There are a few games out there that have always had timeless graphics. I'm talking about Age of Empires 2, I'm talking about Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2k4, Metal Gear Solid 2, Halo (it always seemed to me that halo 1 was, if not better, then at least clearer and easier on the eyes than it's sequels) Morrowind and it's expansions (some areas aren't so good, some areas are better than oblivion, all areas are wonderful - provided your graphics card has -some- imagination), Civ III.... Half life 2~

Are there any games out there that, for you, will never look old?

age of empires 2 does look old.

ICO

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages/ Seasons. Two of the best games I have ever played. All on the Game Boy Color.

I think time will tell on Doom 3, but hey, you never know.

Late era 2D games still look great. The first example that came to mind is Super Mario World. Great, clean, crisp graphics that look old, but definitely not bad. They really hold up, even today.

Altorin:
age of empires 2 does look old.

Ah well; opinion based that's the joy of forums

cthulhu257:
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages/ Seasons. Two of the best games I have ever played. All on the Game Boy Color.

And golden sun is defiantly a beautiful handheld game

Mario 64 it still looks good to me in many ways

I recently played Homeworld for the first time. That game looks great.

Super Mario World, and it's spin-off/sequel Yoshi's Island.

I also believe that most current-gen games have timeless graphics as not much can be improved.

Additionally I believe Halo 3 to be the most beautiful of the series but as you said: opinion.

Any of the Ratchet and Clank games after the first one. They're just so colorful and fun!

I think adventure games are probably the most timeless for me. I have just as much fun with the old, low-res art as I do with the newer stuff. And most isometric pixel stuff is pretty timeless for me as well. Starting around the AOE2/BG/Fallout 1 era anyway. You go back to Syndicate and Sim City and you can really see the age then. Heck, aside from the resolution, I bet even Crusader and Planescape would look OK - maybe not great..

Most of the later sprite-based games still look good.
Super Metroid looks only marginally less good than Zero Mission in my experience, and Diablo 2 still looks awesome.

Related but also not, I think Wind Waker has a sort of timeless charm about it in terms of looks, and I'll never get tired of Majora's Mask's appearance.

Yeah i reckon Halo:CE was probably the easiest if you think about it, most of its levels had a decent level of lighting apart from Keyes (but you still had a flashlight). Actually, include Halo 2 in that aswell. It still had visible levels but only the High Charity flood level was the bad choice, i forgot if you had a flashlight in that level but i can remember squinting and turning up the TV brightness to get anything.

Halo 3 however, has lots and lots of lighting, yes it helps with contrast and plasma weapon effects and shiny surfaces. But there's so much that it burns your retinas(not literally).

Zelda: Link to the Past looks decent no matter the year

Shadow of the Collossus is the only game I have ever described as beautiful

Okami is a close second

For me, the 2-D games age much better than 3-D games do. There are some very beautiful 2-D games out there while with 3-D, what looks amazing the year it comes out, looks terrible a few years later when compared with what is possible then. Take Castle Wolfenstein 3-D for example. I remember people oohing and ahing over the graphics when it first came out. Now, it looks simply awful compared to today's 3-D graphics. Even it's sequel Return to Castle Wolfenstein has aged better than Wolfenstein 3-D has.

How about Alien Hominid? It's a somewhat modern game, but it's done in the classic 2-D side scrolling platformer style from years past. The graphics look as clean and neat as anything you'd draw with a pen on paper or any cartoon you've seen. They are exaggerated and overly colorful, but that was done totally on purpose and is part of the charm of the game. It won't look dated 50 years from now.

Even more so are the 2-D puzzle games. They have simple shapes for the most part and were not too hard to render even back when some of them were made. Take the original arcade version of Tetris. I played it at a pizza restaurant a few months ago and it still looks great.

Graustein:
Most of the later sprite-based games still look good.
Super Metroid looks only marginally less good than Zero Mission in my experience, and Diablo 2 still looks awesome.

Related but also not, I think Wind Waker has a sort of timeless charm about it in terms of looks, and I'll never get tired of Majora's Mask's appearance.

As much as Wind Waker's gameplay drove me totally nuts because I was too slow with the button pressing and couldn't figure some of it's puzzles out, I also simply love it's graphics. They look about as close to a 3-D version of a cartoon as I've ever seen. Heck, they look better than some of the 3-D animated cartoons on TV (I'm looking at you 3-D Transformers).

urprobablyright:

Altorin:
age of empires 2 does look old.

Ah well; opinion based that's the joy of forums

cthulhu257:
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages/ Seasons. Two of the best games I have ever played. All on the Game Boy Color.

And golden sun is defiantly a beautiful handheld game

I wasn't trying to troll.

I basically agree with you for the rest of the references, there is nothing wrong with the graphics in those other choices, but I found it interesting to tag AoE2 in with them.

that's alright though.

Chrono Trigger looks great, regardless of the year. Only the animations are showing their age, and it's not like I didn't notice how choppy they were back in the day.

As said, Link to the Past has an ageless, hand-drawn look. Also:

Secret of Mana

Illusion of Gaia

Riviera: The Promised Land

Shadow of the Colossus

Metal Gear Solid 3

Zone of the Enders 2

All of the above games will continue to look great for the next ten or twenty years, regardless of how good the graphics of next-gen games get.

Pretty much all of the late SNES era 2d games still look great, in 3d I would have to go with ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, and Halo:CE. I am sure there are many others that I haven't played or am just not thinking about right now.

