QOTW: Which is the most visually stunning computer game?

[HEXUS]

Is there one in particular that blew your mind?

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[Jonj1611]

Vegetation in Crysis 3 was amazing imo

[aniilv]

Having played most triple A stuff, best looking game to this date award definitely goes to witcher 3! Pushing it to new level even if individual components of it is not THE BEST, but as overall package it is best looking game imo.

I however cannot say that witcher has had the biggest impact on me, since to me the graphical leap of Half life 2 was much greater than the minor changes to graphics in last 7 years or so...

[cowboysaif]

Played cod black ops and NFS:HPS 2010 in my friends computer and we both were like "WOW"

[DemonHighwayman]

The first COD Modern Warfare game on PC, Donkey Kong Country on Snes, Crysis on PC, Far Cry 3 on PC, they were all memorably stunning at the time.
At the moment..hmm difficult, i'll go with Crysis 3.

[GuidoLS]

Sacred 2 - not for anything all that great regarding the game, per se, but for this -

https://youtu.be/JyfE55c_ZjI

For 2008, this was pure epic. Otherwise, I'm going to go with Skyrim, especially with the mods out there.

[chrestomanci]

A visually good computer game will always be relative to others in it's time.

Back in 1984, I thought the graphics in Elite where visually stunning. I thought the same in 1997 when Quake came out. These days the graphics on either can easily be beaten by the cheapest of phones or consoles, but at the time they where groundbreaking.

[LSG501]

Doesn't this depend more on your taste of design....
the original line art asteroids because it's totally minimalist
then there's minecraft... it really follows the current design trends of flat imagery

[abaxas]

Metal Slug 2

Nothing in the 3d realm has ever come close to the near perfect pixel perfection of the metal slug games.

[ed^chigliak]

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.
Photogrammetry FTW.

[simonpreston]

As mentioned, it was always be relative to the time it exists.

The first Gran Turismo was an absolute game changer. For it's time it looked absolutely spectacular.

Games look far superior now, but they've never blown me away quite like that did. Although Gran Turismo 3 comes close.

[Plasmastorm]

Parm makes a good suggestion with Donkey Kong country up there, not the best now but when it came out it blew every other SNES game away instantly.

For me tho, even after playing the Witcher 3 lots, Skyrim with an HD texture mod wins.

[azrael-]

I can still remember the first time I saw Unreal. That really blew my socks off at the time. Of course, it's been far surpassed by now visually, but for the time it was amazing.

[Zhaoman]

For me the big wow moments in graphics were Half-Life (all the guns look so real!), GTA3 (you can do anything!), Halo (have you seen the grass?), GT3 (photorealistic!), Oblivion (look at that view) and of course Crysis (my computer will never be able to run this)!

The fact you could zoom in on someone's assault rifle and see how much ammo they had on Halo blew my mind at the time, I couldn't believe the detail. Ninja Gaiden (Xbox) gets a shout out for having such slick and stylized cutscenes. Most racing games looked incredible at the time, a shout out goes to Colin McRae Rally 3 for kicked up dirt, sunsets and windscreen wipers that convinced my dad that he was watching TV.

[Corky34]

One that has always stuck with me was the original Unreal, after years of playing Quake it felt like a breath of fresh air with its wide open spaces.
Looking back at videos of it though makes it look really naff.

[Bane2087]

Trying to think back to all the wow gfx moments I've had it goes back far before PC to Amiga to Megadrive/SNES even to ZX Spectrum. I guess for brevity I'll just list a few of the PC games.

Tomb Raider was the first 3D accelerated game I played so that was pretty impressive. Unreal definitely blew anything that came before it away. Oblivion first gameplay trailer made me drool. There is so many though... recently the weather effects and atmosphere in Metro Last Light, the overall visuals and aesthetics of Lords of the Fallen and at the moment Witcher 3 is standing out as the best looking open world game I've seen just beating out GTA V.