TenSpot Readers' Choice: Top Ten Best-Looking Games

Recently, the GameSpot editors published their list of the ten best-looking games of their times, and now, the reader results are in. More than 3,500 votes were cast for games from every period of computer gaming. In the end, readers preferred relatively newer games--games that were released in the last several years. The older games just didn't make any of the final voting cuts. This isn't to say that older games didn't look spectacular for their time or didn't make any contributions to graphical design or art direction in computer games. However, the rapid advance of hardware acceleration technology has given recent games a definitive advantage in terms of complexity, character modeling, character animation, and general performance. It's this sort of complexity that makes up eye candy in games, and thus, the new eclipses the old.

Some of the older games you voted for include a number of classics. For example, King's Quest V was mentioned several times for its point-and-click interface, its 256-color VGA palette, and its fluid animation. The first Gabriel Knight game, Sins of the Father, was cited for its myriad dark images, great backgrounds, vast environments, and--for the time--a great lip-sync graphical effect. Surprisingly, American McGee's Alice for its art direction and design. The cohesive art, character, and environmental design blended to give the game a very distinct atmosphere.

In sum, readers voted for games that impressed, and it was mostly a matter of stunning visuals, as well as solid performance. In particular, games with the best visuals were able to inspire real emotion or awe; they would often cause players to stop and look at the world, even for a brief moment, to admire its design and realization. Looks aren't everything, of course, and your choices reflect the fact that beauty and quality gameplay aren't mutually exclusive. Here are, in order of popular vote, your top ten best-looking games of all time.

Number ten
Giants: Citizen Kabuto
Developer: Planet Moon Studios
Publisher: Interplay
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"Hard to believe any game press would leave out Planet Moon's colorful masterpiece, Giants. While not exactly a realistic game, its overtly emphasized (at times comic yet also artistic) designs and raucously comic characters created a stunningly beautiful environment to explore. The effort put into Giants' environments seem dismissible to some because of its overtly comic nature, but in reality, the effort and art, as well as professional quality, combine to form probably the best-looking game ever made."
--James Herring

"Giants: Citizen Kabuto possesses the most detailed, lush, and colorful environments and characters I have ever seen in a game."
--Charlie Davis

"Giants is one of the best-looking games of all time, and for one simple reason: Seven months after its release (at the time of this writing), it is still the best-looking game on the PC market and is most likely to hold that position until games like Max Payne or Operation Flashpoint are released later this year. The game is remarkable for the times and manages to have a visual allure that even games like Sacrifice and Alice couldn't match."
--Brandon

"Perfect textures, wonderful models, huge outdoor environments, and breathtaking water. I'm also sure this game has the perfect sky of all times."
--Jean-Marcel Rothen

"Giants: Citizen Kabuto is the best-looking game of its time because it combines beautiful colors and wonderful effects (lighting, smoke, water) in an immersive experience that is fun to play in addition to being fun to look at. The character models are unique and well-detailed, the game is packed with action, and there is enough variety in the styles of gameplay and methods of completing each mission that it keeps the player coming back for more whenever they're looking for a colorful, adventure-filled, humorous, and graphically beautiful experience."
--Giovanni

"[The developer] broke away from the green-and-brown space dungeons of most action games. They used full-color palettes and creatively modeled characters, which had original and humorous animations. This game is definitely a feast for the eyes."
--Michael Brown

"Giants is the richest, most visually deep game yet, period. The texture quality and lighting effects are amazing. The fact that the landscape ripples with explosions (rendered fully in the game) is amazing and doesn't happen without a truly efficient engine. The characters make you laugh and are so close to a cartoon or piece of comic art that you forget the media in which you are enjoying the masterpiece. One of the top ten games, it should definitely be on the list."
--Brent Atwood

