Where there is unanimous agreement is in the placement of Star Wars Outlaws in position number three. The game is praised for bringing the “lived” Star Wars aesthetic to gaming in a simply brilliant way, powered by Ubisoft Massive's next-generation Snowdrop engine. From a technological standpoint, the use of RT highlights, diffuse global illumination, and RT shadows is a notable achievement considering the relatively limited ray tracing hardware available on consoles. The fact that the PC version also has a route tracing alternative (RTXDI) for high-end hardware is the icing on the cake.
It's an impressive achievement overall, let down only by its scenes where the animation actually seems to look sub-par compared to the game's animation.
- 0:00:00 Introduction
- 0:01:58 Honorable mentions: STALKER 2, Persona 3 Reload, Metaphor ReFantazio, Nightdive Studios, Tiny Glade, FF7 Rebirth, Power Rangers
- 0:20:46 Dragon's Dogma 2
- 0:26:35 Divided
- 0:30:32 Dragon Age: The Veil Guard
- 0:37:24 Silent Hill 2
- 0:48:50 Astrobot
- 0:54:32 Penny's great escape
- 0:58:05 Black myth: Wukong
- 1:08:49 Star Wars Outlaws vs Hellblade 2 vs Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Where opinions are divided is on the placement of the first two games: Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Obviously, from a gaming perspective, MachinesGames' epic is a clear winner, but that's obviously not the focus of a discussion about Digital Foundry's 'Best Graphics of 2024'. Hellblade 2 was praised for its amazing character and virtual camera work, to the point that some environments appear almost indistinguishable from real-life footage.
The scope is much more limited than that of Indiana Jones, but it also offers a strict and commendable level of consistent quality throughout the experience. It's a heavy game, but also surprisingly scalable: Hellblade 2 can run on the Steam Deck, while the 30fps limit on consoles is easily surpassed on more capable PCs.
The team eventually agreed that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle should take the coveted “graphics of the year” award. The high quality and quantity of its objects and environments is notable, while the use of good quality RT global illumination on all console versions, and in high resolution on Xbox Series X, cannot be ignored.
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The fact that the game is effectively locked at a perfect 60fps is another plus for MachineGames' epic, while the PC version running unlocked is a remarkably consistent stutter-free experience. We were also impressed with how much the PC version outperforms the console versions thanks to the inclusion of route tracing, and that is Ultimately, why the panel gave Indy the nod: While Hellblade 2 is barely a single pixel off what Ninja Theory set out to achieve, there are strict limits there: there's no support for hardware-accelerated RT, for example. . Indiana Jones delivers that in spectacular style, while taking it to the next level with the 'Full RTX' upgrade… and while it's computationally expensive, it's still affordable even for hardware like an RTX 4070.
Of course, as the chapter list above clearly suggests, there's a lot more to this discussion than just the first three, so if you have some free time, check out the full video (or podcast) where the team breaks down a lot of games!