Digital Foundry's Best Game Graphics of 2023

As is DF tradition, we round off the year with a look at the team's personal picks for the best game graphics of 2023. Covering off the very best in both PC and console rendering, Alex Battaglia, John Linneman and Oliver Mackenzie share their thoughts on the most impressive visuals of the year, leading to an open debate on which title did it best: Alan Wake 2, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora or Cyberpunk 2077's RT Overdrive?

[PrinceOfAnger]

I agree with top 3 Especially on PC
1. Avatar
2. Alan Wake 2
3. Cyberpunk RT Overdrive

First they said before Avatar
" Alan Wake 2 is the best looking game released so far this generation " Whether you're playing on PlayStation 5 in either of its quality modes, or on a PC without hardware-accelerated ray tracing features active, you're still getting a frankly incredible-looking game".

Crazy that Cyberpunk enter the list again this year!

In 2020 the game did win
best graphics of the year
1. Cyberpunk
2. Spiderman Miles Morales
3. Microsoft flight simulator
4. Half life Alyx
5. The last of us part 2
6. Demons souls
7. Doom eternal

[Einhander1972]

Three 2023 PlayStation exclusives made it to their top 10 Final Fantasy 16 Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores and Spider-Man 2.

[--Onilink--]

Where is Burning Shores in their Top 10?

[PrinceOfAnger]

First of all they said in the video "Top 3" not top 10 so Spider man 2 , Horizon Forbidden are not on their top 3
and
They all picked Avatar at the end of the video as the #1 best graphics of 2023
they said Alan wake is second place.

[PrinceOfAnger]

Horizon Burning Shores is not even in top 10
But in 'Honourable Mentions' along side Dead space remake etc.

[Zenzuu]

" Alan Wake 2 is the best looking game released so far this generation " Whether you're playing on PlayStation 5 in either of its quality modes, or on a PC without hardware-accelerated ray tracing features active, you're still getting a frankly incredible-looking game".

For PC yes, but for PS5, Alan Wake 2 although is good looking, has aliasing issues, shimmering noises because of FSR, low quality shadows, low resolution, and performance hitches that prevents it from being the top looker for PS5.

Best looking game on PS5 would be Horizon Forbidden West. High quality textures & shadows, decent resolutions, and above all, performs at an almost rock solid 60fps.

[gold_drake]

i agree with cyberpunk and alan wake 2 xD

i haven't seen anything on avatar yet

[isarai]

Glad to see RoboCop in here, the visuals were a pleasant surprise when I played through it.

[Ironmike]

They said avatar not alan wake 2 they said the the world the jungle best they ever seen all agreed

[PrinceOfAnger]

At the end of the video all of them John, Alex, Oliver said Avatar wins. as #1

[Ezio2048]

For the people who didn't watch the full video, they picked Avatar as Rank #1 by a hair split difference over Alan Wake 2 just because it is pushing these graphics across an open world and mainly because of it's consistency across all platforms (like all platforms get ray tracing features with PC just getting a max version of those features). They all agreed if they had to choose one game with least technical flaws and a game which looks great in every scene, it would be Alan Wake 2 on PC.

I respect their final vote decision but Alan Wake 2 on PC maxed out is the best looking game this year, even DF agreed on that. It is pushing many technical boundaries behind the game like full path tracing, best implementation of Ray Reconstruction and Mesh Shaders to name a few.

[AKS]

One of the factors that earned some extra favor for Avatar is the fact that it looks and runs as well as one could expect for all platforms, from consoles and previous generation GPUs to the top end enthusiast cards pushing the limits. With FSR3 and frame generation, an RX 7600, a GPU you can buy for under $350, can average around 70 fps at 1440p with Ultra settings. Many bleeding edge graphical showcase games seem to target one or two generations or more of graphics cards in the future like Crysis and Metro games, but this is running about as well as one could reasonably expect across all platforms, including previous generation GPUs and consoles. This is extremely impressive, especially in the context of a year that was full of notoriously poorly optimized games that weren't even that impressive technically.