Best Xbox360 Graphics - Technical

[NRP]

Archgamer:
The way you phrased your assertion that Mass Effect is some sort of lower bound or minimum barrier for entry is quite suspicious.

Have you even played the game? The visuals are very compelling, and they actually help convey the story. To dismiss Mass Effect outright only because it has the same issues as most every other game makes you sound like an angry little fan boy.

On topic.
Almost no one that would post in this thread is capable of assessing graphics from a technical perspective. All we can do is give our impressions of the overall impact a game's graphics had on the game experience. From this perspective, there are a lot of winners in the 360's library.

 

[Arwin]

I think there should be enough people on this forum to be able to state which games stand out for which technical features. What the other can do I suppose is state why they found a certain game impressive, and then have the experts here tell them what balance between technological prowess and artistic skill has been struct to achieve those graphics.

What there shouldn't be is off-topic discussions about the relative merits of the Xenos hardware to other hardware, since this discussion is about Xbox360 graphics only.

 

[Hazuki Ryu]

Mass Effect is not a worthy contender for best graphics since it suffers from technical issues.

Hm have u played the game? i mean more than the first parts?
I think if you would, you wouldn't be saying something like that.
I would agree if you said its not your favourite because of that but it really has the same problems we see in so many games even unreal 3 in pc has the texture pop in problem.

Halo 3 (though not as much) has the same problem, Uncharted, Gow too, and many other top games have the same problems.

If i had to chose some games for the top 5 graphics on x360 mass effect would definatly be in it and it has got a very good chance of winning.

Talking about good graphics in games i just finished assassin's creed and i must say it looks awsome theres not much attention to detail, textures look just average and so does the polygon count, but the very nice shadows the huge maps and the number of characters on screen really make up for it.
So ill add assassin's to the very large list of great looking games on the 360.

 

[joker454]

Personally, Gears of War is still the best looking console game I've seen to date. I played through the whole game which is important because the best looking levels are the later ones. It still looks phenomenal to me today. It can be argued that it's awesomeness is partly due to Artistic excellence. Well, so be it. Games that are good on a technical level alone don't necessarily look great. To me the art contribution to the final product is every bit as important as the coding one. If you just want to go by technical merit alone then you can I guess, but your list will likely not result in the best looking games out there. Thats my 2 cents.

 

[RobertR1]

Overall: Gears
Characters: Mass Effect
Lighting: Halo3
Scope: Halo3
Honorable Mention: PGR4

 

[archangelmorph]

Halo 3. Call me crazy, but it has better texture fidelity than CoD4 or even Gears of War in some instances, but the color pallete tends to subdue this detail unlike the harsh contrast that make the textures "pop" in Gears. It has far better lighting than almost everything out there, some of the best model work on Spartans and Elites, massive scale, and a consistently smooth frame-rate through it all.

Technically niggles - Harsh aliasing, shadows are drawn at very short distances for some objects depending on their priority (MC has his shadow drawn to a very large distance whereas marines lose their shadows at 10 meters). Also, environmental shadows are baked. I think with these issues addressed, Halo 3 would be, by far, the best looking console game around.

Are you forgetting the absolutely atrocious-looking character models for everyone except masterchief?

 

[_phil_]

To me the art contribution to the final product is every bit as important as the coding one.

Much more .(IMO)

 

[Daozang]

I agree.
I think that Mass Effect is the winner here. The technology serves the games purpose perfectly.

 

[liolio]

Did somebody try Kane & Lynch?
Eurogamer hints that the engine is pretty awesome (frostbyte engine?).

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I've heard that it's sterile, ugly, and boring game in general - but the story, characters, voice acting and writing almost saves it and will keep you playing through it all. Kinda like the FMV games of old times, you hate the game part but want to watch the included movie...

 

[Deepblue]

Are you forgetting the absolutely atrocious-looking character models for everyone except masterchief?

Not true. All of the Elites look excellent, and about half the humans are fine. Then again, that's the fault of the artist.

