Players had no shortage of beautiful games in 2023. As the year closes out, it’s about time to look back on 2023 through a lens of beauty in how a game might’ve been able to achieve an impressive level of hyperrealism, while another might’ve stunned in its stylistic approach to nostalgic pixel art. In the interactive storytelling medium of video games, stories and gameplay are expressed largely through their visuals, and it’s in these artistic distinctions that a game can truly boast a unique identity.
How a game looks certainly isn’t the only measure of its quality, but looks do play a role in how a game will be received, such as how vital gameplay information will be interpreted by players. Of course, a game could simply be striking in its art direction alone and display the value of a AAA budget. Especially nowadays, current-gen visuals are being pushed further, and fans have had a taste of what graphical fidelity can look like moving into 2024. Either way, there’s surely a game out there for everyone this year with regard tothe most beautiful games of 2023, listed in no particular order.
Alan Wake 2
Alan Wake 2could’ve been beautiful exclusively in its hyperrealism, reinforced by how exact its character models in gameplay sequences are compared to how the characters’ actors look in live-action cutscenes. But that fidelity, when enmeshed inAlan Wake 2’s surrealistic survival-horror elements, becomes a psychedelic swirl of mixed-media presentation and phenomenal lighting techniques.
The result is a trippy psychological horror trek between two playable protagonists whose stories are completely unique in how they’re represented visually—Wake’s writing reimagines the world around him in real-time, for instance. How Remedy steeps lighting into each environment is also a true testament to how horrifying the IP can be.
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A string of ritualistic murders threatens Bright Falls, a small-town community surrounded by Pacific Northwest wilderness. Saga Anderson, an accomplished FBI agent with a reputation for solving impossible cases arrives to investigate the murders. Anderson’s case spirals into a nightmare when she discovers pages of a horror story that starts to come true around her.Alan Wake, a lost writer trapped in a nightmare beyond our world, writes a dark story in an attempt to shape the reality around him and escape his prison. With a dark horror hunting him, Wake is trying to retain his sanity and beat the devil at his own game.Anderson and Wake are two heroes on two desperate journeys in two separate realities, connected at heart in ways neither of them can understand: reflecting each other, echoing each other, and affecting the worlds around them.Fueled by the horror story, supernatural darkness invades Bright Falls, corrupting the locals and threatening the loved ones of both Anderson and Wake. Light is their weapon—and their safe haven — against the darkness they face. Trapped in a sinister horror story where there are only victims and monsters, can they break out to be the heroes they need to be?
Cassette Beasts
Cassette Beasts’Pokemon-like designis dynamic in its presentation with a cartoonish pixel-art hybrid art style. Lighting goes a long way in drawing out shadows and giving depth to each environment, and its distinct perspectives give that depth even greater dimension whether players are looking top-down in the overworld or in a side view during battle. Character portraits have their own art style to represent their pixelated counterparts when sharing dialogue and, despite the primary use of purple inCassette Beasts’ palette, it is highly colorful in every frame.
Welcome to New Wirral, a remote island inhabited by strange creatures you’ve only dreamed of, nightmares you hopefully haven’t, and a cast of brave folks who use cassette tapes to transform for battle. To find a way home you’ll need to explore every inch of the island, and record monsters to your trusty cassette tapes to gain their abilities! Transform into monsters using… retro cassette tapes? Faced with the constant threat of monster attacks, the residents of Harbourtown, New Wirral choose to fight fire with fire. Record a monster to tape, then play it back to take on its form for battle! Fuse monster forms. Getting close to your companion has benefits–while transformed you’re able to combine your strengths to gain the upper hand in battle! Any two monster forms can be fused to produce unique, fully-animated new fusion forms. Explore a rich open world. Certain monster abilities can be used in human form. You’ll need these to help you get around, solve puzzles, and locate dungeons. Glide, fly, swim, climb, dash, go invisible, or turn magnetic! Travel alongside a diverse cast of human companions. Never fight alone! Form bonds, spend time together, and help your selected partner complete personal goals to become a better team. Master a deep battle system. Take advantage of elemental chemistry to apply extra buffs or debuffs alongside your attack, or even alter your opponent’s elemental type!
EA Motive’sDead Spaceremakecompletely overhauls the original game, and while the original arguably never had poor graphics, it appears overwhelmingly outdated now when compared to the remake. Isaac’s suits glisten with blood and necromorphs are impeccably detailed, especially with each Plasma Cutter shot butchering them and cleaving away more of their flesh to reveal bone beneath. The Ishimura is now a barely lit labyrinth that flickers and shudders to life with each of Isaac’s paranoid hallucinations, and it’ll be interesting to see if EA Motive gets a chance to give the same ground-up remake treatment toDead Space 2in the future.
