The reason it looks so good is because it is using the "Turok" trick as I like to call it, Silent Hill 1 used it a lot too. They use fog and darkness to cover further away areas, so that the engine only has to render the immediate surroundings. That is why it looks fantastic, and I'm glad they did that, because if it was open world it would not look anywhere near as good as this.

Still, I personally don't think it looks as good as Uncharted 2, but I'm sure there'll be many many (many) people that disagree :).

edit: @ blaze, I didn't disagree with you, dunno why anyone would.

What this article fails to note is that many multiplatform engines were originally lead and built FOR xbox 360. Unreal engine 3 was worked on immensely for 360's architecture and then ported across to other platforms. Epic built the engine and then built a 360 specific game with it, improving the SDK for other developers as they went along for Microsoft's machine. Only with sony's intervention was this engine better optimised for PS3 when they worked with epic on UT3. This is also not the only case...

Graphically alan wake takes the cake.

uc2 is plastic and cartoonish giving it its exclusive look not its real life look.

alan wake looks realistic and remedy did a damn good job on the textures of the environments.

god of war 3 is a script and slasher probably doesn't use realtime physics and has a fixed camera angle.

So while it is graphically better, it is not technologically better no matter how you slice it.

kz2.....no.

and all this time I thought multiplatform games were held back because of the 360?!?!
they're the first developers to EVER say this... so we should believe them rite??.... Rite???...:/

^ did you really play UC2..
AW is on my buy list...but look at the vids...little to no DOF and the dark fog...I heard in one of new spoiler vids, there is a wider open space, but I dont wanna look to much besides whats has been shown in small bunches
sorry...dont compare the 2...if I can see AW clothes get wet like in UC2 than I might be impressed

With Alan Wake, I think people are confusing the cut scenes with the gameplay graphics. The cutscenes look damn good. Uncharted 2 good from what I have seen. The gameplay graphics are a step down though. That step down is what keeps the actual game from looking as good as God of War 3, Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2. If you ask me, Uncharted 2 is still the graphics king, and Killzone 2 is the technical king. God of War 3 was cool but it had some areas that were lackluster. But Alan Wake does look really good, probably the best looking 360 game to date.

Microsoft is focusing a lot on multiplayer, that's why they can't compete graphics wise with Sony. Every multiplayer game has to have 4 player split screen, open world... (Fable, Reach, Gears, etc). Sony on the other hand wants to show the world what the PS3 can do.

i3eyond the Circle done convincing yourself? :)

Well, Multiplatform engines didn't do the PS3 justice either, but for the 360, it is the exclusive that really didn't do it justice, until Alan Wake, which is looking better than anything we've seen on the 360 so far.

A lot of criticism is leveled at the Unreal Engine 3 but Gears of War 2 is one of the best looking games this generation and it runs in splitscreen with no compromise to the games graphical fidelity. That's impressive. Uncharted 2 is the best looking game this generation, fact but I would love to see what the game would look like had accommodations been made for splitscreen play. Of course, we'll never know since none of the PS3's graphical powerhouses makes this accommodation. I'm still waiting for the visually striking game on the PS3 that offers splitscreen play.

This article has the potential to draw the most delusional comments on N4G EVER.

To anyone claiming it looks better than UC/GOW - Please let us know if you have actually seen those games on a HIGH-DEF TV. Based on the comments claiming that so far, I highly doubt it.

uncharted 2 with alan wake, cause uc2 looks like a dream, especially in motion, the effects, the animation and nate's movements are excellent, guys let's wait and see

even if alan wake did not beat uc2(wait till it comes, then compare), it's still has jaw dropping gfx as far as im concerned and the most important part is the game itself, alan wake look groundbreaking, it kinda reminds me when I first saw Resi4, Im shocked by alan wake's atmosphere, voice acting, cinematic feeling and the overall production values

can't wait for alan wake

The author is right on that exclusives will help shore up the 360's lineup, with better than multiplat visuals. But we're talking how many in-house 1st party studios in Microsoft's portfolio? 3? or is that 2 now that Bungie's separating? If it took Remedy 5 years to make Alan Wake and we see a similar trend with Sony's 20 1st party studios only churning out about 3-4 exclusives a year... Where is MS going to pour money to find that load of talent to make custom games?

