What I am seeing in the second one (with the bodies heaped up), the left "sidewalk" looks like it has a lower resolution "concrete" texture with a higher resolution normal. The asphalt doesn't appear to be lacking much detail (fine grained speckles and detailed cracks). imo it seems like the artist probably decided that obtaining the effect of stained concrete (wear exposing fresher [white] concrete and marring [darker areas] from oil, dirt, and so forth) had a good enough result with the low resolution texture and that a detailed normal map would fill in the missing detail. If the normal wasn't there I would agree that the 2nd shot looked poor, but seeing as that not being the case I would say imo the overall effect is good in that shot.
The first shot with the pillar does look poor. The object is obviously intended to be very detailed, and I am sure that the original model probably had significant amounts of geometry and detail. The texture itself not only seems to lack some resolution, it also looks washed out and doesn't seem to have much depth. I have noticed that a couple of the MP maps seem to be uneven in quality--some better than others. The one with the vines, imo, looks especially poor in some places. Others looked really great. It could be partially related to the deadline and the addition of 2 MP maps at the last moment before launch.
But like others have noted, the texturing is a genreal strength of this game compared to other games. It isn't perfect, and I don't think anyone is suggesting it is. I know some people will angle this toward either system memory limitations or storage format limitations (both could be factors), but just as likely (beyond MP) is the "human" limitation. A game that plays ~12 hours with a lot of variety in content is going to have some limitations and pit falls. Obviously it isn't a technical limitation in the simplest respect as much media shows (and on average, the "normal" GOW scene looks better than those shots), but it is worth noting that even a sponsored exclusive on a "next gen" engine from 2004 can have rough spots.
Nothing to be ashamed of. Now if the game in general had these issues it would raise some eyebrows about why the press is excited about the game in regards to the graphics. The real question is "why" -- which none of us will probably get an answer about, even after the finished game -- and in the long run the only reasonable technical point would be quanitative and qualitative, i.e. "How often, and how good/bad". I think it is fair to say GOW based on what we have seen (subject to change!) is "not often" and "doesn't typically destroy the overall impression". A bad texture here or there is different from frequently poor texturing (which can also be art limited mind you... long list of games inserted here!) and other factors like lack of normals and lack of quality lighting in general which can all impact the gamers impression of an object. In many cases you can actually get away with a low detailed texture if the object lacks that sort of detail. We are beginning to get to a stage where object "IQ" is impacted by a lot of factors above and beyond the hand painted texture. But... oh, end ramble...
All you guys have fun while I play my B3D.com! 