COD2 Reviews

[pjbliverpool]

Ok so know what? I'm sick of seeing these PC elitists, PC is an open platform, of course that if you double the GPUs....

And when GAmespot never says a High End PC may run it better, it only says it may run as fluidly, and take into account, a high end PC isn't a PC paked with 1000$ alone worth of GPU....jesus christ.

Anyway, Uh yeah of course a Dual 7800 512 MB should run the game "Better", but if it's only 10 FPS better, who gives the F? The fact that Xenos can show enough muscle to match those two Pitbulls is amazing.

So what's next? Worstations? Farms? OMG Farms can run COD2 much better than teh Xbox 360. Then as a side note: Cost isn't meant to be taken into account.

Yeah....like someone comes out with this Porshe Like Car that costs under 50.000 Bucks, can Reach 340 Km/h, and the guy is like "My car is faster than most cars outthere" then comes a guy and says "Oh yeah? Well my F1 car is much faster, take that you bitch!!!"

Come on...

People make references to the X360 being able to outeprform any PC in this game, and then as soon as you put together a comprehensive argument in return that makes it seem unlikely, you can absolutely guarentee yo will get someone wade in with the "but its more expensive argument". Did you even bother to read my final statement? Here is for you again:

Don't get me wrong, X360 is still by far the most cost effective way to play CoD2 and is the better solution for the vast majority of people but its not the best solution full stop. Well probably not anyway.

And no, you are not going to talk about a farm, a farm is not a desktop PC, a SLI GTX 512MB system is the kind of desktop PC that any joe average can go to an online store and buy today (if he has the money).

Can you utilise the power of a farm to play CoD2? No, so stop making silly analogies to try and prove a point that no one is denying.

 

[Mintmaster]

Yup TXB gives it a 9/10.

"Graphics

First off, let me just say that Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360 is superior to the PC version of this great game. Ask anybody at Infinity Ward and they will tell you the same thing. On that note, the smoke effects in Call of Duty 2 are worth the asking price of this game all by their lonesome. Whether the smoke effects are billowing from a burning building, seeping out of a freshly-fired artillery piece, erupting from an actual smoke grenade, or spewing from the frozen breath of your allied comrades, the battlefield in Call of Duty 2 is high-end particle effect heaven. You’ll understand a bit better when you walk into a cloud of dust and touch barrels with an enemy, even though you cannot see the opposing soldier at all.

(Bolded by me)

This is why XB360 used eDRAM. Alpha blending is very bandwidth intensive. If the RSX memory specs are correct, it will have less than half the performance of XB360 with AA (maybe 70% without). To put it in perspective: RSX will output the equivalent of 3-5 pixels per clock due to bandwidth under this scenario.

Of course, the drawback is the framebuffer size. We'll have to see how easy it is for devs to get tiling working, but hopefully it won't be an issue when they get more experience.

 

[Bobbler]

I don't really understand why people are comparing the PC version of this game to the X360 version, and whats more confusing is they aren't even comparing them on as equal grounds as possible. The PC version can infact run at 1280x720.

The game looks like its using 2xAA and Trilinear filtering as far as I could see (maybe I'm mistaken), not 4xAA and 8xAF. Additionally 1280x1024 is around ~42% higher res than 720p (or 720p is roughly 70% the res of 1280x1024).

Don't get me wrong here, I'll probably pick it up on X360 if I am to pick it up at all (which at this point seems likely), but when all things are considered, it isn't some amazing feat its pulling off (which has more to due with the time it was allowed on the actual platform than the platform itself, most likely) -- people are just comparing it to absurd PC settings and calling it even. I have yet to see a comparison between the platforms that is even somewhat reasonable.

 

[scooby_dooby]

And counterpoint to that is, some reviewers have stated the visually COD2 on X360 looks better than the PC version at max settings (such as a sunset, or certain settings) so it's entirely possible the X360 is running a different version, with custom additions to take adantage of Xenos' SM3.0+ capabiltiies, and/or the 3 cored CPU. That would make the fact it's running at 60FPS (according to the developer) even more impressive.

