Digital Foundry's Best Game Graphics of 2025

pulicat said:
Metroid Prime 4 is beautiful. F FalconPunch I won.
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Alex: "I think this the best switch 1 game....... this would be like, I dunno, a port of killzone 3 to from the ps3 to the ps4...."

Pulicat: "I won"
On The Floor Omg GIF by Joel James


Since day 1, we've said metroid looks like an upressed ps3/xbox 360 game. Now the people you referred to as "Industry Experts" concur with our initial claims. Go sleep brother. Game looks like ass. For the og switch, it's fine. In the context of all games released, it looks like trash.

 
Am i missing something with Silent Hill F?. I never finished the game but from what i played i honestly thought the game looked bad, even at max settings with RT.

Oh and of course Metroid 4 is there, a game that was running emulayed at 200fps on a GTX 1060 lol (search Youitube). A Switch game always has to make the list.
 
Stuart360 said:
Am i missing something with Silent Hill F?. I never finished the game but from what i played i honestly thought the game looked bad, even at max settings with RT.

Oh and of course Metroid 4 is there, a game that was running emulayed at 200fps on a GTX 1060 lol (search Youitube). A Switch game always has to make the list.
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Found the video that you're talking about:



It's wild that even a gtx 1060 in traditional raster is more powerful than a Switch 2 in docked mode. I think the switch 2 is slightly weaker than the rtx 2050 mobile? According to techpowerup, my gpu is 1385% faster lmao.
 
FalconPunch said:
Found the video that you're talking about:



It's wild that even a gtx 1060 in traditional raster is more powerful than a Switch 2 in docked mode. I think the switch 2 is slightly weaker than the rtx 2050 mobile? According to techpowerup, my gpu is 1385% faster lmao.
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Funny thing is that is with zero optimization done for the GTX1060 (obviously). It was even hitting 60fps at 4k lol. Imagine if this was an official optimized PC port, it would probably be hitting a lot higher than it already is, even at 4k.
Not only that but gpu usage isnt close to 100%, even at 4k.
The game is basically a Switch game uprezzed for Switch 2.

By the way that isnt the vid i saw. The one i saw had gtx1060 only at different resolutuions, and it was hitting 200fps at 1080p.
 
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Stuart360 said:
Funny thing is that is with zero optimization done for the GTX1060 (obviously). It was even hitting 60fps at 4k lol. Imagine if this was an official optimized PC port, it would probably be hitting a lot higher than it already is, even at 4k.
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The fact that DF put it on the Graphics list is laughable along with all the other nintendo games. I know they mentioned that they keep the hardware in mind when choosing games however, there are more impressive games on switch 2 if you had to select one.

Personally speaking, there's not one Switch 2 game that should make the list this year.
 
FalconPunch said:
The fact that DF put it on the Graphics list is laughable along with all the other nintendo games. I know they mentioned that they keep the hardware in mind when choosing games however, there are more impressive games on switch 2 if you had to select one.

Personally speaking, there's not one Switch 2 game that should make the list this year.
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I cant find the vid i saw a few days ago, i guess it was taken down for copyright or somehting. But yeah at 1080p with the framerate unlock mod it was hitting 200fps a lot of the time. I mean even in the vid you posted it was hitting 60fps at 4k with 50-60% gpu usage, meaning if the card was being maxed out a GTX1060 would be hitting 100-120fps at 4k in a Switch 2 game lol.
 
Stuart360 said:
I dont know if you're being sarcastic or not (you never know on here when it comes to Xbox related games) but I literally played a little bit of Avowed today to test out my new 4070ti, and yeah at max settings with RT and DLAA, it looks gorgeous.
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I am dead serious that the game looks ridiculous at times, stunningly so. My favorite map is definitely the last one (Galawain Tusks). Fantastic game that catches a lot of shit unfairly.
 
AC Shadows. A multi plat game that scales down to NSW2 and Series S whilst pushing the visuals on base consoles and PC.

It's a new era of cross-gen indeed.
 
FalconPunch said:
Alex: "I think this the best switch 1 game....... this would be like, I dunno, a port of killzone 3 to from the ps3 to the ps4...."

Pulicat: "I won"
On The Floor Omg GIF by Joel James


Since day 1, we've said metroid looks like an upressed ps3/xbox 360 game. Now the people you referred to as "Industry Experts" concur with our initial claims. Go sleep brother. Game looks like ass. For the og switch, it's fine. In the context of all games released, it looks like trash.

Click to expand...


They mentioned Kirby Air Riders, I won.

runway-fashion-show.gif
 
ByWatterson said:
Metroid and Kirby and a 2D pixel art space shooter are on this list but Expedition 33 is not.
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Expedition 33 was not a very good looking game. The environments were meh. I mean it was fine for what it was, but nothing about how it looked stuck out in a super positive way. Metroid looked pretty good and ran smoothly. It should be included in a piece that discusses graphics because of what it does with limited power. Kirby though? If you needed to include more than one Switch 2 games I would include DK as the destruction at least accomplished something noteworthy.
 
I really don't think Doom deserved to be in the top 3. Its technically good, but aesthetically ? Really ?

You have to factor in art-direction as the tech should be employed in service of that. Especially as with game graphics you otherwise may as well judge based solely on the data-sheet for the engine/renderer being used.