The author is clearly delusional. Alan Wake doesn't even have full mo-cap in the cinematic parts. Not to bash Remedy but they simply didn't even get the the budget for that. Where are these loads of 1st party titles going to come from for Microsoft? Does the author know how hard it is to hire creative talent for a great dev team when there is no existing infrastructure? As you can see, we're not even talking about textures here. Just real world numbers.

Having seen the videos, no way does AW look as good as UC2. Call me a fanboy, but the animations looked so stiff as compared to UC2. Also, UC2 has some of the best detailing I have seen... Not only UC2, but GOW3 just pulls the PS3 even further.

If you thing AW pushes the 360 with 5 people onscreen, then go take a look at the initial level of GOW3... 20 people on screen on a TITAN!!!! And a Huge Leviathan that you gotta fight pulling stuff down and the levels dynamically shifting... Sorry, but a dark gloomy atmosphere of AW with 5 people onscreen at 30FPS doesn't even come close to GOW3s initial level running at 60FPS....

AW looks great and remedy has done a great job, but lets not compare it to heavy weights like UC2 or GOW3... Hell both the games don't use 'MORE POLYED CUT SCENES WITH POST PROCESSING EFFECT'.. Both use ingame CGI which even looks better than AW CGI....

The one thing we all know from every console generation is that the games will get more visually stunning every generation of software. So even though ps3 has been kicking x360 butt in the graphics department for the last 18 months it doesn't mean that we won't get x360 games that look better and better. Same goes for the ps3 they will get better and better. And for anyone saying this game is using tricks or that game is using tricks to look good. So far this generastion all of the really good looking games have used tricks to look really good. For example KZ2 used deffered rendering to only process things that were immediatly vivible on the screen, gears2 used a muted color pallette and low enemy on screen count, FFXIII used 3 different types of cutscenes to look better, UC1&2 use scripted events i.e mini ingame cut sceanes to look better, many games use tricks but who cares as long as the games look and play well let the developers figure out every trick they can to get them to look good and play better.

which is why it's a good thing Crysis is on the way to remedy that problem. Lets just be honest here, Cryengine 3 will be the best game engine on the Xbox360 and will make AW look blah.

No, it does NOT. It has good shadows and lightning. It's much harder to make a high quality game with bright lighting than the other way around. Alan Wake isn't even going to make the top 5 list.

but took 5+ years to make lol

It's interesting that early in the PS3's lifecycle that everyone was saying the 360 was more powerful and a better game machine regardless of what game engines were used. Fast forward a few years, and now that the PS3 has the best looking games, the 360 is disadvantaged because it doesn't get custom engines for their best games or it only has a DVD9 to work with. What happened? It's true that there are certain disadvantages to multiplatform engines, but it's also true that multiplatform engine games can look much better than most games on the market. Crysis 2 and Gears of War game demonstrate this pretty clearly. Multiplatform games can be customized considerably. For example, Epic always makes sure their Gears games are great showcases for their multiplatform Unreal Engine.

Alan Wake looks great, but I haven't yet seen anything about it that puts it ahead of the most visually impressive games. But I'll wait to see the final version and play through it in my own home soon and can form my own impressions from first-hand experience.

I'm done watching AW second 10 mins video. Gameplay-wise that first section was a lot like HR, so it allows for comparisons. Game looks very good but not HR good. Dont expect it to reach UC2 levels.

BTW, who is Beyond the circle trying to fool. U2 cartoonish, GoW3 a script? LOL. Stop looking for dumb excuses.

So ALL 360 exclusives have split screen and that's THE reason a 4yr old console is trying hard to match the graphics, lighting, physics etc of a 3yr old console?

Uhm, ok so all the online MP PS3 exclusives that match their SP in graphics and are better looking than a vast majority of non-PS3 exclusive SP graphics are that way because...?

