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[Scotty W]

Most of the Wii U library is still GOTY material today too.

The real lesson is that you have to put more work into a great art style than just mimicing photorealism if you want to make a great game that stands the test of time. In the case of some of these PS3 games, they're really not even that old. Much older games can still look great today.

This is one of the great secrets of Nintendo. It allows them to save on development costs, and it makesbit easy to rerelease the games in the future, often with minimal changes.

 

[MISTER INVEIGLER]

Looking back

I'm now more impressed at what developers were able to achieve on those console.

 

[Radical_3d]

No bull shots. Only glorious 2007 beauty from the OT back in the day:

Uncharted |OT|

Only one thing pissed me off: That's what the

www.neogaf.com

 

[DonF]

I played last gen games on a 32" screen and they looked great. This gen I'm playing on a 55" 4k screen and the difference is noticeable.
720p games look like shit. It's way better to play those games on a 32" tv.
Old 3d games look bad due to lack of techniques like Anti aliasing or taselation and raw horsepower but 2d looks great.
For example, nes and SNES 2d looks great on my 55" tv via nes online on the switch.

 

[xrnzaaas]

I don't mind the outdated graphics, but it becomes annoying for me when archaic gameplay mechanics come into play. I've recently tried replaying Red Faction Guerrilla and especially the mission system aged very poorly. I'm currently playing RE5 and no movement during aiming feels 10 times worse than when the game was originally released (fyi it still annoyed me back then). Almost feels like playing with a disabled character.

 

[HaveButOneLife]

CoD 2 comes to mind, but later in the gen games looked amazing, like the latest Army of 2 game, Black Ops 2, Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, etc.

And i just want to bring your attention to the last game Sonic Team actually tried on:

This is 2008 Xbox 360 with Global illumination.


Ran like absolute shit, but it was dropping frames in style.

Is that Sonic Unleashed? Crazy, very underrated game too.

 

[cireza]

for a Ps3 game

Except that PS3 would run it at 720p@20fps. Valkyria 4 has extremely clean graphics and is perfectly smooth. And it is an improvement, there are many more things on the maps.

And i just want to bring your attention to the last game Sonic Team actually tried on:

Unleashed is very impressive, back then when it was announced, it was a pretty big slap in the face. The game is indeed 30fps with drops, that's too bad as it still looks as good as day-one, I replayed it recently on Xbox One. Best level-design for 3D Sonic games as well (with Colors), in my opinion.

 

[SpiceRacz]

Puppeteer is still gorgeous.

 

[Danjin44]

Puppeteer is still gorgeous.

 

[GreyHorace]

I can forgive games looking dated since it was a generation ago. But some examples shocked me at how badly games from that era have aged now.



Despite the obvious downgrade from the PC version, I thought The Witcher 2 looked damn good on the 360. But these graphics (even on PC with max settings), look damn cartoonish in my eyes now. Playing The Witcher 3 numerous times will do that to you.



Mass Effect was touted to have graphics that rivaled ingame cutscenes from the previous gen. Looking at these cutscenes however, and you'd wonder the people at Bioware were smoking. Even ME3 with it's improved graphics engine can't save it from the somewhat stiff animations plus the oily skin textures. Again, it looked great back then but it wouldn't past muster with today's visuals.

Ironically, I think the first Red Dead Redemption's graphics hold up.



It certainly doesn't match the graphical powerhouse that is it's sequel, but these visuals still look pretty good to me.

 

[The Shepard]

I'm playing yakuza 3 atm on the ps4 and the 3d models almost look ps2 like, especially in the animation, quite the drop from this gen. Yakuza 6 and judgement both look great.

2 games from the PS2/GC/Xbox era that have aged well is resident evil remake because of the pre rendered backgrounds and the windwaker because of its cell shading. More realistic looking games tend to age more and quicker.

 

[rofif]

I hooked up 360 in last week. Some games look still good like GTA IV, The Darkness, Gers of War 2, Dark Souls. Generally games with MSAA are fine.
But most of the stuff is very rough and runs at 20fps most of time. Even the games above.
Some of it is due to playing on 4k monitor, sure.
Youtube compression is really good at hiding aliasing I am sure 360 would benefit from that mcable a lot

 

[ShirAhava]

I thought wall guy was going to be the first post lol

 

[cormack12]

I think I notice going back, how little detail is in each scene. The sharper angles on the models, the lack of textures that makes everything looks a little flat. It's not massive but it's the same as comparing Toy story 4 to Toy Story 1. That road scene with Forky probably has more detail than the whole of Andys house in the first Toy story. It recently hit me at the end of UC3, the airport in the background just looks flat and lifeless, like a set. And the clothes and bags on Drake/Sully are jarring. As well as Elena's triangular ass - probably more noticeable when you actually play it than on youtube. You notice some levels are just wide open area's with a few physics objects or static props.



