Those 3d games that stays pretty over the years

Most people are all for awesome graphics in their games today. There's nothing wrong about that in my opinion but the thing is, most of the games we shit bricks about today will look terrible in 5 years. Doom 3? it was pretty awesome at the time, but today the characters look like zoomed-in action figurines. they remind me of the movie "Small Sodliers". remember that one? my jaw dropped at seeing max payne in motion back when it came out, and I once said, back then, "holy shit, there's details in his hair!". don't judge me, I wasn't on crack; I was just an impressionable teenager, and quite frankly it was a seriously pretty game.

And that's the thing: it still is. a lot of games still look great, despite their age. it's not just polygon count or texture quality that matters; it's the art style, the atmosphere, the design that sticks all those elements together makes the game something special.

For me, games such as Unreal, Thief: the dark project, System Shock 2 and as I mentioned, Max Payne, still look as great as they did back when we first played them. plenty people will dismiss those games because of their dated graphics, and that's really terrible.

Let's go back to our beloved (yet tragic) Max. the first game he's been in was made at a time when we were starting to cross into next gen territory, with games like metal gear solid 2, return to castle wolfenstein, and such, but most games still looked like this:

That's Tekken 4, released at the arcades in 2001, ported to the playstation 2 in 2002.

Let's compared that to System Shock 2, which was released in 1999 for PCs:



I took that screenshot, by the way. it's right at the beginning of the game.

Now, if you think comparing an arcade game to a pc one isn't fair, then let's look at something more modern (and which was released on the same platform, amongst others):

Battlefield 3, released in 2011, versus:

Unreal, released in 1998.

Living beings trying to kill you aside, I'd rather spend my week end at Na Pali, and needless to say, the first time you get out of the Vortex Rikers in unreal, and you see just what planet you're stranded on, is a much more impressive sight (personally) than anything battlefield 3 has to offer.

Mind you, I'm not shoving 2d games in there because that's kind of... not the point. 3d games until recently (and even then...) had to deal with limitations of the hardware it was running on. games like unreal ran on computers with pentium 2 cpus, 32mb to 64mb of ram (128mb if you were wealthy) and both 3d accelerators and dedicated 3d video cards (which wasn't all that common back then. 3d accelerators like the 3dfx voodoo cards worked in combination with your regular video card to provide the 3d goodness for your games.) that had around 2, 4 or 8mb of memory, often 12, and 32mb, the latter being in high-end territory for the time (actually, I'm not sure if 32mb cards existed back in 1998...), so the textures were kind of blurry, and even later games such as max payne, while they looked amazing to us then, looks kind of blurry today, polygons aside, and most of the time, 2d games don't have that problem.

So there, just because a game is old doesn't mean it's ugly. plenty are, but not all.

What are those old games that you think still look great today? mine are those I mentioned above (max payne, ss2, thief, unreal) and a couple more like return to castle wolfenstein, mdk 2, and (on the old playstation) medal of honor.

 

Most of the last gen games still hold up now

 

indeed, splinter cell: chaos theory still looks amazing.

 

I have to disagree about System Shock 2, it looks awful today, and so does Deus Ex, both great games though.
Practically everything from the late 90s done with 3D graphics looks pukeworthy today.

 

well... deus ex already looked kind of bleh when it was released. those textures were blurry as fuck.

 

well FFX hold good still today

 

Counter strike.... don't have amazing graphics compare with today, but there's still a lot of players online throughout the world, and when I played year ago, it still captivated me and had some funs.


The same with Half-life 1, still very topical game.

 

God of War 1 and 2
Panzer Dragoon Orta
Stretch Panic
Ninja Gaiden
Otogi 1 and 2
F Zero GX
Wreakless
Sonic Adventure 2

They all hold up and that's just off the top of my head.

 

Those games aren't even that old. Hell, God of War 2 came out in 2007!

 

I said last gen games before the list was made

But if you're gonna be a crotchety old man about it I'll go back even farther

Rage Racer and R4 still hold up.

Dead or Alive 1 still holds up

Virtura Fighter 2
Daytona USA
Last Bronx
Fighting Vipers
NIGHTS

 

I'll go back further and say: I think the arcade version of Hard Drivin' still looks great. Same for Star Fox, even though the framerate is low. Both games are crystal-clear, have great overall design, and are graphically effective.

Heck, I can go even further back: Dungeons of Daggorath for Tandy CoCo. Its framerate is something like 0.33fps, but that in no way undermines the incredibly striking graphic design and intense atmosphere.

 

I still think Shenmue 1 has one of the most atmospheric/convincing/pretty/cozy environments ever.
The attention to detail is staggering and you really feel like you're stuck in a small Japanese village. You really take in the sights and begin to feel a connection to the various locales.

 

Daytona USA 1 and 2 on the Arcade are still exceptionally great!

 

and the animation is top notch even better than some games made now!

 

Ive actually been sitting on the fence on building a old PC with a Voodoo just for my older games

Someting like a 1GHZ P3 , Riva TNT2, 2x Voodoo 2, running windows 98se (or plain 98 with proper dos)

You can get high definition texture packs for both of those, and System shock 2 actually has a complete model replacement aswell that looks amazing, this was actually created because back in the day system shock 2 didnt have the best GFX....

As for games out of the 90's, take a look at Need for speed 3 (1998) as long as you had a GFX accelerator the game looked amazing, or Thief 2 (2000) with its amazing shadow engine, hell even Quake 2 (1999) still looks good with a proper GFX accelerator

 

Vampire the masquerade: Redemption
Vampire the masquerade: Bloodlines

 

Bloodlines really pushed the original source engine to it limits, while being an amazing game at the same time , but the bugs just killed it back then, luckily today its rock solid thanks to user generated updates that fixed just about everything

 

Dead or Alive 2 - Levels look amazing, fast animations, and I have to say this but the girls would have to be the most attractive in a video game :/

Wreckless - The over amount of post processing with flares. Lighting and shadows are still nice today. It's one of the best looking games on XBOX.

Re-Volt - Great amount of details on the levels, rain splatters, reflective floors, water animation and explosions.

Roadsters (On N64, Dreamcast port was HORRIBLE) - Nice overall geometry, levels looked nice and cars were modelled well. Skidmarks would stay on the road for whole duration of the race.

HSV Adventure Racing/Beetle Adventure racing - Lighting effects were really nice, and draw distance was quite amazing for a racing game then.

 

Headhunter on Dreamcast. Some pretty nice texture and lighting work going on in places.

 

Yeah, the rain on the roof top looked amazing back in the day. Still looks pretty nice even now.

Yakumo