Awesome Art / Video Games

Left-Column: Paintings from Zdzisław Beksiński's Fantastic series.
Right-Column: Landscapes from The Medium.

Awesome Art found in Video Games.

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• Lumino City is a stunning puzzle game with a bright, colorful visual style that's literally built by hand out of paper, cardboard and various bits and bobs of mixed media. Only a few elements, such as the characters, appear to be CGI.
• Etrian Odyssey IV, Untold 1 and 2 have gorgeous artwork, with the latter two succesfully enhancing the visuals of the respective first two games in the series. Most notable in the first stratum of the first game, and the fourth stratum of the second game. This is carried over in the games released since then, with Beyond the Myth having gorgeous locations like Tutelary Forest and Untamed Garden, and Nexus having not only visually-improved dungeons from IV and the Untold games once again, but also giving an exceptional treatment to the designs of the strata from The Drowned City (which is sadly the only game from the original Nintendo DS that was never remade like the other two were).
• Yoji Shinkawa's art for the Metal Gear is instantly recognizable because of his ukiyo-e-esque style. His work is very stylized and abstract, yet still technically accurate. Some of the most gorgeous cover art you'll see out there.
• Retro Studios of Metroid Prime Trilogy and Donkey Kong Country Returns/Tropical Freeze fame have gained prestige for this. And they have unlockable Concept Art in every game they have released, for players to enjoy.
• The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise in general has nice artwork, so much that some games, like Sonic Classic Collection as well as Sonic Colors for the Nintendo DS have a proper "Gallery". This even carried over to the post-Sonic Adventure era, as the distinctive cartoony style of said artwork is Sonic-ish enough to be considered part of what made Sonic the character we know today. So much, in fact, an official website is mainly known for its official artwork. The GBA games faithfully recreated this style with its sprites, pinnacling with Sonic Battle and Sonic Advance 3. The concept art for the 3D games, such as this one◊ for Sonic Forces, look like they belong to a museum. This extends to the games, with various stages featuring stylized, surreal environments, most famously Green Hill Zone.
• Amongst Run-and-Gun games, Metal Slug stands out for its incredibly detailed animation and spritework, going so far as to include wacky animations for the enemy vehicles and even regular Mooks which other games would have simply glossed over in the interest of saving man-hours. According to a staff interview with NAZCA Team, each frame of animation is hand drawn by a team of artists before being carefully inspected — and sometimes personally edited — by the art leads to ensure a tight consistency between all assets. And that's not even getting into the stage backgrounds, which are nigh-photorealistic despite being rendered in cartoony pixel art. The result? An incredibly seamless-looking, beautiful game.^note Too bad they started using painted Photoshopped background assets beginning with the 6th title, though.
• The Donkey Kong Country series combines this with Scenery Porn, with Tropical Freeze setting the bar even higher.
• In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, not only does each character potrait sport the fighters in a dynamic pose with vastly improved textures from previous games, but the official box art used to promote the game◊ is an astonishing, panoramic mural that includes every character in the game, and marks the first time the box art for a smash game was hand-drawn since the original.
• The dev-team of the high-profile Fan Game Super Smash Flash 2 goes above and beyond with its high-quality custom sprite work. Each fighter that was in Super Smash Bros. has had their appearance faithfully recreated in pixel form, and the ones that weren't fit in seamlessly. Of course, the stages continue this standard of quality as well.
• While the character art from Touhou Project is often debated, the background art from Mountain of Faithis absolutely gorgeous, and the background art from Ten Desires is just well-animated all around.
• Advanced V.G. II: For such an old game, it has amazing '90s style anime visuals and character designs, to compliment its gameplay. And with such detailed narrative cutscenes like these, it's no wonder they finally decided to just make an OVA of it.
• Ōkami is known for its distinctive, beautiful style. To think, they were originally planning to make the game realistic. It's a good thing they didn't.
• Rayman Origins was praised for its beautifully detailed backgrounds and smooth character animations. Even people who haven't bought the game admit that it looks amazing. Michel Ancel and co. went for a unique and striking look so as to stand out from other games on the market, and man did they succeed. Rayman Legends is looking to take this further by giving it a more painterly feel, and lighting the 2D characters with 3D lighting.
• Bendy and the Ink Machine has an absolutely stunning and amazingly detailed sepia-toned Cel-Shaded art style with gorgeously cartoony lighting and hand-drawn textures and outlines that give it a sketched look. It essentially looks like an early 30s black and white cartoon.
• Child of Light is not only powered by the same engine that brought us the visuals shown in Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends, but also has an art style that lends to a presentation not unlike a moving picture book, leading to some absolutely breathtaking shots.
