Let's have some fun and compare some new and old games.
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0:00 Intro
0:17 Number 10
2:25 Number 9
4:17 Number 8
6:18 Number 7
8:01 Number 6
10:08 Number 5
11:45 Number 4
13:47 Number 3
15:52 Number 2
17:46 Number 1
Cyberpunk 2020 vs Cyberpunk 2024 lol
👍
Yeah lol
💯 but CDPR really did what they said they were gonna do and made the game into something special. A lot of people won’t ever stop hating on it for the launch but I have to give them props, they crushed it the best they could after that launch. It’s one of my favorite worlds and games of all time now. I don’t even fast travel because Night City is so interesting to drive and run around in.
It actually hurt me to fast travel in liberty city😂 I started playing a week after the 2.0 patch and it is one of my most played games I have. Such a good game.
@@DintheDinster I tried after launch and had a terrible time, but reinstalled after the 2.0 patch too, and now it's one of my favourite games. The original release was virtually unplayable, but CDPR was very diligent in continuing to develop it, and the Phantom Liberty DLC really completes the narrative. It honestly feels like an Early Access experience, which pushes further blame to the publishing timeline, not the devs.
Why not compare Harry Potter to Hogwarts legacy? Lol that was such a weird choice to start with.
yeah, this guy has bird brains for sure
I can only assume that it was a comparison of what Unreal can do from it's original form compared to now. Also, Hogwarts Legacy used Unreal 4.
because this video was sponsored by Unreal
I get the logic of preffering better graphics over worse ones, but that doesnt change the fact that ive played some of the worst best looking games, and the best worst looking games, graphics dont fix a bad game and they dont ruin a good one imo
Cyberpunk 1.0 got something to say about that
@@vadnegruCyberpunk actually has nothing to do with that, it was the same game, just don't optimized at the release. Dude means completely different stuff
I somewhat disagree that bad graphics can't ruin a good game. Maybe not for you, but they definitely can for myself and others. While I can appreciate a game that plays well but looks bad, it definitely holds me back from really getting into it. That also doesn't mean that a game has to be a technical graphics powerhouse, it can just be art direction.
sometimes games are about immersion, contemplation, or have a meaningful artstyle. gameplay isn't some monolithic thing separated from the graphics
I agree. It just drives up the costs of the pretty games while they loose the essence of what makes a game good. Graphics are something to throw money at, but gameplay is where all of the creativity is at. Sadly for the big guys, you cannot just throw money around and get a good game with a compelling story.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="780">13:00</a> Ninja? You mean Nina :)
I am shocked!!!
Got you to comment. Classic KZheadr strat
Gotta find the comment and up it instead of making one. ❤
I was about to comment this but you beat me to it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who picked up on that 😂
The wildest thing for me and my brother was using the graphic switch button (aka the back button) for Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Halo: Combat evolved where it would swap between original and new graphics. After having grown up with Halo, it blew our minds.
Similarly, the graphics toggle for the Diablo 2 remaster.
I feel like the remastered graphics in that game are genuinely worse than the original. It’s just rough to look at.
i did the same thing only to find in some cases that the newer graphics were worse and more lifeless
@@knivesron They also mess up the level design's visual queues by putting 10+ new light sources
@ZimtikiBar don't be daft they look 100 times better.
Would have been a great opportunity to talk about Resident Evil and their remakes.
And Final Fantasy. The FF games from XV onwards look absolutely incredible
GTA and Fallout have some of the biggest “then vs now” differences
I mean fallout went through extremely changes gameplay wise so idk if that’s best example
@@JetBlack2024facts I guess first two don’t really count but even the jump from 3 and NV (if you wanna count it) to 4, 76 and SF are big
That could be said for literally any long running franchise
@@brandonreyes7113Fallout SF? What’s that?
@@clays4038 Fallout seventy fix
The OG Gran Turismo vs GT7 is a unreal difference too
Yea but gameplay wise I prefer GT2 and GT3 A Spec. GT7 is garbage, and I bought the steelbook edition on launch. It's a traffic passing simulator. No real racing. Very minimal amount of real cars. Very limited customization. My favorite feature of GT2 was transforming a car using the race car modification (i forgot what it's called) but you could basically take certain cars and go into the upgrades and buy a race car conversion, it would come complete with a paint job, like Castrol and the like, it would add a spoiler and body kit depending on the car, making it look like a real race car.