I know I've made a few digs at Cyberpunk, but the truth is that game is perfect example of what you get when the vision and the tech are in alignment. Neon-lit, night-time futuristic cityscapes are the perfect sort of environment to showcase GI and RT lighting, especially if you're doing the old Michael Mann trick of having wet roads to further enhance the opportunity for reflections.
 
vaibhavpisal said:
Thats a big omission.

At this point, without RT and good draw distances (zero pop in), a game cannot claim best visuals.
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Especially for an open world with dynamic time of day, and you even build stuffs in the game so it's dynamic assets that would benefit even more from RT

Maybe DS2 on PC will have it, hopefully

Kojima must see the advantages of RT with OD I imagine
 
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Buggy Loop said:
Especially for an open world with dynamic time of day, and you even build stuffs in the game so it's dynamic assets that would benefit even more from RT

Maybe DS2 on PC will have it, hopefully

Kojima must see the advantages of RT with OD I imagine
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Also, optimising RT for consoles is hard. So a dev capable of doing that means they have some technical chops beyond just good art style.
 
Decima engine always on top every year. Looks amazing and it's honestly one of the most optimized engines out there. All developers should get their hands on it.
 
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Surprised that Yotei made it. Seems like a pity inclusion to let Sony have a second slot. DS2 looks awesome, but it's the only really good looking PS game this year.

Yotei is just too uneven and AC: Shadows blows it away in every aspect.
 
Personally it's DS2.

The game is locked to ps5 pro max capabilities and looks more beautiful than dark ages 90% of the time.
 
Not much in terms of artistic aesthetic chops in that top 3. DS2 of course, but Dark Ages was very poor in this regard. Shadows was just completely neutral.
 
simpatico said:
Not much in terms of artistic aesthetic chops in that top 3. DS2 of course, but Dark Ages was very poor in this regard. Shadows was just completely neutral.
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HDR on console still busted on doom, and it's like 800p upscaled blurry mess where you can't see monster details unless right face to face with them. On console specifically dark ages is uglier than eternal.
 
Clear said:
I really don't think Doom deserved to be in the top 3. Its technically good, but aesthetically ? Really ?

You have to factor in art-direction as the tech should be employed in service of that. Especially as with game graphics you otherwise may as well judge based solely on the data-sheet for the engine/renderer being used.

I know I've made a few digs at Cyberpunk, but the truth is that game is perfect example of what you get when the vision and the tech are in alignment. Neon-lit, night-time futuristic cityscapes are the perfect sort of environment to showcase GI and RT lighting, especially if you're doing the old Michael Mann trick of having wet roads to further enhance the opportunity for reflections.
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its expected from them. they were shilling doom nonstop since launch, had a dedicated sponsor deep look etc.
game had visually nothing to show for its forced rt requirement, so they even had to praise that it saved development time lol,
(with all that saved time it still took 5 years to make that flop btw.)
 
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Buggy Loop said:
Maybe DS2 on PC will have it, hopefully
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I doubt it, can't see them re-lighting the entire game when it already looks so good. They'll likely improve mid-field LOD's and stuff like that, but honestly short of adding in DLSS/Frame Gen support there's not much needing to be done.
 
Whining about Switch games being on the list is odd to me. By that logic, only PC games running maxed out on 5090's should be there. I believe they directly said the Switch games look great despite hardware limitations.

I'd like to shout out Cronos. I thought that game was pretty amazing looking on pc.
 
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Buggy Loop said:
Especially for an open world with dynamic time of day, and you even build stuffs in the game so it's dynamic assets that would benefit even more from RT

Maybe DS2 on PC will have it, hopefully

Kojima must see the advantages of RT with OD I imagine
Click to expand...

Folks assumed the PC port of Horizon would add it, but it didn't. Maybe something about the engine is a blocker. Or maybe Sony doesn't want a fundamental feature to be missing in the console version and be available on the PC.

OD is Unreal 5 so it's going to have Lumen (Software on console and possibly hardware on PC) by default.
 
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Clear said:
I doubt it, can't see them re-lighting the entire game when it already looks so good. They'll likely improve mid-field LOD's and stuff like that, but honestly short of adding in DLSS/Frame Gen support there's not much needing to be done.
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Bollocks. RTGI alone would be a huge improvement, but I don't think Decima supports RT atm
 
Senua said:
Bollocks. RTGI alone would be a huge improvement, but I don't think Decima supports RT atm
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It already looks great, and re-factoring the code to replace all that work with something that only tech-fetishists are going to notice is a waste of time and resources.

I certainly wouldn't sign off on all that work just to pander to a few internet bell-ends!
 
Clear said:
It already looks great, and re-factoring the code to replace all that work with something that only tech-fetishists are going to notice is a waste of time and resources.

I certainly wouldn't sign off on all that work just to pander to a few internet bell-ends!
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So if you like realistic lighting you're a bell end, ok a lot of devs are bell ends I suppose! Even Kojima as he has moved to UE5 with OD, for the superior lighting in his atmospheric horrior game I'd wager.
 
SaiyanRaoh said:
Man, Metroid Prime 4s HDR is go good that had it been my very first experience with HDR years ago, most games implementation of it save Cyberpunk would fail to impress me.
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If you want amazing HDR, horror games are generally a good place to start.
The best implementations imho (on console) are:
- resident evil games
- dead space
- Sony games have usually very good HDR
- cyberpunk indeed

On the other hand, UE5 is known to have poor HDR implementation across the board (though some games fare better than other)
 
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