• Wario Land: Shake It! was a 2D platformer... with hand-drawn, anime-style graphics and cinematics by Production I.G.
• Wario Land 4. The sprites are amazingly well put together to the point where Wario looks like he's actually moving. You wouldn't believe that it's sprite-based at all. And what platform did it come out for? Game Boy Advance. Yup.
• Anything by Vanillaware (examples: Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade) is hardcore scenery porn. It's like playing a moving painting.
• Even eroges and Visual Novels aren't immune to this. Just look at ef - a fairy tale of the two.'s OP. Justified that the OP's directed by Makoto Shinkai.
• Ayami Kojima's official art for Castlevania... well, what can we say? For two specific examples, see the page images for Symphony of the Night and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow duology.
• Jet Set Radio is responsible for bringing Cel Shading to the mainstream in video games. No other game at the time of its release looked anything like it; the sharp shadows and thick outlines around character models made the game look like a slick, stylized anime come to life.
• The World Ends with You is no slouch in this department. The art direction and character designs are incredibly stylized, with thick outlines and the right amount of shading to help make the environment feel even more lively, giving the game a very pleasing comic book like aesthetic that still holds up even to this day.
• Asura's Wrath has plenty of awesome concept art and well done character models and animation, and truly pushes the limits of the Unreal Engine's graphics capabilities, to boot.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1. The areas are of a very grand scale yet finely detailed, and each has a well-defined ecosystem and weather effects. They must be seen to be believed. Xenoblade Chronicles X takes the beauty of the first game and cranks the scale up with an entire breathtakingly beautiful world to explore, all of which is seamlessly rendered in-game.
• Albion has some amazing graphics for a sprite based game.
• The Final Fantasy series:
  • Say what you want about Final Fantasy XIII, but it still has breathtaking backgrounds and character designs. Lake Bresha, for an example◊.
  • When you think of the earlier Final Fantasy games, Amano's work will usually come to mind. They're breath-takingly beautiful, you'll forget they're video game art.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has some of the best art direction in any MMO ever, with a completely unique and frankly gorgeous aesthetic with dozens of amazing, memorable designs.
  • Final Fantasy VI onwards featured some amazing background art, not to mention Final Fantasy 6's sprite work.
• Granblue Fantasy has absolutely amazing background art of its lovingly-crafted world, as well as many very impressive character arts.
• Pick a Kirby game. Any Kirby game. Chances are, if you're playing one with SNES-style graphics, looking at the painting-style backgrounds will make you drop your jaw on the freaking floor. Wow. Just wow. And the ones you've seen are just the most relevant ones, although some from Kirby: Squeak Squad are missing. The first five links are from Squeak Squad, the following seven are from Nightmare In Dreamland and the final one showcases the backgrounds from Kirby & the Amazing Mirror. Alternatively, have fun with these search results.
• BlazBlue. Yeah, it's a 2D sprite game in an age of photo-realistic 3D, but don't be fooled: these aren't ordinary sprites. Each character's sprite set include 1000 frames, all meticulously made for high-definition. And don't get me started on the stage backgrounds... Here's a gameplay sample.
• Long before BlazBlue, there was Guilty Gear. While the first game wasn't really anything to write home about in terms of asset design^note Capcom had substantially better spritework during the same period, Guilty Gear X upped the ante by switching from the usual 320x240ish screen format used by most fighting games, instead going for a whopping ~640x480 in order to showcase higher definition sprites and backgrounds, a practice which carried over to its pseudo sequels. Then after several years of silence following Guilty Gear 2: Overture, Arc System Works pulled out all the stops by painstakingly rendering Guilty Gear Xrd in gorgeous cel-shaded 3D using the Unreal Engine as a base, making the entire game look like an anime movie.
• Dragon Ball Fighterz is made by Arc System Works (see Guilty Gear and BlazBlue above) using the Unreal Engine in the same way as Guilty Gear Xrd, which fits Akira Toriyama's art style like a glove; the game looks very much like an anime come to life.
• Anything on the Gambryo engine used most notably by Bethesda from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on through the remaining TES and into Fallout 3. Though the textures and models displayed can always be improved on (and usually are, quite significantly, by modders,) the engine itself has fantastic potential to provide breathtaking panoramas.
• Fallout 4 provides an excellent demonstration of Bethesda's Creation Engine. Compared to Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, the game is much more colorful and vibrant while still maintaining its haunting post-apocalyptic aesthetic. In addition, characters are animated much more fluidly than in previous game.
