Which PC game do you think has the best graphics?

Metro 2033

Metro 2033 has some amazing visuals

but if i was to choose one of those Battlefield 3. I think its visual stunning

Far cry 3. isn't doing much for me atm
Crysis 1 - for its time amazing, even now still pretty darn nice but so very demanding even on some setups today unless you have 2x GPU's
Crysis warhead - not played
Crysis 2 - Nice but... still felt the game lacked something visual wise and DX11 Patch was not the greatest & also liked a second GPU to get somewhat 60fps Maxed
Dirt 3 - ?? If any racing game F1 would be the best looking
Skyrim - I thought looked very cheap (haven't seen the game with addons)
Battlefield 3 - stunning, Shame about EA
Witcher 2 - Stunning also but It has some weird shadows on my 7850 and it does my head in.

It's a toss up between PacMan and SkiFree.

I've played every title on the list except Far Cry 3 (which after seeing the bait & switch video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqnAbRpyqfI#! I will never play as they totally screwed PC gamers over) and I feel like Battlefield 3 is my answer, particularly of those choices. It not only has great scenes, but it avoids some of the awkward face design and animation found in other titles.

I don't think graphics are the most important factor in a game's quality though, so don't take that as a slight toward other franchises.

FarCry3 does some things very well.....the weapons modeling and skinning is FANTASTIC. They knew that would be the closet thing to your face and they put serious resources into making it look good.

The farther you get away from yourself, though, the uglier things start to get. The skyboxes look SO BAD at times. Distance views begin to look a bit like low-res JPEGs covered in blue fog at times.

Still a beautiful game, in a very "perfect world" sort of way.



Crysis2 + MalDoHD 4.0 is still the top of the graphical heap. I have yet to play any game that approaches it.


BF3 is a mixture of great and terrible. Some of the vegetation in this game is unforgivable, steams look more like Saran Wrap than actual water, and very low-poly objects abound, but there is some really great lighting.

I would probably put Metro2033 ahead of BF3.

True. Battlefield was "simply awesome" when I started the Single Player. But as I proceeded through the game, the vegetation looks so CS like. Same goes for the water too.

Witcher 2 has some really cool environment graphics. While playing the game, you at times stop, and take a look around, just to appreciate the graphics.

And since people are mentioning Mods, GTA 4 with ENB Series ICEnhancer Mod, along with the high-resolution texture pack, and the Trees Mod is awesome too (might call it the best, considering the scope of the game).
Here's a video of GTA 4 with all those Mods. It's like a 2015 game.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...

I know a guy who has been to some LAN Parties with me that has dual SLI'ed GTX 460's in his rig. He install the upgraded graphics pack to Skyrim and some other graphics upgrade mods and put every setting to max....WOW was it crazy good looking and no lag.

Ultima 1!!!  

Metro 2033

Personally with Skyrims large amount of visual mods, once modded I feel this game is just breathtaking, BF3 is def neck and neck as far as immersive environments imo tho. These two tho just make you stop and take a look around sometimes.

Good poll mate but not that good;) you need to think about new ideas.
And i voted for far cry 3 for good.

if you mod skyrim right, yeah. but I love bf3. so I voted that

BF3

Yeah BF3 is amazing truly

Screenshot of the amazing BF3 ground textures.......hmmm...not so much. What are there....5 polygons in that rock to the right? There is also no depth to the textures....it looks totally flat, as if there is almost no bump-mapping.





Compare to Crysis2+MalDoHD.





BF3 looks pretty, thanks to great lighting and DICE's excellent artistic design (I don't know how they make those distance views so good). Just don't look at anything very closely. Crysis2 with MalDo's painstaking retexturing is simply amazing.

Problem with BF3 is (Remember it's quite old) is that it has unnecessary sharp textures in some areas.

I'm judging the games in their unmodded states (since by judging what has the best graphics we're basically asking who has the most technically accomplished developers). And we both know Crysis 2 doesn't hold up without a year's worth of community mods.  

I'm just answering the poll according to the OP's criteria.  




