Digital Foundry Direct Special: The Best Game Graphics of the Year 2023

Punished Miku said:
Pretty impressive win for Avatar. I'll have to pick it up on sale. Love the movies.
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It's already on sale. 33% off on PC through the Epic store. It's activated with Ubisoft Connect either way so it doesn't matter where you buy it. It's like $50 USD on console at the moment.
 
Killjoy-NL said:
Yeah, but technical aspects are objective, so one can judge the graphics based on tech, performance and respective hardware.
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My point was that there would be no need for judgement. You could just build a script to see what game does the most of xyz technique up with a list which would remove the artistry from the art.
 
Turk1993 said:
Just because of his console version comparison he didn't put Forza in there while the pc version looks excellent. But hey atleast they put a Nintendo game in there thats a plus point right.

So he thinks that Mario looks better than this lol

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And then you all wonder why im so hard on DF. They are not shills, just morons.
 
I swear to god they compiled this list to fuck with people and get rage clicks, and judging by this thread it's working.
 
Honestly it's great that no 1st party exclusives made the top 3!


Third parties bringing their A-game and everyone gets to reap the benefits.
 
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bender said:
My point was that there would be no need for judgement. You could just build a script to see what game does the most of xyz technique up with a list which would remove the artistry from the art.
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That's basically the whole point of Digital Foundry.
 
analog_future said:
Honestly it's great that no 1st party exclusives made the top 3!


Third parties bringing their A-game and everyone gets to reap the benefits.
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I dont think its great. If anything its extremely disappointing because pushing graphics fidelity and consoles is literally the first job of first party studios. To justify the $500 investment we've all made. Again, the console by itself cant play any games so it falls on first party to justify the purchase. Insomniac spent $300 million on Spiderman 2 and didnt even come close to AW2 which cost $50 million euros or $55 million dollars. Not to mention that insane downgrade. And dont even get me started on the Starfield and Forza downgrades. I think they shouldve been in the top 10, but had they shipped with pre=downgraded graphics, there is no way DF couldve left them out of the top 3 let alone top 10.

A fucking Ubisoft game showing up Sony and MS first parties which now total up to 50 fucking studios combined is NOT great.
 
What a perfect year to have switched to PC gaming.

Some of my shots:


Alan Wake II
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Forza Motorsport
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Starfield
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Really looking forward to experiencing the visuals of Spider-Man 2, Final Fantasy XVI, Hellblade II, and others on PC in 2024!
 
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Just watched it and came here:
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Not surprised they didnt mention Hogwarts, whatever. But Dead Island 2 and Atomic Heart or even Starfield/FM being absent in favour of some of the stuff theyve discussed is meh, overall its pretty good list imo, could have been way worse, they could have put their beloved Immortals of Aveum there.
 
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SlimySnake said:
I dont think its great. If anything its extremely disappointing because pushing graphics fidelity and consoles is literally the first job of first party studios. To justify the $500 investment we've all made. Again, the console by itself cant play any games so it falls on first party to justify the purchase. Insomniac spent $300 million on Spiderman 2 and didnt even come close to AW2 which cost $50 million euros or $55 million dollars. Not to mention that insane downgrade. And dont even get me started on the Starfield and Forza downgrades. I think they shouldve been in the top 10, but had they shipped with pre=downgraded graphics, there is no way DF couldve left them out of the top 3 let alone top 10.

A fucking Ubisoft game showing up Sony and MS first parties which now total up to 50 fucking studios combined is NOT great.
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Like it or not, consoles are just PCs nowadays. 1st party developers no longer have a secret sauce like the old days with PS3 and older consoles. 3rd party developers have the same knowledge, tools, and budgets as 1st party developers nowadays.

And yeah, I do think that's great. It means the best looking AAA games reach more consumers.

Nowadays, if you want the best looking games you simply buy the best hardware (PC).
 
Really good list and top 3.

I'm not really feeling Resident Evil 4 remake visually though. Looks kind of standard and garish in a way. Those rains drops they thought were good is an example of their choices. I can see see RE4 being remade again with a lot more style and panache.
 
analog_future said:
Like it or not, consoles are just PCs nowadays. 1st party developers no longer have a secret sauce like the old days with PS3 and older consoles. 3rd party developers have the same knowledge, tools, and budgets as 1st party developers nowadays.

And yeah, I do think that's great. It means the best looking AAA games reach more consumers.

Nowadays, if you want the best looking games you simply buy the best hardware (PC).
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its not just about secret sauce, they have more time, resources and budget than third party games. spiderman 2's $300 million budget proves this. as well as starfield getting delayed by a full year. Not every third party gets to have that kind of delay, let alone help from ms first party to polish up games.

Hellblade 2 looks absolutely mind blowing so at least MS is going to deliver next gen. dont see any other game topping it.
 
