Shumaosha selects the game of the year: Who has the best graphics?

DigitalFoundry recently released the team’s online discussion and selection of the best game graphics in 2023, and nominated a number of games. The game performance evaluation team said that many of the games on the list in 2023 do not break the boundaries in terms of graphics technology, but are cleverly designed to make full use of hardware (such as Switch consoles) while providing excellent gameplay.

The team specifically cited "Perfect Soundwave" and "Super Mario Bros.: Surprise" as examples, saying that they are both first-party works with obvious stylized graphics. The cartoon rendering and animation effects of "Perfect Sound Wave" make the game feel like an interactive cartoon. Shumaoshe said that the stylized graphics allow the game to still respond sensitively to player input on limited hardware, and the world and music of these two games respond to the player's actions, showing a vivid world.

As a result, they are not overly reliant on technologies such as DLSS and FSR: Shumaosha said these technologies have been used more this year, but they have also resulted in a serious lack of clarity and overall picture fidelity in the console versions of many games.

The top three games with the best graphics technology selected by Shumaosha are "Cyberpunk 2077", "Avatar: Pandora's Frontier" and "Alan Killer 2". These three games combine design, high-performance graphics, and boundary-breaking ray tracing technology. Two of them support full path tracing on PC, essentially completely replacing the previous pseudo-lighting system with an alternative that can "run easily."

The team said they were impressed by the successful upgrade of AAA games to path tracing technology on PC this year, as many games using similar technology in the past few years have had huge performance issues. They attribute this to huge technological advancements by developers and graphics card manufacturers, as well as the efforts of "enterprising developers."

The team said that when used properly, ray tracing and path tracing can actually help small studios easily enhance images and reduce art and technology costs. Here they take "Robocop: Violence City" as an example, saying that they used the Lumen, Nanite and VSM (Virtual Shadow Map) functions of Unreal Engine 5 to create a realistic and detailed environment within a 2A budget.

Looking forward to 2024, Shumaosha said they hope that game companies can learn from the successes and failures of 2023. The team said that the best games in 2023 are not those that blindly use the latest graphics technology, but those that have time to brew and wisely choose graphics technology to serve the gameplay and achieve performance goals.