I think both developers (Crytek and DICE) are pretty good at putting on a visual show. I think Crytek is the better SP developer because they put a lot of resources into their AI engine, and DICE really doesn't seem to care (their money is MP, anyway). They're also pretty supportive of the modding community. I think they realize that it benefits them a great deal, of course.

If DICE would make Mirror's Edge2 though, in Frostbite2, I think I might have to do cartwheels. I would be far more stoked about the prospect of that game than I am about Crysis3.

Mirror's Edge 2 in frostbite 2.0 was confirmed relatively recently by DICE wasn't it?

I've read the rumors that it is indeed being worked on. You know how that stuff goes in the gaming business, though. I haven't seen any officially backed statements from DICE or EA specifically acknowledging work on Mirror's Edge 2.

I agree with you that Crysis 2 looks better than BF3 , Yes, BF3 has some good lighting but overall Crysis 2 wins IMHO

For me it's Galaga 3D. Joke.  

I voted for crysis 2 .I was very upset that this poll was started too early. You should have waited for the release of crysis 3.According to the trailer it will have the best graphics ever

No one gave a thumbs up to my Ultima joke in this thread but there isn't enough 'silly' in this place so Galaga 3D gets a thumbs up from me.  

I feel that Battlefield 3 has some quite impressive graphics. But as mentioned before dont look at anything close up, it does not look so nice. Crysis 2 on the other had looks stunning no matter where you look. Thats why my vote went to Crysis 2.

I could do another one after it comes out, perhaps together with Metro Last light.

Crysis 3 will sure be super cool. Specially the toads.  

I played most of these games tonight back to back....just for old time's sake. I noticed that they all have certain weak areas and strong areas.

I was most surprised when I played STALKER ClearSky: Complete. I had just gotten done playing FarCry3 and my modded-as-hell Crysis. I'd forgotten just how unique and incredibly interesting the environment was in this game, but man....the lighting!!

There's just something truly special about how this engine renders lighting - in an incredibly realistic way. The way the light and shadows are rendered inside of structures totally blows away games like FarCry3 and Crysis....it just looks so totally natural.



Another thing is how well this engine renders objects at distance. For example.....this church. This thing is a LONG way off, but it still manages to look detailed and realistic so far back....and as you walk towards it, you don't notice LOD snapping the shadows popping in half as much as other games. You can walk straight towards it from this distance and it looks totally realistic the whole trip.




It doesn't have the modern dynamic vegetation and tree assets like you see in modern games, so it doesn't really compete in a lot of those areas, but it makes up for it in so many other ways. FarCry3 sky boxes don't look half this good!





Walking through some areas of this game just made me sad though......I'd forgotten how immersive and haunting the STALKER environment is, and now that the IP is basically dead, we'll probably never see another one.  

Was going to pick up Far Cry 3 but man, that video is ridiculous... HUGE difference between the actual game and their demonstrations... Think i am just going to wait for Crysis 3 lol..

How about The Hunter, that game is fantastic looking.

im also a fan of stalker. but not just because the gfx. they were ok in parts great in others but nothing wow for me. the gameplay is what puts it apart for virtually every other franchise.
for me its hard to tell games apart gfx wise as most use the same bag of features. so its only slight variation in quality over multiple titles.
the true stand out for me was ingame on bf3 not looking at the ground but taking in the scenes as a whole on a gtx 680 maxed out on some parts you could be fooled into thinking you were watching a movie. the lighting and shadow on parts of caspian border were almost photo realistic and thats in the middle of a 64 player batrtle. so yeah if you deliberately go looking for flaws you will find em but taken as a whole bf3 is hard to beat in certain areas of certain maps.

I agree about the gameplay. There really is nothing else like it.

It's sad that a franchise this good can just die with nobody picking it up......how can developers see no potential here?

it sucked. it may have been a good game but it looked horrid for what it supposidly is...
which is a benchmark???? disapointing. glad i got it in the humble bundle for a buck. didnt even get my bucks worth out of it

Just picked up Metro 2033 for free on Steam using one of those December promotional keys... Their pasting them all around the steam Metro 2033 boards..