March Climber said:
I remembered:
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i see. that was before AW2 and Avatar came out though. ive been singing their praises in the graphics thread for the last two months.

Edit: posted my top 10 last week and put Avatar and AW2 on top.

SlimySnake said:
I preferred HFW over Cyberpunk for a whole host of reasons, and not all of those reasons apply to Avatar. character models, cinematics, animations etc. But Avatar is just so much more dense and rich in level of detail that I have to go with cyberpunk as second best again. I guess third best now.

I think Spiderman 2 vs cyberpunk wouldve been a far more accurate comparison since they are both doing the same thing. Sadly insomniac forgot to upgrade the character models, building quality and other lighting features to next gen. It still beats Cyberpunk in some areas like traffic, cutscenes, animations, setpieces and NPC density, but cyberpunk is better in the two most obvious things... lighting and asset quality.

Hellblade 2 is doing everything right. Lighting, asset quality, animations, cutscenes, character rendering so i guess if you had me at gunpoint and asked me to pick between avatar and hellblade 2, id pick hb2 for the same reasons i picked HFW over cyberpunk back in the day.

for the year, id say my top ten are:

1) Avatar
2) AW2
3) Starfield
4) Forza 8
5) Spiderman 2
6) FF16
7) Star Wars
8) RE4 remake
9) Dead Space remake
10) Robocop

Not listing DLC because thats cheating and it would let HFW, Callisto and Cyberpunk back into the mix and fuck that. They had their run in their respective launch years. Callisto id put behind HFW last year if i had played it last year. Still not sure about robocop so i might readjust it as i play some more but so far its been disappointing but worth mentioning.
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bender said:
That your sterile argument is foolish. Digital Foundry isn't putting together a list of games with the least jagged edges or most pixels.
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DF is talking about best game graphics.

I'm saying art style is part of visuals, not graphics.
Just like why there are no art-style sliders in a games graphics settings.
 
bender said:
That your sterile argument is foolish. Digital Foundry isn't putting together a list of games with the least jagged edges or most pixels.
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If that were the case, HiFi Rush would probably be higher up, since it's running native 4K/60 on console and the PC port was one of the rare, single digit, PC releases that launched without any issues like shader comp. 🤷‍♂️
 
I don't know about DF, but my picks for most impressive looking (and running) games of the year are Resident Evil 4 Remake and Spiderman 2.

I played Resi 4 then immediately started a new run, putting in close to 50 hours+ and in that whole time I did not experience one crash to desktop, it ran well despite my low tier hardware, and apart from one moment of texture pop in, was a flawless experience.

If only all pc games were so professionally made.
 
The silly comments on here, its a personal choice and you to respect them for that. Avtar on a top range PC does look incredible the console version doesn't come close
I loved the visuals in Under the Waves even if they are rather simple , but its hard to top Alan Wake 2 on the consoles ( I don't game on PC)
 
Senua said:
Why are you always so salty bro. What did you want to win?


True there was great hair tech in Spiderman 2

BVbPOeg.jpg
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Is this realy how this character look in game? Or is it some meme-purpose modified?
She looks juat like that girl from the last of Us Tv show
 
Rendered Tangent said:
I don't know about DF, but my picks for most impressive looking (and running) games of the year are Resident Evil 4 Remake and Spiderman 2.

I played Resi 4 then immediately started a new run, putting in close to 50 hours+ and in that whole time I did not experience one crash to desktop, it ran well despite my low tier hardware, and apart from one moment of texture pop in, was a flawless experience.

If only all pc games were so professionally made.
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mmm debatable.
We made it very far with raster tech and other "cheating" techniques.
Ray Tracing is not the only way to go... in fact it's just brute forcing graphics.
 
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Ngl AW2 is not a good looking game on consoles. Way too many issues from horrible image quality to bad performance, to bad physics and animation. Way too many problems for aw2 on console. I won't delve into its bad gameplay as well but I'm glad avatar won.
 
adamsapple said:
Technically, Avatar is superb. As a game, it's mediocre at best.

Both the top 2 games also have very solid console ports, while their #3 is something only doable on PC's at the moment.
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Avatar touches as low as circa 800p and cant hold a locked 60fps on either XSX or PS5 and we're calling it technically superb and a very solid console port?
 
lakitu1982 said:
Because it's a beautiful game. The attention to detail and art style. Have you played it?
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I don't need to play it to see the graphics are nothing impressive. Might be a great game and look pretty with all the colours but in the best graphics line up? No, it shouldn't be in it.
 
S0ULZB0URNE said:
Same style as Avatar but on steroids (smh@DF)
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Their whole issue with Burning Shores is its DLC, but not only that its because they havent changed the renderer to include something like path tracing (on PS5? are you having a laugh), so they can include Cyberpunk even though it is DLC. Its stupid reasoning, it should be included because it was released this year, whether DLC or not. They even admit it would be right up there at the top of the list.
 
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