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Post Scenes from Games that Used to Wow You, that Don't Hold a Candle Anymore.

FliX

FliX

Master of the Reality Stone
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
9,868
Metro Detroit
We all have fond memories of different games and scenes within those games where we distinctly remember being impressed back in the day.

One I thought of recently was the Cote d'Azur level from Need For Speed Porsche Unleashed.
I distinctly remember driving around the bend to see the sunset and being really impressed by the realistic graphics.
Needless to say, seeing it now I'm not quite sure what I was thinking... šŸ˜‰


Another example would be the sky box in the first level of Deus Ex, while the game overall was not really a graphical showcase at the time, the skybox was really impressive to me.
 
xoxoclvbs

xoxoclvbs

Member
Aug 1, 2020
173
437205-the-elder-scrolls-iii-morrowind-xbox-screenshot-each-town.jpg


This whole game. It blew me away when I first played on the OG Xbox as a young ~12 year old.

I want to play it again so bad but now I can't look at it.
 
Hey Please

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
Blew my mind when I first these:

10_1.jpg

Quake III Arena

and

hidden-y-dangerous-deluxe.jpg


Hidden & Dangerous (I only ever played the demo and the atmosphere in it blew my mind)

and finally

maxresdefault.jpg


Cliver Barker's Undying. What a great sense of atmosphere.
 
digitalrelic

digitalrelic

Weight Loss Champion 2018: Biggest Change
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,124
I remember in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on Xbox 360, when you first leave the sewers and see that vast, vibrant, beautiful, living world...

Oblivion_LeavingtheSewer_1280w.jpg


Oh how times have changed.
 
Kadzork

Kadzork

Has got mad skills!!
Member
Oct 27, 2017
16,733
I remember vividly stepping out onto Hyrule Field for the first time in Ocarina and it blew my pants off.

Hearing this music swell still fills me with nostalgic joy but after playing Botw it would be hard for me to go back.

 
Rotobit

Rotobit

Editor at Nintendo Wire
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
10,196
My memory of how Midnight Club and Smuggler's Run looked on the Xbox is way off what they actually look like. I think the lighting in the former and the scale of the latter were just that impressive at the time.

I remember my first PS4 "wow" moment being the pizzas in Assassin's Creed IV. There have been better pizzas since.
 

Shroki

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,911
digitalrelic said:
I remember in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on Xbox 360, when you first leave the sewers and see that vast, vibrant, beautiful, living world...

Oblivion_LeavingtheSewer_1280w.jpg


Oh how times have changed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's it.

The first Oblivion screenshots and footage were mindblowing and the last time a next-gen game really amazed me, and now it looks like bloom covered dog ass.
 
Rodney McKay

Rodney McKay

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,189
xoxoclvbs said:
437205-the-elder-scrolls-iii-morrowind-xbox-screenshot-each-town.jpg


This whole game. It blew me away when I first played on the OG Xbox as a young ~12 year old.

I want to play it again so bad but now I can't look at it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Morrowind on a PC with larger draw distance still holds up decently to me for an older game.
The music and architecture really helps it IMO.

And that first moment of exiting the sewers in Oblivion is definitely not as impressive as it used to be, but I still find that world to be pretty cool overall.
There's a decent amount of diversity to the environments (snowy areas, forests, cities, etc) that I still find impressive.
 
scare_crow

scare_crow

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,309
digitalrelic said:
I remember in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on Xbox 360, when you first leave the sewers and see that vast, vibrant, beautiful, living world...

Oblivion_LeavingtheSewer_1280w.jpg


Oh how times have changed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I was blown away by the open landscape after coming out of the sewer. The sewer is kind of slog, but the payoff (at the time) was incredible.
 
Lobster Roll

Lobster Roll

signature-less, now and forever
Member
Sep 24, 2019
34,325
Kadzork said:
I remember vividly stepping out onto Hyrule Field for the first time in Ocarina and it blew my pants off.

Hearing this music swell still fills me with nostalgic joy but after playing Botw it would be hard for me to go back.

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Ocarina has "remake" written all over it. So many of my issues with that game come from how absolutely hideous it looks, especially Hyrule Field. It's a green desert with like two enemies total. I would love to see that game, it's dungeons, it's towns, everything, remade from the ground up.
 
