Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Deepblue on July 29, 2005, 02:26:37 am
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While this matter is probably extremely subjective, which do you think looks best out of Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Far Cry, and Halo 2 (hardly fair considering resolution and hardware limits, but it has good post-effects).
A sampling of each...
Half-Life 2:
(http://www.fpsteam.it/img2004/half-life2/half-life2_12.jpg)
Doom 3:
(http://www.goodgame.se/upload/gameguide/games/PC/doom3/screenshots/screen8.jpg)
Far Cry:
(http://www.matbe.com/articles/softs/farcry/images/FarCry0021.jpg)
Halo 2:
(more screenies 'cause there are just so damn many)
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/reviews/562116_20041105_screen002.jpg)
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/reviews/562116_20041105_screen066.jpg)
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/reviews/562116_20041105_screen065.jpg)
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/reviews/562116_20041105_screen124.jpg)
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/reviews/562116_20041105_screen045.jpg)
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/reviews/562116_20041105_screen003.jpg)
*wonders how Halo 2 would have looked at full potential on a high-end PC*
EDIT: Damn, this was supposed to be a poll...
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None of them. At the moment, I think Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory with the SM3 stuff and HDR turned on looks better than anything else out there.
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Well.... That's not a 1st person shooter, so ha! *wishes he could change the title of the thread...*
EDIT: On another note, can someone please enlighten me on why SC: CT is rated M?
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That F-16 game someone posted somewhere.
Barring that I'd go with Halo 2. It just looks so damn good, even on a TV.
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Well.... That's not a 1st person shooter, so ha! *wishes he could change the title of the thread...*
You just said "games." :p
Out of the ones you listed, I think Far Cry has the edge if you use HDR (and tone down its effects, which are too strong by default). Otherwise it's really a toss up between that and Doom 3. HL2 for the most part looks like it's about two years old while Halo 2 might have looked good if you could run it at anything higher than 640x480 or whatever standard TVs run on.
Speaking of Far Cry, I just noticed this in the game directory and had to post it: :D
(http://home.comcast.net/~cp5670/FarCry0000.jpg)
EDIT: On another note, can someone please enlighten me on why SC: CT is rated M?
Who knows. I stopped paying attention to those ratings long ago. Another strange one was Descent 3, which I think was rated T for some reason.
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Halo 2 FTW.
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I like Doom 3 the most but it always seems that halo 2 makes use of alot of lighting effects to look so good. Still Doom 3 and halo 2 are an even match for me.
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[Strike]Freespace 2![/Strike]
Halo 2 looks good, but seems to have problems with Anti Aliasing in game,
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FarCry all the way.
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I don't think there's any decisive winner - but if you really forced me I'd go with Doom 3.
Doom 3 has the most impressive engine going for it. Its potential is really very special indeed, and while some of the objects do look "plastic" - with a little tweaking you can get it looking incredible.
Half Life 2 really doesn't look that great in default. It has an HDR bloom mod that is quite nice, and the engine has some nice tricks up its sleeve, but overall it just doesn't seem to quite measure up to the mark.
Far Crys lush environments and massive areas of play (while maintaining high frame rates) are really very nice, but the textures lean more towards the "comic" than the "real" which isn't to my taste entirely. Also, the player models are a bit long in the tooth now. Some of this could be down to a matter of taste though.
Halo 2 just doesn't look that special. It looks good - but it doesn't really separate itself from the pack at all. Again this could be down to a matter of taste (and I've never actually played it, I'm going on the screenshots).
I'd like to nominate a game of my own if I may. Need For Speed Underground 2 on the PC. Normally I don't play driving games for the PC and I wasn't sure I'd like this one - but I thought I'd give it a go. Having cranked the settings up - I must say I'm very pleasently suprised. It looks quite simply fantastic. If Grand Theft Auto upgrades to a similar look - it'd be a landmark game. It does look a lot better when it's moving (but these things always do). Suffice to say, it does quite a nice job.
(http://www.zen8740.zen.co.uk/pics/nfsu2.jpg)
Update:
Also, when you think about it, personal taste plays a big big part as well. Half Life 2 focuses more on decaying East European cities etc. Doom 3 is all about claustrophobic corridors of a military installation - therefore quite drab colours. Far Cry takes the prize for vast open spaces and lush vegitation.
