 2D sprites. 

Virtua Racing looked amazing - it was early 90s counterpart to Star Wars arcade from '83...at least, that's how I felt about it seeing it for the first time in arcades.

'92 was quite important year - Ultima Underworld not only introduced texture mapped 3D worlds, but went on to be major influence for creation of Elder Scrolls, Wolfenstein 3D started FPS era, Dune II defined standards for RTS games and Alone in the Dark, grandfather of 3D survival horrors, was released.



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d21lewis on 09 October 2020

Arcades were basically "For 25 cents, you can play the future".



curl-6 on 09 October 2020
HoloDust said:
curl-6 said:

Virtua Racing

Might not look like much today, but this came out in 1992, when gaming was still firmly in the era of 2D sprites. 

Virtua Racing looked amazing - it was early 90s counterpart to Star Wars arcade from '83...at least, that's how I felt about it seeing it for the first time in arcades.

'92 was quite important year - Ultima Underworld not only introduced texture mapped 3D worlds, but went on to be major influence for creation of Elder Scrolls, Wolfenstein 3D started FPS era, Dune II defined standards for RTS games and Alone in the Dark, grandfather of 3D survival horrors, was released.

I was too young to appreciate it at the time, as I was 3 years old in 1992 and grew up in a small town without any arcades anyway, but I think it's easy to see how mind-blowing Virtua Racing would've looked if you were used to playing 2D NES/SNES/Megadrive games at home.

On a similar note, while obviously running on less powerful hardware than arcade machines, Starfox on the SNES brought polygonal 3D to consoles in the middle of the two dimensional 4th gen:

Last edited by curl-6 - on 09 October 2020

thepurplewalrus on 09 October 2020
mZuzek said:

Metroid Prime: the thread.

One of the best looking games of its generation, running at a locked 60fps, and came out very early in its console's life cycle. From a studio that had never made a game before. Ridiculous achievement, really. Still looks good today.

Metroid Prime is a great example! I played the first Prime a few months ago and was super impressed.



KratosLives on 09 October 2020
curl-6 said:
KratosLives said:

The post is graphically ahead of its time, not what was most technical. You could have a game with a real life rendered object and it would be boring to look at and no one would think twice about it. Graphically, we are talking overall visual pleasing taking into consideration tech and artistic design.  The screenshot of crysis put up was boring, heaving use depth of field , blurred backgrounds and the same greenery. Uncharted will always look better due to the variety of assets and little details used, and the range of colors which made it feel more alive and dynamic. Also what they achieved on the ps3 for that game is more staggering considering the specs they could work with.

You're talking about art direction now which is completely subjective. Like Pemalite says, by that standard I could claim anything looks better than Uncharted. Hell, I grew up with the SNES so I could just say that because I prefer pixel art, A Link to the Past looks better than Uncharted.

Crysis is much more dynamic than Uncharted with much more interactivity and destructibility in the environment, more emergent and open-ended encounters in terms of AI and physics, more effects done in realtime rather than baked.

Uncharted and Crysis released just 6 days apart, and Crysis is much more technologically advanced, therefore it is much more ahead of its time.

Crysis is a boring game to look at for me than 20 mins. Call it art style or whatever, but uncharted looked better to me visually than crysis ever did. It looked more real to me than crysis did. I couldn't get over how good the foilage looked at lighting in some parts, coupled with great artistic design. Even the explosion and smoke effects that turned to a mushroom which may have been hand drawn, looked better than the explosion effects I saw in crysis lol. But since we are comparing pc to a console, pound for pound I have to chose uncharted, considering what it did with the inferior cell and gpu, and what it achieved to do with it and the naughtydog engine.



curl-6 on 09 October 2020
KratosLives said:
curl-6 said:

You're talking about art direction now which is completely subjective. Like Pemalite says, by that standard I could claim anything looks better than Uncharted. Hell, I grew up with the SNES so I could just say that because I prefer pixel art, A Link to the Past looks better than Uncharted.

Crysis is much more dynamic than Uncharted with much more interactivity and destructibility in the environment, more emergent and open-ended encounters in terms of AI and physics, more effects done in realtime rather than baked.

Uncharted and Crysis released just 6 days apart, and Crysis is much more technologically advanced, therefore it is much more ahead of its time.

Crysis is a boring game to look at for me than 20 mins. Call it art style or whatever, but uncharted looked better to me visually than crysis ever did. It looked more real to me than crysis did. I couldn't get over how good the foilage looked at lighting in some parts, coupled with great artistic design. Even the explosion and smoke effects that turned to a mushroom which may have been hand drawn, looked better than the explosion effects I saw in crysis lol. But since we are comparing pc to a console, pound for pound I have to chose uncharted, considering what it did with the inferior cell and gpu, and what it achieved to do with it and the naughtydog engine.

Uncharted was a great looking game for 2007, the best on consoles at the time without a doubt, but Crysis eclipsed it in basically every technical category from effects work to character models to shaders, and remained unsurpassed by anything on consoles until PS4 and Xbox One released six years later.