3 most beautiful games of 2022

Many new games can boast beautiful graphics in recent times. But some of them deserve a special attention. Digital Foundry experts Alex Battaglia and John Linneman presented their view on the top 3 most beautiful games of the year.

Portal with RTX ranks third, which is an advanced version of the puzzle game Valve. According to experts, it is the integration of ray tracing that makes this game especially beautiful.

Second place went to the horror The Callisto Protocol. Realistic graphics, well-detailed models, quality facial animation - all this makes the game's visuals really impressive and the game itself really scary: it was even banned in Japan, because it doesn't meet the age rating criteria.

The first place and the title of the most beautiful game of 2022 got the post-apocalyptic open-world action Horizon Forbidden West, the sequel of the popular Horizon Zero Dawn. The first game was already very beautiful, but the sequel got many improvements, that took the visuals to a higher level.

The authors of Digital Foundry also presented a list of seven other games with very nice graphics, which were not among the three winners:

- Dying Light 2 Stay Human;

- Need for Speed Unbound;

- Fortnite on Unreal Engine 5.1;

- A Plague Tale: Requiem;

- Warhammer 40,000: Darktide;

- The Last of Us Part I (improved version);

- Gran Turismo 7.

Digital Foundry's authors also made an improved version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which looks much better thanks to ray tracing and other upgrades, but on the other hand there are a lot of technical problems that annoy gamers.

Interestingly, neither Elden Ring nor God of War Ragnarok, which are considered the best games of the year - with really good graphics - made it into Digital Foundry's rankings.