"The Xbox 360 version is comparable to a high-end PC system running the game, and in some little cases -- like a lit landscape or a full-blown fighting sequence -- the Xbox 360 version looks superior. "
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/667/667388p1.html

 

[Mintmaster]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/call_of_duty_2_performance_ati_nvidia/page10.asp

1280x1024/4xFSAA/8xAF = 59fps

Add 10% for going down to 720p and another 20% for going up to GTX 512's and you have an average of around 78fps in this, what Firingsquad have admitted is a more than usually taxing CoD2 benchmark featuring 23 players in a multiplayer scenario.

I've heard this from a couple of people in this forum. How is 720p only 10% fewer pixels than 1280x1024? The latter has 42% more pixels, so the extrapolation will work out to about 100fps for a pair of GTX 512 reviews.

The funny thing is I didn't even realize you were talking about SLI until I clicked the link. You're talking about $1400 in video cards + a fast system to get maybe 1.5 times the performance.

 

[seismologist]

It's a fun game but I dont really look at COD2 as any kind of graphical benchmark.
The graphics are much on par with PC games for the past year or so.
I've played the 360 demo, it looks slightly better than what I'm playing but still looks like a PC game.

Now I do remember one part on the PC where framerate went into the teens. It was when there were like hundreds of troops charging this fortress. For some reason PC's dont see too good at rendering lots of characters. Maybe a bandwidth issue? I wonder if 360 can run that scene at 60fps..

 

[pjbliverpool]

I've heard this from a couple of people in this forum. How is 720p only 10% fewer pixels than 1280x1024? The latter has 42% more pixels, so the extrapolation will work out to about 100fps for a pair of GTX 512 reviews.

Regardless about how many pixels the difference is, the performance differnce will be about 10%. Thats easily predictable from how the performance scales from 1024x768 to 1280x1024

The funny thing is I didn't even realize you were talking about SLI until I clicked the link. You're talking about $1400 in video cards + a fast system to get maybe 1.5 times the performance.

Im not talking about money at all (as I have clearly stated in every one of my posts so far - to say nothing of the sig). Im challenging the claim that the X360 can run this game better than any PC. I know the X360 has a massive cost/performance advantage, and that has absolutely nothing to do with my argument.

 

[NRP]

Im not talking about money at all (as I have clearly stated in every one of my posts so far - to say nothing of the sig). Im challenging the claim that the X360 can run this game better than any PC. I know the X360 has a massive cost/performance advantage, and that has absolutely nothing to do with my argument.

Well, okay . . . but why would you even waste time to argue such a ridiculously obvious point? Seriously, it seems like you're just trying to start (or continue) a PC vs console argument.

 

[expletive]

9.0 on IGN

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/667/667388p1.html

 

[rosman]

Here are 720p in game footage from cod2.
I think the "storm the hill " must be a heavy scene on pc ( with lot of char in screen )
http://media.xbox.gamespy.com/media/743/743289/vids_1.html

 

[blakjedi]

People make references to the X360 being able to outeprform any PC in this game, and then as soon as you put together a comprehensive argument in return that makes it seem unlikely, you can absolutely guarentee yo will get someone wade in with the "but its more expensive argument". Did you even bother to read my final statement?

X360 can compete successfully with any PC but it wasnt designed to output anything other than to a consumer's livingroom environment. TV's even High Def Tvs dont output at greater than 1080i in general and 1080p if you stretch it. Can the X360 beast a PC within its given resolutions? Hell yes and every time. Will some of the settings that a PC gameplayer fawns over be present maybe maybe not depends on the dev.

With everything from free to even fairly expensive tools I cannot detect information on machine after a low level format of your harddrive. But if I throw enough money into an electron microscope I can find everything you ever wrote on your machine... so COST does matter. Pay $500 every 12 months for system that gets marginally better and doesnt have software to take advantage of it anyway. Or pay $400 and get a system that stays essentially on par with upgradeable systems for years on end.

