Comparisions between the 360 demo and PS3 demo
- As far controls go, I definetly prefer the control over Tequila with the SIXAXIS! This is due in part that I've really fallen in love with the sensitivity, resistance, and range of movement with the Analog Sticks on Sony's controller overtime. Controlling the reticule and Tequila just felt sooo much more fluid and responsive.
With the 360 controller's resistance (which i'm NOT a fan of), aiming and movement just isn't as "smooth" and "deliberate." You can be slightly moving the stick in a direction just for it abruptly shift in response and you go from a walk to a full on run. Its obsessive, but little things like this matter to me. As a whole though, this can be something very much tweaked to no end to get just right (see Resistance: Fall of man). Who knows though, as the final build may have more tweaked response with the 360 controller (as aiming overall felt tightened), couple with the fact they may have had more time polish the controls on the Sixaxis. Also preferred the "deadzone" calibration on the Sixaxis more
-Okay here we go! As far as I could tell after extensively playing BOTH builds back to back, is that they are essentially identical!
Allow me to go into more detail. So I was playing this on a 40inch S2000 Bravia, with the 360 version running through component and the PS3 running HDMI
When I finally launched into the PS3 demo, the first thing I noticed IMMEDIATELY was *gasp*...the color saturation just wasn't as "vibrant" as when I was flipping the input back to my 360 demo running. I thought this might be a similar situation with something like Rainbow Six: Vegas, which on PS3, has a much more subdued/dulled overall color palette.
...Also, the contrast wasn't popping as much....THEN, I realized the nature of running things through component as opposed through HDMI, and how component can tend to bump up saturation on colors and contrast.
Once I got past that, I took that into consideration and moved onto something else...
Next was textures and resolution of them throughout the environment. Here at first I thought the 360 build was maybe throwing out a few more visual tricks, like when staring at some bricks wall, it seemed like some of them might have some "displacement mapping" going on to make the bricks pop out more. When I flipped back and forth though between both inputs, the more and more I saw this wasn't the case. BOTH the 360 version and PS3 version seemingly have the SAME low res-ish textures in the EXACT same places.
Stranglehold as whole, doesn't have the strongest (read muddy) textures in alotta places (walls, NPCs, etc), but I still thought the 360 version might have a few slightly higher-res ones scatter throughout the environment....there isn't. At least from what I could tell flipping back and forth between inputs over and over again....as I said before, texture wise, the two skus are seemingly identical...
Moving on to Aliasing, from what I understand, UE3 doesn't do any real aliasing and in the case with Stranglehold it shows on BOTH versions....so no "free AA" for the 360 version...its just as jaggy as the PS3 version. Though at first I didn't think so, but then I again realized the component input was probably just "smoothing/blurring" things out more.
Now time to move on a to "effects"....namely Massive D
Once again, it appears that Massive D spread carnage is identical on BOTH platforms. I shot up several walls, pillars, tables, chairs, etc. and each time it seemed like both versions were spitting out an identical amount of debris.....with NO slowdown differences
Bloom lighting also appears identical....though at first it seemed like there was more pronounced in the 360 version, especially when going into "tequila time"....upon further inspection, it honestly doesn't seem like it
Finally I'll talk about the framerate. The only real difference in framerate between the PS3 version and the 360 version, is that in the 360 demo it appears like the devs "left Vsync" completely off...hence when looking at walls or in interiors, the framerate shoots up into 60+ fps. The PS3 version doesn't....but it looks like they probably turned Vsync back on in this build, because I didn't notice any tearing and the framerate almost stayed locked at 30fps the entire time....so basically it seems the the performance of both versions are also the same....except the Vsync thing, so I like to hear from somene who has the final retail 360 version and if they could tell me if it appears they turned Vsync back on...
....a comparision would be if you liked Bioshock with the "framerate unlocked" or not...thats the difference here...though your NOT getting a bump in "visual fidelity" with the locked 30fps on the PS3 demo...
-Anothering I noticed with the animations was how it seemed like maybe Tequila's animations had been "polished" just a hair more...It just seemed like he wasn't AS spazzy when moving throughout the environment, then when he was on the 360 build...then again, this could be just attributed to the added "range/lesson resistance" with the SIXAXIS analogs.....