• Though not consciously seeking to be visually bombastic as other Nintendo games, The Legend of Zelda has shown several beautiful landscapes and exotic character designs over the years. Two well-known examples are The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, with the former using cel-shading visuals with realistic effects (like heat haze and motion blur) that are usually too difficult to program in a normal cel-shading game, and the latter showing an impressive realistic style with some cel-shading effects (such as the animations of the bomb explosions or the disappearance of the deceased enemies). It helps that both games were actually made with the same engine. Breath of the Wild takes it even further, showing a visual style that offers many beautiful landscapes that can easily remind people of the scenery seen in Studio Ghibli films.
• Dark Souls shows amazing craftsmanship, with the artists at From Software being great at creating memorable and just downright awesome designs for monsters, armor, locales, etc. The concept art is breathtaking in how beautiful the paintings are, which just makes the amazing designs stand out even more.
• Skullgirls has absolutely gorgeous hand-drawn artwork, done simply because the dev team wanted to, even if it was more expensive than 3D models. The art style was based off 1930s Art Deco and Batman: The Animated Series. And while the art is great, the best part is the animation: the characters are better animated than many major releases that use full 3D models, with incredibly smooth animations (see, for example, Filia's run cycle◊) with a ridiculous amount of frames. In fact, Skullgirls holds the world record for most animation frames per character in a 2D fighting game. Yes, more than the 1000+ frames of the above mentioned BlazBlue.
• Any of the Mother Games. EarthBound Beginnings didn't look very good for the most of it, being a NES game, but the battle sprites are very good looking. But Mother 3 deserves a special mention.
• Transistor has amazing visuals. The empty city of Cloudbank is beautifully drawn.
• Say whatever you want about Dm C Devil May Cry's tone, gameplay, and story, but it's hard to deny that Alessandro "Talexi" Taini's artwork◊ is gorgeous◊ and stylish◊.
• Chrono Cross has very good graphics for the PlayStation, with colorful and varied designs done in pre-rendered graphics which haven't aged much. Even the character art is amusing.
  • Its predecessor, Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, was no slouch, either. Nintendo knew what it was doing with the pixel art for this one. Every animation is beautifully done and the game looks like it could have come out yesterday.
• Two words: Kazuma. Kaneko. Regardless of whether it's his Shin Megami Tensei I or II early cyberpunk style, his Persona style (which, admittedly has some minor growing pains, but is still fantastic in it's own right) or his Persona 2 onwards◊ art◊style◊, it is impossible to go wrong with him.
• Gargoyle's Quest was always about pushing the limits of whatever system the games were on, with Gargoyle's Quest II and Demon's Crest having absolutely gorgeous, beautifully animated sprites. Demon's Crest was so impressive in its level of detail that the game is prone to lagging when there's an excess of enemies on the screen.
• Pokémon X and Y:
  • Bounce's animation now reminds one of an orbital cannon, somehow.
  • Most of the moves and Pokémon animations are quite impressive, most notably the Honedge line.
  • Oblivion Wing. It's essentially a black and red Wave-Motion Gun that Yveltal blasts the enemy mon with, then drains 75% of the damage to heal itself with.
  • The Brave Bird attack animation makes every flying type look amazing.
  • The animation for Palkia's Signature Move, Spacial Rend, utilizes a flurry of slashes and an array of effects, ending with a striking visual that makes it seem as if you're not just cutting into space/subspace, but rather shattering the very fabric of reality itself.
  • Arceus' Signature Move Judgment has finally shed its rather underwhelming (considering that it is the trademark technique of a Pokémon that is fabled to have created the universe and has a higher BST than all others) animation from the Gen IV and V games, and now has a much more impressive animation that resembles its appearance in the Jewel of Life movie — in that it rains down a barrage of light from the sky.
  • Seismic Toss now resembles the iconic "around the world" shot that was popularized with Ash's Charizard in the Pokemon anime, much to the nostalgic delight of veteran fans.
• Smogon:
  • The custom Generation V sprites made for the Generation VI mons look very impressive, to the point that sites like /vp have been known to "steal" them for their own use.
  • The site has a surprisingly large group of artists that make works for The Smog web magazine or just like to post their stuff on the forums. Special mention goes to long-time member Yilx, who makes a ton of amazing pieces for The Smog and himself.
  • Many CAP Pokémon have great designs and look like actual Pokémon Game Freak would make. For Gen. VI, the CAP community has been developing 3D models with extremely accurate renders.
• The entire World of Mana franchise has very meticulously detailed and colored hand drawn graphics.
• The in-game posters of War of the Monsters are so bad it's glorious. Have a few examples here, here, and here◊.
• The art style of Rain World is absolutely gorgeous and gives the right sense of an abandoned industrial environment and contrasts it with good animation and colorful inhabitants.
