Rockstar Games with the best graphics (for their era)

Key things

• Rockstar Games pushed the graphical boundaries in games like GTA 4, Red Dead 2 and GTA 5 and set new standards.
• Grand Theft Auto 3 revolutionized open world gaming by going from 2D to 3D and changing the course of the franchise.
• LA Noire introduced face scanning technology that affects motion capture in game history.

Rockstar Games is one of the most famous game development studios for good reason. Their games are constantly pushing the boundaries, especially when it comes to the all-important graphics that bring their open worlds to life.

Whether it's jumping into 3D or elevating those 3D graphics to an unmatched level of realism, Rockstar has released plenty of games with incredible graphics for its era.

Some of these games didn't hold up well by modern standards, but that's okay. These are the games that were the best for their time. The list will also take into account games that Rockstar has published.

7 Grand Theft Auto 4

Liberty City Unleashed

In terms of graphical leaps, the leap from the PS2/Xbox generation to the PS3/Xbox 360 generation was massive, making vast open worlds not only possible (as would be seen in the influx of games in the genre), but also making those worlds feel ever more real .

Grand Theft Auto 4 he did it first and quite possibly did it the best with the amount of hidden details and secrets to find. Although the game has a somewhat divisive reputation for its admittedly bland vision of Liberty City, it was unprecedented in the realism it offered and still holds up very well today. Rockstar proved just how powerful their open worlds could be by using every ounce of power they had in the consoles they had to work with.

6 Red Dead Redemption 2

Blazing Wild West

As 2010 progressed, it became increasingly clear that Rockstar's output in terms of games was declining, meaning that any new entry in whatever franchise they were focusing on would likely be a big leap, which was true for Red Dead Redemption 2.

The first game that Rockstar made for the PS4/Xbox One generation (if we don't count remasters of older games), Red Dead Redemption 2 he put all of Rockstar's efforts into unparalleled realism, creating a vision of the West that looked like it was straight out of romantic paintings, full of hidden and rare encounters, with an even more brilliant attention to detail. It's quite possibly the best the Wild West has ever looked in video games, and it's not likely to be topped anytime soon.

5 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Grove Street, home

While Rockstar's production is known to be slow these days, in the early/mid 2000's they churned out games very quickly, including the now famous Grand Theft Auto trilogy released within a few years of each other: 3 , Vice City and San Andreas.

Although everyone has their fans, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was the pinnacle of Rockstar's efforts in its day, not only creating loving tributes to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas, but also filling it with a previously unexplored landscape in the Grand Theft Auto games. It looks dated these days, but it was a stunning achievement for its time, especially since it somehow had to render an entire open world on PS2/Xbox hardware.

4 Grand Theft Auto 5

Los Santos like never before

In Rockstar's long and illustrious history, it's probably fair to say so Grand Theft Auto 5 was the most important game they've ever made, forever changing the way their business model and quality standards worked, and bringing together what appears to be the definitive vision of what the fictional state of San Andreas looks like, full of breathtaking locations.

To this day, it remains a wonder how on earth it is Grand Theft Auto 5 ran on PS3/Xbox 360 hardware, especially considering it wasn't too long after that Grand Theft Auto 4. Nevertheless, the machines managed it and the game became a hit for the time with incredible graphics that only got better with subsequent remasters for newer consoles.

3 Max Payne

Visceral Bullet-Time

Although Max Payne It doesn't look like it these days, it's important to remember that it came out in 2001, not long after the PS2/Xbox generation began, not only inspired a whole slew of third-person shooters, but also set the standard for graphical fidelity. and they age beautifully while doing so.

This is perhaps best seen on the model of the protagonist Max himself. Remedy brilliantly used a face scan of now gaming darling Sam Lake to render a character that, while a bit goofy by today's standards, was an incredible leap forward in character models for the time.

2 LA Noire

Truth, Doubt, Lie

If any game in Rockstar's catalog deserved a better ending, it was the work of Team Bondi LA Noirea detective game set shortly after World War II in Los Angeles, where players take control of Cole Phelps solving a litany of cases in Sin City.

What really set it apart was the revolutionary facial scanning technology for its time. This was essential in the creation of the deduction segments of the game, where players had to figure out whether interviewed suspects and witnesses were lying or telling the truth. While it's true that some of these scans look a little silly by today's standards, it was a tangible and influential leap forward that clearly had a massive impact on the best motion capture performances in gaming history.

1 Grand Theft Auto 3

3D revolution

Although Grand Theft Auto 3 is rarely mentioned as a franchise favorite these days, it's incredibly important to give this entry its deserved credit for bringing the 2D world into 3D and launching the franchise into the commercial juggernaut it is today.

Before Grand Theft Auto 3, the games were top-down, car-based mayhem simulators that were fun arcade experiences, but didn't have nearly the depth that the franchise could have. Grand Theft Auto 3 somehow turned the page and single-handedly revolutionized the entire open-world genre, delivering a technical masterclass in 3D open-world rendering on underpowered hardware, while laying the groundwork for all of Rockstar's success to soon follow.