Digital Foundry vs. Gears of War 3

"It's safe to say that Gears of War 3 is one of the most advanced video games of this generation, and a ringing endorsement of what the Xbox 360 is capable of handling when the right people, the right tech, a lengthy development cycle and an inordinately large budget are in play. From a technological perspective, with just a few caveats that we've touched upon, the overall presentation is first class."

[DrFUD]

"screen tearing is present and noticeable."

LOL

[BeAGamer]

stop trolling:

"Lighting and effects work in Gears of War 3 is a massive improvement over previous UE3 titles"

[sack_boi]

I think he was just quoting the troll above.

[Shanks]

1. I didnt troll.
2. DrFUD quoted the article.
3. People judge comments too quicky, I'm not a troll and my comment was relevant.

[WrAiTh Sp3cTr3]

Gears 3 is the biggest leap in graphics from a sequel on the same generation of hardware, I've ever seen. There is no game out that has done such a thing and it's rather lame that this isn't pointed out.

Killzoned, just stop, you're making yourself look silly...

http://www.gamespot.com/for...

[Ju]

Gears 3 seems to look awesome. But in all honesty, it can't even stack up against R3 - and I would almost think you could consider these two comparable for various reasons (despite the fact 3rd person vs. 1st - play the R3 campaign - preferably on Superhuman - and you'd understand).

While pretty and great lightning, much improved color palette in G3, still, the levels appear lifeless in my opinion. The visuals look sharp, bright and proper lit (statically, actually lit the same as R3), AA is great. But particles are limited and so is enemy count.

"Biggest leap for a sequel" possibly on the 360, but not across the board.

[WrAiTh Sp3cTr3]

@Ju, what's funny is you seem to be serious. Whatever though...

[Ju]

@WrAiTh Sp3cTr3 what's funny is you seem to be serious. Whatever though...

[WrAiTh Sp3cTr3]

I can only hope and pray that other devs who utilize this engine step it up to this level and hopefully surpass it.

[Ju]

With that I agree, actually. And I hope that Epic will start supporting advanced features for the PS3 (like MLAA and deferred rendering) in UE3 (or UE4??) at some point. Still not there, yet.

[vandal GAB]

@Ju

R3 is sub HD and has a poor framerate. Yes gears framerate dips but the lowest it goes is 24fps which is the average framerate Crysis 2 runs on the PS3.

[Ju]

Aha. LOL. Sure.

Funny at the disagrees that UE3 doesn't need a deferred renderer. ha ha ha. UE3 is at its limits. It goes as far as it can. Not even close to modern engines; still remarkable what they squeeze out of that old tech. But a full (SW) generation behind current tech. But it shows the discrepancy and platform problems between 360 (a traditional architecture) and the PS3 (which must emulate that - with obvious deficits).

[Ghoul]

Playing the game since yesterday, and all i can say that it does look freaking incredible, outstanding game. (no its not a rip i bought it from a store)

stop the platform arguments buy the game its worth it

game on

[blackbeld]

"screen tearing is present and noticeable."

It's not trolling.

I just checked the gametrailers review and it is sadly noticeable.

But who cares gameplay ROCKS!

[PrinterMan]

AmaZinG. Your comments are WAY off buddy. Uncharted may be a different game than Gears but to class it so lightly ? c'mon. Barely see enemies on screen? What? Go play it then comment. I have not played Gears 3 (and probably never will as Microsoft is evil :) yet but from what I have heard the fans will be very happy. Just don't do the political crap and bash the competition to make you look better. That's not the way to do things. If it's good it's good on it's own merit.

[baodeus]

can we just give it a rest. Good game is good game, who care which console it is on. Both Gears and UC are great franchise. Can't wait for Gears.

[Unaffected]

i second this

[baodeus]

ok, so we should be proud of being a single console owner? So much for proclaiming yourself as a gamer.

[Jocosta]

I have not played Gears 3 (and probably never will as Microsoft is evil :)

Everything you say beyond this point is irrelevant, because your just another popular belief sheep.

[Biggest]

The rest of his comment was "but from what I have heard the fans will be very happy". How is that not a valid statement? I wish people had more critical thinking skills. The whole "I shut my brain down because I don't like you" thing is stupid.

Edit: Like death2smoochie's comment. . . He didn't say ANYTHING about other corporations. He didn't so much as express affection to anything. How you added your thoughts to his thoughts is beyond me.

[Jocosta]

I do have critical thinking skills friend, I just don't care for the perpetual irrational hate for a corporation, I do not care what else he had to say whether it was positive or negative about Gears. And don't throw around terms like "critical thinking" when you clearly don't even know what it means.

[Biggest]

"reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

You were unable to decide on what to believe or do after reading a small statement that didn't agree with your views. A critical thinker would have been able to see past their own feelings to understand the meaning of the entire comment and react accordingly. You did not do that. Now we both know what critical thinking means and how you were unable to apply it in this instance.