Only on the PS3 do you have online graphics looking insane with 16v16, 20v20, 30v30 & 128v128 while a big accomplishment for online fidelity on the 360 is a multiplat game in BFBC2's 12v12

You mention games like Fable, Halo3/ODST and Gears, well lets have a look at their online co-op MP

Fable: upto 2 players - Demon Souls: upto 4 players

Halo3/ODST upto 4 players - Resistance2 upto 8 players

Gears2 upto - Uncharted2 upto 3 players

Look, if you want to talk about "teh features" well that's mute cause their are features on both systems that dont' exist on the other but when it comes down to high quality gaming experiences (online & offline) the PS3 delivers beyond what any other console is doing today and that's just plain as day obvious.

It's like some gamers just want to bury their heads in sand or stick their fingers in their ears going "lalalalalalalala!!!& quot ;

People tend to call people ps3 fanboys because they don't agree with them, but thats y the 360 extremest get call delusional. Because when you see a delusional 360 fanboy saying AW is just as technically impressive as God of war 3 it leads me to believe they haven't played the game. How can some 1 walking on an area all dark(where you can barely see detail in textures) match the scale of GOW3 ? where everything is almost daylight and huge detailed bosses are trying to kill you while the map is moving and changing + you can see other large scale titans climbing all at the same time be as technically as impressive ? I mean wow, thats called delusional. Then I see people talking for MS like if they worked there, Yeah its that they focus on this or that and not this. I mean really ? They don't know what to make up next. Another trend Im seing are lies, example

"N4PS3G"
Even more amazing is that Alan Wake doesn't use CG and RemedyPR confirmed that it was all in-game with post processing effects.

2 hours l8r an article came calming it did and he had posted 3 CG clips saying it was all in game and as you can see he said "RemedyPR confirmed that it was all in-game"

Another claiming the game was a sand box game and thats y they couldn't up the graphics, and we just saw yesterday it isn't a sandbox game.

Then people ask y we don't take many 360 fanboys serious.

Like chubear said on top of me, people claiming Sony doesn't focus on multiplayer and mS does. Really ? Sony doesn't even charge us and they have dedicated servers while we(or those who have 360's) pay for p2p on most of the games. Sony has 128 vs 128 players online fighting at the same time, 32 vs 32 on kz with those graphics which till this day are being compared with newer games and yeah people saying Sony doesn't focus on multiplayer or Sony's online sucks.

People saying MAG's graphics sucks on the PS? Oh yeah I had forgot 360 had a 256 player too, with better graphics right guys ? Until 360 gets a 256 player game, lets not talk about graphics. Because I would love to see a 256 player game on the 360 with those graphics and run on a p2p service. But hey if it lags with 8 vs 8, how bad can it be when we add 240 players?

xTruthx, I see why you have so many bubbles. I don't have the patience to explain it like you explain it.

I think half of these guy seriously do work for MS though. There is no way that anyone can believe the words they are typing when they compare a flash light game to God of freaking War.

I think Alan Wake is the best looking 360 game to date, and one of the best looking games this gen. But it's in the same category as Heavy Rain, and Fight Night. The graphics look great because there isn't much else going in the game (although Alan Wake has the most effects of the previous 2 games).

The lighting and environments in Alan Wake are beautiful, and so is Alan's jacket.

The character models are good, not the best but good.

Animations are decent, not bad but nothing lifelike.

And finally effects are only used during combat which is supposed to be in dark places only, and from an earlier interview the game is suppose to be 67% dark 33% light which means theoretically the game won't be as action packed as many of the graphical juggernauts that hold the graphics crown such as Uncharted 2 (Best TPS), God of War 3 (Best Action Adventure), Killzone 2 (Best FPS), even Mass Effect 2 (Best RPG).

So PS3 gamers give the 360 gamers a break they finally have a game that truly surpasses Gears of War. The thing I'm concerned about however, is the story. Heavy Rain felt like playing a movie which was great. But after watching clips of Alan Wake it seem more like playing a book rather than a movie. There too much narration, and hearing Alan's thoughts about every little thing got VERY annoying after watching the first 20 minutes. I also want the game to be a nice length. Heavy Rain was a decent length, but I wish they took more time developing the characters involvement with one another ultimately producing a longer and more believable story.