Even having played Spiderman, I dont know why this never clicked, but Insomniac should reboot the Prototype franchise. It would be amazing.
Hdr or 4k prototype 3rd sequel would slap!
I think Microsoft owns them now
I prefer old graphics. Everything looks the same now, and all AAA publishers seem to care about are graphics, no matter how poorly a game runs.
The graphics keep getting better, the gameplay keeps getting forgotten.
Not really ... play some older games again. They are so clunky and simplistic compared to what we have today. Put down the nostalgia tinted glasses.
@@Jigsaw407it's purely opinionated of course, but personally I have way more fun playing GoldenEye and starfox on switch online than any new release of the last few years. I literally only today have dug my PS3 out to play some old PS1 games like resi 3, dino crisis and gran Turismo. They just feel more like games to escape in and less of a chore of today
@@Jigsaw407 Some of my opinion is informed by my rose tinted glasses, yes. Also, I'm older, so nothing is quite as much fun as teenage me playing the SNES, but, let's face it, AAA games have royally, and I mean royally, disappeared up their own arses.
Id agree. It's more about how best to sell a game with a trailer than actually playing something enjoyable
Sometimes it is possible to combine great graphics, good gameplay and nostalgia - Resident Evil 4 Remake and Dead Space Remake.
You should make a list of older games that look better than new games.
This actually is a good idea.
Crysis was holding up for a long time
Batman arkham, uncharted 4, tomb raider reboot are some of the ones I can think of.
👍
Heroes 3 vs any Heroes afterwards.
Didn’t realize Ninja made it through all eight generations of Tekken. 😏
I noticed Falcon's mistake too 😅
The benefit of sticking to the shadows I guess
I’m excited to see how facial graphics improve in the next few years, because for a lot of games I feel like they have a really hard time escaping the uncanny valley.
To make graphics as life-like as possible...water. Because of thermoregulation, humans are always filtered through water vapor. Whoever comes up with the algorithm for water vapor, wins.
@@intelligentbodywork i bet slow people think you're smart
@@iangray1980 I bet most people think you're stupid for wasting your time trolling youtube comments with weak wit.
i think they dont care, compare Fallout 76 vs Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 76 has less facial animations than ME: Andromeda had at launch, a lot of companies, like Bethesda simply dont care about adding motion capture or animations, which already exist, it way cheaper to not add them at all
We hope we ain't dead
Weve been pushing photorealism for a while, with textures at least and even lighting. When i look at new games and judge them "graphically" nowadays i tend to look more at the fluid, hair and cloth physics.
The lighting is definitely the most important thing for photorealism. Ray-tracing helps a lot. But yeah you're right about the hair and cloth, I think we mostly ignore this in our judgement of graphics nowadays because it's still nowhere near reality.
@@teeds88 Yeah, but we still have a long way to go for photorealism. Most things that are called that way (be it unrecorded or anything else) rather looks like a fever dream due to all the tricks used than actual photorealism.
Yes, something like cars already got pretty realistic in 2012, but something like cloth and fluids still aren't looking good in most games
Don't forget mirrors
Most of this isn't photorealism. It's a sort of larger-than-life "hyper realism" that has its origins in art of the 50s and 60s.
Wow look how different ninja is <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="783">13:03</a>
why didn't you compare Harry Potter to Hogwarts legacy?
Legacy not made with unreal 5
@@EverlyZillaJ180 that's not what the video was about?
Yah I was thinking the same...a lot of the time their lists just don't make sense lol
@@Reddeadredemption3seeing as he mentioned unreal engine 5 alsmot every number I’d say yes this is about unreal engine lol
@@Scotland_James no he didn't lmao, you must have brain damage, only like 5 of the games use unreal engine, you can keep coping tho
Resident evil.. walking into that mansion in the first game back in 97 or whatever was unreal.. mind blowing.. now look at it, and how good the new remakes are. We have seen a lot
The big deal about Deus Ex was never the graphics. It was about a fully voice acted game with a really cool multiple choice storyline. And I think the graphical difference between Indigo Prophecy and Detroit Become Human is pretty crazy.
