The year 2023 has spoiled us with many top games, earning us a place among the best in the history of the gaming industry. It is true that the long-awaited unification of reality and virtuality failed again. We have seen many “simply beautiful” games with excellent graphics, good animations and high details. It’s time to round up the best releases of the past year – both for consoles and PC!
Atomic Heart
The easiest way to understand what level the graphics have reached today is to play Atomic Heart. It is built on Unreal Engine 4, so you don’t have to worry about the quality of textures, surface details, particle system, lighting model with a realistic play of light and shadow. All this is at a high level. If you wish, you can enable ray tracing and experience the joys of new technologies. The feeling of a living and dynamic world is given by the vast semi-open spaces filled with good (though not ideal) vegetation for the player to explore. As for the cons, we would add very simple NPC models and boring animations. If you’ve seen the trailers and screenshots of Atomic Heart, you might think that this is the bare minimum among the 2023 projects in terms of graphics. But this is a rare case where the beauty of a game depends not only on the technologies used, but rather on its visual style and creative approach to design.
Dead Space remake
Complete rethinking of the original Dead Space, using all modern graphics technologies. Above all, the necromorphs are great: with their flexibility, sharpness and highlighted animation of body parts, they are superior not only to the original, but also to other projects of this genre of recent years. Dead Space Remake introduces a new lighting system and offers a realistic play of light and shadow in the complete darkness of the game world, creating an atmosphere of cosmic horror that is more believable than ever. The seamless world greatly increases immersion: the USG Ishimura can be traversed from end to end, lengthwise and widthwise. Moreover, the ‘destroyer of planets’ was rebuilt towards plausibility. The game was developed on the modernized Frostbite engine, which, after a few years of delay, showed excellent competition with newer engines in terms of visuals.
Other New Year’s items and tops
Witchfire
Indie project Witchfire impressed players with its technological brilliance. This is a clear demonstration that in the right hands Unreal Engine 4 can be an effective tool for creating colorful worlds with realistic effects. Photogrammetry is one of the technologies that made this result possible. But not alone. The lighting system adds depth and atmosphere to the game and creates colorful lighting effects and shadows. Thanks to careful development of the source code, Witchfire does without ray tracing and its image is not much inferior to games that use the infamous ray tracing. The project is still in its early stages and some locations and objects may be too similar. Otherwise it’s one of the most amazing projects of the year.
Does graphon come first for you?
Sons of the forest
Another project in our TOP – the heir to the legendary indie survival game The forest. And since he caught our attention, you can understand that even on Unity projects are possible that compete with the giants. A world full of forests, meadows and streams Sons of the Forest is truly vast, impressive with the details of forests covering a significant part of the territories, created using the same photogrammetry. The developers have introduced seasons with smooth transitions, as well as interactive elements such as leaf fall, first snow, icing and even deep, knee-deep snowdrifts. The game features a wide choice of graphics settings, including anisotropic textures, draw distance, ambient occlusion, and dynamic resolution, which can significantly increase on-screen FPS.
Avatar: Borders of Pandora
A game based on the cinematic universe of James Cameron’s famous “Avatar”, worthy of the visual quality of the film! Regardless of the gameplay shortcomings, consider Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is like an impressive virtual tour of Pandora, where you can wander through the majestic forests full of beautiful and amazing plants, interact with fantastic animals, explore picturesque open plains and breathtakingly steep mountains with high cliffs. Just like in the movie, you can enjoy the world of Pandora while flying on the dragon Ikran. And many plants are endowed with bioluminescent properties, which gives them a unique appearance at night. Ubisoft’s engineering team has unleashed the full potential of the Snowdrop engine, although the game requires a powerful computer to render fully.
Death Island 2
Dead Island 2 doesn’t have excellent textures, stunning light and shadow play, or next-gen solutions for rendering vegetation. But the same epithets can be applied to the ultra-violence and brutality in this game. Yes, yes, only in Dead Island 2 can you see in detail how a splash of blood sparkles in the sun, just knocked out of the nearest zombie, how their bodies are destroyed by blows of cold weapons, or how they fly apart by explosions. Luckily, the action takes place in illuminated Los Angeles, so the lighting is OK. “Ketchup” from zombies ends up on hands, clothes, walls and generally colors the space around the main character, increasing the immersion in what is happening.
Hogwarts legacy
Detailed environments, rich in elements and artistic solutions, attention to small details at Hogwarts is one of the most striking features Hogwarts Legacy The visual beauty of the landscapes of Northern Britain, combined with excellent effects, captivates from the first minutes (especially compared to all previous Harry Potter games). And by turning on ray tracing the game becomes even more beautiful. It makes sense to keep looking around here and there, looking at yourself in reflections and catching notes of different types of light and light scattering. Yes, to some extent Hogwarts Legacy is a typical console port, the graphics on medium settings are equivalent to those on the XSX and PS5. But this also means you can easily run it on an average PC, and if you have a more powerful system you can take advantage of all the graphics goodies.
Fort Solis
And now a truly new generation. Built on Unreal Engine 5.2, indie horror Fort Solis surprised with excellent animations of characters and NPCs – both general (body) and facial expression, which was even called one of the most realistic in the industry at the moment. Moving, correctly directed pupils, blinking eyelids, wrinkles on the forehead and correct processing of smiles – and this is not the whole list of technologies. All light sources can create shadows and the environment looks really cool. The use of Nanite technology made it possible to display a large amount of detail without the need for objects to appear suddenly. At the same time, Fort Solis is a very demanding game that only runs reliably on the latest flagship NVIDIA video cards.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Powered by Insomniac’s proprietary engine, this game unlocks the potential of console graphics at the height of the PlayStation 5 development cycle. The landscapes, transportation and character models of New York City are impressive in their splendor. There’s more geometry in buildings, more detail in parts of the city, and a variety of textures and materials everywhere. Lighting, shadows and reflections have been thoroughly updated, adding a visual polish to the game. Large groups of NPCs roam the streets, and the city that never sleeps is almost always stuck in traffic. Despite the vast world, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 loads in seconds and moving at lightning speed won’t cause any performance issues. The game offers two graphic modes, and the photo mode is rightly considered one of the best in modern projects.
Alan Wake2
Another project developed on its own engine, instead of the mass-produced Unreal Engine and Unity, but is in no way inferior to them. And in some ways superior. We have characterized Alan Wake 2 as a technologically advanced, highly optimized game. Here we have one of the first next-gen projects created at the intersection of advanced graphics and cinematography. The image looks very good at minimum settings and excellent at maximum settings. Delivers stable 4K 30 FPS with ray tracing on PC and consoles and easily scales up to 120 FPS, which was previously impossible in projects of this level. The photo mod in the game is also considered one of the best in modern gaming.
In which game did the visual atmosphere give you the most vivid emotions?
Ending a brilliant gaming year in 2023 is no reason to be sad. Brace yourself, soon the games will be such that you won’t have to worry about reality anymore. Inspired by their success, the developers will raise the bar for graphical heights in the coming years. We are sure, and you? We’re waiting for your opinion in the comments!
Source: VG Times
Christina Moncayo is a contributing writer for “Social Bites”. Her focus is on the gaming industry and she provides in-depth coverage of the latest news and trends in the world of gaming.