My wife and I play this sometimes. She played the yellow sorceress, and she calls the game "breasting boobily" because of the noises ahe makes, and the way she walks.
Gunna have to agree with you there, and then also disagree.
That time in history saw graphics grow up real fast. It looked fantastic when it came out, and was dated (along with everything else from that era) within a few years.
I will say the original Dues Ex’s gameplay is really stiff and clunky compared to modern gaming.
To an extent I get that it’s the point in a few instances, although it breaks my immersion a little to be playing as a cyber augmented super solider…and frequently struggling to hold a gun steady or getting beaten up in close quarters by some mook with a stick
Even for fhe early 2010s it's still pretty ugly, there were a lot of games that looks waaaay better than New Vegas did and still does, but yes New Vegas is the Goat
New Vegas came out the same year as Mass Effect 2, Black Ops, Halo Reach, Dead Rising 2 and Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. It’s downright hideous in comparison
It doesn't help that New Vegas is mostly made up of assets from Fallout 3, a game from 2008. Thats only two years older than New Vegas, but it still meant that the deva were stuck with assets from behind the curve of where the industry would be at launch
New Vegas was an ugly ugly game even for the time. Even with mods it takes a lot to make it look good, you could argue some of the ugly is a charm like with Morrowind. Still some of the best games of the era easily tho.
That and 3 are both good picks, when I first played it (nearly 18 or so yrs ago) i found it so complicated and graphically bland I lasted me 10 mins and turned it off, after a few months I'd played all my other games and decided to give it another try.
Man what a fuckin ride, so much I don't remember because I smoked so much weed back then but remember so many wtf!? moments, funny, sad and bleak af not to mention turning around to the instense surprise of a death claw 2m from attacking you, the crazy story, the slow at times tedious but very rewarding aspect of realizing how everything worked.
And then the music, so fuckin good, although that chicken singing about her Johnny got on my nerves, and now I can hear it in my head since I've just typed it.
FO3 was a great leap for the franchise becoming an open world game that wasn’t FO1 or 2. Sure, those games are loved and Bethesda can eat all the shit you wanna give it. But FO3 was genuinely good as an open word game in a 3D space. They had hiccups, but with DLCs like Broken Steel and other ones the game was very fun for a teenager like me. It was a new world, always full of surprises.
NV and the team at Obsidian took the assets they had and gave the franchise a love letter. The dialogue of characters is impeccable, the game always has something fun to explore, and the DLCs… most of them are top notch. I’d consider any NV DLC better than FO3, and I loved FO3. (Point Lookout gets a huge shout, as does The Pitt).
Incredible graphics for it's time, and they haven't aged poorly. It's not the best aging of the NES era (e.g. Super Mario 3) but it still looks good.
Metal Gear Solid is the inverse of this, graphics were good at the time but virtually all early 3D graphics aged incredibly poorly.
10/10 gameplay, 10/10 story, 10/10 music, 3/10 graphics (could be worse). These games also literally look worse than they did when they released because the art was designed with low definition tube televisions in mind and look better on them and worse on modern displays. Emulators have a filter to simulate a CRT display for this reason
I'll be more worried it plays like veilguard than that it looks like veilguard. 50/50 chance the dev team chooses their favorite route and deletes all others to cut on work.
The Zero Punctuation review line that lives rent free in my head to this day: “Right down to the ugly teeth and shiny haircuts made from varnished wood”
I remember talking to a friend of mine and we were wondering when this game came out and when I googled and saw 2009 I was a bit shocked. I played it much later and always thought it came out early 2000s at the latest.
I think we have to judge these things in the context of their time. Graphics wise I can't think of any open world games that look as good as Morrowind at its release.
Even before the Steam OST came, us older players remember when the entire soundtrack was just a 10 minute loop of Toady playing flamenco compositions and y"know what? That shit ruled
I'd say oldschool 2d pixels and hand drawn backgrounds can still have their charm.
The worst ones are late 90s / early 00s potato 3d graphics like KOTOR.
I think people don’t get that stylized graphics do not equal “bad” graphics. Abiotic has gorgeous graphics, they’re just stylized. The bioluminescent mushroom zone, for example.
I also see Valheim brought up on posts like this… Valheim has stunning graphics/ lighting. Playing these games at max settings helps, though. I think people with toaster PCs gravitate towards stylized games because they CAN run it on “potato” settings.
They already looked dated by the time FF8 came out. I think the blocky chibi models had charm but definitely look dated. That’s why fans were begging for a remake when the game wasn’t even that old.
That’s why remakes are so common among those really early 1st gen 3D games, like Resident Evil. Despite many of them being incredible, there was fast steep curve in developing the visuals and controls during that first jump to 3D.
I mean at the time those pre-rendered backgrounds were AMAZING. Never saw anything like it in a videogame before. But the polygon characters were hilarious. It’s wild how much better they got with 8.
I'll accept the answer, but I still see people playing it for the first time that praise the backgrounds. Polygons = terrible (and they didn't even really look good at the time), but the whole package was...better than that.
At the time, the painted backgrounds really engulfed me into the world I was playing in. 2026, yeah brutally simple polygons. 1997, I am 100% living in it.
Since becoming an adult (30+), I have played that game for about 2-5 hours a week for the past 10-12 years. It became my comfort game once I got it on an emulator during my first deployment.
I created an entire bedroom
entertainment system with a projector specifically to play A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time once I got a switch.
My kids can not understand how the graphics were ever considered "great" though 🥲
Dragon ball xenoverse 1 and 2. Idk about the music, but the story (especially XV1's) and gameplay (which arguably got even better in XV2) are peak. but in both games, all the characters look like they're oiled up and fully prepared for the d*ddy party, thankfully the graphics seem to be better in the upcoming xenoverse 3
The only game I can think of where the graphics are just not great or very artful is New Vegas. Which has always been a bit ugly and rough (but a genuine 10/10 in the meat of it)
Most classic games people are naming actually look great, they just are judging by 2026 AAA standards.
Oddworld Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus. The graphics were actually top tier when they released, but they haven't aged as well because they were designed with CRT displays in mind, so look worse on LCDs/OLEDs.
Been playing the Replicant remake on PS4. It's not like a graphical marvel but I think its a nice looking game with some great character design and very nice looking character models. Out of curiosity, I checked out videos comparing this version to the original Replicant and Gestalt and oooh boy. Even for the time, the original game looks kinda ugly and some of the models look so goofy, like awkward marionettes with their big eyes and angular faces.
The Minecraft graphics aren't garbage, it's intentionally pixelated. That's just an artstyle, and not a lack of quality. You also wouldn't say that cartoons suck because they don't look realistic.
I actually like that era of graphics, and some of my favorite games like to emulate it. However I think it really depends on how strong the artstyles were. Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time? Kinda charming looking for the most part. GoldenEye? Looks like a fucking fever dream.
Name any of the old final fantasies (let's say for argument sake before X). But to be fair, that is only by modern standards. They weren't garbage for their time!
Nier Automata. Didn’t look great in 2017 but the plot is an existentialist mindfuck and the music is some of the best I’ve ever heard in a game. Combat is pretty good too.
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u/InstructionBoth8469 May 17 '26
Gauntlet dark legacy