Bioshock Infinite is pretty freakin' sweet. I was totally impressed and thought, this is PC gaming 2013. I was able to play the game on max setting and 60+ fps at 1920x1200. No crashes, no glitches. Beautiful, just beautiful.

Golden Axe (PC VGA version)
King's Bounty (old NWC version of 1990)
Heroes of Might and Magic II
Diablo (both graphically and musically 😜)
Rage of Mages
Evil Islands
The Witcher
King's Bounty: the Legend (new Katauri version of 2008)

I was very impressed by doom 3.. Dont know games could that scary..

I'll just stick to the major players.

Mercenary (C= +4)
Another World
Dune 1
Doom
Frontier
Thief

And since then (1998): nothing

PC:
Eye of the Beholder II
Wolfenstein 3D
Unreal
Warcraft II
Jazz Jackrabbit 2
Rogue Squadron
GTA IV
Crysis
Elvira 1
The Witcher 2
Metal Gear Solid 2
Technical merit though, at the time, the graphics looked like ass: Quake.

Arcade:
Mortal Kombat
Time Traveler
Primal Rage
Marvel Superheroes - War of the Gems
Samurai Shodown

Consoles:
Punch Out!
Castlevania III
Super Mario Bros 3
Dracula for Lynx
Ninja Gaiden
God of War 1 and 3
Metal Gear Solid 4
Super Castlevania 4

Ultima 7
Diablo
Morrowind
Skyrim

Gabucino wrote:

I'll just stick to the major players. […]
Show full quote

I'll just stick to the major players.

Mercenary (C= +4)
Another World
Dune 1
Doom
Frontier
Thief

And since then (1998): nothing

Forgot: Relentless (Little Big Adventure)

I am obsessed by Bubble Bobble although I knew it long after it came out. I was especially surprised by the PC conversion on such a non game oriented machine.
Its cute and colorful graphics is hard to forget.
Another game I was impressed by graphically is Alone In The Dark. I think it was the first game with 3D characters and villains I played at home when, I'm not sure, 3D graphics cards for mere mortals were available.

Wolfenstein 3D, and I know this next one is fairly new but still, Skyrim.

Hater Depot wrote:

The first game to really blow me away was Space Quest IV, because it was the first VGA game I ever saw. After that I had similar reactions to Doom, 7th Guest, and The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes.

Since then the only game to similarly impress me was No One Lives Forever, which was the first 3-D game I saw which didn't look blocky and chunky with uninteresting textures. After that, although games became far more advanced, I feel jaded. Going from EGA to VGA was transformational. Going from NOLF2 and UT2003 to any modern game just feels like a predictable progression.

Quoting an old post for truth. For me, the biggest jump was from my dad's 386DX 40 Mhz to a Pentium III based Celeron 633 Mhz. I was just 7 and hearing real music from the computer (our 386 only had the beeper) and seeing non-blocky graphics in 3D just amazed me. A bit later I was really impressed by Morrowind (first truly openworld 3D game I played) and I wasn't impressed much by anything since. There are many people who say "zomg graphix improved so much since 1999", but I just don't see it that way. The jump from pixelated 320x200 16 color graphics to 3D models in 640x480 and more has occured in 5 years or so, what significant leap has been made since? Sure shaders, effects... but the newest attempts at "realism" seem honestly cheesier than mid-90s 3D graphics. The problem with new games is that they either look "too good", too clean and shiny in ways the real world simply isn't and have reflections on things that don't usually reflect light mirror style (like wood) or go the opposite extreme and make everything dull brown. Same with "HDR lighting", I often find games with HDR turned off more realistic as HDR just looks like an overexposed scene. It "looks nice", but is no more "realistic" than the simple 90s style colored lighting. In fact I see the trend here - HDR is overused just like color lighting was in the 1990s like for example it was in Quake 2.

I think the issue here is a different variant of Uncanny Valley. Modern graphics really pretends to be "realistic" even when it really ain't. Older graphics don't suffer from this as much as low poly models and low res sprites are quite clearly not real.

I was impressed with F-Zero and Stunt Race FX on the SNES. On the PC I was impressed with Doom II, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Quake II, Unreal Tournament and Imperium Galactica II. FarCry and Crysis also caught my attention but failed to impress me as much as the others because I had already came to realize that graphics will continue to improve constantly. So being impressed becomes more and more difficult.

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.
When I saw it I was definitely shocked. Since then I've never experienced such a madness about a computer game.

Wing Commander_Price Of Freedom blew me away, an interactive video and game starring Mark Hammel (spelling?). My son played it nonstop on my Windows 98 box for a month. Excellent storyline also, you must turn traitor to win!

Myst got the ball rolling for me
Quake 1 on a Voodoo1 blew me away and basically got me hooked me PC's and 3dfx
Grand Prix Legends - even in it's initial release
Riven
Longbow 2
Apache v Havok
WW-2 Fighters
Nascar Racing 2003
Half-Life 2
rFactor
Amerzone
Limbo
Machinarium