10 PC Games That Already Look Like Next Gen Titles

19th, Dec. 2012 | Posted in Feature, Gallery | by

E3 and other such expos are a time for looking forward more often than not. We see the upcoming titles that will define our future gaming experiences, and we continuously hope for that exciting surprise hardware unveiling, but this desire for updated processing power is often ill placed.

After all, for all the good that the Xbox 720 and PS4 will do, PC gaming is always ahead of console gaming when it comes to graphics. Indeed, there are plenty of PC games that already look good enough to be in the next generation graphical ballpark; and we’ve rounded up ten of them for your perusal.

For more exciting features, take a look here. Do you agree with the list above? If not, what games do you prefer?  What games are you looking forward to in 2013? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt.com for more news and updates.

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  • FaizanAliNaqvi

    Thats why i chose PC Gaming, I have the CHOICE.

  • Skull King3694

    I agree on most of the titles on this list, except for Metro:2033 which I would hope is nothing what next gen games will look like, but it gets an A+ in the story department can’t wait for the sequel.

  • 2wisted

    I disagree with Batman and Max Payne. The PC equivalents aren’t better looking than most top tier AAA console games. Gears 3 is the best looking Unreal engine 3 title out there, so that beats Batman.

    Plenty of games look better than Max Payne. Considering next-gen development cycles tend to provide 10-15 times more processing power than their predecessors (as was the case with the PS2-PS3 and Xbox-Xbox 360) I’d doubt most of these games will look as good as next-gen. Crysis, Metro and modded Skyrim are the only ones I’d say are on-par.

    Every gen console tech catches up to PCs and gets the same results for 2-3 years, I don’t see why this one will be any different.

    • Burnzzzzz

      Are you joking? Go play batman arkham city on DX11..

    • http://www.facebook.com/ClockworkKnight Ashiedu Nwadiei

      Looks the same. Tessellation is unnoticeable except for cutscenes I’m guessing. NONE of the lighting or shadow enhancements make a noticable difference unless you have the two screens set up side-by-side. It would basically be like how to decide to optimize your HDTV setting for DVD or Blu-ray.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ClockworkKnight Ashiedu Nwadiei

    I disagree, Arkham City basically looks the same as consoles, but with higher resolution. The DX11 does nothing except to drop it’s frame rate. Outside of a benchmark or cutscene, you won’t notice the tessellation. I played it on PC first btw, so I definately could tell the difference, it just wasn’t mind blowing.

    I would also remove Just Cause 2, Metro 2033, and Max Payne 3. All good looking, but none better looking than Killzone 3, Metal Gear Sold 4, Final Fantasy XIII, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, The Last of Us, etc. I would add Alan Wake on PC and Alan Wake American Nightmare, which to me looks like DX11, but isn’t, just great lighting effects and true high resolution textures. Max Payne 3 must be upscaled textures, because it doesn’t match Alan Wake American Nightmare, Battlefield 3, or Crysis 2 (high resolution texture pack).

    Sadly, PC has been held back by console and very few PC games outshine console except in resolution and potentially running full HD 3D. Hell, most console ports run better than native PC games, even Rockstar got the port right this time with Max Payne 3 regardless of how much it sucks…and don’t get me wrong, a true native PC port like Alan Wake/American Nightamre is stunning and will make you want to play all games that way. That’s why my cross-platform of choice is PC…holding out for the stunning Resident Evil 6 and Tomb Raider next on PC.

    Just demoed *ahem* Far Cry 3 on PC and it looks terrible by today’s standards. Definitely a poorly optimized console port. Crysis 2 is still king until Crysis 3 comes out. Battlefield 3 is a close second. Haven’t tried out the new Medal of Honor yet.

    • Guest

      Just demoed *ahem* Far Cry 3 on PC and it looks terrible by today’s standards. Definitely a poorly optimized console port. Crysis 2 is still king until Crysis 3 comes out. Battlefield 3 is a close second. Haven’t tried out the new Medal of Honor yet.

  • Deathbringerrr

    Metro 2033 is the most demanding game, Even on new Cards @ 1920×1080 its destroying pcs and only getting 40 fps

    • http://www.facebook.com/ClockworkKnight Ashiedu Nwadiei

      Just poorly optimized. It looks okay, but not nearly as good as DX11 maxed out high resolution texture Crysis 2, but it runs worse.

  • http://daow.net DAOWAce

    Crysis was released in 2007; ’nuff said.

    Consoles have been holding back gaming for the last 5 years.

    • http://www.facebook.com/ClockworkKnight Ashiedu Nwadiei

      But has since been surpassed by console games, namely Killzone 2 and 3, Uncharted 3, Resident Evil 5 and 6, Vanquish, Heavy Rain, Metal Gear Solid 4, Final Fantasy XIII, Gears of War 2 and 3, and the list goes on. After Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3, PC has merely maintained a slight edge in resolution and textures, but nothing outrageous. Medal of Honor Warfigher looks ridiculously good and runs better than BF3 I might add, but it’s not a shocking a leap as when we first saw Frostbite 2.

    • http://daow.net DAOWAce

      Uncharted 3 may be the best quality console game I’ve seen yet.

      None of them quite reach the overall quality we saw with Crysis.

      Throw mods into the mix and, well, you know how it is.