[PrinterMan]

Really Jocosta. Your opinion, but notice I did not Bash Gears at all. I thought my comment was an opinion only. I do not like Microsoft but I did not say Gears was crap because of it did I?! And yes as an open source advocate Microsoft is EVIL. Again, my opinion and I am alloed to have one just like you.

PS I am not a sheep. My views are solely based on MY opinion not the popular vote.

[death2smoochie]

MS is Evil and all other corporations are goddie goodie? LOL
Oh man only on N4G.COM

[DigitalRaptor]

Not at all.

It's just some companies have better consumer standards is all.

p.s. Gears 3 is clearly a great game!

[XabiDaChosenOne]

Anybody honestly expecting better? Great looking game, just not better than the competition.

[Unaffected]

arguably the best looking game on consoles until rage comes out

[Unaffected]

get those eyes checked

[omi25p]

From what ive seen of it i think its the best looking game this gen so far.

[zod]

LOL RESISTANNCE 3 NATIVE RESO..900 X 600. in 2d.Its a sub-hd game unlike Gears 3..its nothing like Gears 3....

[Ju]

"its nothing like Gears 3"

True. There is actually stuff going on in R3. Not like lifeless backdrops you run through over and over again in Gears.

Well, I still think it looks awesome, Gears, that is. Much better than the first, and significantly improved over 2.

But downtalking other games doesn't make it better. I shouldn't judge Gears3; I admit. I played the first, and find its one of the most overrated games. Difficulty is defined through a simple hit counter; none of the NPCs ever get smarter the harder the game gets. You load them up with bullets; and when harder you just fill them up with more. WTH. Color palette was the biggest issue from the start - yet other games got the flak.

It looks Gears3 improved on all those levels. I would play it. Looks much better now. Don't have a 360 and won't get one for that game; so, I will be missing out this time. Or maybe someday I will get me a 360.

So, that said, enjoy the game. I think its worth enjoying, one of the best games this year, but again, it is getting overrated like crazy. Nothing new here, though.

[zod]

Kz3 also had fps dips...minor tech issues are in every game..Screen tearing is not big..it happens coz of all those lightning effects during intense firefights....

Overall its super polished nd best looking 360 game and one of the best games of this Gen..haters will hate

Getting such visuals on 360 is really no joke as 360 has a extremely dated hardware unlike PS3...Forza 4 is also another example of gr8 visuals on 360

[402]

xbox 360 hardware and ps3 hardware are equally dated in fact the ps3s rsx gpu is far more dated than the 360s gpu which has directx10 functions and a multiple pass tesselator(terribly weak by todays standards but better than nothing). the 360s gpu is also much more powerful than the rsx from every angle(polygon and geometry throughput, fillrates, memory bandwidth, efficiency, feature-set(flexibility)

on the cpu side the ps3s cell is much more powerful when it comes to graphics processing and physics performance because it has much higher SINGLE precison compute power(which is vital for such tasks) while the 360s cpu wins in branch prediction(which is vital for unscripted Ai performance as well as running conventional OS such as linux) and general purpose performance(can compute much more computer instructions per second than the cell)

in the memory department the 360 has a better memory architecture and also has more usable ram than ps3 due to lower OS memory footprint(504MB on 360 is uable compared to 480mb on ps3). to top it off memory can go to waste on ps3 if both the rsx and spus require the same render targets to carry out a task because in such cases the render target will need to be copied back and forth(which costs processing time and latency) or copied into BOTH the gddr3 and xdr(if the render target is 5mb when copied into both pools of ram it will take up 10mb ram in total, 5mb out of each pool)

overall ps3 is slightly more powerful but will need more work to get the little extra power out. I have both gears 3 and uncharted 2 and gears 3 does look better than UC2 and also better than killzone 3 and crysis 2 you'll have to play it yourself without fanboy glasses on to see it UC3 still looks better than gears 3 though.

the only part of 360 thast extremely dated compared to ps3 is the dvd drive

[RGB]

Textures still look horrendous, must be something to do with the Unreal engine. No POM textures, no mega textures and still looks as bad as the first game. Hopefully Unreal 4 can sort this out.

http://images.eurogamer.net...

Everything looks poor and low quality besides her skin and hair.

[humbleopinion]

That's because her skin (except the tatoos) and hair are not basic textures like the armor you see there.
Unreal engine streams textures on the fly. Combine that with consoles that have low graphics memory (things always need to be swapped) and you can get some nasty glimps of the low-res texture before the high-res texture is streamed.
It's a disadvantage but the downs are minor (you don't play the game from the perspective on this pic after all). On the other hand it enables amazing large scale dynamic scenes that you don't see on many other game engines.

[Legion]

I can't believe the numbers of trolls on this post? Are people so annoyed with positive remarks to a game that they have to jump into a post and start pushing their own favorite games?

N4G... gotta love it.