The freedom of game play mixed with RPG elements was a decade ahead of its time! It blew my mind back then.
Some great mentions would've been : Final Fantasy, Twisted Metal, Metal Gear, Mario, Zelda.....The OG's
this is like a list of "how games used to actually look vs how we imagined them looking when we played them"
True dat. I remember thinking how amazing the graphics were in games like Gran Turismo 2, and Red Faction 1, nostalgia clouding my memory. Looking back at them (in the form of KZhead videos) those games are unplayable now. I mean not literally, a lot of people even enjoy the retro graphics, but to me it's unbearable now that I'm spoiled with way better looking games.
When resources were little, people were more creative. Now it seems the solution is just more money coz the technology we have today can do pretty much anything you want.
The Tekken segment does make the argument that graphics aren't everything (which is not what you're claiming I know). Seeing those OG animations applied to current gen graphics just shows that the gameplay is what allowed us to overlook the relative unreality of the old graphics back in the day. If anything, devs have to work a lot harder now to make these much more realistic graphics move and act realistically. The old games relied on help from our imaginations to bridge the gap.
Man, I have no idea if it’s nostalgia goggles, but even with these truly amazing graphics, games just felt so much more interesting back in the day.
Sometimes simplicity is more fun.
Graphics aren't the most important in a game. Gameplay and story should come first, I think
Spiderman 2 may have been empty, but that kid still managed to lose his damn balloon every couple of blocks
An example even within the same game: No Man's Sky has received quite the graphics glow-up since it's 2016 release. I wouldn't say it's completely unrecognizable, but it sure is a stark difference when you compare them side-by-side.
Graphics have definitely advanced really well, but I'm still waiting for an open world city with the ability to enter every building. GTA where every npc lives and has a genuine life. Imagine a mission where you have to run through a street but can jump through open windows, smash through any door, etc.
Isn't this claimed for Watch Dogs or The Division?
I went outside once... was pretty much what you are asking for... Planning to go again this year ;D
Shadows of Doubt
theres not much reason to do it. like why invest the dev time for a feature that ultimately will lead to many players getting lost or searching 1000 virtually identical rooms. like its a niche within a niche if anyones gonna do it i could see an Arma style game and it could be cool for a persistant online space like Rust; like if you had a new york sized map there could be thousands of players and you could never see a single one for literal days
@@ince55ant I don't think it would be too hard to design a program that could procedurally generate interiors, the same way that buildings and landscapes were generated in the Matrix UE5 demo. I imagine that would take a lot of resources though, so maybe in a decade or two.
Playing games with my second grader has reminded me that graphics are not nearly as important as gameplay. He could care less if it's NES or PS5, just so long as it's fun.
Doom could have been added. Actually you could make an episode of any game series from first installment to the latest comparison (Aliens, Doom, GTA etc) Love the show, keep it up!
Back in those days, our eyes didn't see them as horrible graphics. We were so much happy to play the games and saw them as real. Though back in the day i liked those graphics I also imagined high polygon graphics like we have today.
You called Nina from Tekken "Ninja", lmao.
Max Payne 1 blew my mind when it first came out lol
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. Built my first 486DX2 PC in 1992. Played most of these older games. 👍🏼
The original Nier is still on of my favorite games of all time. I feel like even though graphics weren't there, older games were so much more memorable
Even better than graphics are physics, the Euphoria engine used in gta4/5 and force unleashed does more for immersion than grahpics ever could.
Microsoft Flight Simulator should really be on this list, I'm not sure there is a bigger THEN vs NOW anywhere.
Exactly.
You make a good point - we can't trust demos of Unreal 5 games too much. Until the next gen consoles come out, & we see actual gameplay, it's wise not to get our hopes up too high.
following star dust we are
Next-gen consoles... God, that feels weird to say. I still can't wrap my head around the Series X and PS5 even existing and it's been five years
@@pygmalion0451it’s been 3?
