Red Dead Redemption 2 hands down
This 👆
Modded Skyrim
I’m going to give you an evil answer and say Final Fantasy X. Are you ready to dodge 200 lightning bolts?
I’d forgotten that awful bit until you mentioned it. :( iirc my brother got that on my file and I got the chocobo balloons on his.
This was my first thought on reading the thread 🙈 I’m so glad I knocked that out when I was like 11, no way my mid-30s ass is staying focused enough for a challenge like that now.
I hate to admit doing it multiple times, including in my 30s, haha. But it’s a long and tedious achievement. The trick to doing it at our age is a good podcast to keep the mind busy!
How about the one at the end of Zelda: Ocarina of Time?
Having effects that shatter the framerate is, of course, a very undesirable thing for gamers. But something about it in the context of a sudden final boss fight against Ganon, placing his large figure against the thundering background, made him much more imposing in a way that might not really even be represented when playing the game in 4K on an emulator.
The ganon fights from Wind Waker and Skyward Sword are similarly cinematic!
Ganon has a thing for theatrics
I was talking to a friend the other day and trying to convey how good that fight looks. In some ways it’s kind of cliché (the narrative flips on the “lightning” switch for effect), but it’s so well-done that it doesn’t matter. If you let yourself get swept up in the story, it’s so damn tense and emotional. And the music, oh my god…
Off-topic, but I finally beat TotK the other day and the experience was utterly transcendent. I’m still blown away. They seriously made up for the deflated final fight in BotW, and then some.
I really liked the storms in Valheim. Probably not the best looking but they felt so impressive.
This channel has a lot of pretty game ambience, but isn’t limited to storms.
From what i have played, sea of thieves has the best storm, great visuals and sound, and having to make sure the ship doesnt sink is the cherry on top
happened once while carrying gunpowder barrels
“watch the lightning strike the gunpowder barrels and we explode” famous last words about 10 seconds before lightning struck our gunpowder barrels and we exploded
I had such a great, if brief, time in sea of thieves. It fell out because the main reason I enjoyed it was the team aspect and our friends stopped playing it, but damn if it didn’t give that immersive vibe for a little while, kind of like when I first played WoW.
You’re all wrong. It’s DriveClub. They put so much detail in the simulation of air pressure, angle of light coming from the sun, dynamic volumetric clouds, and so much more. On top of that, they simulate their weather on the conditions 100 miles out from the actual racetrack to make things as realistic as possible. It’s absolutely gorgeous.
No Man’s Sky has some impressive storms. They change depending on the planet, and a recent update (still updated for free since 2016, btw) added a bunch of new atmospheric effects. Some storms have winds strong enough to throw you around and, in some cases, off the planet.
The storm in Life Is Strange was hella intense.
Don’t see it mentioned so I’ll share it, The Last of Us 2. When I think of the game I think of rainfall, and golfing.
Death Stranding for me. Especially at the beginning of the game when you encounter your first storm, and you clear it. That feeling of relief is truly spectacular.
My vote has to go to the super storms in Horizon Forbidden West. They’re pretty incredible as they pass over. It’s just a shame they’re so rare and stop after a certain point in the game.
I’m pretty sure the lead on clouds is the industry leader on cloud rendering. He has some great gdc talks and paper write-ups of his work.
From an audio perspective, Terraria has great a thunderstorm effect - just something that really stuck as weighty and impactful
For the whole experience, Project Zomboid isn’t a slouch either as it has the audio/visuak effects down and feels better with the some of its parts together as individually there are parts that feel weaker but as a whole makes the for an engaging experience if one decides to wonder during a thunderstorm
MSFS 2020
Minecraft, it’s just relaxes me every time it storms.