If you're a Morrowind fan, there are some mods that remove the fog entirely (so you can see the mountains in the distance, at least in a loaded "cell), update the character models to look more like Oblivion models (beautiful, I wish I had a screenshot to show), and other tweaks. It really breathes new life into the game - and I couldn't go back to playing it without those mods now.

diablo 2.... super mario 3 for the nes... fall out 1 aoe2 still looks very nice advance wars for the gba looks still good to me and silent hill 1 i just love that game

Morrowind Graphics Enhancer is indeed a wonderful thing, and the Better Bodies and other Oblivion-like texture mods are sweet, but the game still rather unmistakably looks like Morrowind and nobody would confuse it for Cyrodiil (which still blows my mind, especially with Qarl's Texture Pack installed).

As far as timeless classics go, good art transcends its medium. Super Mario Bros. 3 looks great even today, Super Mario World and Super Metroid and Link to the Past are all amazing even now, and Square's body of work on the SNES still makes itself a good case for anyone arguing "2D > 3D".

I've got some ageless PC games too, namely Railroad Tycoon 2 and Tropico. Plus, I'm a nut for isometric graphics and therefore love the retro (even at the time) art style on Capitalism 2 and Civ 2.

Crysis isn't exactly old.

Far Cry......

SmugFrog:
If you're a Morrowind fan, there are some mods that remove the fog entirely (so you can see the mountains in the distance, at least in a loaded "cell), update the character models to look more like Oblivion models (beautiful, I wish I had a screenshot to show), and other tweaks. It really breathes new life into the game - and I couldn't go back to playing it without those mods now.

Where d'you get those from? I can't find em anywhere.

Starcraft, they may be sprites, and not especially high quality sprites but they've got personality, they've got personality in spades. Each one in iconic. Everything from the Zergling to the Archon is instantly recognizable.

Even ten years after it's release battlenet is still packed with people playing it. Not to mention the modding community and korean tournaments. Starcraft will never get old. It's timeless.

Eggo:

Piemaster:
Crysis isn't exactly old.

Neither is Doom 3 or Halo.

Halo bloody is.

Crash Bandicoot.

It's not particularly amazing, but it doesn't need to be.

curlycrouton:

SmugFrog:
If you're a Morrowind fan, there are some mods that remove the fog entirely (so you can see the mountains in the distance, at least in a loaded "cell), update the character models to look more like Oblivion models (beautiful, I wish I had a screenshot to show), and other tweaks. It really breathes new life into the game - and I couldn't go back to playing it without those mods now.

Where d'you get those from? I can't find em anywhere.

Crap now you're going to make me go digging. I think I just did a google search for Morrowind Mods, and found some of that cool stuff. I'm at work (for a few months), so it will be a while before I can get you the direct link. I can search them up if you can't find them.

I do remember it being called Morrowind Extender - This is one of the results from Google: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Utilities.Detail&id=45 Looks like it is the same thing. Also, look up the top mods for Morrowind or the "must have mods".

Suddenly Morrowind looks more like this:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/fms/Image.php?id=52038

curlycrouton:

Eggo:

Piemaster:
Crysis isn't exactly old.

Neither is Doom 3 or Halo.

Halo bloody is.

Thats subjective, especially when your comparing it to titles like Super Mario 3 and Zelda

tendo82:
I recently played Homeworld for the first time. That game looks great.

Yes. Homeworld is just a fine piece of work all around. How did you like that soundtrack? :P

At first when I saw this thread I read it as Topless Graphics. Heh too tired.

SuperFriendBFG:

tendo82:
I recently played Homeworld for the first time. That game looks great.

Yes. Homeworld is just a fine piece of work all around. How did you like that soundtrack? :P

At first when I saw this thread I read it as Topless Graphics. Heh too tired.

I loved homeworld and homeworld 2 -so much- I got the packs that came with the soundtracks, yeah, loved 'em. That game is amazing in that it gives deep space ambiance, which is a -hard- thing to do.

I add the following games:

Ground Control (one) and Kohan: Ahriman's Gift. Zelda: The Windwaker is amazing, I think, graphically and atmospherically - they really made the ambient sounds sound really delicate and realistic. Red Faction 1 and 2 (i think RF 2 is one of the most underrated shooters ever). Commandos, and other spinoffs, like Robin Hood.

Eggo:

Piemaster:
Crysis isn't exactly old.

Neither is Doom 3 or Halo.

Doom 3 is from, about 2004. Halo is from like 2002 or 2003 - so yes they are getting on a bit, though yeah not as old as other pretty games.

SmugFrog:

Suddenly Morrowind looks more like this:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/fms/Image.php?id=52038

That looks amazing, and I'm definatly going to try out the character graphics upgrades, do they have the same update for the expansions too?

I love age of empires graphics for the same reason that I love commandos and Robin Hood - the buildings, thankfully 2d, are no less than pieces of art. They are really well rendered, with no visible pixels, just little bitmap artworks. The entire levels of games like commandos and Robin Hood are giant paintings that you can interact with - if that doesn't sound awesome i don't know what does. As a matter of fact i might get my hands on Robin Hood again.

Robin hood:

http://linux.softpedia.com/screenshots/Robin-Hood-The-Legend-of-Sherwood_3.jpg

Banjo Kazooie looked great, and look!:

http://www.ryansgoblog.com/images/banjo_kazooie_3_threeie1.jpg

hell yeah!