Thought ue5 was for ps5 not 6??
@@brandonmurray6779 3?! What is time anymore? Man...
The first time I played Tekken 1 is etched in my memory. At 14, I was dining with my parents at a pizzeria on Spain's south coast, a summery place fringed with palm trees and the beach just a stroll away. It was about 9 p.m. when we entered and I spotted a Tekken arcade machine. My excitement was palpable. That evening, the pizza tasted incredible, and those 100 pesetas (roughly 60 US cents) were the best spent on any game.
meanwhile crysis 3 still holds up well today despite being 11 years old
I can think of two big, very natural reasons Stellar Blade looks better than Nier.
Haha !
Did Falcon call Nina Ninja? Lol, rare for him to misread so it jumped out. Great vid, I love old games and graphics and appreciate many games from PS1 and early PC 3D.
If the gameplay and stories could also keep up with the graphics we'd be living in gaming Utopia. But we can't have it all I guess 🤷♂️
HL2 beginning is perhaps THE BEST opening in any game ever made. It's so atmospheric.
Just remember that all these beautiful demos will run at 30fps on consoles.
teehee get a battlestation
Nothing wrong with 30fps and this is coming from a PC gamer with 144hz. Ya’ll are just weird
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="784">13:04</a> “Look at Ninja, for example” lol
The Serious Sam games, some of the most awesome fun I ever had, single player, LAN multiplayer and online multiplayer. The games were jaw dropping to be hold to me, as I was new to PC gaming and had a machine powerful enough to run Serious Sam and Serious Sam 2 maxed out at 1280x1024. The only other game to get the more play time online and just at home multiplayer than Serious Sam was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and its expansions. That game I was a part of a pretty highly ranked clan, and it was a blast.
I was playing Castlevania: SoTN on my 360 earlier this week, and was wow'd switching between the original graphics and the enhanced ones. And I remembered playing the original disc game on my PS1 in the 90's. We really have come far.
Lego games are slept on in terms of graphical quality. Compare Complete saga to Skywalker saga and it's night and day
10 best Fishing Minigames in actual Games when?
2 ideas for you: - Try to do the opposite: then vs now... finding game that are 10 years (ish) old that look better than new recent games. - compare current real-time game with old(-ish) pre-rendered 3d movies (toy story, Final Fantasy, ...?) have fun, thanks for the videos !
Probably my favorite gameranx videos.see how video games graphics are then and now is amazing.word up son
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="783">13:03</a> It's Nina, not "Ninja"! 😂
these guys don't even play the games they talk about
Old Games have good graphics too
great artistic direction makes a game timeless
for their time yes
No
@@Pulpos999 absolutely but games that wanted to be realistic (graphics wise) in that time dont hold up anywhere close to the graphics of now
Not if it's old 3d lol they don't hold up at all
Dam I remember playing Serious Sam when it first came out. I think it's actually aged quite well. It's a game that has a scene ingrained into my head forever... when Sam approaches a sand hill *hears faint screaming* "Uh Oh!" Suicide bombers run over the hill in waves... ARHHHHHHHH!" *BOOM!" "ARRRHHHHHHHH!" "BOOM!" "ARRRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Unforgettable 😊
"Look at Ninja" LMAO, I don't mean it in as an offense, but hearing that was really funny.
Far Cry 2004 to Crysis 2007 is a whole different world
For years i thought the face of max Payne 1 was Johnny Knoxville
I have no idea why the developer's used Sam Lake's "I just ate a lemon" expression for that game.
I vividly remembered standing in my boy room mesmerized by the graphics of the cut scenes in Rage Racer (Ridge Racer 3) for PS1 and thinking wow one day the gameplay will look that awesome! And here we are today where it’s starting to become realism without any uncanny valley’s.
So many more comparisons you could do! I'd love to see a second part - GTA 1 vs 5, Fallout 1 vs 4 (especially with the next gen mod!), Morrowind vs Starfield, Red Dead 1 vs 2. Would also be cool to do a comparison with originals vs. remakes (FF7 comes to mind first).
falcon aways reaching. you never compare deus ex with cyberpunk son. Mankind divided maybe.