Tuorom

Tuorom

Member
Oct 30, 2017
10,907
ss_lemonade

ss_lemonade

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,650
I don't have pics and this is probably cheating, but I remember seeing early screenshots of the game Enclave for PC on a gaming magazine that looked way too good. Cheating because I don't think the actual game even looked as good as those screenshots lol
 
Rodney McKay

Rodney McKay

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,189
I remember playing a 007 Driving game on the PS1 and thinking it looked pretty good.

Then I saw screenshots of it years later and I was soooo wrong.
36468-007_Racing_[U]-2.jpg

3Demerzel said:
Those shadows! Splinter Cell is the first game I remember that did this. Today is kind of rough.
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That's a good one, I recently bought it and tried playing the first Splinter Cell on my Xbox One and the lighting overall is way flatter than I remember it being.
 
PersianPrince

PersianPrince

Member
Feb 12, 2019
1,655
Kadzork said:
I remember vividly stepping out onto Hyrule Field for the first time in Ocarina and it blew my pants off.

Hearing this music swell still fills me with nostalgic joy but after playing Botw it would be hard for me to go back.

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


I know tons of people still say that OoT is still the GOAT, but its so many things that I don't think hold up in this day and age that make me think that BOTW is the new GOAT. I agree with you.

But yes. Ocarina was jaw dropping for its time.
 
ajszenk

ajszenk

Member
Dec 6, 2017
1,207
for me it was the first time seeing FFX. I couldn't believe how good it looked.

See those character animations now though make everyone look like 2nd rate animatronics at knockoff disneyland.
 
edgefusion

edgefusion

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,865
Playing The Getaway (PS2) for the first time and thinking to myself, "This is it. Graphics have peaked."

The-Getaway-Toyota-MR2.jpg
 
Prophet Five

Prophet Five

Pundeath Knight
Member
Nov 11, 2017
7,690
The Great Dark Beyond
I don't have screenshots or anything but just going back to say like Gamecube and Melee (which I thought was GORGEOUS at the time) or PS3 titles and stuff. Like, I'm not a PC gamer outside of WoW or occasionally FF14 so I always think "I hate knowing that there will be a time where this will be 'ugly'" but those generations are the ones I remember the most when I think about how far we've come with graphics.
 
Koukalaka

Koukalaka

Member
Oct 28, 2017
9,283
Scotland
Some good ones here already, I'll add the start of Act 3 in Gears of War, with those funky rain effects - mind-blowing to me in 2006.



Definitely hasn't held up as well as I remember.
 
laxu

laxu

Member
Nov 26, 2017
2,782
hanshen said:
maxresdefault.jpg

(Yes, this is an actual PC game screenshot)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I remember this scene chugging along at something like sub-30 fps on my PC just so I could check it out on max settings. It looked well...unreal!

There was also something impressive about seeing the first level of Quake and realizing that "woah, this is real full 3D" I remember especially the 3D enemies were impressive when everything else just had sprites. Now? Not so much...

iu
 
Temascos

Temascos

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,505
Motwera said:
More than a decade ago, the PS3 demo (kiosk) of Motorstorm looked absolutely out of this world. Now, it seems a bit dated despite it still being kinda impressive

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Man, the selection screen in Motorstorm looked so damn cool at the time. The problem was the load times, god, they were BAD. It took several minutes going from the menu to a race because of how frequent and long the loading was.

Devil May Cry 1 blew me away graphically, the mix of the setting and demons was just so damn...cool!

da54b80cb97218d26cdefe9632686303ee3a29a7_hq.gif


Something about the first game's setting makes it so special compared to the locations used in the other games. While they were more competent on a technical level the first game had the best design I think.
 
Captain Tuttle

Captain Tuttle

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,975
What a great thread!
xoxoclvbs said:
437205-the-elder-scrolls-iii-morrowind-xbox-screenshot-each-town.jpg


This whole game. It blew me away when I first played on the OG Xbox as a young ~12 year old.

I want to play it again so bad but now I can't look at it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Morrowind blew me away

digitalrelic said:
I remember in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on Xbox 360, when you first leave the sewers and see that vast, vibrant, beautiful, living world...

Oblivion_LeavingtheSewer_1280w.jpg


Oh how times have changed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And then somehow Oblivion topped it! Coming out of the sewers...damn
 

Strandr

Member
Oct 12, 2019
540
Gotta be playing through all of KH2 with the pretty block graphics on the original PS2 and then getting to the end cutscene and seeing Sora and Riku look so good and splashing in the water. I remember hoping that one day I'd get to play a Kingdom Hearts that looked as good in gameplay as it did in the KH2 final cutscene

(Screenshot may be from the remaster)
jSWpjQ2.jpg
 
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