Dead Space (2023)
The sci-fi survival-horror classic Dead Space™ returns, completely rebuilt from the ground up to offer a deeper, more immersive experience. This remake brings jaw-dropping visual fidelity, suspenseful atmospheric audio, and improvements to gameplay while staying faithful to the original game’s thrilling vision.Isaac Clarke is an everyman engineer on a mission to repair a vast mining ship, the USG Ishimura, only to discover something has gone horribly wrong. The ship’s crew has been slaughtered and Isaac’s beloved partner, Nicole, is lost somewhere on board.Now alone and armed with only his engineering tools and skills, Isaac races to find Nicole as the nightmarish mystery of what happened aboard the Ishimura unravels around him. Trapped with hostile creatures called Necromorphs, Isaac faces a battle for survival, not only against the escalating terrors of the ship but against his own crumbling sanity.
Final Fantasy 16
Final Fantasy 16is a Square Enix game through and through, and it takes considerable steps forward in terms of astonishing set pieces and cinematic visuals. LikeFinal Fantasy 7’s remake, there’s an ethereal beauty to the high fantasy conceptsFinal Fantasy 16expresses, and itsGame of Thronesinspirationsare made clear in a lot of the setting and wardrobe designs. Of course,Final Fantasy 16’s colossal Eikons are easily its standouts in terms of tremendous art design and creativity that make for jaw-dropping boss fights.
An epic dark fantasy world where the fate of the land is decided by the mighty Eikons and the Dominants who wield them.This is the tale of Clive Rosfield, a warrior granted the title “First Shield of Rosaria” and sworn to protect his younger brother Joshua, the dominant of the Phoenix. Before long, Clive will be caught up in a great tragedy and swear revenge on the Dark Eikon Ifrit, a mysterious entity that brings calamity in its wake.
Ghostrunner 2
Like its high-octane predecessor,Ghostrunner 2displays the samesleek, neon-soaked cyberpunk aestheticthat never has and never will go out of style in futuristic designs. Impossibly quick mayhem ensues in a concrete jungle of what would look like a bustling downtown dystopia filled with harsh blues and reds and a scale that seems incredibly rich and expansive. Being able to ride a motorcycle through this dystopia now only makes that more succinct, and at blinding speeds, it looks even more terrific in the ruins of futuristic society.
Ghostrunner
“Ghostrunner is a hardcore FPP game packed with lightning-fast action, set in a grim, cyberpunk megastructure. Climb Dharma Tower, humanity’s last shelter, after a world-ending cataclysm. Make your way up from the bottom to the top, confront the tyrannical Keymaster, and take your revenge.The streets of this tower city are full of violence. Mara the Keymaster rules with an iron fist and little regard for human life.As resources diminish, the strong prey on the weak and chaos threatens to consume what little order remains. The decisive last stand is coming. A final attempt to set things right before mankind goes over the edge of extinction.As the most advanced blade fighter ever created, you’re always outnumbered but never outclassed. Slice your enemies with a monomolecular katana, dodge bullets with your superhuman reflexes, and employ a variety of specialized techniques toprevail.
Hogwarts Legacy
Hogwarts Legacywill be instantly visually familiar toHarry Potterfans. Besides the fact that it takes place in the late 1800s,Hogwarts Legacyfulfills what many fans have wanted froma full-fledgedHarry Potteraction-RPGfor decades, and a lot of the theatrical franchise’s iconography is represented in the game.
The massive castle is incredible to explore and the way it is intricately designed helps to sell that iconography further. Likewise, Hogsmeade is everything fans could hope for in terms of being able to stroll its quaint streets and enjoy its available shops, and flying everywhere in between on a broomstick or mount is gorgeous regardless of which season the game’s story is presently set in.
Hi-Fi Rush
Hi-Fi Rushwas one of the year’s biggest surprises as a shadow-dropped game, and the fact that its humor and cel-shaded graphics came from Tango Gameworks was an even bigger surprise.Hi-Fi Rush’s most prominent feature is how it marries music and rhythm into combat and generally any movement in the game, but its visuals are certainly an early allure that makes it stand out with a striking color palette, mainly incorporating reds, yellows, oranges, and greens. This art style complements how bombastic its action is with pop-out onomatopoeia and other comic book-esque visuals that all makeHi-Fi Rush’s stylistic choicesremarkable.
