Digital Foundry's Best Game Graphics of 2025

daclynk

daclynk

Member




im very surprised some nintendo games made it on Digital Foundry.

0:00:00 Introduction
0:02:09 Honourable Mentions: Kirby Air Riders, Mario Kart World, Star Wars Outlaws (Switch 2), Fast Fusion
0:11:45 Routine
0:16:35 Earthion
0:20:00 Silent Hill f
0:25:50 Mafia: The Old Country
0:32:18 Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
0:39:00 Ghost of Yōtei
0:46:11 Dying Light: The Beast
0:56:32 Top Three Discussion
- Death Stranding 2
- Assassin's Creed Shadows
- DOOM The Dark Ages
 
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Death Stranding 2 while a 5/10 for me personally was the best looking game of they year by a country mile. It borders on photorealism at times
 
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daclynk said:
im very surprised some nintendo games made it on Digital Foundry.
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first time GIF
 
It's no surprise for me that ROUTINE is on the list; it looks outrageously good. The atmosphere it creates is top-notch.

For me, the best graphics this year overall, considering technology + visuals, is Assassin's Creed Shadows.
 
So did Death stranding beat Hellblade 2 or is it still the King till now?


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Anyway..
Congrats microsoft last year it was indy jones and hellblade 2
This year it's DOOM The Dark Ages at # 1

Can't wait for 2026
Gears E-Day
Horizon 6
wolverine from sony
GTA 6
I can tell right now GTA 6 will win! xD
 
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Good list, I would put AC Shadows AT THE TOP though, DOOM Dark Ages while excellent, it's not open world which is much harder to get it right, Ubisoft tech and engine teams absolutely cooked really hard. Optimized a gorgeous, high fidelity world.

A lot of you are confused, ART STYLE IS NOT EQUAL TO GRAPHICS/RENDERING!
 
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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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It's a tech top, not artistic one. E33 is pretty stock Unreal and dare I say even wonky at places (especially facial animation and heads/world scaling).

I mean, my personal overall leaders this year are DS2, GoY and E33, but Doom and Shadows are really outstanding purely for their technical achievments.
 
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analog_future said:
I don't think a single soul actually honestly said Yotei looks like PS3 game. But it does not impress as a PS5 game outside of draw distances.
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Nah no one did. People said PS4, I said PS4 pro. But that was before they showed the RTGI off which helped somewhat with the lighting flaws, but it's still a limited solution. I don't find the game particularly impressive, though it's nice to look at
 
analog_future said:
I don't think a single soul actually honestly said Yotei looks like PS3 game. But it does not impress as a PS5 game outside of draw distances.
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Senua said:
Nah no one did. People said PS4, I said PS4 pro. But that was before they showed the RTGI off which helped somewhat with the lighting flaws, but it's still a limited solution. I don't find the game particularly impressive, though it's nice to look at
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Filter through. There's plenty of trolling cunts that did 🤣
 
Metroid Prime 4 has made me a believer in HDR.
I gave it a chance for years and had been so let down by HDR that I have actively spoke out against it. Most games just looked dull and washed out. Where I love big bold colors.
MP4 though has best of HDR and keeps the bold colors. It really shows how much most devs suck at HDR and just leaves it as an after thought.
 
AC Shadows not being number 1, completely skip over UE5 games like Ninja Gaiden 2, Erikshold, The Alters, Wuchang, KCD2 while including pixel art and Nintendo games.
clown-clown-meme.gif

Mindseye legit looks better than some of the inclusions...
 
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RaidenJTr7 said:
So did Death stranding beat Hellblade 2 or is it still the King till now?


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It's hard to compare those games in my opinion.
One of them is a super big open world game with lots of interaction with environments, fast actions with lots of things happening at the same time on screen and real time events like raining and... in 60fps, and the other is a super linear game with almost zero interaction and 1v1 battles in 30fps (at least at launch on consoles).
I think Death Stranding 2 is much more impressive when we consider everything.
 
ShaiKhulud1989 said:
It's a tech top, not artistic one. E33 is pretty stock Unreal and dare I say even wonky at places (especially facial animation and heads/world scaling).

I mean, my personal overall leaders this year are DS2, GoY and E33, but Doom and Shadows are really outstanding purely for their technical achievments.
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Then why is Routine on the list?
 
Doom in the top 3 is a good shout. Silent Hill f also there, fantastic.

AC Shadows was always going to be near the top, say whatever you want about the game, the tech behind is extremely solid.

I should probably check Routine out soon, its position in the list is surprising.
 
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its DS2 by far, they have been riding ID's dick since TDA launched with their sponsored deep looks etc.
game looks barely better than eternal, while tripling system requirements with forced RT, and its the most bland ray tracing implementation ever,
they were running around the levels trying to find any place PT makes a difference lol
 
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