Number nine
FreeSpace 2
Developer: Interplay
Publisher: Interplay
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"This is the best-looking game for its time due to its huge battles, huge ships, and stunning effects. Nothing beats seeing a Shivan capital ship slowly making its way through a nebula. I think the graphics have yet to be beaten in any space game."
--Andrew Hennagan

"The ability to maintain a smooth frame rate with true scaled models where your biggest pilotable craft were 41 meters vs. the biggest capital ships in the game about 6 km...the visual effects were stunning. The nebulae and various space environments were groundbreaking, and none of this detracted from the ships or weapon effects themselves. The detailed and magnificent environment, especially with its excellent frame rate, made a totally immersive game experience."
--Klock

"I remember downloading the demo of FreeSpace 2 quite some time ago, and I couldn't believe how much improvement had been made since the first game. Everything was just so colorful and sharp--it was amazing! I still don't think there is a space shooter that looks as good as FreeSpace 2. It is quite simply peerless."
--Chris Ryan

"I can remember the surprise and slight terror that I felt as the Shivans were discovered in the nebula. Wonderful graphics helped to make this even more awe-inspiring. Truly atmospheric and powerful battles between huge, great-looking capital ships put this on the top of my list."
--Derek Colombage

"An already impressive space sim in terms of its gameplay, FreeSpace 2 has graphics that are still impressive by today's standards. The massive starships, swarm missiles, detonating nukes (either by hitting a ship or shooting them), not to mention the massive lasers--sorry, beam weapons--that would tear through your ship if you got in the way, are all extremely well done. If I had a large enough TV (or plasma screen), I would think I was really sitting in a cockpit. It's just simply unrivaled, and I hope they make a third game at some point. Even now I still pull it out every six months or so and play it again just for kicks."
--Mike F.

"Still the most awesome-looking space combat game ever released--amazing ships, explosions, weapons effects, and frame rate."
--Joel Hume

"The flak cannon fire bursting around you, the stunning missile trails, the swirling nebulae, the beam weapons as they cause a Shivan craft to spin wildly before exploding in a glorious ball of fire--this is definitely my choice for the best-looking game of its time. No space combat game since then (Starlancer, Tachyon, and so on) has ever matched up to the standard set by FreeSpace 2. Great production values helped as well." --John A. Shipley

Number eight
Unreal Tournament
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: GT Interactive
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"The texture detail, animations, weapon effects, and environments surpass any first-person shooter I have played so far, even Quake III. Many of the levels are very large, with beautiful, lifelike environments ranging from jungles to futuristic space stations. It's the first shooter I have played that got away from the dungeon crawls of Quake. A great game with great graphics that has raised the bar substantially."
--Gold

"There's no doubt that Unreal Tournament was one of the best-looking games of its time, and even today it still is a good-looking game. But what many of us don't know is that UT is an awesome graphical experience when you activate the compressed textures found on the second CD. Wow, those textures can compete with today's game graphics: When you think those textures were available two years ago..."
--Nicolas Bastien

"Even by today's standards UT is amazing. Not only is the engine fast and stable, but the textures are realistic and visually appealing. Even the player skins are detailed and fun. I still play UT today and have not found a game that compares."
--Lee Tschetter

"While there have been many different multiplayer-only games, and that, too, in a genre whose realism is quickly reaching its height, this game was easily the one with the best effects. Also there were incredible backgrounds, as well as character designs."
--Fred Danson

"[It] allowed for the use of 16- and 32-bit palettes on as high a resolution as your video card would support. It did this without killing the CPU and took full advantage of the video card's capabilities. Conversely, it's even playable on laptops because it can scale down. I can't even get Quake III (or Alice for that matter) to function on a laptop (8 MB video card). UT, however, runs just fine if you keep the screen size down."
--DaVinMan

"With UnrealEd anyone can add their own textures to the game, making the possibilities endless. The detail of the engine allows crystal clear images, and the ability to skin the whole world makes for unlimited creativity. Levels such as Facing Worlds take two towers orbiting in a beautiful environment in space and creates a battleground. In the level Gothic, a deathmatch takes place in a highly detailed castle where lighting can blind your enemies or show you to them. The effects are unreal."
--Grisham P. Fontaine

