2010 AG Awards: Nathan Drakes Perfect Face Award for Visual Excellence

Feature from Nat - Tuesday, 21 December 2010 @ 12:49am

The 2010 AG Awards: The Nathan Drake’s Perfect Face Award for Visual Excellence

Over the course of the year, we've had some truly phenomenal looking games released. Be it the eerie darkness of Alan Wake's fog-laden forests, or Luke's favourite visual masterpiece, Limbo, 2010 has been the year of the good looking game. Here is where we look back at some of the best of the year.

The AG Nominations:

For me this one is a hard choice to make, I could go with my buddy Kratos and his funtastic adventures in God of War 3. Manoeuvring on an enormous titan while it's climbing Mount Olympus sets itself up for one of the best action scenes this year. It was cool looking and freaking awesome, but I believe they blew their load too early and nothing else that followed was able to live up to that. So if I take a step back and take a look at the games I enjoyed the most this year, Alan Wake sits at the top of that list, a big part of this is due to the story and overall atmosphere of the game. The visual style delivered by Remedy helps bring Bright Falls to life in order to make the small town eerie during the day, and scare the pants off of you while wandering the endless forest at night.

The visual fidelity is insane and the effort that goes into making each scene unique and instantly recognizable is unparalleled. If you’re uncertain, go back and watch the beginning of the game when (SPOILERS) the Normandy is cut apart and Shepard is walking in the suit in front of the giant blue planet, followed by his reconstruction. Gorgeous from head to toe, with minimal hiccups and texture loading.

Even though the game in all other respects is a complete failure, it is without a shadow of a doubt the most stunningly beautiful game I've ever played. Developers have been sprouting "photo realistic" environments for years, but GT5 actually delivers it. I actually stopped in the middle of a race through Piccadilly Circus London just to stare in wonder at the amazing detail. Until now, games have only shown this sort of detail in post-rendered "photo modes" GT5 delivers it in real time. Of course, it begs the question why it needs to be photo-realistic when you're speeding past at 200km/h, but that is beside the point.

I’m going to take this literally and award it to Enslaved. While Enslaved was in general a good looking game and not a great playing one its attention to voice acting and especially facial animation were exceptionally strong. There are games that are overall better graphically, such as Gran Turismo 5, but to me the ability to do humans and complex emotion well is more impressive.