Uncharted vs Gears of War

06/04/08 - Update: I added a few new comparison shots and modified a few with hopefully better ones. I will be adding more as time goes on.

*Click the images to enlarge them*

Ever since Gears of war was released in 2006 it was declared the best looking console game, and although many people tried to counter it with games like Resistance: Fall of Man it was stll holding strong. On November 20th, 2007 many people think Gears of war lost its standing when Uncharted: Drakes Fortune was released. Till this day it is still debated to an extent; now is it just fanboys being stuborn and that they wont let go of the past or is there really such a close call between visuals that its too hard to tell which one has better visuals. Hopefully with this comparison the question is answered.

I guess Ill start with something that I find very important in games, but for the most part is very hard to deliver with much detail. That would be the ground textures; due to the fact that the ground spans across the entire level its hard to get high res textures that dont look flat, so when a game delivers I give defiantly give props. A game can have as much eye candy as it possibly can, but if the ground textures are horrible and surrounding objects dont blend well with the ground it effects the overall graphics as a whole and can be a make or break situation to an extent in graphics.

Top: Uncharted
Bottom: Gears


Without the eye candy though the world would be empty. Another hard thing to nail when it comes to 3d world's is the tree. As simple as it may seem it can be very difficult to replicate a tree due to the immense amount of leaves (Millions of them!) and the bark is very rough and hard to duplicate if you use flat textures. Now when it comes to this comparison I would like to take note that Uncharted for the most part is taken place in a forest so they put more detail into the tree's where as for Gears there is more detail in the pillars and concrete.

Left: Gears
Right: Uncharted


Short walls usually aren't a big thing when it comes to visuals since they usually are just there as detail/barriers. In these two games though they are very essential due to the cover system so the detail of the walls are very important since you will be hugging them for a majority of the game. despite all the firefights that will go back and forth between the walls, niether will break apart.

Left: Uncharted
Right: Gears


Now this next subject is always the most important. You can have a not so robust environment and have a great looking character model and it still blends decently, but if you have a great environment but horrible character models you wont have a very aesthetically pleasing game to play. For the most part of the game you will be staring at either your character or the enemy characters so it is very vital to have great looking models. Again a small disclaimer - I chose the pictures due to pose to get the best direct comparison. You will have to forgive the difference in lighting.

Left: Gears

Right: Uncharted

Main Character:

-Over the shoulder view-
1.
Left: Uncharted
Right: Gears
2.
Left: Gears
Right: Uncharted

Left: Gears
Right: Uncharted

Enemy Character:

Now whats a shooter without blood. Well to be honest you don't need to have blood, but it does help add to the illusion that you are shooting an actual alive character. Blood has always been a bit of a tough thing to replicate or even create rather since for most of us we haven't seen someones brains blown out or chest ripped apart by a shotgun to see exactly how blood physics look or work. Although for the most part we don't know how it would really look for blood to be shooting out, but there are obviously bad and good particle effects when it comes to blood. If you can nail blood it can defiantly add a lot of realism to the characters you are fighting.

Left: Gears
Right: Uncharted


Now this next one is really what brings the graphics together - the detail of the eye candy. There are a lot of objects in the environment that can really have no purpose other than to make the game look more 3d and alive. This is what really pushes games from good looking to great looking. (I may add more examples later)

Left: Uncharted
Right: Gears

Whats the point of having a robust enviroment if you can only see 10 feet infront of you and the rest is a blurry mess. When it comes to the draw distance for the most part the farther the better. There are some games that a low draw distance can help add atmosophere, but for the most part you want the view to be clear.

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There are of course other elements to visuals like lighting, post processing effects, animation and more. Though right now I don't plan to dive into those until later, if your interested in seeing what I have on those you can check back later when I update.

I hope there is enough visual representation here to give a bit of an idea of how each game stands in the visual department. Now which one looks better is up to you to decide, I tried my best to give the closest comparison possible. I did not edit any image other than resizing to a smaller size to make it more reasonable to fit on the page.

If you have any suggestions on how to make my next comparison better, or what games you would like to compare leave a comment and Ill check it out. Hopefully my comparison is more in depth and insightful than the attempts that Ive seen from Gametrailers and Gamespot.