Feel the beat as wannabe rockstar Chai and his ragtag team of allies rebel against an evil robotics enhancement megacorp with raucous rhythm combat! From Tango Gameworks, the studio that brought you The Evil Within® and Ghostwire®: Tokyo (no, really) comes Hi-Fi RUSH, an all-new action game where the characters, world and combat stylishly sync to the music!CHAI VERSUS THE WORLD: Labeled ‘defective’ after a shady corporate experiment mistakenly fuses a music player to his heart, Chai must now fight for his freedom in a slick animated world where everything – platforming puzzles, enemy attacks and even the colorful gags & banter - are synced to the beat.OPEN UP THE MOSH PIT!: Take on armies of corporate drones (read: actual robots) in satisfying, rhythm-amplified combat. Time your moves to pull off flashy Beat Hits, hard-hitting special abilities and even combination attacks with your allies! Want to show off? Go further and tap into the beat to amp up your skills and earn those covetous S-rank scores.ROWDY REBELS VS. BADASS BOSSES: Lead a squad of colorful teammates and take the fight to the heart of an, er, heartless corporation. Square off with each department’s boss, from Production to Marketing to Finance, each more ready to protect the company’s bottom line than the last in over-the-top battle sequences accompanied by their own music tracks!GRAB YOUR HEADPHONES: Tap your toes to a killer mixtape of original music, as well as songs by Nine Inch Nails, The Prodigy, The Joy Formidable and more! Want to show off your skills to a live streaming audience? Fret not: Hi-Fi RUSH includes a streamer-friendly alternate audio mode which replaces those licensed songs with original tracks made especially for streaming Hi-Fi RUSH.
Lies of P
As it was first announced,Lies of Pcouldn’t flee from its apparentBloodborneinspirations. This is because, as a Soulslike game,Lies of P’s Belle Epoque-era settingwas closely comparable toBloodborne’s Gothic Victorian-era setting.
The two are unrelated in any manner, but it is true thatLies of P’s dark, sophisticated Krat does hold at least somewhat of a resemblance to the architecture and atmosphere ofBloodborne’s Yharnam.Lies of P’s environmentsalso gradually descend into more treacherous, fantastical, and gruesome landscapes, and they are all wonderfully designed to help embolden the world-building that players experience.
Lies of P is a thrilling soulslike that takes the story of Pinocchio, turns it on its head, and sets it against the darkly elegant backdrop of the Belle Epoque era.You are a puppet created by Geppetto who’s caught in a web of lies with unimaginable monsters and untrustworthy figures standing between you and the events that have befallen the world of Lies of P.You are awakened by a mysterious voice that guides you through the plagued city of Krat - a once lively place that has been poisoned by madness and bloodlust. In our soulslike, you must adapt yourself and your weapons to face untold horrors, untangle the unfathomable secrets of the city’s elites and choose whether to confront predicaments with the truth or weave lies to overcome them on the journey to find yourself.
Mortal Kombat 1
If any AAA developer has shown that it becomes more visually impressive with each new game, it is NetherRealm Studios.Mortal Kombat 1once again pushes the envelope on graphical fidelity in games.Guest characters continue to populateMortal Kombatgameswith the actual likenesses of the actors who portrayed them elsewhere, and therefore it’s more important than ever that fighting games—butMortal Kombatgames in particular—portray them accurately.Mortal Kombat 1’s stages are also extraordinarily impressive, depicting an immeasurable draw distance in the background and dynamic themes throughout each. (All of this with the exception ofMK1’s Switch port, of course).
Welcome to a new era of Kombat. NetherRealm Studios ushers in a new era of the iconic fighting franchise with a total reset that changes the entire world as we know it. Following the thrilling climax of Mortal Kombat 11, the all-powerful Fire God Liu Kang has created a New Era in the hope of bringing peace to Earthrealm and beyond. Through the series' most cinematic story mode yet, you’ll be reintroduced to a cast of legendary warriors as you’ve never seen them before. Expect twists on classic friendships and rivalries, as well as new backstories that will change everything you think you know about your favorite Kombatants. Discover a host of new offline and online game modes as you master a revitalized fighting system that boasts bone-crunching Fatal Blows, defensive Breakers and the most creatively vicious Fatalities yet.
Pikmin 4
Pikminhas always had a distinguished look and that’s no different inPikmin 4, though it’s easily one of the most iconic games on any Nintendo platform.That’s always been the key toPikmin, not unlike other Nintendo games; its simplicity is key to comprehending and interpreting information in gameplay, with that immediate interpretation becoming incredibly important when in multiplayer. Moreover,Pikmin 4has some alarmingly realistic water reflections and environmental details.
Guide pint-sized creatures in an endearing expedition! Meet Pikmin: small, plantlike creatures with distinct abilities that you can grow, pluck, guide, and overpower enemies with! Use your Pikmin’s miniature might (and a bit of strategy) to explore this mysterious planet in search of your crew—and treasure.Lead your loyal and curious squad To succeed, you’ll have to balance caring for the Pikmin with leading them into dangerous situations. Do your best out there!Pikmin grow from pellets and wildlife that you can bring to your ship. Pluck them from the ground to have them join you. Go team!Lead your squad through vast explorable areas to find treasures, discover new paths, and battle enemies of all sizes. You can also direct the Pikmin to collect and carry resources that are helpful for your mission. Up to three Pikmin types can be with you in the field at a time—the rest will hang back until you need them.When their task is done, the Pikmin will wait in place for you. Get close and blow your whistle to summon them to your side! This handy action can also help you protect the Pikmin from danger, do a headcount, or simply bring them with you to your next task.
