Games with Great Lighting

[brandonmatic]

The STALKER games are the most atmospheric games I've ever played and I think a lot of it is the amazing lighting (I played with the Complete mod). The day/night cycle - with beautiful dawns and dusks - really made the same areas of the game look radically different at different times. Also the flashlight at night and in the underground bunkers looked amazing. Skyrim also did a great with lighting, especially with ENB.

What other games can people recommend that have the same level of immersive lighting with a nice 24 hour light cycle and dawn/dusk?

 

[mnewsham]

Minecraft modded can be pretty nice actually

 

[UglyDuckling]

Tomb Raider 3.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light are 2 games which both make heavy use of dynamic lighting, I think it's the Redux of Last Light which has all the graphics effects cranked to 11, either way they're beautiful looking games and pretty good albeit very linear single player stories.

 

[Zenoth]

The Witcher 3, best looking dawns and dusk visuals and colors in recent memory (and having a good monitor displaying properly balanced colors/temperatures/RGB settings is definitely a plus there). The original Crysis' shadows/lightning, along with Crysis 3's is pretty good. Also, Dragon Age: Inquisition has some nice lightning and shadows effects too (albeit "fixed" with no actual day/night cycles, except for that one map in which the setting changes from night time to dusk after triggered events are completed).

And one that has surprised me recently is Skyforge. I play it on maximum settings and, I must say, that it's probably the best looking DX9 game I've played since The Witcher 2 or a heavily modded Skyrim.

 

[Unoid]

doom 3

 

[Red Hawk]

I'm partial to Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age Inquisition's lighting.

 

[DigDog]

this is gonna be weird, so brace yourself.

i suggest you download and play the F2P Survarium.

surv is made by the same people that made stalker; it's a free to play shooter, multiplayer only.
it's honestly not the best shooter out there, it's got bugs and the devs don't really understand shooters .. so why would i recommend it to you?

surv has some of the best maps i have seen in a shooter; all asymmetric (considered blasphemy in most shooters), great visual effects, and most of all, the lightning changes as you play. the server, as it goes through the maps, also goes through the day/night cycle, so you go from morning, to midday, to noon, and night, all with various nuances. lighting and environment effects are applied to each map in rotation, and the cycle is consistent.

i know some people here have said that survarium is bad looking - i dissent. i find the art style to be unique and i love the visuals.


i should need to say though .. as a shooter, it fkk sucks.

 

[Oyeve]

Metro 2033. Has great atmospheric underground lighting. Very scary effects.

 

[Crono]

BioShock Infinite.

It doesn't have day/night cycle, though.

 

[DaveSimmons]

The lighting is nicely done in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, but it's always night time while you're awake.

 

[brandonmatic]

Minecraft modded can be pretty nice actually

Sounds interesting, although doesn't nice lighting work better with more realistic graphics?

Tomb Raider 3.

I looked at some images on Google. Doesn't seem that impressive. Did you mean the latest Tomb Raider? Haven't played that yet.

Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light are 2 games which both make heavy use of dynamic lighting, I think it's the Redux of Last Light which has all the graphics effects cranked to 11, either way they're beautiful looking games and pretty good albeit very linear single player stories.

I've played a bit of Metro 2033 and agree that it has amazing lighting and a very STALKER-ish atmosphere. But almost all of it is underground, right? I think I prefer outdoor environments and lighting for the most part.

 

[brandonmatic]

The Witcher 3, best looking dawns and dusk visuals and colors in recent memory (and having a good monitor displaying properly balanced colors/temperatures/RGB settings is definitely a plus there). The original Crysis' shadows/lightning, along with Crysis 3's is pretty good. Also, Dragon Age: Inquisition has some nice lightning and shadows effects too (albeit "fixed" with no actual day/night cycles, except for that one map in which the setting changes from night time to dusk after triggered events are completed).

And one that has surprised me recently is Skyforge. I play it on maximum settings and, I must say, that it's probably the best looking DX9 game I've played since The Witcher 2 or a heavily modded Skyrim.

Thanks. Witcher 3 is at the very top of my list of games to play once I get a handle on my backlog. I loved the lighting in Crysis, definitely top notch. Haven't played Crysis 3 or DAI but can imagine those are both nice. I might check out DAI at some point, but it sounds like a huge time sink and bit grindy.

doom 3

That's definitely on my list - the whole flashlight in the dark thing, right? But I heard the game play is only so-so.

I'm partial to Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age Inquisition's lighting.

Thanks. I think I have DA2 on Origin but haven't yet installed it. I'll have to check it out.

 

[brandonmatic]

this is gonna be weird, so brace yourself.

i suggest you download and play the F2P Survarium.

Thanks, I've actually been meaning to do that. I think it looks great from the screenshots. Even if the gameplay sucks, it couldn't hurt to check it out just for the lighting/graphics.

Metro 2033. Has great atmospheric underground lighting. Very scary effects.

Agreed. I need to give it another shot - somehow didn't agree with me the first time I played. But the lighting is very atmospheric.

BioShock Infinite.

It doesn't have day/night cycle, though.

Sounds interesting. I might try to pick it up next time it's on sale.

 

[brandonmatic]

The lighting is nicely done in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, but it's always night time while you're awake.

Always heard great things about that game. Thanks.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I've played a bit of Metro 2033 and agree that it has amazing lighting and a very STALKER-ish atmosphere. But almost all of it is underground, right? I think I prefer outdoor environments and lighting for the most part.

A lot of it is underground, there's several quite long above ground sections, I think there's more above ground action in Last Light as well.

The problem with outdoors and lighting is that you can't have as much dynamic lighting, dynamic lights are calculated in real time and the scope of what they can cast shadows on increases the load on the GPU so typically you don't have a huge amounts of them outdoors, they're usually indoors in enclosed environments where you can control the amount of surfaces the light hits.

The indoor sections of Metro: Last Light are practically a showcase for good lighting techniques, they really nail it, conversely I don't know many games that do really good technical lighting outdoors.