Ask Lemmy

Team Fortress 2

Cruelty Squad (okay, the game is only a couple years old, but the art style is so intentionally shit that I just can't see it aging at all)

Jet Set Radio, Jet Set Radio Future, and (I predict) Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. BRC also is only a couple years old, but it shares the same style as JSR(F), which has aged very well.

Minecraft

Doom and Doom II (just remember to turn off texture filtering, or set it to nearest neighbor).

The Sims. No, really, I think The Sims games have all aged very, very well. Some better than others, but I feel like each one of them has a visual style that still works today.

Wind Waker is probably the go-to answer for this. I think Xcom 2 is a good example too, even though it's fairly recent.

Mirror's Edge

Super Mario World. It still looks great.

Any game that isn't trying to go for realistic graphics. Some off the top of my head:

• Braid
• Okami
• Outer Wilds
• Ori and the Blind Forest

The Portal games.

Jet Set Radio

RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 and 2. They still look as good as the day they were released, while RCT3 looks terrible now.

Wind waker. The cell shading will always look good.

Okami

Age of empires 2

Pong is still unmatched, even after all these years

Katamari Damashi.

Definitely Minecraft

Transistor

Terraria

Journey

The original XCOM has some of the best pixel art in any game, imo. Original resolution: 320x200. Somehow it is still visually detailed and clear. It has one of my favorite things in a game ever where the tiles you see are partially obscured by tiles you can't. Specifically, the tiles you can't see aren't fully blocked so silhouettes can still be visible. If you're good you can use it to ID aliens lurking in the shadows and sometimes it's literally like 3 pixels of difference for you to pick up on it

My son was playing Sunset Overdrive the other day, and I had forgotten how cinematic it was. Very fun, very punk rock.

StarCraft 2 still looks amazing.

Halo 3

Psychonauts. The design aesthetic is so well crafted. The gameplay and technical elements did age, but the level design and aesthetics are still mind blowing

Minecraft

I would have to say L.A. Noire.

Crysis still looking great.

I'm still blown away with what SNES was able to accomplish with killer instinct. Based on the games around that time, it shouldn't have existed.

Super Mario World II: Yoshi's Island

Most 2D games. We're only slowly figuring out how to make 3D games not look janky...

I have a soft spot for pixel stuff. Stuff like the original monkey island, or heart star or cat tales never get old.

When it comes to 3D games, if they tried for realism, they can't, IMO. Stylized 3D can look pretty good even when fairly old, but old 3D that tried for realism just looks dated. Even a lot of 3D games now that try for a more realistic style (outside of the huge AAA studios) look kinda bad to me, but I'm very sensitive to the uncanny valley effect. I mean, even before they updated the models and world, WoW still looked pretty decent long after release.

total annihilation

Interstate '76

Borderlands

Many or most retro games from the 80s-early 90s (NES, SNES, Genesis)

Terraria

"team fortress 2"

Man I miss Day of Defeat, it was the best half life mod IMO

Metroid Prime for the GameCube, but the remake on Switch really turned out to be the consoles best looking game

Red Alert 2. Any N64 game at high resolutions. Command & Conquer Generals at high resolution. If you can't tell, I like cartoon aesthetics.