 

[liverkick]

Pay $500 every 12 months for system that gets marginally better and doesnt have software to take advantage of it anyway. Or pay $400 and get a system that stays essentially on par with upgradeable systems for years on end.

Yeah, this is why I felt safe waiting until about the fourth year of the console cycle to get back into PC gaming again and started upgrading. By then the graphical gap finally got big enough to make it worth it for me, and some great games started coming out as well. But when all the new consoles are out PC upgrades for gaming go back into hibernation mode for me, I just wont feel the need. I dont know if I'll stick to my formula though, who knows where PC gaming will be in 4 years.

And although Im admittedly laymen, the console CPUs vs. x86 seems like it could be a very interseting process as software evolves on all the respective platforms over the next 5 years. Exciting stuff.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Why are you guys all assuming that the X360 version of COD2 is already maxing out the system's capabilities?

 

[DemoCoder]

IMHO, CoD2 does not look like a next-gen game graphically. Except for the smoke and weather effects, it looks about on par with HL2 or HL2 Lost Coast graphically. I just watched a bunch of hi-res gameplay on IGN Insider. It looks *flat*. Geometry wise, stuff is still very klunky/blocky. They're not using parallax/offset mapping. It just looks like a 2004 PC game title.

PGR3 and Gears of War are the only two titles I've seen that scream "next-gen" to me.

 

[Moloch]

ya it's pretty plain but it also plays well on my 6600gt/ 2500+ 1GB ram.
1280x960 anistropic/ 2xfsaa default settings besides that.
Textures are atleast decent.

 

[expletive]

IMHO, CoD2 does not look like a next-gen game graphically. Except for the smoke and weather effects, it looks about on par with HL2 or HL2 Lost Coast graphically. I just watched a bunch of hi-res gameplay on IGN Insider. It looks *flat*. Geometry wise, stuff is still very klunky/blocky. They're not using parallax/offset mapping. It just looks like a 2004 PC game title.

PGR3 and Gears of War are the only two titles I've seen that scream "next-gen" to me.

I would throw some of the stuff ive seen in Kameo onto this list.

 

[expletive]

Why are you guys all assuming that the X360 version of COD2 is already maxing out the system's capabilities?

Because thats the only was this discussion makes sense.

 

[Guilty Bystander]

Wanna see some really good models and killer lighting, look at The Incredibles and Monsters Inc!!

Have a ball I'd say.

I know Killzone was only running 5fps but still it was realtime running on the alpha kit.
With Killzone they only showed that movie as what Killzone could look like in the future.

Also Motorstorm might not be ingame but it was realtime aswell.
I for one have no doubt games will look like Killzone or Motorstorm with the 2nd or 3rd gen PS3/Xbox 360 games.

I-8 and MGS4 on the otherhand where ingame and did have some good smoke.
Snake blowing smoke toward the Cell robot anyone???

A little tip for you and the other ignorant CGI calling blokes.
Just because a realtime fragment isn't in-game doesn't mean it's CGI.
If that's CGI then 3Dmark, techdemo's etc. are all CGI then.
CGI are Computer Generated Images (hence CGI) being processed on for hours by large cluster servers that's nothing like realtime videos.

 

[London Geezer]

Oh God please tell me we're not going through this again...

 

[Guilty Bystander]

ya it's pretty plain but it also plays well on my 6600gt/ 2500+ 1GB ram.
1280x960 anistropic/ 2xfsaa default settings besides that.
Textures are atleast decent.

Plays well right???

That's why I have to play on med-high quality on 1024x768 with 4xAF and 4xFSAA with mediocre framerates (30-50fps on average) with some dips into low 20's.

This is with an Amd 64 Venice 3000+ @2,25GHz (9x250), 1GB Corsair DDR333 LL (2,2,2,5 1T) and an Asus GeForce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 (@400/1100).