The storm in Life Is Strange was hella intense.
GTA3
Minecraft, it’s just relaxes me every time it storms.
EverQuest
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.
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.
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 around and, in some cases, off the planet.
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.
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?”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The ganon fights from Wind Waker and Skyward Sword are similarly cinematic!
Ganon has a thing for theatrics
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.