What 3 games Graphically 'wowed' you the most

Hey all gurus, i thought i would start a thread about what games graphically over your years of gaming have wow'e you the most. Im talking about the first time you get into the ingame visuals and are just stunned by how amazing it looks. Ive thought about this a lot with my bro whilst he was playing oblivion on his ps3 and we were jus chatting about it. Of course by modern standards oblivion is truly amazing in its attension to detail, and had huge wow appeal, but my games after thinking about it would be, in their day of course (inb no particular order):

Giants, Citizen Kabuto:
A great game of course but i remember when i first played this game on my voodoo 3000, damn it jus blew me away visually (was so big and jus wow)

Zelda Ocarina of Time
I loved and adored the game, but the attension to detail was jus so damn amazing at the time...

Donkey Kong Country (Snes)
Was such an amazing step up graphically from the other mario games and platformers on the consoles. This game looked so damn good and still looks great today i think

 

super mario 64
wave race 64
the first gran turismo for ps2.

 

Star Fox (SNES and Star Wing in Europe)
Megaman X1 (SNES, made me buy a SNES)
Super Mario 64 (N64)

and a #4 for me: Final Fantasy 7 (PSX)
Ohhh... and a #5: Super Mario World (SNES, WOW, look at those rotating and scaling effects )

 

I don't prefer any of the following games, you can put them in any order, because they have all positive and negative aspects

Tomb Raider legends in Next gen mode, although it ran crap with my old 256mb card

Splinter Cell 3, when I just enabled the HDR with my brand new HDR capable card Damn, that was nice, man

Half-life 2, gosh, I ran it on a Geforce2, I guess, but I was just blown away, really Also by the gameplay

Very weird, but the most beautiful games usually got sub 30 frames per second, when I was amazed

(Really, those are the only WOWS in my whole gaming career, I mean, I wasn't such a gamer back then (Geforce 2 :S)...)

 

diablo 2 made me **** my pants, so did ground control and medal of honor allied assault. this is all within the same era of where I actually started spending my own money for ****.

 

The game that impressed me the most was Sacrifice, a mix between action, strategy and RPG. It had amazing worlds, very detailed caracters and that sky...I still think to this day that Sacrifice has one of the most beautifull skyes ever made in a game, making the game look like a painting. And the graphics mixed very well with the gameplay too.
Another game that wow'ed me was Unreal. I remember back in 1999 when i first played it, i was very impressed by the way Unreal Engine rendered water.
Splinter Cell is another game that looks amazing. I was blown away by the realistic shadows and the richness of the textures.

 

Half life 2 - This has wowed me on all three graphics cards I've run it on - First a GFFX5600 then again in DX9 mode on X800XL and finally recently on GF8800GTX in super-high res. Seems it doesn't matter what card you feed HL2 - it always impresses.

FEAR - I know some don't like the gfx, but I thought they were perfect for the game.

Deus Ex - I remember every section took literally 10 minutes to load. That's actually a lot longer than you think, time yourself you'll see what I mean. But when each level had loaded - wow.

 

The 3 games the floored me were first,

Donkey Kong Country on SNES. That game looked WAY better than anything out at the time. And its revolutionary use of pre rendered CGI for the game was truly a sight to see on the SNES

Then there was Final Fantasy 7 on the original Playstation. In particular the first time I summoned Bahumut Zero and he basically blew up the entire planet as an attack. (Kinghts of the Round was cool too, but they didn't blow up the entire frigging planet!)

And finally there was Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast. I was speechless when I first played that game. In a time of Nintendo 64s, Atari Jaguars And Playstations, the visuals in that game had no peer.

 

Sacrifice i must say one of the BEST games ive ever played bought a new copy year ago after old cd was destroyed >_<

Final Fantasy 7 was very cool at the time and still is

Dark Reign 2 imho very good strategy game had one of the best gfx for an rts back then and going 3d was madness

 

-Driver (PSX)
-Gran Turismo 2 (PSX)
-Fear Effect (PSX)

 

My Three Games

Oblivion
Oblivion
&
Oblivion

 

Hmm, let's see:

X-Wing , the first one that is. What joy it was to play a 3D space simulator with real 3d models instead of sprites used by Wing Commander 1+2 at the time.

Unreal, went from a 486DX 50mhz which could just barely run Doom playable to a P2-300mhz with a Voodoo2: Unreal was one of the first games I played on it, man oh man, that was truly great (a step up from 320x200 to 800x600 and all the other improvements)

X3: Reunion, The graphics in this game are almost perfect imho. The game itself isn't and the way the starsystems connect is a little lame, but graphically (I do like the game a lot, but I would have liked a space like in I-War 2 with the possibilities, scale and freedom of X3)

Oblivion, although very great graphically with mods, isn't on the list because when I first played it (without mods, there weren't any yet back then) the LOD textures were all blurry, buildings popped up in front of you etc, there was too high of an annoyance factor to the graphics, now with mods it's all dandy, but it doesn't have the WOW-factor anymore)

 

Half-Life 2: I remember getting a 9800 Pro just so I could pump out the resolution for that game. The engine still amazes me to this day, especially with the various quality mods that give it new life with HDR among other effects. Even with those, what wowed me was the water and how real it looked compared to previous games.

Half-Life: Hey, it was my first PC shooter and when the HD pack came out for it, it was like a new game. I'm still amazed at how much can still come out of that engine, like the Poke 646 mods.

Wolfenstein 3D: I remember my dad playing a bit of that back on his 386 66MHz and thought it was amazing. Sure it's nothing today, but back then I thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread.

I have other games that have wowed me, but those tend to stick out to me in how they looked at the time, and in Half-Life 2's case, still to this day.

 

Hmm, surprised no one said Perfect Dark. I remember when I got that game for N64, I could not keep my hands off the controller.

Splinter Cell

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Mike.

 

Donkey Kong Country (snes) Just looked great for it's time
Hydro Thunder (N64) Quite possibly my most favorite console game. I loved the way it looked when I first played it in 1999
GTA 3 (PS2) When I first played it I fell in love with the graphics, can't really explain it but I just really really liked the graphics.

 

edit

 

final fantasy X
far cry
and FEAR

 

Black and White 1
Morrowind
Gears of War

 

1 - Killer Instinct for the arcade cabinets - noone does cgi like rare
2 - DK country for the snes...tho it looks hideous today on a large screen
3 - F.e.a.r - The effects are still tops!