Rockstar Games With The Best Graphics (For Their Era)

Key Takeaways

• Rockstar Games pushed graphical boundaries in games like GTA 4, Red Dead 2, and GTA 5, setting new standards.
• Grand Theft Auto 3 revolutionized open-world gaming by moving from 2D to 3D, changing the franchise’s course.
• L.A. Noire introduced facial scan tech, influencing motion capture in gaming history.

Rockstar Games is one of the most famous game developer studios around for good reason. Their games constantly push boundaries, particularly when it comes to the all-important graphics that make their open worlds come alive.

Whether it be the jump to 3D or heightening those 3D graphics to unparalleled levels of realism, Rockstar has released plenty of games with incredible graphics for their era.

Some of these games haven’t held 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 published.

7 Grand Theft Auto 4

Liberty City Unleashed

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

Grand Theft Auto 4 did it first, and quite possibly did it best with tons of hidden details and secrets to be found. Though the game has a somewhat divisive reputation owing to its admittedly drab vision of Liberty City, it was unprecedented in the realism it offered, with it holding up very well to this day. Rockstar proved just how powerful their open worlds could be by taking advantage of every ounce of power they had in the consoles they had to work with.

6 Red Dead Redemption 2

The Blazing Wild West

As the 2010s progressed, it became increasingly clear that Rockstar’s output in terms of games was decreasing, meaning that every new entry in whatever franchise they were targeting next would likely be a big jump, which was very true for Red Dead Redemption 2.

The first game Rockstar made for the PS4/Xbox One generation (if excluding remasters of older games), Red Dead Redemption 2 put all of Rockstar’s efforts towards unparalleled realism, crafting a vision of the West that looked like it was straight out of Romantic paintings, full of hidden and rare encounters, with even more brilliant attention to detail. It is quite possible the best the Wild West has ever looked in video games, and it’s not likely to be surpassed soon.

5 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Grove Street, Home

While Rockstar’s productions are known to be slow these days, back in the early/mid-2000s, they were pumping out games very quickly, including the now-famous trilogy of Grand Theft Auto games released just a couple of years from each other: 3, Vice City, and San Andreas.

While each has its fans, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was the pinnacle of Rockstar’s efforts for its time, crafting not only loving homages to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas but also filling it up with a never-before explored countryside in Grand Theft Auto games. It looks dated these days, but for its time, it was a stunning achievement, particularly as it had to somehow render that entire open world on PS2/Xbox hardware.

4 Grand Theft Auto 5

Los Santos As Never Before

In Rockstar’s long and storied history, it’s probably fair to say that Grand Theft Auto 5 was the most important game they ever made, forever shifting the way their business model and quality standards operated, bringing together what seems to be the definitive vision of what the fictional state of San Andreas looks like choc-full of breathtaking locations.

It remains a marvel to this day how on earth Grand Theft Auto 5 ran on PS3/Xbox 360 hardware, especially considering it wasn’t too long after Grand Theft Auto 4. Yet, the machines handled it, and the game became a smash hit with incredible graphics for the time that only got better with subsequent remasters for newer consoles.

3 Max Payne

Visceral Bullet-Time

Although Max Payne doesn’t look like much these days, it’s important to remember that came out in 2001, not long after the PS2/Xbox generation began, not only inspiring a whole suite of third-person shooters to come but also setting the standard for graphical fidelity and aging delightfully well in the process.

This is perhaps best seen in the model of protagonist Max himself. Famously, Remedy used a facial scan of now gaming-darling Sam Lake to depict the character, which, while a little goofy by today’s standards, was an incredible leap forward in character models for the time.

2 L.A. Noire

Truth, Doubt, Lie

If any game in the Rockstar catalog deserved a better end, it was Team Bondi’s work on L.A. Noire, a detective game set shortly after WW2 in Los Angeles, where players take control of Cole Phelps solving a whole litany of cases in the city of sin.

What really set it apart was its revolutionary facial scan technology for the time. This was essential in crafting the game’s deduction segments where players had to figure out whether interviewed suspects and witnesses were lying or telling the truth. While it’s true that some of those scans seem 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 all of gaming history.

1 Grand Theft Auto 3

3D Revolution

Though Grand Theft Auto 3 is rarely mentioned these days when it comes to a favorite of the franchise, it’s incredibly important to give this entry its well-deserved flowers for transposing the world of 2D into 3D and launching the franchise into the commercial juggernaut that it is today.

Before Grand Theft Auto 3, the games were top-down car-based mayhem simulators that were fun arcade experiences but had nowhere near the depth the franchise would come to have. Grand Theft Auto 3 somehow turned the page and single-handedly revolutionized the entire open-world genre, pulling off a technical masterclass in rendering an open world in 3D on underpowered hardware, all while setting the foundations for all of Rockstar’s success that would soon follow.