Topic: 🏆 Digital Foundry's Graphics Award 2025: Clear Contenders?

With the end of the year rapidly approaching, which game do you think will take home Digital Foundry's coveted Graphics Award for 2025?

It felt like both 2023 (Alan Wake 2, Avatar) and 2024 (Indiana Jones, Hellblade 2) had standout candidates for this award.

Do you feel there are any clear favourites for the 2025 gong? Or upcoming releases which may take the prize?

I guess Doom The Dark Ages must be a serious contender, alongside AC Shadows and Ghost of Yotei. Shadows looks so stunning on the PS5 Pro, so I say it takes the crown for me.

Doom with Path Tracing is definitely my highlight but I can't help but feel there hasn't been any truly standout titles, especially compared to 2023.

yotei is a clear contender but for me it is Death Stranding 2 the level of detail and artistry is next level

Well, of course it's MindsEye! Graphically so incredible that the graphics stretch off the screen.

But probably Hell is Us or Arc Raiders, Silent Hill F is also great.

huh?

I'm being ironic, I'm not really saying MindsEye is graphically amazing, but it's insanely graphically buggy.

@Brunuu Haven't come across Hell is Us. Will check it out, thanks.

I think it's a beautiful game, but it's much more impressive on PC than on PS5.
It's a pretty solid game, and it's not even that long, which is fantastic, about 15-20 hours to complete.

@Snorlaxcat Seconded. The environmental effects, weather effects and terrain design all combine together to create an atmosphere that just simply unmatched. Coming up above the fog layer in the mountains to reveal a tranquil starry sky, riding a hoverboard up a sand dune into a sandstorm gradually turning the entire world red, seeing the entire world revealed to you after walking through a narrow crevasse in a cliff.. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it! And thats not even getting into a lot of the surreal visuals.

Let's not forget the one and only Cryengine game, Kingdom Come Deliverance II, whose environments look absolutely gorgeous, it does plenty of ambitious things with its NPC simulation and other systems, is fully dynamically lit, and brilliantly optimized.

I think that The Keeper is interesting to mention at least. Of course not as the winner but its style is so consistent. Beautiful like you are playing a picture book. it looks amazing!

Death Stranding 2 is a good contender indeed. Its visually the most impressive game I played this year.

For me, it is between Ghost of Yotei and AC Shadows. Yotei just is something incredible special in regards to artistry while performing rock solid. Everything feels like a beautified version of reality, it's as dreamy of a gaming world as it can get, almost "beyond cinema". A really awesome experience.

Shadows on the other hand made an old dream of mine come true - seasons in an open world! That, combined with awesome visuals and the implementation of realtime light and shadow being part of the gameplay even - it makes for something special, especially considering the size of the world. And the tech behind it - moving to Switch 2 even - kinda unreal.

Hmm 'Mafia: The Old Country' looked pretty good but it's performance wasn't exactly great. To be honest though the most impressive game to me so far this year is still Death Stranding 2. It looked great and performed well too.

Despite its technical issues, I think Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a contender. Its visual design is gorgeous.

I'm playing through Death Stranding 2 on my Pro console and the visuals are quite stunning. There's something about their tech that really impresses me in terms of scale of the world. Maybe it's as simple as FoV tweaks but it really makes the game for me. I'd put DS2 up for the win.

Silent Hill f is quite incredible, I'm playing it right now and I'm at awe at every cutscene. It should definitely be in the talk.

Death Stranding 2, Yotei and AC Shadows all make open worlds shine in different and awesome ways, too.

@Frosh On the PS5 Pro, the image quality is quite bad, especially in performance. Tons of flickering. (I regret not getting it on PC eugh)

Hehe...MindsEye...hehe

In terms of pure graphics, I would probably say Death Stranding 2. The Decima Engine is just phenomenal.

But overall, I think Ghost of Yotei is generally the best looking game this year; not only it runs and looks great, but the art direction really elevates the visuals.