After playing Splinter Cell, which also looks good in my opinion (not best of the best, but almost there), I hope the controls aren't over complicated. I hate having to do multiple button combination's just to go from cover to cover. Simple natural controls, great gameplay, and an amazing story are what make TRUE AAA games. And Alan Wake needs to make sure it has those three things checked off so my 360 can get Left 4 Dead 2 out of it's tray.

Well i think AW looks astounding. And to the people commenting on how it's dark and blah f@#king blah. Go watch the video of the first 10 mins of the game then run your mouth. And after i play it i will let everyone know if i think it is the best looking game so far. And with what i have seen so far it could be a possibility.

IMO!!It looks better than U2...

Everyone just read comment 1.5 again. Epic and Microsoft worked out a deal to make the 360 have hardware that is well suited for the unreal 3 engine. The xbox 360 is essentially like a PC anyway because it's the tripple core processor.

As for Alan Wake you can tell the game look pretty good on a 5 inch screen on your computer, but when it's on your 32 inch TV the game isn't going to look as good. Right now it looks just a step above GTA4 which is not that great.

Splinter Cell looks amazing on small screen footage but on a TV the game looks just average.

Also Halo 3 was 1st party with an exclusive engine but the game was below average. Bioshock 1 came out a month before Halo 3 and kicked its ass in terms of visuals. COD4 demolished Halo 3.

^ HAHAHAH! They want it to look like PS3 games!

But the excuses I'm reading as to why PS3 exclusives look so good are really sad. Lol, some of you are just full of it. All of your post may as well say "PS3 sucks, 360 is better," or something along those lines.

360 may *finally* have a game that could be technically comparable to PS3 exclusives, but don't let it get to your head because it took a *very* long time.

so for 3 years all we heard was "multiplatz are made for teh 360ayyy"
"no on cares about the bluray playerrr" "hahaha PS3 fanboys wasted $600 on a movie player" yada yada yada

now that PS3 exclusives have been leaving everyone silent and wiping the floor with "360s tis teh multiplat home" we get "multiplats don't do 360 justice".

like xtruthx said, this is why 360 fanboys are the laughing stock of the industry.

LOL, we haven't seen any confirmed realtime 360 gameplay in HD of Alan wake but these fanboys still consider it the best looking console game to date.

http://www.gamezine.co.uk/n...

The "X-engine" is nothing but a rumored engine started by a credit-less "insider source"
So when you speak of the "X-engine" like it's factual, expect some disagrees.

I used to believe this will be a beast.
Especially that trailer i saw.
But then I found out that was all CGI/not real time

2spock said:
"Well i think AW looks astounding. And to the people commenting on how it's dark and blah f@#king blah. Go watch the video of the first 10 mins of the game then run your mouth. And after i play it i will let everyone know if i think it is the best looking game so far. And with what i have seen so far it could be a possibility. "

The first 12 minutes of gameplay were in the dark. The second 10 minutes of game were cutscenes in the "day" with some gameplay, if you can call getting into your car that, in the "day". Then you were allowed into a dark bar. Followed by more cutscenes, which let you walk around in a dark house. I wonder what the next bit of gameplay will be. If 24 hours in Alan Wake is the same as 24 hours in every other game based on earth, I would imagine that more dark is to follow.

that allan wake can get hit by a house, tractor, and a car and not fall? Incredible physics! game still does look good, but nowhere near PS3 quality.

Xbox fanboys are freaking delusional. The 360 is no where near as capable as the ps3 in the graphics department. The games are good and all (just about to fire up the splinter cell demo) but you guys need to let it go. If it's all in the engine, why does forza 3 still not compete graphically with gt? Maybe if the media and fanboys didn't give the xbox a free pass there would be more incentive to improve it.

To much nerd rage in this article so ama just say I think Alan Wake looks amazing. Does it look better then God of War 3? That's down to opinion.

Graphics and Graphic Styles are subjective and saying one is better then the other is a matter of opinion and your own personal choice.

Saying God of War 3 is better then Alan Wake as fact makes you a moron.

Saying Alan Wake is better then God of War 3 as fact makes you a blatant idiot.

So pick your side either your a moron or a blatant idiot. Or you could use your brain a little and look at them both in there own merits as completely different games.