"Very detailed environments and textures, characters and level design were interesting, and the game had an amazing frame rate on a good computer. All this adds up to a visually impressive game, as well as a great game gameplay wise."
--Andy

Number seven
Myst
Developer: Cyan
Publisher: Broderbund
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"The rich environments that were created for the game surpassed anything I had seen before, even if it wasn't the best game in terms of gameplay to me."
--Anthony

"Myst featured spectacular cinema-quality environments everywhere you went, to the point that you could easily lose yourself in the game. Most of Myst's environments still look good nearly a decade later."
--Sam Hark

"While I had a hard time choosing between Unreal Tournament and Myst, Myst in 1993 opened up a lot of possibilities for PC games and got the attention of the general PC-owning public. There are all kinds of reasons why photogenic graphics, in-game movies, and integrated 3D objects while playing from a first-person perspective make a good case for Myst. I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned!"
--Brad Rubin

"The lack of processing power led to still-frame scenes, but since these were rendered beautifully in 3D, you forgot that you were looking at a computer with simple pictures on the screen, and instead you were immersed in a world."
--Ma Am

"High-quality 3D graphics before 3D cards were a standard. It set a quality standard people still try to achieve in current 3D games."
--Paul Wouters

"This game was the first adventure game with eye-popping graphics, an interesting story, and five strange but beautiful worlds you could travel to that amazed lots of people. Even the sequel to Myst, Riven, could not make as good an atmosphere as Myst did. So in many ways, Myst truly was one of the best games during the '90s."
--Kane

"This game was a revolution in graphics design and in its gameplay aspects. At times the graphics were so real it was scary. In fact, they were so good that the graphics alone influenced me to purchase the next two games in the series. This game was unbelievably brilliant and should have made it onto the list somewhere."
--Chird

"Even though it was a fairly static set of worlds to explore, for their time they presented an amazing onscreen presence for those of us who had older, slower systems. I could use my 66MHz 486 and still see all the great imagery and play the game at a reasonable speed. Myst III has done it again in that the worlds are still pretty empty, but they are great eye candy with some clever puzzles and they give you the ability to look around. Even though it is not true 3D, it really gives you a chance to explore, and that is what the Myst games are all about."
--Thom Doonan

"Myst was and still is eye candy. Worlds were detailed, foggy, animated, filled with shadows and light. The first time the title screen came up and threw me into Myst, I recall my jaw dropping."
--Steven O'Hare

"I realize it's almost obligatory for game critics to hate it and to call it a pretty slideshow, but you can't forget that it was a pretty slideshow and by far more beautiful than games [that] had ever been seen before. It's the only reason I had ever thought to get a CD-ROM drive back before they were standard equipment. The scenery and the attention to details, such as screws in the machinery, were far above and beyond anything I'd ever seen before. I've played many games since, and while a lot of them have been more immersive, I am still waiting for a game to take my breath away quite like that one did."
--Marc Josef

Number six
Quake III Arena
Developer: id Software
Publisher: Activision
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"Breathtaking visuals like highly detailed gargoyles and seamless round arcs and some of the best-looking levels that combined fantastic architecture and highly detailed multilayered animated textures. Two years after its release its engine is now being used for a large number of new titles."
--Teh

"It was the first game to truly support curved surfaces, and in addition to this, it added effects from a combination of many spectacular lighting effects."
--Nathaniel Myers

"It's just beautiful. Truly reflective surfaces, true utilization of a 32-bit color palette, truly round splines for archways, beautiful smoke effects, and so on. Way more pretty and impressive-looking than Unreal."
--Stephen

"An improved skeletal animation and spectacular character design make this game definitely one of the best-looking games of all time."
--Winston Liaw

