What are the most graphically impressive Original Xbox games to you?

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

Colin mcrae rally. Half life 2 may run like crap but looks good. Doom 3 amazing lighting helps with atmosphere.

I’m dead serious: it’s insane that it even RUNS on the original XBox. I’m part of the “bad ways to play HL2” club, since my first experience with it was on the PS3. A truly awful version…. That I played a lot of and still loved the game.



Great games stay great, even when played through a cheesegrater.

 

[Antilocal123]

Bloodrayne

 

[Miles Miles]

Forza Motorsport 1 looks really good

 

[Krazy Kat]

sudeki

 

[Dannzy]

It may not be the most advanced game on the platform but the detail and scope of Halo Combat Evolved is still really stunning, it's an incredibly strong launch title artistically.

 

[Sumea]

Someone made a retrospective about Phantom Dust and dived quite deep how good the game looks as it uses a lot of techniques on Xbox that would be much more popular (albeit, also improved over time) on Xbox 360 and PS3 (era). The game does look very good though I only seen the modern Windows version in action myself, and the stylization of the human characters is deliberately unrealistic which goes for some against "good looking" territory but I think people here would agree.

 

[RyuToken]

I'm still impressed with the fur textures in Conker Live & Reloaded to this day

 

[Illuminary]

Honestly? It's either Conkur or Riddick for me. Both still look really amazing.

 

[LeoTCK]

For me, it has to be Far Cry: Instincts. It's a rare example of a console port being better than its PC counterpart to me as a game, but visually, although it is downgraded from Far Cry, it still looks really good. Proven by how it was ported to the 360 a year later with nought added but enhanced character and weapon models as a part of the 360 version of Instincts: Evolution (called Instincts: Predator).

Really, the main reason WHY I go for Instincts: Predator for my FCI fix is because it doesn't feature the unskippable trailer that plays whenever you go to the main menu.

I don't understand how Ubisoft added all those extra elements for this game, while they made every other far cry game (for the most part, except some addons I heard about) boring real life shooters without any hint of anything sci-fi or otherworldly.

Anyways the most "impressive" game I can think of was stuff like Unreal Championship 2. They did go an extra mile there and its visually much better than say the port of Unreal 2 which was criticized for how it got downgraded visually.

The environments are stunning, while the character design is very "inspired" it also moves and looks impressive. It started as a project called UT:Avaris during the last stages of production of ut2003(yes its that old, that game came out in 2002 despite the 2003 year in the title) and was temporarily even considered to become UT2005 when they thought they'd churn out a new ut every year.
The leaked PC Developement version is also something and the launch file is still called avaris.exe. There are also many developement leftovers there, i posted fixes of them to moddb. Several cut maps and even gametypes were there that we didn't et to see. Including a racing gametype. Because of the deal with Midway this is technically the only game which became a crossover with another franchise. Outside of the main story if you continue with inidividual character tournaments, you will eventually encounter Raiden from Mortal Kombat. Originally this was a bonus Nali character called the Nali Windstalker. The model is still in the game files, but yea they changed it to be Raiden instead directly. I never knew how to feel about that.
edit:

John Sheffield : Animator

The portfolio of John Sheffield, animator and game developer.

web.archive.org

like this guy here lists working on it since 2002. it was originally a project of scion studios but they got fully merged into Epic later.

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

I must agree with everyone who mentioned the team ninja games .

DOA ultimate & 3 and Ninja Gaiden Black are still great looker to this day .
Trying to finish costume hunting in DOA 2 ultimate right now and even the hidden content is awesome .
Didnt know that Ayane had a finisher cutscene against Kasumi when certain criteria (defeating kasumi with a hit that she falls down to the ice-cavern ) are met !! Just crazy , how much effort they did .

But i appreciate Brute Force and its graphics too .
Maybe a bit dated but can still look awesome , especially the jungle levels are very atmospheric .

 

[rugal]

dead or alive 3
jade of empire
azurik rise of perathia

 

[sneakyguts]

Project Gotham Racing 2 Also DOA 2-3

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

It doesn’t push the system at all, but Jet Set Radio Future still is able to stand out thanks to the style it took. It’s the OG XBox exclusive you’ll never escape from, because it’ll always garner people’s attention for its visual style. It also runs WELL on the hardware! People moreso want a modern port for availability’s sake more than anything, because the game otherwise fits the Original XBox like a glove.

 

[MemeAlert]

I would Bubsy: Live & What Can Possibly Be Reloaded?.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

An unironic answer is Project Gotham Racing. Reflections are pretty in any game, and I realize how cooked my brain is because I sometimes like to just look at reflections in games or even in real life.

But, for a racing game with luxury cars, it’s a big deal. Especially since the fundamental system of the game, the Kudos mechanic, is based around driving risky, risking damage to your vehicle.

 

[Psychonara]

Panzer Dragoon Orta still looks great too.