It is not as good as Uncharted or Killzone, both of those games have lots of AI going and many many scripted events and other stuff happening in the landscape. AW looks good yes, but being there is next to no AI and very few physic like events (Big explosions with stuff flying all over) They can use that for textures and better AA and shading. When you see a shooter that looks as good as those two games and have a better ground for comparison then you might have an argument.

Watch the trailer in the link. There is rarely fog at all. You can see the lighthouse from anywhere in the level and you end up running all the way there.

And there is gameplay in the article. It's a button click away.

Also, the unreal engine was developed on the PC before it was developed on the 360 or PS3.

iDtech 5 is also better looking than any engine to date and it's completely multi-platform.

@baum

got enough beer to share?

look at all the disagrees. you can tell the ps3 fanboys are out in droves. gotta do that damage control. can't allow anyone to comment on articles that might suggest the 360 can match ps3. lol..gimme a break.

as for the article: the guy makes some excellent points (points i'm sure 95% of you didn't even read before nearly having a heart attack) that never really occurred to me. less than a month now til we see what alan wake can officially do.

EDIT: I gave a bubble to every person with more disagrees than agrees to partially compensate for what the ps3 fanboys no-doubt did. it's not enough for them to blindly disagree with you, that have to take your bubbles too. so sad. must suck living such a lousy life that the only thing you can get fired up about is that gismo under your tv.

Dang 100+ agrees, new record(i think)

Uncharted 2 gives me an eyegasm.

Seemed obvious to me unreal engine 3 has been crafted heavily around 360. It was epic who asked microsoft to increase 360's RAM. They consulted on the hardware design.

Gears of war was the first unreal engine 3 game i believe, closely followed by roboblitz and rainbow six vegas. These games only had 360 as their console platform at that time. Gears was hailed as the best looking game ever when it arrived late 2006 and it was only on one platform- 360. It then came out that epic had not delivered the engine for the PS3 platform on time for developers in early 2007, and that in the months leading up to the UT3 launch (which was delayed itself remember) to PS3 late that year, sony had been working furiously with epic to try and optimise UE3 better for PS3. Note sony didnt specify UT3, they said the engine itself- no doubt the SDK as a whole for the use of licencees too. It was indeed, a whole year after Gears that PS3 saw its first UE3 based game. If it was designed properly to be multi, why on earth did sony have to help epic 'optimise' it for PS3 long after the first 360 titles were out?????

Another example. Remember Fatal inertia? Remember how it was initially supposed to be PS3 exclusive, then announced as multi, and then SOMEHOW finally it ended up on 360 six months before it dragged its corpse onto PS3 in spring 2008? How can a game go from being an exclusive for PS3 to being out six months later than the 360 version? Guess what engine it ran on....

What about the upgrades shown on the engine in mid 2008 aka UE3.5. All shown on 360, all implemented for the first time ever in Gears of war 2, which is still a 360 exclusive of course. Its not rocket science to realise Epic had further refined the engine specifically for Gears 2 only on........360.

Sound like an engine that was developed with PS3 in mind equally alongside 360 from day one to you?

The truth is Unreal Engine 3 has been heavily built around 360 by Epic. To accuse it of being so multi platform it damages 360's potential performance isnt all that justifiable. Specifically Epic's history of the engine on 360 practically makes it a custom 360 engine in their hands.

Edit: On conviction.... err... Yeah. No thanks.

Uncharted 1 came out years ago and has noticably better textures and shading.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

There's no technical reason why Alan Wake shouldn't look about as good as Uncharted 1 but, sadly, it simply doesn't.

Killzone 2's dynamic lighting, physics driven smoke and particles, hit response, animation, etc... are simply on an other level. Watch the this in HD:

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

check my comment 2 hours later, buncha stealth disagrees and a lost bubble. what a joke n4g is. you can go into a 360 exclusive article, say a bunch of obvious ps3 fanboy garbage, and the comment stays up. but say anything even remotely anti ps3 (even in a 360 article) and get your comments removed.

the gaming community really is petty and pathetic.

@guy above me. go brag about your 6 hour linear snoozer in a ps3 thread.

are you on crack?

PBR

The PS3 is making games that are movies or linear, or have ZERO game-play options or all of the above!

Anyone can make a game look impressive when it severely lacks game-play options!