    • http://www.facebook.com/ClockworkKnight Ashiedu Nwadiei

      I don’t think you’ve seen Vanilla Crysis in a while, it’s not that impressive. Crysis 2 DX11 makes it look like Child’s Play, and all of those console games I mentioned make Crysis 1 look like Child’s Play as well. Medal of Honor: Warfighter is the best looking game I’ve seen yet to date on PC. Crysis 1 is no competition. I know the common misconception about Crysis 2. At launch, without high resolution textures and DX11, it didn’t even look as good as Crysis 1, I know, but the two patches resolved that. To give you a true state of the union for PC gaming, the card I had before a 4670 could max most any game I threw at it in 1080p60. The list of games I couldn’t included Crysis 1, Metro 2033, Crysis 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2, BF3…and crappy console ports like Rockstar’s and Saint’s Row 2. Everything else sang. That was a sub-$100 card and even less now. Aside from Crysis 2 and BF3, my 6870 only truly improved the performance of Saint’s Row 2 and L.A. Noire, GTA 4 still runs poorly and so does Metro 2033. Crysis 2 and BF3 are basically maxed MSAA just drops the framerate and would require more memory, but wouldn’t make either look that much better in actual gameplay. Just maybe for screenshots.

      Console has lockstepped PC innovation, but that will change next year with a few titles since new consoles are at least a few years away, Epic and maybe a couple other companies will lead the charge and actually make PC the lead platform for a title or two.

    • Hard

      …all i saw in this article is you and your console…go somewhere else and find something like “Top 10 Console games that already look like….currentgen titles.”

    • hamidious01

      Besides, none of those games had the huge environments and open worlds of Crysis. Sorry, nothing on consoles reached the graphical quality of the original Crysis.

  • merwanor

    If you can’t see the difference between console gaming and PC gaming, then you really need to get your eyes checked. The most important graphical improvment PC has is AA. And when it comes to these open world games, it is also the horrible draw distance on consoles that bring the quality down. Batman AC also has Physx which is even more amazing than the DX11 features that are not that noticable, but amazing physics really make the game look amazing.

    But what PC gaming brings to the table compared to consoles, is not really the graphics but often it is modding. Playing Skyrim on console is unthinkable to me, there are just to many essential mods out there that improve gameplay so much, and I am not talking about the countless graphics mods.

    • http://www.facebook.com/ClockworkKnight Ashiedu Nwadiei

      Modding yes, emulation yes, but honestly resolution and AA have less do with it since FXAA is possible in DX9 level graphics cards on some of the newer games. I was floor when I was making these comparisons with my son’s 360 and his newer version of Assassin’s Creed, upscaled graphics and all, looked better than my older version of Assassin’s Creed on PC because the 360 version actually had AA that worked, likely FXAA. It’s often hard to even demo console versions in a lower res of games that look stunning in full 1080p like Resident Evil 5 and Warfighter, and Red Dead Redemption was so low res and bad looking I couldn’t even play it.

      I know cross-platform stuff usually looks better on PC, but I don’t even know of a PC exclusive that looks better than Resident Evil 6 for instance.

      The reason I’m so bowed over by PS3 exclusive is because of how much they optimized it for specific hardware and how close it comes to some of the best looking PC games I’ve played (cross platform or otherwise). I wonder why my 2 teraflops 6870 can’t do leaps and bounds above that aside from pushing twice the pixels and a higher framerate? Theoretically all decent graphics cards nowadays could run games that look as good as the Samaritan demo with perhaps less antialiasing and more graphics memory, the superior PC counterparts I mentioned aren’t so far ahead as the could be, even while stunning. We should have been running stuff that looked like Fox Engine, Luminous Engine, and Unreal 4 long ago. Only one who bothered to go there was Crytek, and Crysis 2 honestly has a slight edge on Battlefield 3.

      And like I said, you can’t tell the difference on Arkham City. I’ve seen the PhysX stuff, but obviously can’t use it with an ATI/AMD card. They aren’t that impressive though. Stuff you could do in software, like on PS3. Warfigher has pretty good particles, glass, and paper physics, without needing to be bound to Nvidia hardware. The lighting differences are negligible. If you were to stop the DX11 game and switch over to DX9 you see NO difference.

  • Iba

    loool, speaking of crysis series but showing a picture of crysis 3, which WILL be already the next gen…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Richard-Tovar/100000279618934 Richard Tovar

    Yes games look much better on a pc but some of us just don’t like the “keeping up with the Joneses”, arms race of a pissing contest that hardcore pc gamers seem to get a huge stiffy from. Ok so you spent a G on your setup, great. Stop telling me how much better your game looks because at the end of the day, it isn’t any better of a game because your 500 dollar graphics card gives you a billion frames per second. Rant over.

    • http://www.facebook.com/ClockworkKnight Ashiedu Nwadiei

      Nor is a rig that expensive necessary unless you’re running multiple monitors and stereoscopic 3d. A $200 card will max well optimized PC games in 1080p60 no matter how good they look and those games are few. Can’t wait until next gen games start coming that actually taxes current gen PC hardware except frostbite 2 and CryEngine 2 games. The only advances I’ve seen in PC graphics have come from the optimizations in console programming, so you get outstanding looking titles like Alan Wake that actually run and look better than PC games that came before it.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Richard-Tovar/100000279618934 Richard Tovar

      That’s what I thought but apparently any pc gamer with a budget to blow just can’t stand not having 15 $300 graphics cards in his system along with the hundred core processor. Overkill seems to be their bread and butter.

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