The point is, if you hate dark and claustophobic corridors then of course Doom 3 is a bad choice. If wide open vegetation doesn't float your boat then Far Cry won't win the prize for you. So it's not necessarily down to which looks best - but to which looks best at showing off the bits you like about gaming.
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HL2 for me. If they'd put more detail in the levels it would have been spectacular. I prefer Far Cry's vegetation (though the distance clipping on the grass etc was annoying), but the Source water effects blow it away. Doom 3 sucked on all counts, and I haven't played Halo 2 so I can't comment on it...
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i dunno, i'd say Halo 2, because not only did it look pretty, but it had a cinematic feel to it, one that either HL2, D3 or Far Cry have failed to reproduce, that said, all of the others have their memorable moments, too.
note: the latter three games are either coming, or are on the Xbox, post screenies and see which ones survived the console porting ;)
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Originally posted by Deepblue
Halo 2:
(more screenies 'cause there are just so damn many)
...
*wonders how Halo 2 would have looked at full potential on a high-end PC*
Gee, you've in no way tried to load the question, have you?
Um, HL2 had the most convincing environments IMO, but in terms of graphical impressiveness Far Cry was better.
Halo 2 looks nothing special compared to either. It's probably about the same level IMO as Call of Duty, but with more shiny bits.
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
I'd like to nominate a game of my own if I may. Need For Speed Underground 2 on the PC. Normally I don't play driving games for the PC and I wasn't sure I'd like this one - but I thought I'd give it a go. Having cranked the settings up - I must say I'm very pleasently suprised. It looks quite simply fantastic.
:yes:
Agree with you there Kal. NFS:U2 does look pretty impressive when everything is flying past you at speed.
That's a pretty impressive bank balance for a street racer though. I guess we know why we never see police in the game. He must have bought out the whole city :D
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I'm waiting for Need For Speed Underground: Gifnock.
You start off racing stolen Asda trolleys, before moving to driving Vauxhall novas with blacked-out windows, a completely usless spoiler, a non-functional decorative second exhaust*, and a big Bang & Oluffson stereo sticker on the back (belying that the actual stereo is made by Alba and cost 20 quid from Tesco).
The aim being, of course, to win back your fake burberry cap & kappa tracksuit collection, a race at a time - and then to go professional to pay for your hearing aids (having deafened yourself playing Bonkers 14 - available from Woolworths - at 200 decibels on your ****ty car stereo)
*also available; useless bucked exhaust with no benefit beyond scraping across the ground
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Actually that's a screenshot from my own game Kara... I got bored early on when I realised that you were allowed to unlock new tech and just get your car up to scratch... only for them to let you have access to a better car.
So now I drive the races to unlock the tech - but I can afford them any time I want. Less arsing about waiting ;)
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It looks plastic at times, but I prefer Doom 3's dark twisting hallways filled with bizarre science fictionery. HL2's engine doesn't really impress me, and I found most of the environments to look pretty boring (the architecture especially), though they did have their moments. Far Cry can be quite impressive at times, but I'm not a fan of its cartoony bright colours. Halo 2 I think is somewhere between Doom 3 and Far Cry for me.
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For those of you who don't like the cartoony look of Far Cry, set the render style to Cold. I also thought that the default style looked strange, but this makes it look a lot better. The colors are even better with HDR enabled and properly configured.
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Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn
It looks plastic at times, but I prefer Doom 3's dark twisting hallways filled with bizarre science fictionery. HL2's engine doesn't really impress me, and I found most of the environments to look pretty boring (the architecture especially), though they did have their moments. Far Cry can be quite impressive at times, but I'm not a fan of its cartoony bright colours. Halo 2 I think is somewhere between Doom 3 and Far Cry for me.
Funny that, as I got bored of D3's constant Industrial pipes'n' railings pretty quickly.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
I'm waiting for Need For Speed Underground: Gifnock.
