Considering it's a launch window game and it's open world with the IQ that it has, I think that it is very impressive. People are saying the framerate is smooth too. All being said, this is the most impressive looking launch window game I've seen. Nothing on PS3/360 has even come close to impressing me this much, this early. But that's just me.
IQ is standard 1080p with SMAA T2x, its baseline for me and should be for devs. 1080p and FXAA should be killed with fire and anything less it mediocre, bad to awful.
Feature set of this game is similar to KZ:SF and Ryse, but it does not go beyond in any way.
Open World in current engines is mostly about assets streaming management. Infamous does not have fidelity of more linear levels of other games, so open world is not big advantage in my opinion in general tech comparison. I would more count the fast pace of combat and movement than the whole open world area as an advantage for Infamous.
Infamous would be "
very impressive" to me if post processing wouldnt be 1/4 res, quality of shadows would be good, not low res as it is, with LoD cutting shadows 10 meters from camera and lack of any shadows from static light sources in the levels. And game would feature PoM, which it severely lacks
There is no physics simulation of any kind in this game, nor there is any new technique implemented not seen before.
So nope, its not very impressive to me. Its good and even great, but not impressive.
Ryse has vegetation, PoM and PADM, wind and tons of cloth/armor physics and joint tech, new GI probes, highest quality post-processing from any game ever released, some tessellated geometry, tessellated water with physics and big battles with even 80+ units on the screen, but its 900p and it drops frames
KZ:SF has quite amazing Area Lights tech and volumetrics for every lights [even though 1/4 res] and quite high poly count in LOD0 objects, PoM on some surfaces, very high quality shaders, great 3D sound tech and its 1080p FXAA with TAA and stable 30hz.
Infamous has 1080p, SMAA T2x, GPU particles, great 3D AO and its open world with some nice baked destruction, if You want to count this, but its the most action packed and it blends art with tech the best from all three.
Other than that they all share same tech feature set, like PBR lighting, lit and shadowed particles, SSR reflections, HDR cubemaps, dynamic AF, bokeh DoF, per pixel motion blur.
For me they all are equal, some get things better, some get things worse, but all and all, they are all on same level, with Crytek being a little ahead in terms of pure tech, but they lack polish and they compromised IQ and framerate (as usual unfortunately) although Ryse was on weaker platform than the other two.
So yeah, its all about trade offs.
BF 4 lacks some of those features, but its cross gen and 60hz, so its not completely fair to compare 1:1.
TL: DR. All games are quite equal in terms of tech and balance, so no, its not impressive, let alone very impressive to me.
Division tech trailer was impressive to me: GI from every light source, very high quality bokeh, high precision cloth, procedural geometry destruction, volumetric lighting, shadowed particles from all light sources, very good LoD and shadow management.