"Quake III is undoubtedly one of the best-looking. The sheer beauty of the environments and the rich textures even at low resolutions like 640x480 are very impressive. And the game supports insane resolutions all the way up to 2100-something. That is quite unbelievable, and the game loads very fast, too, compared to Unreal Tournament. Unreal Tournament does not even begin to compare with Quake III. Quake III has it all: stunning graphics, well-balanced weapons, and cool multiplayer games, like your basic CTF. On the other hand, Unreal, the closest competitor, had rather OK graphics, unbalanced and boring weapons, horribly slow load times, and poor multiplayer games. "
--WrathChild2K

"The animation sequence at the beginning was and still is amazing. The game itself runs so smoothly, and the environments pull you into the game."
--Matt Donafrio

"Quake III was amazing. One of the few games to take your breath away. Sure UT had a lot more features, but who cares? I would rather have a first-person shooter with a better engine that has flexible coding to allow the mod community (the real game developers) [to] make the game last forever. Let's face it: You can't play the same maps in deathmatch forever."
--PeonS

"This game is the greatest-looking game I have ever seen. The 3D graphics are amazing. The mirrors, the fog--everything is perfect. The models are very well done as are the weapons and the firing graphics. Id Software has always been top-notch for graphics, and it's a shame that other games take them and get more credit than they do."
--Milo

"How could Quake III Arena not be on this list? It's used by practically every major hardware-oriented magazine or Web site as a benchmark for one reason: This game breaks systems! I can't even run it on my Celeron 700 with 96MB of RAM and a GeForce2 MX at a respectable resolution. It's one of those games that almost seems to come alive, with its curves, the nice use of fogging in some maps, and pixel shaders--it all adds atmosphere to the game."
--Whypick1

"The visuals in this game are some of the best I have seen for a first-person shooter. Awesome characters and beautiful maps complement this game."
--Jeff Smith

Number five
Black & White
Developer: Lionhead Studios
Publisher: EA Games
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"The attention to detail is amazing. The game environment is huge and lush; the scale is grand. This game has set a standard for strategy games and raised the bar for computer games in general."
--Seth Williams

"Well, I really wouldn't say, 'in its time' because this is still its time, but Black & White really includes all the ingredients for a graphically stunning game. The beautiful landscape and lush greenery add a nice, peaceful feel, and the NPCs and PCs alike have a sense of emotion. A game with better graphics will be hard to find, and the developer's choice for putting it into a strategy god game was a great choice, because strategy games really make you pay more attention to graphics and gameplay than any other genre."
--Robert Kwolek

"When I put this game on my computer and played it for the first time, I was absolutely floored. I could not believe how amazing everything looked. From the sunsets to the creatures, it all is amazing. I love the look of this game more than the game itself."
--Megatron

"The renderer in Black & White is absolutely amazing. You can smoothly zoom out from viewing one villager to viewing the whole island. Some of the technical achievements include level of detail, as well as some amazing texture blending, which allows the creation of an unlimited amount of states between good and evil."
--Greg Brown

"The ability to zoom from above the island down to the ground level seamlessly. Gorgeous sunsets and sunrises, rain, lightning, fireballs...need I say more?"
--Brian Chadderdon

"The lush backgrounds look great from any angle, close or at a distance (and you can see things like that if you want to). The amount of people onscreen at once can become something to see as well, each with expressions on their little faces. The effort put into the graphics of Black & White is really impressive."
--Jesse Fernandez

"Most importantly, the versatility of the graphics engine: The ability to zoom out to view the entire land, then in seconds zoom all the way in to see your villagers' faces, all in one engine. It is also done smoothly. Also, the fact that B&W didn't use traditional bitmapping for terrain surfaces but created terrain textures on the fly. All in all, a graphically impressive game."
--Steve Martinez

"It combines a completely fluid interaction with environmental factors, population, and absolutely stunning visual appeal."
--Kai

