[H]ard Gaming Awards: Graphics

Which Game Has the Best Graphics?

  • DiRT

    Votes: 53 18.6%

  • Doom 3

    Votes: 15 5.3%

  • F.E.A.R.

    Votes: 22 7.7%

  • Guild Wars

    Votes: 9 3.2%

  • Half Life 2

    Votes: 41 14.4%

  • Oblivion

    Votes: 135 47.4%

  • Quake 4

    Votes: 10 3.5%
  • Total voters
    285
I'm so psyched to run Oblivion with all the mod texture packs, on a 37" 1920x1080 screen on a beast video card for a reason..

Oblivion!
 
My vote is for Company of Heroes. The level of detail for an RTS is simply amazing. The DX10 patch, while it doesn't add much, does make it look even better.
 
The absolute igonorant and useless replies in this thread make my fucking head hurt. I see now why you cannot talk/discuss/debate this type of question, because most people are staring cross-eyed through coke bottle glasses... :rolleyes:

I vote for Prey.
 
Quake 4 and Prey were the ultimate in indoor games, possibly challenged by Dark Messiah... outdoor is Oblivion's territory, but STALKER gives it a good run for its money (has more capabilities, but less polish)... however there is yet to be a game that can pull both off without a hitch. Graphics is too great of a generalized category.

It would go something along the lines of:

MMO Graphics: - as these face restrictions no 1-player game even has to consider
Outdoor Graphics: - concerns being distances detail and resolution scalability
Indoor Graphics: - small details in compounds, HDR, level of interactivity (physics)
Macro-Micro Level Graphics: - we're talking the likes of Flight Sims, Space Sims, Tank Sims, RTS, Top-Down RPGs, B&W series... where you can zoom in or out at will and everything has to scale and scale well.
Art Direction: If a salt factory in the middle of the Sahara has a giant slug for a boss, well, where the hell did that come from? ... a giant sand scarab with crystallized-salt stalactites growing out of its back would have been better art direction.

Where is Vanguard or LotRo on here, or EQ2? ... Vanguard seriously whips the lamma's ass of every MMO out there now or ever, with its graphics and art-direction. Despite the fact that it is exactly that which sunk it in the first place.

Graphics doesn't cut it when each game's "graphics" are catered to a genre, multiplayer concerns, environmental concerns, or distance scalability. We're comparing Oranges to Pomegranates to Apples to Tangerines to Passion Fruit to Blue psudo-raspberries.

Games I want to see added to this list:

Prey, STALKER, Dark Messiah, Dark Star One, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Rainbow 6: Vegas, Dark Crusade, C&C Timberium Wars... I mean seriously... out of what ass was the above poll list pulled from?
 
Lotro has amazing design and textures... I think it looks better than EQ2 overall... Vanguard is apparently the best looking MMO right now, but I haven't played that yet. There are so many avenues in which to narrow down the game with " the best graphics '...
 
eq2 still best imo...vanguard still dosn't impress me...and edited because someone said lotro is better...thats LOLable to say the least...
1600x1200 max settings
EQ2_000040.jpg
 
Zaphear said:
eq2 still best imo...vanguard still dosn't impress me...and edited because someone said lotro is better...thats LOLable to say the least...
1600x1200 max settings
EQ2_000040.jpg
Click to expand...

EQ2 has HORRIBLE fucking design.. If you check out the Shire in Lotro VS ANY ugly zone in EQ2, you would realize that Lotro doesnt have expansive areas of fucking NOTHING but a tree and grass like EQ2 does... also, EQ2 is still full of bugs and the framerates are brutal... you should know this if you play EQ2 cause its so apparent... Everquest 2 does have an amazingly adjustable engine, and maxxed settings bring most systems to a halt, but who cares if you can't even get decent framrates with many settings turned down. I said this before, its impossible to argue the best graphics, because people still vote for fucking Farcry!! EQ2 is at least a game that still requires a high end system to play with high settings. I wouldn't be shocked to hear someone mention Pong in this thread...

