I'd say Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2). Everything about the atmosphere in that game was immersive - graphics were good enough that I didn't notice they were graphics. I genuinely felt cold, wet, hot, windblown, or joyful at the various weather/environment situations in the game.
BOTW/TOTK is pretty memorable because it has a mechanical effect. Climbing becomes harder due to wet surfaces being slippery, and lightning can strike things killing them, damaging things and setting fires.
I loved the storms in BOTW. The rainy atmosphere and the mechanical effects were really well done.
In a similar vein, Majora's Mask has a fantastic thunderstorm on day 2 of the cycle.
This is one of the two that jump to mind. Red Dead Redemption 2 had beautiful, atmospheric storms that were a sight to behold at a distance. Breath of the Wild brought the lightning up close and personal.
There's nothing quite like deciding to take a fight in a thunderstorm while the only gear you have left is metal, or carefully sneaking up on an enemy only to have a bolt of nature's electric fury crash down two meters behind you and shake the ground you're standing on. Especially in surround sound.
I feel like I'm biased and it's my answer for everything, but RDR2. No other game environment has come close, for me. Screenshot from one moody moment I captured:
Rockstar is no nonsense with their thunderstorms. The ones in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City are particularly wild.
In Valheim it was quite real and comfy at the same time. Weird I know.
I have a tower built off a pine tree. When it thunderstorms, I race up the stairs to go Thor-spotting
Though they're a mix of sandstorm/thunderstorm (like in the movie), the Mad Max game from Avalanche.
One of the few games where I thought storms were an actual danger.
The way those storms rolled in and turned peace into pure chaos. Driving around avoiding thunderstrikes. Going on foot meant having to dodge pieces of debris or getting yeeted to some unknown part of the map. Actually required to take shelter somewhere. Storms felt actually like it really added something to the game beyond just a different skybox and rain. That was good shit.
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!
Sailing games like black flag, valheim, and sea of thieves had pretty fun weather iirc
+1 for sea of thieves.
Stalker ~ Stalker gamma but those storms are a little more than a thunderstorm..
Came here to mention just that. Base Stalker has some nice storms, but the mods built into Gamma make those absolutely terrifying. I think I genuinely fear the weather more than any mutated monster in the Zone.
Alone at a fire or surrounded by allies, those storms still make me anxious. Like I'm in the child's nightmare version of a storm
Super Metroid.
Surface of Crateria has a thunderstorm for the entire length of the game.
Incorrect... The storm actually ends after you get the Varia suit and the music turns from dark and brooding to more heroic.
It still wins for one of the moodiest openings to a game, in my opinion. It really makes me wish that Metroid leaned even harder into the horror stuff
@games Battlefield Bad Company 2 has a sniping mission in a thunderstorm. You use the thunder to hide your shots and that one was memorable to me.
And I think Far Cry 3 or Blood Dragon had thunderstorms somewhere? But of that i'm not sure anymore
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've always liked the storm in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC from Mass Effect 2. It takes place on a ship chasing the sunset on a planet with a really slow rotation, and there's a massive storm at the terminator. It looks amazing.
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.
Best chill weather: FFXIV
Turn off the music and sit in a zone listening to the rain and thunder while talking to friends. A+.
This game has excellent ambient sounds. I turn the music off often and just listen. Sometimes it's fun to just wander or find a little nook to craft in nature.
Red Dead Redemption 2 hands down
This 👆
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.
Witcher 3 and Skyrim are pretty good. RDR2 is great, particularly because you can see it coming.
As much as the rest of the game is an exercise in tedium and complete disrespect of the player's time and intelligence, the thunderstorm event in Spiritfarer is pretty rad, and definitely one of its high points.
At least the first time. The charm wears off after the 9th or 10th time you do it just because you need to grind for the one material you can get from it, and only from it.
I really tried to like spiritfarer. It’s popular and conceptually my kind of game.
How tf did they manage to make it so awful. I still don’t understand. I played like 4 hours and not once had anything approaching fun. Even the emotional impact of the first storm was ruined by that terrible minigame.
I think the best way to approach Spiritfarer is as a somewhat cryptic expression if its core conceit: Thanklessly doing a bunch of repetitive chores for dying relatives who mostly act still like dicks towards you for your trouble, and bending over backwards to structure your time and living space around catering to them. The only reward for hard work is more work, and ever more specific and petulant demands. This inevitably evolves to all of your obligations piling up to the point that there literally aren't enough hours in the day and your progress in your own life (or your boat) grinds to a halt. And when they finally die you're stuck dealing with all their stuff, forever.
