I’m not, BUT I do work in ‘teh industry’ and therefore I like to keep up with what looks awesome, so I know what people expect.
Plus… as a developer, my videogame purchases are on expenses :D
So… I need some tips on what game I could buy for my shiny new quad core PC with Windows 7 and an ATI 5750 (or 70, can’t remember).
The last video game I bought and went Whoah! at, was Bioshock, for it’s water and particle effects.
I also thought oblivion looked darned nice. And COD 4 too.
(I’m skipping Modern Warfare 2 because I dislike the ‘controversial’ level, otherwise I’d already have it.) I watched vids of Bad Company, but it didn’t blow me away, is it betetr in the flesh? How about Dragon Age?
Genre doesn’t really matter. What should I buy? What really made your PC stretch its legs and do some shiny things?
Well, it may not be the most advanced game on the market, but I think Resident Evil 5 looks absolutely magnificent from a technical perspective. The level of polish is stunning, light and shadow is subtle and most textures don’t telegraph their mapping techniques from a mile away.
Apart from that? I can’t really remember any recent games that blew me away with their technical accomplishments. I suppose Assassin’s Creed 2 is going to look nice’n’shiny on the PC, but that’s not out yet.
Well, Arkham Asylum has a bunch of nifty stuff like ambient occlusion and plenty of cosmetic physics, while Borderlands at least does something slightly different from the waxen normal-mapping we usually see, although I personally find the art direction pretty drab and boring. It’s striking, but not inspired.
Edit: If we’re talking two-to-three-year-old games as well, I’d get behind STALKER and Unreal Tournament 3 as well as Crysis. I personally think STALKER looks absolutely marvellous, especially with a heavy-duty rig and some decent mods. Unreal Tournament is a strikingly ugly game, but it’s got plenty of bells’n’whistles.
I’d also suggest Far Cry 2 for the fire propagation and the lighting.
I just played this last week start-to-finish, and while the art design is excellent, it is clearly a console port and has not aged so well. There’s lots of pop-in of detail textures and other little things that bring it down a bit here and there.
I refer to the “hawk view” when you climbed monuments and the camera pans out and rotates around the buildings.
The draw distance is simply amazing and one of its kind.
Yeah, that was nice, but even in those spots you could see the level of detail drop off the higher you got. They did give me vertigo though, looking down from a great height, so the game got the job done!
Either of the Cryses (which I’m assuming is the plural of Crysis) should give you plenty o’ purdy graphics to marvel at.
Far Cry 2 is also quite impressive. The fire is especially nice, the way it sinuously weaves its way through the grasslands, like some great, infernal serpent, devouring everything in its path. But what really got me, the first time I played it, were the shadows; the first ones I’d ever seen in a game that actually convinced me they were actual shadows, and not just some tacked-on silhouette. This game does great things with light.
Also, Assassin’s Creed 2, if only to gaze in wonder at the architectural detail. The game’s great, too. But others may caution you against it because of that DRM scheme. I don’t know. Your choice.
Age of Empires III. One of the best looking RTS games made. It’s subtle, but really great looking. You can buy the bundle with both of the expansion packs for about $30.
You can grab almost any recent PC release and be wowed by the graphics at 1920x1200. Mass Effect 2 was a great example. We’re at the point in the life of consoles where the PC makes them look like the limited trash they are.
Did Charles just diss consoles? Did he switch sides when I wasn’t looking?
DA’s graphics are fine, but nothing which made me go “Whoa!” Side effect of an extra-long development cycle, I’m guessing. Mass Effect 2 looks better, IMHO.
The Crysis games (Cryses? Crysises?) probably still set the standard for eye candy. I’ll also second Far Cry 2 and World in Conflict. Oblivion and Fallout 3 are still impressive if you bling up the GFX with mods. What about the Supreme Commanders?
Just Cause 2 looks great (DX10 only) and really taxes my GeForce 280 with Quadcore system. It starts to dip below 30fps when I turn on all the settings and start cranking up the AA. It even has a ‘Bokeh Filter’ which I’ve not heard of before.
Full game is out this Friday in the UK, but if you are just interested in taxing the graphics you can grab the demo off steam and you’ll find that it includes a ‘benchmark’ option in the menu that’ll show you the FPS of a fancy test scene from the game.