"The way the whole world morphs from good to evil. Your temple changes--your creature, your hand, the coloring, the music--just awesome. Also, the growth of your creature. I spend 15 minutes zooming in on my horse trying to see the developing horn. The horse is born naked but develops hair on his hind legs as he grows. These little details make the game a spectacular experience. And let's not forget the ability to zoom in on anything you want. Have you seen the worm in the apple near the storehouse in land one? Awesome."
--Fleppie

Number four
Grim Fandango
Developer: LucasArts
Publisher: LucasArts
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"It was and is the game with the most style and smoothness that has ever been made. The atmosphere and the dialogue--they're brilliant. And there still hasn't been a game made that sucks me into its universe the way Grim Fandango did. When I completed the game, I just sat in front of the computer thinking, "Now what the hell am I gonna do?" I just loved that game, and I looked forward to getting home from work to play it. I think it's the best game I have ever played."
--Solvi Jespersen

"Because it was artistic and original while retaining cutting-edge graphics. It managed to create a unique atmosphere and feel."
--James Gallen

"The environment portrayed throughout the game was absolutely stunning. I have played the game 10 times already, not only because the plot is so immersive but to see the backgrounds and environments once again. How can one vote for another game after walking Manny onto the center dock at Rubacava? The ocean tidal waves slapping against the dock and the beatnik club in the background. And that was only one of many."
--Jonathan Mahoney

"As an award-winning art director, I consider Grim Fandango to be the finest achievement to date for overall design, artistic execution, and style in any PC title. It features many of the very best-looking and most original settings ever created for an interactive game, and the character animations, voice acting, and musical score blend seamlessly with them to elevate the story and the gameplay to a very high level. The Longest Journey, Sanitarium, Planescape: Torment, and several others are in the same league. But for overall originality and style, Grim Fandango is in a class by itself."
--Terry Penrod

"Grim Fandango was beautiful. I either felt like I was there or wished I was. Sure, I liked the other LucasArts adventure games, but this one sticks out. Not only was this game funny but also dramatic and glorious to look at. This game should have sold much more than [it] did."
--Mike Minotti

"Its brilliant architecture, inspired character design, and vibrant colors make this game, a landmark in the evolution of game design, into a form of art."
--Reid Simon

"Grim Fandango combined atmosphere with style. It has truly beautiful graphics, but the way LucasArts used them is over my head. Every character has a distinctive look; every scene makes you think, "Is this out of a movie?" Grim Fandango was a truly great game, and its graphics made it one of the best."
--James Griffin

"Grim Fandango had the best artistic direction of any game I've seen in my entire life. Even though the characters looked polygonal and the background seemed static, they were so perfect in setting the mood for the greatest story ever to be told on a PC."
--Dan Mann

Number three
Half-Life
Developer: Valve
Publisher: Sierra Studios
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"Though it wasn't as technologically advanced as other games (like Unreal), Half-Life was easily the best-looking game of all time due to the cohesive level design and textures."
--Mike Sweeney

"The first time I saw the explosion that caused the rift, I just sat there slack-jawed for five minutes until I realized I was supposed to do something else other than stare at the screen."
--Mark Acquaviva

"This is just the obvious choice. I personally think it's a little unoriginal of me to say so. I'm sure there is a list of people who can say the alien-earth counterworld was superb. How often is it that you see a living environment that throws you around to hunt down aliens or use the landscape to toss you around? Not to mention the realism in the office or lab areas. The vending machines, microwaves, and even the details on the little TVs floating around. There was such a real feel to the way it all looked that it didn't seem odd for aliens or half humans [to be] running around. This game was top-notch in visual appeal."
--Artist Raj

"For both its time and its genre, I thought Half-Life's graphics were incredible. To this day, I still haven't seen graphics that have left such an impression. Indoor graphics were realistic and added perfectly to the atmosphere and setting, while outdoors views were breathtaking. Also--I think this deserves credit--players without graphics acceleration support could enjoy the sights as well."
--Gaurav

