FP does a cross-gen comparison

fearsomepirate

Dinosaur Hunter
Veteran
I broke down and bought Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. It's what my friends are playing (especially since EA didn't do QA for BF4), and after 145 hours of Skyrim, I'd like to play something else.

(P.S. if, like me, you thought Bethesda games were garbage, Skyrim is really good.)

One of the really cool things companies are doing to get you to buy digital versions is cross-selling the current and last-gen versions. Most of my friends play COD on PS3, so this was especially nice.

I did a cross-gen comparison with Call of Duty: World at War where I played it on the PS3, then played it on the Wii (which was roughly on par with the Xbox in terms of hardware). I didn't post about it here, but here's a short recap:

-The difference in resolution, lighting, and facial detail was pretty jarring.
-There was also a noticeable lack of effects like gloss, shimmer, and reflections.
-That said, Treyarch did a fantastic job with the game on Wii.

Now, I'm playing them sequentially rather than side-by-side for a good reason. Basically, I don't want to focus on differences I wouldn't notice without focus and effort. I'm not mashing my face up against a wall to compare textures or pausing the game to see just how different the muzzle flash is from one game to another. I just want to see how the games "feel" and try to get a good, realistic picture of the subjective, experiential difference between one game and the other when I focus on the game itself. AW is competently executed on both consoles, i.e, it looks pretty good compared to the launch titles on PS4 (certainly better than Ghosts), and it's one of the better-looking PS3 games. I also played the new-gen version first to get a feel for how painful it is to regress. Below are my impressions after playing the first level.

First are the most obvious differences, i.e., the ones I immediately noticed and make the purchase of new hardware feel most justified:

1. The most noticeable, qualitative difference is the gamma. For some reason which I don't entirely understand, Call of Duty tended to have a more washed-out appearance than many PS3 games. This was an issue Treyarch managed to overcome with Black Ops II. But whatever the reason, AW definitely looks grayer and less vibrant.

2. The second most obvious difference is the image quality (resolution/aliasing/texture shimmer). In any case, it is noticeably grainier and more shimmery on the PS3---not as bad as going from the PS3 to the Wii, but still constantly apparent.

3. The third thing is that scenes just seem less detailed overall. I could not exactly put my finger on it while playing. There are probably fewer objects, particles, decals, shadows, dynamic effects, and the like on the PS3, and I'm sure the texture detail plays into that as well.

4. Environment-mapped reflections all look pretty bad on the PS3. Any time there is a reflection on a surface, it looks low quality.

5. Facial animation and detail in the in-engine cutscenes was quite a bit worse on PS3. Robo-Spacey appears to have broken servos in his lip actuators on the PS3.

Second are things I only sometimes noticed:

1. Surprisingly, I did not notice low-quality textures often. Sometimes, a blurry, blocky texture stood out. Most of the time, I didn't notice. While the higher-quality textures overall contributed to the more detailed look of the PS4 version, obviously ugly textures did not stand out very often on the PS3.

2. I occasionally noticed missing effects---places where it would be logical for a flash, a flare, pouring smoke, etc to be. There were a couple moments when the developers showed off some dramatic, cool effect on the PS4 that was obviously not there on the PS3.

3. I sometimes noticed blocky geometry on the PS3. Nothing really looked blocky when I played level on the PS4.

4. I sometimes noticed the quality difference in NPC models because they were closer to my character more often.

Third are things where I genuinely didn't notice any difference---I'm not saying there was no difference, I'm saying I didn't notice whatever difference there may have been when playing the games back to back:

1. Audio quality.
2. Weapon model and texture quality.
3. Enemy model and texture quality.
4. Control responsiveness.
5. Quality of menu/interface screens.
6. Frame rate.
7. Quality of item pickups, HUD, etc.

