Trippy one.

The Last of Us

Its a survival game.

Yes it's only a survival game, but for me they have done a superb job with the graphics and I would consider it visually mesmerizing.

It might sound odd but the first Monkey Island is to this day the game that impressed me most visually, I was completely enthralled and hypnotized the first time I saw it. The only other game that had a similar effect on me was Little Big Adventure, those super smooth gouraud shaded animations and the crisp SVGA backgrounds were quite the visual treat. Syndicate had SVGA as well but a very limited color palette and only 2D bitmap characters.

Its not a game, but Razzle/Dazzle was quite the mezmerizing DOS screensaver.

Skyrim.
Crysis.
Sleeping Dogs.

Tetris, try taking your eyes off it for a few seconds.

Outland is the first thing that comes to mind.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outland_(video_game]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outland_(video_game[/url])

The Myst games, in particular Myst 3 onward. Aside from the 4:3 ratio and some minor artifacting, Myst 3 still looks impressive to this day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAShllUlEK0

..whats weird about that? DE had some nice visuals and acustics really. I know some hated it for whatever reason, but personally i liked it.

One of the most visually mesmerising game experiences ive had was in -97 when Total Annihilation was brand new and i had just build my very first plasma battery. I think i watched it turning and shooting for like half a hour or so.

Also finding the swamp in Hexen -95 :)

I guess because it was considered more of a thinking person's journey type game, and in fact it was visually quite memorable.

As far as pure mesmerizing, I could just watch a lavalamp for hours :-) or the visualizations on windows media player.

I don't guess I ever made it that far in Hexen. I lost interest in that one and went back to Doom.

I never cared much for raw graphic horsepower, but some of the games that left me in awe when I saw them (whether because they had the "wow, this thing looks like watching a cartoon!" or because I really -- I mean REALLY -- loved the art direction) are, in no particular order:

- Broken Sword: Shadow of The Templars (I had played loads of point and click adventures before, but this one felt like playing through your own Disney/Dreamworks animated movie, at the time);
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (I know it's nothing special by today's standards, but back then I felt like playing an actual cartoon in video game form, at least for me);
- The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (say what you will, cel-shaded graphics rock, and they age way better than photo-realistic ones, the original GCN version still looks absolutely gorgeous and charming);
- Psychonauts (The Milkman Conspiracy. Black Velvetopia. Need I say more?);
- Stick It to The Man! (awesome art design!);
- Guacamelee! (see Stick It to The Man!);
- Ether One (it's beautiful. Seriously. As soon as I get some money, it's going to be the first game on my GOG wishlist I'm buying!);
- Shadow of the Colossus (it's amazing what they did just relying on atmosphere and using minimalistic design. One of the best looking games ever, in my humble opinion);
- Silent Hill 3 (I played it on the PC and, my god!, it looked amazing! It's not my favorite one in the series, that honor goes to the second title, but 3 was the one that impressed me the most, visually. I think I had to get a new GPU in order to play it properly, too);
- Legacy of Kain: Defiance (I remember the game box quoting something along the lines of "the best looking Kain to date". And it was. Being a fan of the LoK series since the beginning, having fallen in love with Raziel and his storyline in Soul Reaver, after a "meh, just a cool vampire story" with Silicon Knights' Blood Omen, and having played every single game in the series along the years, seeing Raziel and Kain in such a level of detail and gameplay fluidity almost brought tears to my fanboy eyes);

Sacrifice