It's an interactive metaphor. And while hilarious when taken as a whole, perhaps from the perspective of it all being an elaborate troll, it actually makes for a kind of lousy video game.
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.
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.
A Link to the Past was the first thing to come to mind. Of course many games since have done storms much better, but that one had the biggest impact on me personally. The jump from 8 to 16 bits was a hell of a thing!
Whenever it rains, I still hum that tune. Gives a certain mood to it all.
Reminds me of when the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros 3 added thunder and lightning to the background of the Koopa airships. It may have been the coolest upgrade to the whole vibe of that game.
Thunderstorms in Baldur's Gate (the old ones) could outright kill you. Scary stuff.
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.
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.
The storm in Life Is Strange was hella intense.
Sea of Thieves overall best. Hunt: Showdown a close second
I think that "best" is open to various interpretations.
The most-emotionally-impactful in the context of the game?
The most-graphically-impressive?
The best-integrated with the game?
I often don't try and play the latest-and-greatest games, and while I'm sure that I've played games with thunderstorms in them, I can't immediately recall any recent first-person 3D games...and I've kind of shifted way from FPSes in recent years. Probably the newest 3D game that I can immediately recall playing that I distinctly recall having thunderstorms -- though I think that they were rain is modded Fallout 4; I was using one of the weather mods.
I think it was one of:
There are radstorms that impact gameplay by dosing the player with radiation, and I suppose could be considered to a different form of thunderstorm. These are separate from normal storms. Fallout 76 also has radstorms, but they are less-frequent and far-less-damaging than in (modded, don't recall base game) Fallout 4.
I guess that that'd probably be the most-graphically-impressive that I personally can recall off-the-cuff. I'm sure that there must be some newer, fancier thunderstorms out there.
For impact...I can't recall for certain whether-or-not there was actual thunder and lighting other than in cutscenes, though there's certainly rain.. But The Saboteur is an Assassin's Creed-style game (I understand; I've never played more than a very small amount of those games) set in World War II Paris. The areas that are occupied by Nazi forces are mostly black and white, with a small amount of color, mostly red, and at least some of the time, it's raining. The areas where forces have been pushed back look kind of like spring. I think that it added to the game's atmosphere a lot.
Most recent time I was awestruck by a thunderstorm in a game? Forza Horizon 5. One of the early missions involved heading out in the jungle during a massive thunderstorm and it was just legendary. Visuals, audio, everything.
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.
Minecraft, it’s just relaxes me every time it storms.
MSFS 2020
Mafia's "A Trip to the Country" mission has to be up there for best thunderstorm. The atmosphere in the Remake was even better.
EverQuest
I swear I've come across an indie game that had great thunderstorms, but I can't remember what it was for the life of me.
That said, imo The Sims as a series has had good thunderstorms. Being outside can result in your Sim being hit by lightning, and iirc there are things that'll increase the chance of getting hit, like being wet, being in a pool, holding an umbrella, etc. I'm not sure which game has the best thunderstorms though.
VRchat has some worlds with really good ambience, and typically they include rain and/or thunderstorms to some extent. You don't actually need VR, you can play VRC on a normal monitor.
I've just realized that one of the things that Risk of Rain 2 is missing, is a persistent thunderstorm that gets stronger as the difficulty gets higher, lowering your visibility over time.
For atmosphere, I was floored by Kingdom Come: Deliverance's storms. They really did a good job of capturing the deep rumble of an approaching storm out on the plains.
I've yet to find a game that properly rolls in a distant storm that eventually grows into an intense one. They tend to come on very quickly and escalate to 10 in about 20 seconds.
Icarus is about the only one that gives me the "ah shit storm comin" vibes
Uru and Mabinogi has surprisingly good audio with theirs.
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
Permanently Deleted
Modded Skyrim
The opening act of Little Big Adventure 2 gets my vote.
There was something magical about Little Big Adventures.
I only played through the second one but the thing that got me was just how ambitious it was. It ruined many other games for me as I was left thinking "Where's the rest of the game?".
Umineko no Naku Koro ni