Unreal Engine has come so far, it's unreal
The “cool” thing about old graphics was the fact that the “rest” could be interpreted, similar to a book That's why old games have a charm that many of today's games can't match
I love these. Even for a casual gamer, this comparison is amazing. (just got a PS5 two weeks ago after a nine year hiatus)
Unpopular opinion: you're comparing constantly with games pre-2005, because if you'd compare with games of, let's say, a decade ago (which is still 10 years!), you wouldn't find any real significant updates besides a bit of atmospheric light play. Graphics just follows the Unreal engines, and a 15 year wait for an update is at the very least a bit disappointing. On the other hand, I'm still waiting for the first game that will truely take use of Unreal 5's photographic developments.
this list feels really dumb for some reason
Maybe have a reason before complaining because this just makes you seem like a jerk 😐
@@opheliamunroe1110Dumbass fanboy
I think this is the equivalent of "running out of ideas, lets change our wording and change our list to make it look 'different'". Gameranx's Top 10 stuff are a bit stale. I do like their other content though
Boohoo, you’re still here…🤣
The comparisons are like 2d vs 3d See the better perspective on a 3d plane. Infinitely more advanced than 2d
All these technical advancements and people still pay $90/year for sports games that have been carbon copies of the same game since 2015. The same copied assets, the same physics engines, the same stadiums, same voiceover announcers, the same crowd noises. The only thing that changes is the background tracks which get shittier each year. But hey, uPdAtEd RoStErs!
A nice sequence to show in this regard is combat flight sims. • Starting with Their Finest Hour - Battle of Britain. 2d sprites that personally I had no way of hitting, shuffling about in a sort-of 3d space. • Chuck Yeager's Air Combat went 3D and was infinitely more playable as a result. But everything was made of obvious triangles, lacking textures. • Then on to something like the first IL-2 Sturmovik game (or if you prefer something older: European Air War or WWII Fighters), which had textures, damage models etc, but rudimentary ground LOD. • And right now there's DCS. I have not played it much, but some people are putting out some seriously cinematic stuff.
Not much anymore but in the 90s, wrestling games when the graphics got better every year. Fighting games like MK, SF, Tekken, etc
We're gonna see what Unreal 5 is capable of when Hellblade II drops
Twenty years ago I would not have believed that water in video games would be as primitive as it is today. Even with all the advancements, games are far from any photo realism. Look at modern games ten years from now and then it will be much more noticeable to those who think games look real. In fact, I would risk saying that many old games were still able to capture certain realism aspects with the graphical techniques used, not much different from the current generation. Games still look like cartoon pictures with strange effects, smearing, broken shadows and reflections, as well as post processing that really doesn't do much, with the exception of some mods that are on a different level. What is amazing from this point of view, is that games of today do not have much more realism in them at all once the veil is taken from one's eyes.
Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor are night and day with graphical improvements. UE5 is pure magic :)
Far Cry to Crysis was a pretty big jump and those games were only 3 years apart. Which is kinda mind blowing when you think about it. Graphics were moving so fast back in the day.
As someone that started on a Atari.... I'll just say that games are made by wizards ... 🎮 ❤️
Falcon, that "people walkin here" in the Spiderman comparison instantly makes this my favorite video of the year... Thanks for your great work my friend 👊
It's funny that you chose to highlight the spell particle effects from Harry Potter to the UE5 demo, because they're actually both just textures with transparency. There's just a helluva lot more particles now :P
So happy to see that Sean Ashmore is in Alan Wake 2! He was in one of my favorite underrated Remedy games! The reason I wanted an Xbox One because of Quantum Break. Still cool to this day.
The thing about old game nostalgia is that we remember the game play, not the graphics. I tried to play GTA San Andreas again (prior to the "remaster") and was amazed at how bad the graphics looked! When I played it the first time, about when it released, I didn't notice the graphics. There wasn't anything better running a PC at that time. Years from now, I won't remember the graphics of GTA V, just the game play. Maybe I'll try it again and be surprised at how bad it looks (compared to whatever games exist in that not so distant future).