You start off racing stolen Asda trolleys, before moving to driving Vauxhall novas with blacked-out windows, a completely usless spoiler, a non-functional decorative second exhaust*, and a big Bang & Oluffson stereo sticker on the back (belying that the actual stereo is made by Alba and cost 20 quid from Tesco).
The aim being, of course, to win back your fake burberry cap & kappa tracksuit collection, a race at a time - and then to go professional to pay for your hearing aids (having deafened yourself playing Bonkers 14 - available from Woolworths - at 200 decibels on your ****ty car stereo)
*also available; useless bucked exhaust with no benefit beyond scraping across the ground
Or the American counterpart, where you start off in your rusted '88 Honda CRX shell, before moving up to a 93 Civic hatchcrap, which is so low to the ground it scrapes on the tiniest bumps. Slowly you buy your 'OMG WOW LOLZ! Completely 'legit' Integra Type R' motor, and put it in your 1200.00 civic. Get extremely flared body pieces, paint your car an oulandish shade of yellow/green/pink/flatblack and cover it in vinyl. 10 more horsepower y0!
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I'd say Doom3, easily...
HL2 was a great game with great graphics and a great engine, but take away the revolutionary physics, and you're left with a average sequel with default graphics that don't really set it apart from the pack...
Far Cry was also a great game with great graphics, but - as is mentioned several times - they went for a 'comic-y' look for their graphics, but it nonetheless looks quite nice...
Halo 2, well, i've never particularly like the Halo series, and i fail to see the point in pitting it against PC games where they clearly have the edge over an average console game...it could have been un-bloody-real had Microsoft not whored it on the XBox, but alas; until an incarnation on the PC bringing with it the bells and whistles to go along with it, Halo 2 shall remain in graphical mediocrity in my eyes...
And finally, Doom 3; she had all the grace, style, and scares a mindless shoot-'em-up should have, nothing more, nothing less. People may ***** about the repetitive game style leading to unneccisarily dark graphics, but the game is meant to be a mindless repedetive shooter, akin to the great Dooms of old...indeed, a great step forward in graphical cosmetics. If you could get the physics/water-effects/bloom of HL2 with the cosmetic look of D3, and the story of...well...a good story; which seems to be a hard ask in todays world of Sequels, remakes, and cliched premises, you'd have yourself one *****in' game...
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I think they each manage to do one thing just right and the rest is just decent. Far Cry has the best vegetation, HL2 has the best water and shaders, and Doom 3 has the best shadows, even if there are too many of them.
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The only one I have played is Halo 2, and it bores me just like the first one. Graphics are nothin wonderful ether, with some bad texturing.
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Doom 3.
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I think they each manage to do one thing just right and the rest is just decent. Far Cry has the best vegetation, HL2 has the best water and shaders, and Doom 3 has the best shadows, even if there are too many of them.
I thought Far Cry had great indoor areas too and was quite comparable to Doom 3 in that respect. The geometry was less detailed but it used significantly higher resolution textures than D3.
HL2 was a strange game in terms of its graphics. The character models/animations and water effects are very impressive and easily the best of any game out there, but everything else looks quite outdated, with little detail in the levels and hardly any lighting to speak of (which is even apparent in the left side of that screenshot). It's basically how games looked like a few years ago, except with next generation NPCs and water.
Anyway, SCCT is a bit superior to all of them, with the exception of the bug eyed Sam Fisher. They really screwed up his face in this game.
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I thought the Doom 3 character faces were MUCH better than those in Half Life 2.
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Originally posted by Turnsky
i dunno, i'd say Halo 2, because not only did it look pretty, but it had a cinematic feel to it, one that either HL2, D3 or Far Cry have failed to reproduce, that said, all of the others have their memorable moments, too.
note: the latter three games are either coming, or are on the Xbox, post screenies and see which ones survived the console porting ;)
Wish granted.
Half-Life 2 (Xbox)
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/e3/0515/halflife2/914642_20030515_screen026.jpg)
Best of all, no Steam!
Doom 3 (Xbox)
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2005/090/reviews/914444_20050401_screen001.jpg)
Mmmmm... Co-op...
Far Cry Instincts (Xbox)
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2005/208/917534_20050729_screen002.jpg)
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Originally posted by Deepblue
Wish granted.