• Ori and the Blind Forest: The game is entirely hand drawn. With the way everything moves, it's like a painting come to life.
• Cuphead used traditional hand-drawn cel-animation and is inspired by the 1930s cartoons, especially the Fleischer Brothers. This is one reason that the game won Best Art Direction at The Game Awards 2017, as well as Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game.
• Hollow Knight, which is made even more impressive when you know that it was done by a team of just three people. The dark but serene environments, background art and character designs are all beautifully done. It's made more gorgeous to look at by the animations and cinematic cutscenes, which look like something out of a full-length animated movie or a cartoon series.
• The indie Magical Girl Warrior strategy RPG game I=MGCM has stunning visuals, especially the 2D CGs and the opening animation. The character art is well-made, its themes are vivid. This game has cool UIs like Persona 5, and it gives you some Promare and Muse Dash vibes too! This includes the Visual Effects of Awesome from some heroines' attack animations.
• League of Legends has incredibly detailed animation, splash art, and login screens. Of particular note is the K/DA music video with amazing lighting effects and coordination.
• Persona 5 is well known for having an extremely stylish and awesome art style, from its character portraits to the UI, even making what would otherwise be mundane option and shop menus extremely appealing to look at without sacrificing practicality. It's to the point where the battle menu itself underwent Memetic Mutation because it's simply that cool looking. Special mention goes to the "finishing touch" splash screens that display if an All Out Attack successfully kills every enemy during a battle, unique for each party member.
• The entire Castlevania franchise after Ayami Kojima took over. Starting with Symphony of the Night, she delivered both gorgeous concept and in-game art, which kept strong for many of its sequels. Ayami Kojima's style, with its angelic faces and grotesque forms, and landscapes full of meticulous detail, has become synonymous not only with the franchise, but with Gothic Horror itself.
• BioShock and its sequel combine Art Deco with Diesel Punk, and are thus set in a gorgeous-looking Underwater City stuck in the mid-20th century, with the broken and defaced environments only helping the atmosphere. Bioshock Infinite goes a different way that's equally impressive on its visuals, a brightly-lit floating city straight out of The Gilded Age.
• While Mighty No. 9's in-game visuals has been criticized for its lackluster 3D graphics and the fire effects has been a subject of ridicule due to Deep Silver's infamous "Masterclass" trailer, if there's something even some of the game's detractors can admit, is that the game's art looks amazing. The game's official artworks and concept art by KIMOKIMO evokes a style that is strikingly colorful yet retains the cartoony feel of the classic Mega Man series, and even Keiji Inafune's earlier sketches for the game proves that his artistic talents hasn't gone rusty. These◊ are◊ just◊ a◊ few◊ examples◊.
• Tetris Effect bases basically its entire identity around this and its incredible score. The player is surrounded by pulsing, flowing particle effects that resemble things like cityscapes, stars in space, deserts, mountains, oceans, sea creatures, birds, mermaids, and so much more. And all of this is only enhanced when it's taken into consideration that all of this art reacts to how you play, and to the music. Bubbles can flow from your Tetris clears, jewels can sway in the breeze with your movements, the ocean can rotate when you turn a piece, it goes on and on.
• While it is a bit of a Contested Sequel, one thing nearly everyone agrees on is that the weapon reload animations in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) are some of the best in the entire FPS genre. Even more impressively, they were all hand-keyed, not mo-capped. So good that in fact, later games such as Resident Evil Village and Battlefield 2042 seem to have taken influence from MW 2019 in terms of their reload animations.
• Vectorman is one of the early prerendered game whose graphics have aged the best, still looking pretty sharp to this day even without CRT filters. In addition, it's one of the few games to make use of the system's shadow and highlight feature to produce gorgeous transparency and shading effects.
• One of the things people love so much about The Medium is its world-design, many comparing it to the works of Zdzisław Beksiński.
• Zniw Adventure has excellent hand-drawn animation inspired by cartoons from The '90s. The movement is so fluid and expressive, the character designs are unique and lovable, and the worlds are lush and detailed.
• Dungeons of Aether has been praised for its large, detailed, and fluidly animated pixel art sprites.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is beautifully designed in that practically every artistic element of the game is absolutely superb, including the character and environment designs, the music, the animation on both the models and in the cutscenes, and the texture rendering.
• Dead Ahead Zombie Warfare: The unique art style of Dead Ahead is often considered the main reason behind its success. Even a lot of those who don't like the game acknowledge how great and appealing the game's visuals are. The way it tastefully combines cute, stylized anatomy with edgy militarism and body horror has attracted attention of all sorts of people to the game. It even inspired plenty of fans to become pixel artists themselves, thanks to the art style of their favorite game being relatively easy to copy.

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