However, when playing them in their current generation/era they are absolutely gorgeous. The advances are getting harder to quantify and we sometimes say diminishing returns, but when you go back a generation or see an authentic remaster, you pick up on all the advances and extra effort that is going into each scene.

 

[GiJoint]

The not so good framerates and screen tearing are what really stands out for me when I go back to last gen.

 

[D.Final]

You can make the same difference with each generation

 

[mortal]

Great art direction is key.

 

[Makoto-Yuki]

xbox 360 came out 15 years ago.

and you're telling me they have aged badly?

ok

 

[M1chl]

I guess there are still games like Forza Horizon and Mirror's Edge which is perfectly fine.

 

[GymWolf]

killzone 2 still has better hit reactions and meaty gunplay than a shitload of modern fps\tps, it also looks glorious for a game 11 years old.
also the ia was not bad at all, although inferior to some halo games.

 

[Roronoa Zoro]

Funny because everyone said how it was such a small leap this time

 

[alabtrosMyster]

 

[IamOnline4Real]

i play ps3 regularly .. most games looks good graphically .. but yeah image quality is shit .. i care about IQ more then graphics .. i assume ps4 games will be timeless because almost all of them have clean image .. except driveclub : _

Wrong! We haven't even reach the full potential of video game graphics yet. I can tell you with no doubt that ps4 games will look dated in a couple of years..

 

[01011001]

killzone 2 still has better hit reactions and meaty gunplay than a shitload of modern fps\tps, it also looks glorious for a game 11 years old.
also the ia was not bad at all, although inferior to some halo games.

it also has input lag that is literally 2x worse than playing any good modern shooter through a streaming service.

absolutely awful game... a shooter with bad aiming is basically like a racing game with bad car handling... pointless.

and even aside from that it's basically Call of Duty with slightly better AI

 

[nush]

Wrong! We haven't even reach the full potential of video game graphics yet. I can tell you with no doubt that ps4 games will look dated in a couple of years..

Compare Star Wars Battle front II with the first game on PS4. It's not amazing anymore.

 

[GymWolf]

it also has input lag that is literally 2x worse than playing any good modern shooter through a streaming service.

absolutely awful game... a shooter with bad aiming is basically like a racing game with bad car handling... pointless.

and even aside from that it's basically Call of Duty with slightly better AI

yeah it has some input lag problem, many people love that false heavy feeling that the game acquire because of that.

never had real problem with the aim tbh, it is still far better than the aim in rdr2 and that game is a what? 97 on mc?
also the game also has a lovely multyplayer.

but we were talking about the graphics, discussing about the game is pretty pointless.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

The most annoying memory I have of the last gen were the inconsistent frame rates.

Games like God of War 3 and Wipeout HD age well:

However the first Uncharted never looked great to begin with:

Then there are indies like PixelJunk Monster that will always look and play as good as they looked on the first day

 

[pawel86ck]

I have sold my current gen platforms, so I'm playing only X360 / PS3 games lately and these games looks sharp if I only run them on 26 inch 720p HDTV (on 55 inch 4K is different story). But resolution aside graphics fidelity in some games still impress me. I have played TLOU1 for the first time few weeks ago and even after playing many PS4 games I still cant say TLOU1 looks bad in comparison.

These games looms still good even today IMO:

God Of War 3, Crysis 2/3, MGS5, Motorstorm 2/3, GTA5, Killzone 2/3, Ratchet And Clank Tools Of Destruction, Heavy Rain, Gears Of War 2/3, Tomb Raider 2013, Alan Wake, Halo 4, PGR4

Going from PS2 / xbox to PS3 / x360 was a huge difference for me, but PS4 feels more like PS3.5. There's more details and of course higher resolution, but I was expecting more from PS4.

 

[Roberts]

Resolution can do wonders. Some of the Xbox One X Enhanced games still look amazing, like these few Splinter Cell games.

 

[Mr Hyde]

but stuff like El Shaddai hasn't aged a day:

Still waiting for that Switch port. Such a great and tragically underrated game. And it still looks absolutely fantastic.

 

[Kerotan]

Gta 4 badly needs a remaster. 4k 60fps or even a ground up remaster.

