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.
TF2 might be the best example of this honestly. It looks like it could have come out today.
Other than that god awful old-school Valve UI used for most of the menus/things.
TF2s aged beautifully (in terms of graphics), the art style carries it astoundingly. Half life 2 and portal look definitively dated but TF2 holds up really well (I know it had graphics updates but still).
Absolutely and the keyframe animation in cinematics is unparalleled. I wish this were more commonplace
I was gonna say Jet Set Radio Future too. I absolutely love the cel shading art style. Will check out Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, thanks
The Sims 1 is great because they were basically rendered sprites.
Also most of the music on Sims 1 is just… some of the best music I’ve ever heard.
Except the sims and pets themselves those were 3D models
Mirror’s Edge
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.
Wind Waker is definitely my answer whenever this question pops up. It’s one of the few fully-3D games from that era that still holds up moderately well today. A lot of Gamecube games definitely look like Gamecube games when emulated with out-of-the-box settings, but Wind Waker looks like an indie game that could’ve come out last year when emulated.
The Zelda art teams really are masters at their craft.
The art direction at Nintendo in general is really top tier. I was looking looking at their WiiU games not too long ago. I noticed they don’t usually have a lot of complex shapes in their models, they use a surprising amount of flat area, but they jazz them up with extremely well done texturing and shaders.
Honestly, a lot of first party GameCube games have aged incredibly well. Mario Party, Wind Waker, Warioware, Smash, Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion etc. all still look fantastic today, resolution aside.
Super Mario World. It still looks great.
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island too! So stylized it could release today and still be considered beautiful
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
The music from that is still stuck in my head after all this time.
Great game!
I will never not be able to hear baby Mario’s wailing whenever someone mentions this game…
The Portal games.
Jet Set Radio
Katamari Damashi.
NaNa nanana nanananananana na Katamai Damashiii
The camera control is way worse than I remember from playing it when it came out. Still looks and sounds great, camera moves like a fucking cargo ship in the Suez Canal.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 and 2. They still look as good as the day they were released, while RCT3 looks terrible now.
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
Transistor
Definitely Minecraft
Minecraft
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
Super Mario World II: Yoshi’s Island
Age of empires 2