Overall summary:

While the concept of diminishing returns is hard to quantify, I think reflecting on the subjective experience of going backward from one generation to another makes it more apparent. The short version is that each generation, jumping backward is less and less unpleasant and jarring. For example, all of those things on my last list were big, very noticeable differences between N64 and PS2 cross-gen. Even on my first list, while the quality difference in cutscene faces is obvious, it's not as grotesque as the difference between Solid Snake's face in Metal Gear Solid on the PS1 and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes on the Gamecube, or character faces in THPS3 on N64 and PS2. I could say more, but this post is already very long.
 
I've gotten some chance to play the multiplayer on both, and this is where the PS3 version immediately looks pretty bad. Of course, AW MP doesn't even look good for a PS3 game. Aliasing is out of control, lighting is flat, etc (there didn't seem to be much if any AA in the campaign, either). In fact, Black Ops II looked better. The more I play the PS3 version, the more I can tell it was down-ported from the PS4 version, and while the port is competent, it certainly isn't a great-looking PS3 game. Overall, I would say the generation gap in graphics is much more obvious to me in multiplayer than in the campaign.
 
I do this cross gen comp a lot. well not a lot but...I do it with current gen vs past. Notably with BF4 (was able to snag current/past gen copies for $20 combined) and Destiny (buy digitally on 360, get One version free). I also was about to do this with COD AW, but haven't yet, in fact returned my One version. They have the buy on 360 digitally get One version as well, but the price has been $45, usually $60, too steep.

Destiny I can see a huge difference, it's tremendously jarring. I suppose the basic game is unchanged, but it's like looking at it through a horrible gauze filter that's muddy to boot. Just the ship screen is loaded with jaggies on 360 Also, inventory is MASSIVELY snappier on X1, where it takes a second or two even to load on 360. One redditor wrote the first thing he did on getting a One, after using 360, was just go into his inventory over and over for like an hour, just to be astonished compared to what he was used to.

I even took to derogatorily claiming X360 version of Destiny is like "playing it on Atari" compared to X1 :LOL:

Destiny being a MMORPG though, you spend a TON of time staring at it, so I'm sure every difference is perhaps magnified to one's eyes more than a "normal" game you spend 12 hours in.

BF4 was also quite a large difference, in person on a large screen HDTV, and uncompressed. Whereas if you look at a youtube comparison, you will walk away thinking there is little tangible difference. Youtube is quite misleading there, I have thusly discovered.

I can still see someone making the argument that the cross gen differences are not monumental...but they are still very significant, bordering on massive.
 
I couldn't figure out what the "MMO" aspect to Destiny was and got too bored of it to even try it on PS3. Aliasing seems to be a significant issue on all cross-gen games I've seen. Black Ops II was definitely smoother than Advanced Warfare, but AW seems to have more geometric detail.

The gap seems to be the biggest the more data-intensive the game gets, since that 512 MB of RAM gets eaten right up. Last-gen, open-world games and multiplayer games displayed the most obvious limitations. Battlefield 3 couldn't even handle 24 players very smoothly. The Call of Duty campaign, by contrast, is a fairly idiotic game that tightly controls the player experience to get the most out of the machine, very much going for flash over substance. The PS3 version of AW still runs at 60 fps, which goes a long way to making it look and feel comfortable.

This is probably also why AW is the ugliest multiplayer COD I've played on the PS3. Player model customization was scrapped by Treyarch for Black Ops II, no doubt because of data/performance limitations. AW leaves it all intact on the PS3, but the hit to visuals is obvious.
 
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I messed around a bit with Black Ops II multiplayer after playing some AW on the PS4. I would consider that transition less "jarring." While BLOPS2 quite clearly has lower geometric detail than *either* version of AW, it has much less aliasing than the PS3 game and has richer colors. That's not to say it looks as good as the game designed for 10x more powerful hardware, of course, just that the generation gap here isn't quite the gut-punch that going down to the Wii was.
 
I should note that while the audio had no difference, AW is clearly still using the same bargain-basement audio engine that Infinity Ward developed. I honestly cannot believe how bad this game sounds in 2015. The fact that it is still the case that enemy gunfire is whisper-quiet is unforgivable.
 
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