It's... it's beautiful. (AKA the videogame graphics appreciation society)

Mario Sunshine was amazingly pretty! Man I love that game!

Sunshine HD please.

Jet Set Radio, Better in Motion


Shenmue II, Aged a bit but this mind blowing when it came out


KOF97, 2D fighters always look great even this from the Saturn

Speaking of fighting games, Street Fighter IV is a good example of a gorgeous looking fighting game.

Looks nice but boring fighter though give me KOF over it any day.


Another nice looking fighter but slightly newer then one from 1996

I had an SNK background as my desktop wallpaper at the job I had early last year. Someone posted a load of then on imgur, ripped from the game ROMs, so there were no characters or screen funiture.

masofdas wrote:

Looks nice but boring fighter though give me KOF over it any day.

That's something I take major offense to, but it's a story for a whole other thread.   

It's the whole thing Jay back in the day it was Nintendo or SEGA, Mario or Sonic, Street Fighter or King of Fighter's. So you were in one of those camps.

I know this is controversial, but I had a few issues with Skyward Sword's graphics - I think individual screenshots are OK, but occasionally, dark areas suffered from weird colour banding.
But I do love Okami's style. I hate to say it as a Ninty fan, but he HD version on PS3 finally does it justice

(But Wind Waker HD is better!)
You've already brought up Enslaved, which was the other one I thought of, and I would nominate Skyrim, if it wasn't just a really good rendition of grey and another grey.
I'm not a mega-graphicsy person - I'm not that fussed about getting an XBone or PS4. So what I would nomiate is Art Style Light Trax - it looks crap in stills (so no posts here) but awesome when everything's moving - especially in the freeway mode.

I didn't notice the "banding" you speak of, although I'm still bitter about the frame rate slowing down to chugging-speed in the credits. And I won't deny that Okami HD looks better than Okami, although the original is still beautiful.

For me, the big advantage of additional graphical power isn't the number of hairs that the game can model on DK's backside, but the clearness it can add to graphical styles. Although I'm not going to deny that I love the raindrops in SM3DW, which I suspect wouldn't have been possible in SD.

Jimbob wrote:

I would nominate Skyrim, if it wasn't just a really good rendition of grey and another grey.

Wasn't impressed by Skyrim visually, all told.  

I've been watching a Let's Play of Infamous: Second Son, and the neon power makes for some pretty visuals.

Just finished Episode 2 of Bioshock Infinite's Burial at Sea - the last scene had some gorgeous visuals.

Spoiler:

You all will look so beautiful

Everybody's gone to the rapture


Final Fantasy XV


No Man's Sky


Rime


Transistor


Destiny


Lily Bergamo

NMS and Lily look gorgeous.  Destiny... meh.  I'll be impressed if they can deliver on the scale suggested, but they shepherded the trailer very quickly into closed corridors which had nothing going for them visually.  And the wall wasn't exactly pretty to start with.

Just to check, Mas - you know that you don't have to got through that site every time for pictures? You can just put image urls between [img ]image tags[/ img] (remove the spaces).

Lilly should look good seeing who's behind it,

I've got to put this video of rime here as it looks stunning.

I'm happy to see Mario Sunshine get a lot of mentions, I still believe it has some of the best water in any videogame, ever, since it's dynamic and isn't a flat surface, but also looks so inviting. You just want to dive in and swim about.

Silver light wrote:

ctrl+f Okami

ctrl+f Muramasa

All is right in this thre-ACTUALLY WAIT WAIT WAIT HOLD ON A DAMN SECOND I DIDN'T SEE ANY VALKYRIA CHRONICLES IN HERE >=|

I'll take lovely art direction over actual hyperrealistic graphics quality any day of the week.

I really liked the look of Valkyria Chronicles, though its environments could have felt more alive. Asides from swaying grass it wasn't as animated as, say, Wind Waker, but boy was the shading impressive <3

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

CORRRRR!!!

*runs*

*Cries* I love how Yoshi's Nose is going into one of the coins. Great quality control at Arzest, I see.

andyman949 wrote:

That reminds me of how fantastic Pikmin 3 looked! I definitely need to replay that soon.

Another shout to Pikmin 3. I wasn't expecting much at all -- what I had seen of the game before I played it was mainly mission mode, where the visuals are somehow a lot worse, but boy did story mode look fabulous.

Sure, it wasn't the most technically impressive game out there, but it was beautiful in a nature sense, everything was so alive and animated as you'd expect, the various fauna interacted with the environment in inspired ways, the weather effects were amazing, it was just perfect. I still love seeing your spaceship take off at the day's end, its engine light illuminating the ground.



And the fruit!

End-game Dark Souls spoilers ahoy.

Spoiler:

That is some lovely fruit up there.  Good enough to eat (groan).

JayMoyles wrote:

End-game Dark Souls spoilers ahoy.

Spoiler:

I got goosebumps when I seen that area, also loved the touch as you walked down the stairs.

Wave Race 64's water still makes me think "wow". Yes, the environments and jet ski riders have an old school 3D charm to them, but the water's still mighty impressive, particularly how ripples across the surface look and how it piles up. Still my favourite dynamic water to drive atop. I thought Wave Race: Blue Storm's water was a bit less appealing, while technically being more impressive (the still water at the lake level was nice) it looked too much like jelly at points.

fronkhead wrote:

Still my favourite dynamic water to drive atop.

I can't imagine this line coming from anyone but you, fronk.

From Dark Souls II:

There really is some beautiful scenery in DSII makes me laugh at the whole hoopla over the games visuals.

DSII is a huge leap up visually though from its predecessor. Whilst there were certainly impressive views in the original, they pale in comparison to the overall visuals of the sequel. The animation is much better too - dat cloth animation.

Aye that is nice, I tried to swap out my chest armour which has a cape earlier but I couldn't do it haha!