"Realism. Although technologically based on a game already a few years old, the textures and lighting in Half-Life helped it seem almost real. Remember the first time you walked about the first scene? Those plain blue walls and the scientists in their white coats? Great stuff."
--Gavin Ashton

"It had incredible, realistic environments. It was atmospheric, and the best of all, it allowed scripted events that altered the environments without them seeming scripted."
--Josh

"Even though the graphics of this excellent shooter are not what makes you love the game, the truly awe-inspiring aspect of the graphics is that they will work at virtually the same level of detail on a 500MHz and a 266MHz CPU. Half-Life was designed so that the graphics would still be good on computers that were not so good. That fact alone is incredible."
--Brian Kayfitz

"From the very beginning, the title, the PA in the background--this game became more of a movie than a game. Then came the huge, superscientific generator thing that almost destroys the whole area called Back Mesa. But wait there's more! Then you're chased by squads and squads of marines who are after you for...who knows why? And this all happened in a beautifully created game that looks more like reality than a game. I don't know what was more beautiful: the perfectly created aliens and NPCs or the environment."
--Dylan Hardesty

Number two
Unreal
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: GT Interactive
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"The first game that looked so good that I would spend time just wandering around looking at stuff and taking screenshots instead of actually playing the game."
--Mike Salzman

"Just as the review said, there were many times in many different places where I just stopped what I was doing to stare. Just to absorb the awesomeness of what the world looked like was great. This game offers graphics that still surpass those of some games that are being released today."
--Robert C. Shiplett

"The fantastic outdoor environments, the coronas, the incredible detail textures, the shiny surfaces, and the great design of the levels are able to make you stay some minutes only to admire the incredible design."
--John Tanner

"I think the name of the game pretty much sums up the impression you got playing it--it was almost unreal. I had never before seen such complex details, such as reflective floors, rippling water, beautiful flora and fauna in the outdoor levels. I had never before seen such gigantic monsters like the rock-throwing giant in a shooter. Some monsters like the Skaarj were able to dodge your shots and could take cover behind objects. Weapon effects were quite impressive, as were the sound and gameplay. The incredible amount of detail made this game the definitive Quake killer in my opinion, and it was miles ahead of anything else, both in terms of visual effects and gameplay. No doubt in my mind--this was the best-looking game back then, and it's still quite impressive."
--Rune Schaumann

"Quake II had already come out. Although gameplay was a lot of fun, when I first played it, I was blown away by the 3D graphics, and I still think its graphics saved that game. I especially noticed a difference when I upgraded my processor and really saw the beauty of the game. I was awe-struck by the texturing and the lighting effects. Outstanding!"
--Marc Medeiros

"It was down to Unreal and Quake. Both were great at creating the immersive atmosphere that helps draw you into the game. You started playing and forgot where you were as you explored and took care of business. The atmosphere is key, because after playing a level of Quake, you sat back satisfied, while you let your hairs recover from standing on end. Unreal was more like you had to stop to pick up your jaw after a level. The environments and effects were incredible. In the end, Unreal wins just because you could never find a game that created such humongous environments. The huge environments lent the game additional firepower when immersing you since you didn't ever have to wait for a loading screen when you walked across a plain. And, yes, I saved the game and jumped off cliffs. The best is the sunspire level. That one is beyond comparison. It feels as if you're on El Capitan. Plus, it's great to knock bots off into the abyss."
--LoneGunman

"Unreal was great for many reasons. Although it had many delays and release date changes, it came out on top of its genre. Therefore, I had to acquire this marvel. To my surprise, all the hype was true, and the game really offered a new sense of art, both technical and artistic. The lush environments and the spooky corridors were unforgettable, and the creatures added to the overall feel, providing the player with an unmatched experience."
--Ali Raza Mohammed

Number one
Homeworld
Developer: Relic
Publisher: Sierra
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