The jump between Halo 3 and Halo 4 was night and day. Take the intro in Halo 4 and then play ❤
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="473">7:53</a> You know what definitely DOES hold up from Deus Ex? The music!
I'd say 2 jaw dropping one's for me are Halo 2 to Halo 2 Anniversary, that 10 year gap really shows how much better Halo games were able to look at that point The other one is Halo CE to Halo Infinite, a 20 year gap and it really shows
The biggest challenge with making things look "real" now is that we have such high resolutions that everything looks much too clean. That subway example? I've never been on any public transportation that was that clean. Even a fancy train trip, the seats have stains and lint. The carpets have discoloration or frayed edges or ripples. For me to buy that subway as real, there would need to be a good bit of ground clutter that is varied enough to not be obviously copy/pasted for each car.
PS1 games still look beautiful in my eyes. If you grew up with 8bit and 16bit consoles, the jump to 3d was gigantic.
I remember playing Max Payne and thinking my god what interactivity and life like scenes. Lol.
Spider-man 2 is one of the best looking games I've ever played. Its honestly insane how far we've come.
Have you seen how the Sims have improved with each game? If you compare the graphics of Sims 1 vs Sims 2 vs Sims 3 vs Sims 4,you'll notice much the graphics change. It makes me wonder what the graphics of Sims 5 will look like.
The difference between Helldivers 2 and the original blows my mind, I’ve never played the first one but I couldn’t believe how much different it was when I first saw it
I’m gonna need some more VRAM
Pity we can't DL it like RAM lmao
Where is Mario? The NES brought kids like me to tears on Christmas. Then the 64 came out later and I had to RENT the console and a game for the weekend to have my mind blown with advancements…I remember the feeling as a kid going into “Karma” (My local and privately owned rental service) and loving to waste time looking around and hiding the cards for games I wanted to rent later. LOL
Driver 2 was a huge leap into the 3d world. They offered gta 3 on old consoles, at a huge cost to texture quality but was the future of gaming
Who else saw the Red Hot Chili Pepper's music video for Californication and thought those graphic were great at the time? I remember seeing that video and thinking how cool it would be to play a game like that.
Total Annihilation (1997) vs Supreme Commander (2008). The first title was really before 3D was a thing, but they made it work somehow. They created it to look 3d. Lots of reviews scored the graphics 10/10 for the time. Then came the spiritual successor and we got what they tried to in 1997: Fully zoomable, fully rotatable detailed 3 models that look good.
I first started gaming on the Atari 2600 and looking back at those games it's a little surprising how I found them fun. But I did. However, there is no way I would be able to last ten minutes playing one of them again today.
Unreal is impressive, BUT most Unreal Engine games have performance issues, at least I have personally on the PC the past couple years. UE5 is absolutely insane with the amount of detail, I just hope the optimization can get better for the games.
Little bit random but .. why is there not triple AAA studio covering the SCP Games? Like.. Imagine the original SCP game but with way more features, monsters, lore and stuffs. You could update it FOREVER knowing how BIG, scary and creepy the SCP possibilities are. I am so sad we only get like shooters as SCP games.
As a 90's "kid" i am, my first console was a super nintendo and ps1, i think that the games looked great because we have to think of what they had available at that time, most games were amazing for what they were, of course now we say they look bad but in that time they sure were something else, for example for me GT1 was amazing because there wasn't anything like that
I just finished a play through of the original Deus ex with the GMDX mod, would definitely recommend for new and returning players
I remember my first time creating fire and effect using particle generator in 3DGS A5 it was so wonderful. and compare it to today's engine damn that feel so ancient.
I've witnessed the evolution of tech firsthand with everything including video games , 60,s to 2024 , pong back in the 70,s was cutting edge now I play games on my ps5 , hard to believe, but keep improving till it hits a wall
I would have loved a bonus mention with Cyberpunk 2077 vs Starfield flipping the narrative on its head. The older looking so much better than the new.