 

[Neb]

Not true. All of the Elites look excellent, and about half the humans are fine. Then again, that's the fault of the artist.

Yeah but many characters have very low polygon counts for perfomance reasons I would think. Makes them look to "square".

 

[Turok]

Yeah but many characters have very low polygon counts for perfomance reasons I would think. Makes them look to "square".

Hardly. The the only issue with small poly counts is in the faces of human NPC's.

 

[AlNom]

The marines look alright when they have helmets on, and the lighting in the game helps quite a bit more with the marine who has the helmet with sun shades on.

Spoiler

In the cut-scene before they go into the portal, there's that shot of Guilty Spark whizzing by that one marine. I thought it looked pretty darn good there.

If there is something I like about Bungie's style, it's that they can do armour and aliens very well. Their human heads... could use some work.

Technically, I think they did an awesome job with the lighting. It'll be interesting to see what they do with their next game.

 

[Kittonwy]

Halo 3. Call me crazy, but it has better texture fidelity than CoD4 or even Gears of War in some instances, but the color pallete tends to subdue this detail unlike the harsh contrast that make the textures "pop" in Gears. It has far better lighting than almost everything out there, some of the best model work on Spartans and Elites, massive scale, and a consistently smooth frame-rate through it all.

Technically niggles - Harsh aliasing, shadows are drawn at very short distances for some objects depending on their priority (MC has his shadow drawn to a very large distance whereas marines lose their shadows at 10 meters). Also, environmental shadows are baked. I think with these issues addressed, Halo 3 would be, by far, the best looking console game around.

I agree. Self-shadowing, water effects, HDR and large scope make HALO 3 very impressive when compared to the likes of Gears of War and COD4, lighting quality-wise and water-wise HALO3 is better than Mass Effect, not to mention the framerate is so much more stable, except Mass Effect has better character models, Mass Effect doesn't even have real lens flare, just some sort of transparency effect but HALO 3 does use a nice implementation of HDR.

 

[rekator]

Technically, I think they did an awesome job with the lighting. It'll be interesting to see what they do with their next game.

I have got the same interest, hope they tweak their lighting to work with tiling and got 720P 4AA, or atleast 640P 4AA .

 

[Johnny Awesome]

For me it would be:

Gears of War, Halo 3, Mass Effect, PGR4, and CoD4 in no particular order.

 

[Hazuki Ryu]

well halo 3 really falls behind gow and mass effect when it comes to resolution, wich is 1152 x 640 ( or very close ) wich gives you 737280 pixels on screen, and its upscaled for whatever resolution you use, wich results in alot less sharper look than 1280 x 720p = 921600 pixels (gow and mass effect), its considerably higher and it looks alot sharper if you have a good display, though this is only one issue this doesnt essencially make halo 3 worse in my opinion its just something to take into account when comparing games.

When it comes to frame rate on mass effect it has some problems, but they never got in the way of my experience, they would definatly if the game was an fps but for an rpg i dont think that is really that much of a problem.

The Hdr on halo 3 is really good and the water phisics are unlike anything else i ever seen in a game its just amazing the over all graphics are very good if the game would be native 720p i would give it the medal without second thoughts.

Cod 4 its a very good game but also runs in a very low resolution (600p) but it makes up for it with its impressive frame rate and nice over all textures, foliage, shadows just dont think its on pair with halo 3.

Bioshock its amazing for its art but graphics dont seem to be any better than gow. It does have better things but also worse things, still its on the top 10 x360 at least on graphics.(at least on my list )

Assassin's Creed is a new game and its very impressive specialy if you consider that its a multyplatform, its huge draw distance, native 720p fairly steady framerate, impressive ammount of characters on screen, shadows, etc really give it an unique feeling and a very impressive visual both artistic and technical.

Pgr 4 is simply the best racer out there when it comes to graphics, it was really a nice improvement from Pgr 3 in almost every way.