Half-Life 2 (Xbox)
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/e3/0515/halflife2/914642_20030515_screen026.jpg)
Best of all, no Steam!
That's not xbox; that's a beta shot of the PC version (from several years ago no less), they removed that enemy as it was quite **** to play against. If gamespot have it in their HL2 xbox section, they must be fannying about with a lack of real media.
AFAIK the HL2 xbox version is pretty much the same as PC, but with reduced texture resolution.
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Originally posted by Jetmech Jr.
I thought the Doom 3 character faces were MUCH better than those in Half Life 2.
That rather depends.. Shortly after D3 was released someone released a mod to upgrade the detail on all the main charachters/enemies heads - the difference is quite noticable.
But are we taking mods into account here? I mean HL2 has no automatic HDR blooming enabled - but you can download a mod to get it running. Or should we take each game at stock value, as it was published?
As an aside, Doom 3 has by far the best lighting system of them all. As I recall it calculates everything on a per pixel basis - where other games use maps it acurately works out all the lights in real time.
At least I think that's what it does ;)
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Aye. IIRC, Doom3 is so dark because it was too (computationally) expensive to calculate all the shadows from a uniform / many light source/s. So they cut down the number of light source.
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I'm pretty sure it was just dark because it's a horror game. In the map editor there's a type of light you can use called ambient lights - they don't cast shadows. If you wanted a bright area, that's what you'd use.
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That's sort of what i mean; ambient doesn't cast shadows because of the workload had it done so. Of course, some of the darkness was atmospheric; but IMO some would also be necessitated.
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Sometimes it seemed to handle bright areas quite well.. Hell, Mars and the UAC complex when you first arrive (and everything is brightly lit and nothing has gone wrong yet) all look fine.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
That's not xbox; that's a beta shot of the PC version (from several years ago no less), they removed that enemy as it was quite **** to play against. If gamespot have it in their HL2 xbox section, they must be fannying about with a lack of real media.
AFAIK the HL2 xbox version is pretty much the same as PC, but with reduced texture resolution.
Hmmm, I can't seem to find screenshots of the Xbox version on the internet. I do remember seeing a screenshot in a mag a while back though.
On the other hand, Far Cry Instincts looks very nice.
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I've played both Doom 3 and Half Life 2 on my PC both cranked up to full, and i gotta say, HL2 looks so much better than Doom 3 i can't believe people are even arguing about it.
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D3 has its strengths...but the character models and such are just ****. I literally winced when I saw the PC's face.
HL2's environments are closer to photorealistic; Doom 3's are a little more cartoon-y, IMO.
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I'd have to say Doom 3. Half Life 2 was too bright and cartoony, while Halo 2...well, if it was on the computer with a higher res, I'd vote for it, but as is it's too low res for me. Doom 3 also has way better lighting and shadows :D
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I haven't played any of these games, but I do know a game that would get my vote (besides FS2_Open, of course ;)): Myst IV. It may not compare technically to these games due to much of its scenery being prerendered, but I've never seen another game that's so photorealistic and stunningly beautiful. I truly felt that I was walking through those Ages instead of clicking through them. :D
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Pre-rendered doesn't count.
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Originally posted by Mongoose
I haven't played any of these games, but I do know a game that would get my vote (besides FS2_Open, of course ;)): Myst IV. It may not compare technically to these games due to much of its scenery being prerendered, but I've never seen another game that's so photorealistic and stunningly beautiful. I truly felt that I was walking through those Ages instead of clicking through them. :D
Mm. It's a pity Myst 5 is going to be the last one.
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No it's not. Why don't you read a proper book ?
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Not enough pictures?
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Originally posted by Roanoke
No it's not. Why don't you read a proper book ?
Yeah I tried that once, but I couldn't find any puzzles so I got bored.
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Well, I could always make a powerpoint presentation with crosswords if you want a myst-alike.
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Doom 3
Far-Cry looked too cartoony for my tastes, and I havn't played HL2 but it looks as if they took older/common tech but basically pimped it out wheras Doom 3 has a really good/new engine, therefore Doom 3 also has the greatest graphical potential.