Post beautiful games (visually)

Muramasa: The Demon Blade.

Vanillaware, nuff said.

Super Robot Wars Z. Not only is the animation absurdly good, the way it mimics art styles from the 1970s through 2006 while retaining high production values throughout - even on the stuff that was originally animated on a budget of fifteen cents and some baseball cards - is high water mark even for a series that lives and dies on its shininess.

The 2D backgrounds for Suikoden Tierkreis were absolutely gorgeous.

Devil May Cry 4 is a good deal more shiny than its predecessors. God Of War 3, while not pretty by any means, is certainly epic. Assassin's Creed 2 has beautiful cities, especially Venice... But the game that completely owns the cake is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I've gone as far as to put the controller down and just look at the mountains jungles and temples. The insanely good graphics don't hurt either.

Lost: Via Domus is pretty nice, at least as long as there are no characters visible. Most of them is terribly, TERRIBLY Off-Model.
Bioshock, but that one's pretty obvious.
Grand Theft Auto 4 made a great job presenting a living city, well, at least as far as it could.

edited 16th Sep '10 12:09:41 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

N-thing Okami and Muramasa.

When it comes to other games...Cave's Bullet Hell shooters, in my opinion, have very beautiful graphics. And I'm not just talking about vibrant bullet patterns. Also, despite its brutally sadistic violence, Mad World is a damn fine-looking game, especially on the Wii. The art style is simply amazing, and makes for a lot of awesome scenery porn (figuratively, and literally in one minigame).

Even though they haven't come out yet, Kirbys Epic Yarn and Epic Mickey look to raise the bar for Wii graphics.

edited 16th Sep '10 3:51:19 PM by troperwithoutaname

Lair.

OUTRAGEOUSLY awesome landscapes. And dragons. And...everything.

Flower is probably the only game that could sell itself on its graphics alone.

Metal Slug has some of the best animated 2D graphics ever, particuarly the large vehicles and bosses.

The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess — can't believe no one else has listed this. It's so visually stunning that I would much rather watch someone else play so I don't have to pay attention to the fight.

Psychonauts. While not "pretty" in the usual sense, it's got its own special, quirky Tim Burton-esque style and a lot of work has gone into making everyone's subconscious mind their own unique environment.

Prince of Persia 2008. One of the best looking games visually this generation IMO.

Oblivion of course.

Blazblue and KOF 13 are the best looking 2D sprite-based fighters well ever I'd have to say. 3rd Strike's and Art of Fighting 3's have the best animations for the sprites though.

From last gen, Otogi 2.

I'm very much looking forward to Kirby's Epic Yarn.

On the hand-held scene, I forgot to mention Golden Sun: The Lost Age on GameBoy Advance. The battles were gorgeous.

Pokemon Black And White. Sky arrow bridge. That is all:

I'm surprised that noone's mentioned Braid yet. Also, I'm going to fourth Kirby's Epic Yarn.

Metroid Prime, all Unreal games, Half-Life 2, all Quake games.

Quest 64, truthfully. While it was far from the greatest, it's regular visuals were much better than Final Fantasy VII's regular ones. Sure, FFVII's cutscenes were great, but the regular game looked horrible.

Fallout: New Vegas looks like its going to be absolutely beautiful, despite the post-apocalyptic wasteland look.

edited 26th Sep '10 8:04:56 PM by joerc45

Though it hasn't been released yet, from what I saw from various gameplay videos, Sonic Colors is pretty much tied with the Super Mario Galaxy titles in the graphics department. Here's one good example, courtesy of a recent gameplay trailer:

edited 26th Sep '10 8:11:14 PM by Komodin

Disputing Shadow Of The Colossus - I played it on a fuckhuge TV screen, and it being the PS 2, all the graphics got really fucking ugly.

Nominating Uncharted 2 and Modern Warfare. So sue for the latter, but those battlegrounds are pretty.

edited 26th Sep '10 10:08:57 PM by JackMackerel

^...wouldn't that sorta be your fault that it became ugly then?

^^ Get the HD remakes coming out...

Erm, beautiful games that I haven't yacked about yet...

Um, Pokemon White?

Mass Effect. The two games just completely trample on Real Is Brown, by setting gritty fire-fights in tropical beaches. Not every part of the games is beautiful, of course, but there are some sights.

EVE Online. Space is beautiful. And populated with enormously attractive spaceships.