What exactly defines " best graphics " A game that you can scale up so friggen high it makes any system slow, or a game that even if the graphics aren't all maxxed, it wins because of incredible art design, layout, seamless textures, character models and textures/animations.. an overall thing. Its art.... something everyone has different tastes in, so what overall influences the majority when deciding this? Still though.. Farcry? Todays standards? :p
 
Nice way at showing maturity there flaming the game with profanity like that shows a lot...and frame rates are fine EQ2 I don't know what you're talking about...i can raid in high quality just fine with my current setup without any lag, and I was the leader of one of the top kinships in the game and quit because I wasn't impressed with any of it...the graphics where only so so on max settings and I've been everywhere in that game...anyways, going to leave this flame bait thread now, said my 2 cents

kthnxbai
 
that picture of eq2 reminds me of one of the first maps I made in doom1 when I went crazy with a wood texture.
 
Vader said:
My vote is for Company of Heroes. The level of detail for an RTS is simply amazing. The DX10 patch, while it doesn't add much, does make it look even better.
Click to expand...
Agreed, it should have been on the list.

Oblivion with or without the extra texture packs looks stunning until you starting talking to people. The close up textures, animations and lighting for all of the faces makes my eyes bleed with or without the various texture packs.
 
ojax said:
incredible art design, layout, seamless textures, character models and textures/animations.. an overall thing. Its art....
Click to expand...

Yessir. People have varied tastes in paintings, architecture, furnishings etc. Game graphics surely must also reflect what an individual deems to be aesthetically pleasing. It's not like hardware, where performance can be measured - it's purely subjective. I think Akira (a traditional anime film for those that don't know it) still looks better than any modern CGI, but that's just my opinion. I generally prefer stylized art to the photo-realistic, otherwise it just becomes a matter of who can reproduce reality (or pseudo-reality) the most faithfully.
 
MrBojangels said:
Oblivion shouldn't even be on this list :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I could laugh for 10 years straight at that comment... but then I wouldn't be able to go and enjoy Oblivion's superior graphics :D
I guess thats why it is winning by a landslide...
 
Doom 3 and Quake 4 are both the same game essentially... but quake looks a little better.
 
Zaphear said:
Nice way at showing maturity there flaming the game with profanity like that shows a lot...and frame rates are fine EQ2 I don't know what you're talking about...i can raid in high quality just fine with my current setup without any lag, and I was the leader of one of the top kinships in the game and quit because I wasn't impressed with any of it...the graphics where only so so on max settings and I've been everywhere in that game...anyways, going to leave this flame bait thread now, said my 2 cents

kthnxbai
Click to expand...

I always swear, so fucking get used to it. ;) My entire experience with EQ2 was poor. However the computers I played the game on were anything but slow. No matter how the settings were adjusted, it still ran like crap and looked like crap, unless you were in the middle of an instanced area.

You said you LOL'd at someone mentioning Lotro and I flame? I'm just offering my opinion as why I think EQ2 doesn't have the overall graphics award vote over LOTRO... Has EQ2 won any awards for graphics or design? If not, I'd know why :p
 
bobbydole said:
that doesnt look like max graphics to me. doesn't the max setting in eq have shadows all over the place?
Click to expand...

pardon me, -shadows.....

why everyone hate on eq2 so much? the game runs fine now....granted back in the day i know it had some major down falls but it's been out for a long ass time now and finally is tweaked fairly nicely.


editted because poster above mentioned Two Worlds...yes i agree...that game rocks haha, started playing it last night..fun so far minus the horrid voice acting
 
I'm surprised no-one else is asking for further breakdown of game-design branches and the addition of a lot more games to that list... I am hearing specific titles but no-one else is attacking the merit of this list at its core for what seems to be manipulatory exclusions and whole-sale generalization...

this list appeals to "what was the most popular of the above games" not to "which game had the graphics best suited to its game branch"...