 

[sublimit]

Again with the "games have aged" bull crap?

Games don't age. Pong will always be Pong. Only our mindsets change and it's always for the worse as this thread clearly demonstrates.

IMO it's a mentality that has been greatly infused by capitalistic centers and influencers for the last 2 decades (especially in technology) and who want people to be sad consumer slaves. They want to make you incapable to appreciate things for what they used to be in the time they came out and instead only appreciate new things based on some "superficial need" that was never really a need.

Personally i'm always excited for new things but that doesn't mean that i will stop enjoying or appreciating older technologies for what they were.

 

[Fbh]

They did some upgrade to its weather effect and even look at the tank in your screenshot, it has more detail than the original game.

I didn't say they didn't improve the graphics at all, and it's not like last gen games didn't improve graphics in between sequels.
Just that unlike a lot of both big and small franchises the visuals differences were rather tame, considering it's a sequel releasing 10 years later on next gen machines and it doesn't look much better than what I would have expected a sequel on Ps3 to look like (just running at a higher resolution)

 

[DrCheese]

Just as it was for CRT era based games that look rubbish on LCD's, Last gen games don't look that great on the 4k 55ins displays we're all using now.

I used to play my PS3 on a 2005 era 40ins 1080p display & it was fine - But when I hooked it up to my 55ins 4k display it looked terrible - RDR looked like a jumbled mess of pixels & the horrific framerate didn't help either.

 

[D.Final]

No bull shots. Only glorious 2007 beauty from the OT back in the day:

Uncharted |OT|

Only one thing pissed me off: That's what the

www.neogaf.com

Cool OT

 

[Lionel Richie]

Still waiting for that Switch port. Such a great and tragically underrated game. And it still looks absolutely fantastic.

I can't believe it never got a second shot and why it isn't even an actual cult classic, there's never been any true hype around it despite being so incredibly gorgeous and actually playing well.

 

[wolywood]

Final Fantasy XIII still looks good (the game itself is another story)

 

[Parazels]

Good thread.

The graphics of 360 games from my backlog look so bad, that I would rather give up and delete these games with no regrets, than play them.

It will definitely help me faster reduce my backlog!

 

[Wolzard]

Resident Evil 5 looked great because of the level of detail on Chris Redfield's character model and the environment but the color grading looked bad. You also had "realistic looking" games like Battlefield 3 and Far Cry 3 where the dirty lens and SSAO post-processing effects ruined the overall look of the game.

But this happens every console generation where older games from the previous console generation look dated because as time goes on we're being exposed to better graphics and rendering techniques.

I played BF3 on PC a while ago. In 4K the game still surprises me graphically. But at the time, PCs were already far beyond the capacity of consoles.

 

[skyfinch]

On 360, Project Gotham Racing 3 and 4 hold up well even today. Same with Dead or Alive 4.

 

[SimTourist]

Some still look good when cleaned up with higher resolutions and fps, but yeah playing at original 720p or less with 20 fps is painful.

 

[IAmRei]

That's way i switched into artstyle since eons ago. Because it became pointless imo. Pretty graphic in last gen years ago will be not appealing by today, pretty graphic today will beaten by age in 5-10 years later as well.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

I was playing Resident Evil 5 on Ps3 the other day and thought just the opposite! I thought the game looked good, same with others I've played from that gen recently (Assassin's Creed/II/Brotherhood/Revelations). I loved their visuals.

 

[Freelance Yakuza]

I just finished Binary Domain on PC* and thought it looked great.

 

[brenobnfm]

Morons stretching 720p games on 4k TVs "iT dOeNs'T lOoK aS gOoD aS i ReMeMbEr"

 

[StereoVsn]

Some of the games from that era work and look just fine on PCs, especially with down sampled graphics and higher FPS (60+).

Others have FPS and even res boost on XSX. That said, especially for action games, playing them on OG consoles would be painful now.

 

[Drew1440]

Some of the later games look so much better when run in a higher resolution with additional filtering. Usually it's best to play compatible 360 games on the Xbox One X, the enhancements are sort of like a remaster. and look amazing for the supported games.

 

[MiguelItUp]

I'm honestly more impressed with the innovation and art design that existed than anything aging poorly. I think it's wild how some still look as good as they do.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Don't know about the OG console experience, but playing those games on PC be it via ports or emulation makes some of them look really amazing even today.

 

[SonGoku]

The graphics are not even the main problem that plague games from that era
Its the scope and linear corridor design, every big AAA game feels claustrophobic like you are walking through corridors with a painted landscape on the wallpapers.