I always lead with this & no one has an answer but insults: Where is the PS3 exclusive that has the game play features of Halo 3: co-op campaign, 3 or 4 player co-op campaign, forge, saved films, flying vehicles, land vehicles, enormous environments, not scripted, not linear like Uncharted. I can go on for a long time.

Whatever, keep printing these ridiculous articles, consumers aren't stupid, thats why the PS3 exclusives are not selling like a 360 exclusive.

Multiplatform engines can't handle prerender cutscenes??

bubbles to you my friend. you nailed it. all those games they brag up are linear, predictable ai (due to lack of quality programming), immediate -- meaning that everything you do happens right in front of you, very little interaction with the environment (if any), no real co-op. i love the guys that say UC2 has a 4 player co-op. not really. it has tacked on filler. it's junk. it's just a quick, go point a to b, kill everything, no story.

i could go on about all the things these "great" exclusives lack, but what's the point. it's obvious (just like with everything else) that there has to be sides in gaming. everyone feels the need to pick a side and then blindly support that side regardless of quality. it reminds me so much of republican vs democrat. bottom line is, real gamers own both systems and play lots of games so they can actually speak on them. fanboys give blind support to a single company then talk out their @ss to help them justify their decision.

on n4g, the ps3 side dominates. but for those few of us in the middle, we know all that smoke they blow just makes their side stink a little more. i don't even bother with psn anymore, i'm completely turned off to the ps3 community. i'll still buy some of the games, but i won't dare play multiplayer with those zealots anymore.

as for alan wake. it really looks like this game will be worth the wait, and it looks like remedy is taking a chance and trying something new. so of course, we should have waves of ignorant people bashing it before it launches. lets discourage all developers from doing something unique so we can have more years of been-there-done-that like 2009. i can't wait for the day when every game is a modern warfare knock off. ...or a national treasure knock off ;)

The PS3 is my preferred platform, but all the people saying Alan Wake can never measure up to PS3 games are morons, plain and simple.

Alan Wake, in fact, looks amazing and is easily in the running for best console graphics.

Oh god this crap again??? How many sites try to claim this with this game??? And how many games claim to be the uncharted 2 beater?? It's never gonna happen lets just get over it already... Honestly who cares I mean since when did having the best graphics becoming the reason to buy a console?? I mean ask Nintendo if graphics matter...

Graphics don't sell a game and graphics didn't sell uncharted 2. Gameplay sold Uncharted as it was a fantastic game.. It is the best looking console game of this gen but if it played like crap it would have sold terribly and wouldn't have got GOTY on just graphics alone.. Look at GTA it got 10's all over (not deserved) but it certainly didn't get that score based on graphics..

they are comparable on both systems, ps3 exclusives being a bit better. If you really care about graphics that much, build a gaming pc.

Part of the reason Uncharted 2 received so much acclaim from the industry was the graphics. Other reasons include the animations, story, characters. If Alan Wake's graphics are on the same level, why hasn't it reached the same level of public amazement?

I don't know what that term means, but I know what the individual words mean. And from the looks of the words you're hiding something with your ambience. The things you see with your line of sight, or in the case of Alan Wake your line of light (1), are the only things there.

Even if I didn't know already what SSAO meant, I still asked a specific question or two that you failed to address with your nastiness. ;)

1. Have you played it?"
2. How can you call it those things from a youtube clip?

Never once did I discredit the article or the guy's opinion, or even yours. I asked because it doesn't distinguish itself at all with this particular video. The game could be the greatest ever, but until i see or play more than a youtube clip or discern tech specs from reality, I don't see how I or anyone else can make those claims.

I prefer to let reality run it's course, rather than postulate on the hypothetical. And As I said, I was curious, not trying to bring out your nasty towards me. ;)

-CadDad

lol hardcore you haven't played U2 or GOW3 and if you have then your fb is showing.

@ hardcore1912

here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

it isn't new. Uncharted used it EVEN Gears 2 ...

The first game to use this technique was Crysis. So yes, i know that Alan Wake isn't the first game to use it. My point is Remedy's in house engine has great features, it's almost perfect.

care to revise it since it ISN'T 720p but more like 547p?