This kind of statistic manipulation is only seen elsewhere in the lands of the RNC, neo-con, and bible-thumper-sponsored pseudo-studies...
 
WipeoutFTW said:
Here our our nominations for Best Graphics:
Dirt
Doom 3
FEAR
Guild Wars
Half Life 2
Oblivion
Quake 4
Click to expand...

correction, here are your nominations for......

I wouldn't have picked half the games you did.
 
correction, here are your nominations for......

I wouldn't have picked half the games you did.
Click to expand...

The problem with that statement is that I didn't pick them. In my other thread those were the nominated games for "Best Graphics"

I was kind of like WTF when I had more than one nomination for guild wars.
 
the fact that 7 people actually voted for guild wars me makes me a sad panda....and the fact that it's actually on that list makes me LoLZ
 
WoW, (eventhough i do play it alot) does not qualify under many graphic awards... If you are compairing World of Warcraft to Oblivion then i think it would be pretty obvious who would win the graphics contest. And wow is a great game and everything the freedom to do what you want and just everything about it is great but i just dont think it compairs to other games very well graphic wise....Thats just my opinion :p

-Syco
 
oblivion? give me a break.

you need to add in Two Worlds:

TwoWorlds_004.jpg


and Test Drive Unlimited:

TDU_1.jpg
 
sycoblazer said:
WoW, (eventhough i do play it alot) does not qualify under many graphic awards... If you are compairing World of Warcraft to Oblivion then i think it would be pretty obvious who would win the graphics contest. And wow is a great game and everything the freedom to do what you want and just everything about it is great but i just dont think it compairs to other games very well graphic wise....Thats just my opinion :p

-Syco
Click to expand...

The only people that mentioned WoW where talking about art, not technical proficiency
 
I went for DiRT because I think it's the most technically modern engine and has some amazing post-processing effects that raise it well above all the other games listed. It's almost photorealistic but still keeps a distinct style of its own. It's unsurprisingly, the most recently released game on the list.

Modded Oblivion just doesn't count. You may as well call it 'The Gamebryo engine with player made content'. Oblivion's graphics are what comes out of the box and I don't think it deserves first place at all based on that. Its art style is whatever the designers chose for it when then went gold and burned the CDs.... 'muddy faces' and all.

I clicked DiRT and fully expected it to be second, behind Oblivion, so wasnt' surprised at all with the results.
 
You're really comparing games that came out in 2004 against games that came out in 2007? What's the point?
 
Graphically, WoW is ugly.
Artistically, maybe it is something special but thats not what we're here to vote on.

I would have voted on DiRT, but most racing games don't impress me because of their simplicity.
Two Worlds would win this hands down but the game isn't officially out yet in the US.
 
finalgt said:
You're really comparing games that came out in 2004 against games that came out in 2007? What's the point?
Click to expand...

I sympathise, but some of them, like FarCry, still look pretty good. Although, i don't think they're in the same league to some of the more modern games.
 
Hard thing to rate, people say that WoW is ugly but what other game lets you have 100's of people on the screen at once with a smooth frame rate?

Sometimes we sacrafice quality for scale, this is aparant in games like Grand Theft Auto 3 and similar GTA games, rushing to call them ugly because things on average are simpler is not justifiable in my opinion, in many ways the GTA games look better because you have a very large view distance and in the background we still have many hundreds of rendered buildings, this is especially noticeable when you get into a helicopter and fly around.

I think Oblivion wins because it provides exceedingly high quality with massive scale.
 
i've played oblivion --- the graphics look like late 90's graphics to me.
 
ojax said:
I vote for Prey.
Click to expand...

Prey is gorgeous.

Oblivion:
Oblivion.jpg


Far Cry:
fc029.jpg


Which looks better eh?

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And why wasn't R6V included in the list?

R6V:

R6V.jpg
 
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