Pumped   Just gotta wait for internet cap to restart lol

I think once we add modding, games skyrocket in terms of graphics.
Skyrim is stellar (there was a post somewhere about how skyrim looks with over 100 mods on it, really crazy nice).

Crysis 1/ warhead has some great mods out there but they can make the game loook weird. Still, great engine, and my first place pick (i am a bit biased here > )



Metro 2033 is crazy good as far as engine goes, just not used well enought (due to texture reuse it looks a bit dull sometimes).However, since its mostly indoors and very dark, i think it may be a bit overrated.

All Stalker serie looks good, but not great in my eyes. Definitly not as much face definition as Crysis for example.

Battlefield 3 looks really good, but i felt it used a few cheap trick that is adding a lot of high contrast (many explosions and lights in a dark area to make it look more alive for example) Still a great Engine, but not really amazing.

Witcher 2 is my 2nd top pick. The game itself is slightly lacking in terms of graphics, but the engine is amazing. In a calibrated monitor and maxed out, the game really feels alive, even when just having a simple conversation.

Far Cry 3, didnt play it but saw many full HD gameplay and i must say, that the engine is better than i feared, worse than i hoped.
In other words, it will impress those players playing Call of duty but not those who were already modding Games Like Elder Scrolls Oblivion.

In many cases far cry 2 looks better than far cry 3 (engine wise, textures in far cry 3 are better by a decent margin).

I also still think that some of the best looking games are based on the Unreal Engine, and Id probably add also Alice madness returns due to the amazing colors in the game (engine is still nice but old by now).

If people really want to compare graphics, then let's take all these games and supersample them at 3600p internal on the framebuffer and displayed at 1080p.

No offense, But I asked for the best graphics, not the game you like the most.

So so far I played Metro 2033, Crysis 2 and BF3... I must say that the GPU takes a way bigger beating when running Metro 2033... The character graphics are amazing!!

I'm sorry but why isn't there Crysis 3 here?
Are you only considering games that have been released?

I like FarCry3 and Metro 2033. Both have the best visuals and graphics.

How else can you judge games other than after playing them? And until or unless you are at EA, you are yet to play Crysis 3 [Single Player].

But the thread is about best graphics.
We all have seen the single player demo of crysis 3 single player and it looks drop - dead amazing

I personally won't vote on it based on developer videos. Everybody thought the Crysis2 videos looked unreal when they came out, and then the game was released and everyone was all "WTF?"

I don't really think that will be the case as much with Crysis3, but I'll wait until I see it rendered on my own monitor.  

We all saw the Far Cry 3 single player demonstration as well. Remember what happened?

In case you don't: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...

edit: On a side note, Crysis 3 from the multiplayer beta and the promotional demos seems to be roughly 80% recycled Crysis 2 assets. I'm not really convinced Crysis 3 is that much more amazing than Crysis 2 (and certainly not convinced it's more amazing than Maldo's Crysis 2) but I'm definitely convinced that people want it to be, and they are buying into that marketing whole-hog.

Most "Demonstration" is basicly a Lie. The cake is a lie in case you dont remmber.

Now, on a more serious note, if you look for "best graphics" its still hard to beat a well modified unreal 3 engine. Even if you compare gears of war to far cry 3 right this moment, i can bet you it would not be an easy call (assuming the same textures).

This is the main problem: Textures. Some are very good yet are actually cheating your eyes (Stalker was great at this, in first stalker brick walls looked like they had dimension when in fact they were flat), and otehrs have powerfull engines and dull Textures (all console ports).

Unless you get textures and engine at a similar level, you will always get "strange" results.

You know what ur right.
I already fell for far cry 3 I'm not gonna fall for Crysis 3.
But the graphics in the demo (playable for consoles) is also very good don't you think?

You can safely fall for Crysis 3, though. I hope.

I had played the alpha build of Crysis 3. Yes. The graphics were amazing. Well, not that amazing considering the repetitive environment in the only map we were allowed to play in, but still it was quiet nice. Single Player should be awesome, I think.

Rick

Since we're asking about the best graphics and PC is allowed in the discussion, no. I don't think any console game looks very good in that context. Sorry  

i agree with casualcolors . pc provides the best graphics for any game