Added: 948 days ago by By Jingo | Posted in: Nerdcore | 5 Comments

Rating:

 

Share:     Embed:     Fave:    

Item added to your favorites.

You must be logged in to add to your faves. Use the login box on this page or click here to regsiter.

<div align='center'><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog/18464/Best-Graphics-EVA/'>Best Graphics EVA!</a><br><div align='center'></div><br><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog'>See more like this on kontraband.com</a></div>

Now that the PS3 is finally coming good with the technically awesome Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 I've seen a fair few folks talking about whether the 360 or the PS3 has the upper hand in the graphics wars - all of them studiously ignoring the existence of Crysis. Which is fine, you know. Back in the day I could be found arguing with my pal Duncan about how Mode 7 was just awesome and he'd counter with a line about the SNES CPU being slower than glaciation. Good times. But sometime around when the PS2 mugged the Dreamcast and put sugar in my petrol tank I dropped out of the graphics race. PS2 games, especially the early ones, were ugly. They may have been chucking around a ton more polygons than Sega's humble little white box of love but Dreamcast games looked sharper, more vibrant and more stylish than anything that popped up on Sony's sales behemoth for a long time.

As I've got older and more curmudgeonly I've started to despair every time I hear a developer talk about their awesome work with alpha particle effects or how they've managed to power up a new bloom effect to the point where it can render you blind for a few days. That stuff is tinsel and there's no point in hanging it around an ugly tree.

So in no particular order here are the games with the best graphics ever.


Rez

There are two kinds of people who play Rez. Well three if you count women who own the vibrating trance pack.* But mainly the split is between the "awesome to play it when you're wasted" and the synestesists (yes, I just made that up) who try and trace its artistic lineage back to Kandinsky. Whatever side they fall on though it's the visuals that made them fall in love with it.

Colourful wire frame graphics that evoke ancient civilisations pulsing with kaleidoscopic colours form the background over which balletic mechanical terrors swoop and pivot. It's glorious. In stills it is stark and in motion it is riotous and 5 years since its release no other game has come close to matching it in terms of invention or execution.

Stand-out moment:
When the Area 4 boss turns into the giant running man.


Super Mario World

If Rez is Jackson Pollock Mario World is Walt Disney. Playing it again now just makes contemporary games look hideously drab. Mario's world is bursting with primary colours, wonderfully designed and animated characters, and busy, varied locals. I love the weird shiny bulbous mountains in the background of Donut Plains, the lazy whimsy of Star Road and the claustrophobia in Forest of Illusion. I can't put my finger on why I find his world more charming than his galaxy, but to my mind Mario never looked better than in 16 bit. In every way - the gameplay, the sounds and the visuals - this game should be our Mona Lisa. I love it now, then and forever.

Stand-out moment:
Mario himself. Not many pixels, absolutely no motion capture but an instantly loveable hero.


Psychonauts

There's a lot about Psychonauts that is a bit, well, yuk. The textures are really p#ss poor for the most part, it has a weird fuzziness to it and sometimes the colour palette seems drab and washed out. BUT - and it's a big but - for all its technical limitations and failings the art is still glorious. Agent Nein feels both familiar and fresh, the giant charging bull is both terrifying and comical, and the fish people Godzilla level at no point feels like weirdness just for weirdness sake, and believe me that's saying something. All the scattergun insanity gels together so easily into a complete experience that at its completion you'll find your mind going back over all the stand out images from it, hardly able to believe that they all came from the same game. So much so that you'll already have forgotten about all the hair-tearingly awful platforming before the credits have finished rolling.

Stand-out moment:
The twisting roads floating in the ether of the Milkman's paranoid psyche say more than a thousand CGI cut scenes ever could and just beg to be explored.


Ico

Atmosphere. It seems that most games think you can create it by setting every game in a badly underlit city/dungeon/spaceship. But that's actually just eye strain. Ico's world is evocative and romantic, when the sunlight floats in through the windows and hazily illuminates the otherworldly architecture it drags you into a fairytale world that you haven't visited since you were a kid. The relationship between Ico and Yorda is established primarily in the beautiful animation of the pair and by the end I genuinely cared. It's a triumph of artistry and only 700,000 copies were sold. You buggers. Halo 3 sold that in a month.

Stand-out moment:
The Castle in general. It's creepy, beautiful, atmospheric and a seriously wonderful place to be.


Sensible soccer

This may be a stretch but I'd just like to say that when I play Pro Evo or FIFA there is always a moment when the animation breaks or you get a close up of Messi made out of melting plastic that reminds you it's a video game. Sensi on the other hand made you see things that weren't even programmed into it! The developers were constantly amused to hear of people claiming they had seen a Van Basten-esque volley or a two-footed tackle that they had most definitely never animated. 1 - 0 to the power of human imagination.

Stand-out moment:
Watching Major Baws FC running out to play All Huns Must Die United.


Jet Set Radio/Jet Set Radio Future

The original is a bouncing splurge of colour and while the sequel went a bit emo palette-wise it's got the more architecturally interesting city so I'm genuinely torn as to which one I prefer. I love them both to be honest. Zelda on the GameCube may have killed enthusiasm for cell shading but I think when done well it looks spectacular. It's especially apt for JSR, giving the game the look of some graffiti that's sprung to life and consumed a whole city. Excuse me I'm off to check if JSRF is on Xbox originals yet...Professor K is the man.

Stand-out moment:
The funky dancing!

P.S. - I've heard Okami is lovely but never played it.

* Guide to building your own Rez compatible vibrator for the video game hating lady in your life can be found here.

Added: 948 days ago by By Jingo | Posted in: Nerdcore | 5 Comments

Rating: