Games that made you go WOW (graphically)

mattyj1085

mattyj1085

mattyj1085

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What game or games Graphically made you go WOW?

For me the only one would be Unreal. The first time I saw it on my SLI Voodoo 2 setup I neally wet myself. The intro screen blew me away with the shiny reflective walk way, music, lighting etc. Then the game started and escaping through the tunnels in fog/mist, seeing the shadows spin on the floor, then getting outside into a massive expanse of level with birds, a waterfall and a seeing a giant craft that had crashed.

Then theres all the other stuff like darkmatch with a flashlight, trapdoors to lava and teleporter

This to me has been the only game that has graphically taken a giant step from previous titles.

I was a bit too young for stuff like Wolfenstein 3d, Corridor 7 etc. What was the first '3D' (like Doom) title? Im sure it wasnt Doom
 
Half Life 2
Unreal and Unreal Tournament
Lord of the Rings Online
Doom 3
Serious Sam
 
Doom 3 was the first game i can remember that used 'real' lighting (is it called dynamic lighting? I forget). Blew me away.

Oh and when i fired up my PS1 for the first time and put on wipeout, probably the first true 3d game i had ever played.
 
Most notable by far was the tram ride sequence at the start of Half-Life. Me and all my housemates were wowwing at it. None us had seen anything like it before. It just amazed us all.

Far Cry did this too to some extent. The first time you get a decent beach-front panorama with water, mountains and foliage.

The vista of the ruined DC environs when you first leave the vault in Fallout 3 impressed me a lot, but that was more for the scale and design than pure graphical quality.

And Crysis, of course. Still the best looking game ever made when you're looking at a scene that shows off its abilities.
 
Quake 3
Far Cry
Crysis
Doom 3

on consoles it would be
Donkey Kong Country (snes)
Project Gotham 3 (360)
Soul Caliber (dreamcast)
Dead or Alive 3 (xbox)
 
Crysis, I was stunned it'd work on my 8800gt on high settings bar AA even though they said it'd stutter.

Age of Conan, probably the best looking MMO I've played to date and I'll probably go back to it at some point to see how things have progressed.

Gears of War 2, Thought it looked fantastic on a 32" 720p screen.

Street Fighter 4 - Never thought they could make Street fighter work in 3D and they did (at least to so many people enjoying it) I sadly don't own it yet :<.
 
The original Unreal, various set pieces, but remembering when I first walked out of the ship to look across the open space and see the waterfall, was amazing :)

Gran Turismo 1 + 3 (first on PS1 / PS2) just wowed me for overall polish when it came out.

Farcry was epic too, when you first look across the bay to see all the jungle, and ofcourse the moment across the valley when you get the hanglider :)

Supreme Commander for it's massive scale of what is going on was awesome too.

Crysis was just something else all together. I can't pick a single moment that wowed me most, there were so many moments like that :p
 
WoW makes me go wow. :) Sure, the technology is dated but the quality of design of the world and dungeons blows me away frequently. It can be a very beautiful game.
 
Grim Fandango, that was amazing for two reasons, it was a heck of a game and the first pc game i ever played when we got the family pc.

Homeworld was pretty cool when i first got it.

Freespace 2 was a good jaw dropper.
 
lol, the animated council in civ2 :p

I stuck to mostly TBS games during the heyday of FPS 3D development I'm afraid, I missed out on the original Quakes, the first FPS I really played (apart from Doom and the other originals) was Halflife which really wowed me.

Farcry as well when that came out, it was the first of the new gen of semi-realistic FPSs, shortly to be followed by Halflife2 and Doom3.

I remember Age of Empires 2 wowing me with the shadows and the "smooth" fog of war.

Rome: TW for the sheer amount of units, same with Cossacks which I played a bit before that.

tbh I can't really think of many that I was absolutely stunned at, generally I saw screenshots beforehand or just became acclimatised to the increase in graphics quality too slowly to really be wowed.

I forgot the obvious one though, seeing Oblivion on my housemates laptop with a 7900GT. That was what really made me want to upgrade from my 9800Pro :) bloomy goodness.
 
For the pc, it was probably when I first fired up Jedi Knight using the Voodoo 3dfx card installed for the first time! I was stunned that a pc could do something like that! Not quite a game really but seeing the difference it made to pc gaming back then was a wow factor for me. :)
 
Probably Sabre Wulf. Such a colourful game. Or Uridium.. I remember being really impressed on how smooth it was.


Doh, just realised the question wasn't "what was your first". So, Unreal, HL2, Crysis, blah blah blah.
 
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