What gaming visuals blew you away at the time of their release?

I feel Xenoblade is the only right answer here, mainly because the game continued to floor you throughout the game, unlike other visually stunning games where it's obvious all the hard work went into making the first few hours of the game as engrossing as possible and the rest of the game kind of became more muted. Xenoblade though, kept on delivering until the very end, I remember finishing the Guar Plains and thinking the rest of the game would never live up to that point and just being floored time and again by each new location.

I think Ico is the other game that impressed me immensely in terms of visual, largely because it showed how great lighting and camera work can make something visually unimpressive look amazing. Wind Waker is also visually stunning though screenshots don't do it justice, you have to watch it in motion to see the detailed work that went into it.

FFVIII
I remember seeing the cutscenes while playing when I was 9yo and my jaw would drop each time. Stunning graphics for the ps1.

FFX and KH 1
Gorgeous graphics, not many other titles could compete with the visuals around it's release

Valkyria chronicles
It looked like a watercolour painting brought to life on the screen.

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are high on the list. Particularly SotC. Seeing some of those Colossi is awe inspiring. Then you climb them.

Skyrim.

Super Mario 64 blew my innocent child-like mind out of the water.

Anything I've played by Naughty Dog, particularly Last of Us and Uncharted 3. Also MGS4 and FFXIII were my first PS3 games and they blew me away. FFX was the same way on the PS2.

I think Black on PS2 was the first time a game's graphics made me say "whoa" out loud. That game really looked insanely realistic at the time.

Ookami and El Shaddai were simply gorgeous to look at. And the story for Ookami was pretty amazing. Those two really flawed me when I first played them. Hmm, also, on the 3DS, Bravely Default's hand drawn towns are beautiful too. Especially when they zoomed out. I get a feeling that a lot of love was worked into that scenery considering the hardware.
Another good one would have to be Vagrant Story, for the technology it had to work with, the angles and lighting were like a dream

Just seeing the Super Nintendo in action for the first time. Yeah, I know I have my nostalgia goggles on, but nothing will ever top that feeling for me.

I remember . . . having this reaction to Super Mario RPG. I know better now, but at the time I was like, "WOW! It's in 3D! This looks AMAZING!"

I also remember the FMV's from FFVII getting the same reaction from me, though not so much the in game stuff.

FFX, FFXIII, Xenoblade, and mayyyybe Chrono Cross.

Oh, and freakin' Crisis Core! What a gorgeous game for a handheld system.

I may be weird, but I can't remember being floored by any games at the time of their release, maybe because I didn't get around to playing a lot of the most graphically impressive games until long after they came out. The best looking SNES games (Chrono Trigger, Seiken Densetsu 3, Final Fantasy VI, Super Mario RPG, Super Metroid) I didn't get to play until long after they came out. Same with the best looking PS games (Chrono Cross, FFIX), and in fact I played FFVII so long after it came out that its graphics were no longer impressive to me. Even FFX I played a few years after it came out due to not having a PS2 at the time. Despite that, though, all the games I listed in parentheses did impress me graphically.

Oh. Yoshi's Island! That's a rare example of a gorgeous game that I played when it came out. I'm still amazed that they were able to pull those graphics off on the SNES. Wind Waker, too. I never got to finish it, but I did get to play several hours of it on a friend's GameCube and it was stunning.

Someone buy me Xenoblade so I can marvel at it thanks.

Metagloria reminded me - Killzone Mercenary on the Vita. The first thing I did was load up was a bit match on Blood Gracht from Killzone 2. I couldn't believe I was playing a PS3 multiplayer map at seemingly the same fidelity on a handheld, and visceral gameplay to boot.

The original Metal Gear Solid. The cinematic realism was so unique at the time. =)

>>> FFX had that Wow effect.. If you compare FFIX and FFX graphics it was a giant leap..:luca: