Far Cry 2 Triple-Format Face-Off

By Richard Leadbetter Published 28 November, 2008

PC vs. PS3 vs. 360.

Page 1 of 2

One of the most eagerly awaited shooters of the year, Far Cry 2 boasts a cutting edge new game engine which, combined with its very strong 8/10 Eurogamer score, makes it a more than worthy candidate for Eurogamer triple-format bonus round comparison coverage.

For the sake of the one person out there who hasn't read one of these features yet, the aims and methods are fairly straightforward. Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC versions of the game are played simultaneously, hooked up via their digital outputs to a state-of-the-art capture system.

Every single pixel rendered is stored in a completely lossless manner. From there, the games are compared and the differences judged - technical details are revealed and impact on the game experience is also judged.

The HD captures allow us to perform all manner of unholy acts upon the software in question. For a start, you can compare the same scenes across all three formats via the 720p comparison gallery. Simply access the screenshot you want, and then press the 360, PS3 or PC tabs to see the same scene from the selected version of the game. Nice.

More than that, we can crop down the video output, slow it down and encode it into precision h.264 video. Forget the murky scaled-down comparison videos seen almost everywhere else - one pixel in the player is one pixel on your HDTV.

In the case of Far Cry 2, here's a basic introductory comparison video:

(Action from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Far Cry 2. Want to see more? Check Eurogamer TV for Xbox 360 versus PC, and PS3 up against PC.)

If you're that mad keen on comparison videos, the author's blog has bandwidth-sapping full HD downloads to take a look at, optimised for playback on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or dual-core PCs... full resolution, full speed - the complete picture.

First impressions? Ubisoft has done a very good job here. To the casual viewer, there's little to tell the console games apart from the PC version. Our test computer for this feature is our evergreen 'everyman' gamer's PC as used in the Call of Duty: World at War and Fallout 3 face-off features: Q6600 quad-core CPU (GBP 120), 512MB NVIDIA 8800GT (GBP 90) and 2GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM (GBP 30), powered by the ever-reliable Windows XP Pro. It's a machine significantly more powerful than either console, and while Far Cry 2 runs best on this system, perceptually, the margin of difference isn't as huge as you might think.

Flaming Dunia

Far Cry 2 is the debut offering featuring Ubisoft Montreal's Dunia engine, designed from the ground up for parallel processing on multi-core PCs and current-generation consoles. It's pretty impressive stuff in that virtually everything in the game is dynamically generated on the fly as opposed to being pre-baked: there's destructible and indeed regenerating scenery, along with wind effects that affect foliage and dust movement, and even the spread of fire.

Super-realistic trees (thousands in any given scene, apparently) and underbrush are also taken care of as a matter of course. Dunia's attention to detail even extends to the clouds, which are procedurally generated, forming above as you watch. A real-time day/night cycle is the icing on what is a substantial, technically impressive cake. We'd still give the nod to CryEngine 2 in terms of overall performance, but Dunia is working in the here and now on both PC and console, while Crytek's 360 and PS3 work remains under wraps in Frankfurt.

The fact that Dunia was rolled out simultaneously on three entirely different gaming platforms is impressive in itself, but if you take a look at a video designed to showcase the engine, you'll see that the results of the conversion process are quite uncanny.

(Dunia is at its best on PC, but it seems as though the Xbox 360 and PS3 games have been cut-down to fit in almost identical fashions. The console games are seen here, but check the PC vs 360 and PC vs PS3 edits over on Eurogamer TV.)

The PC game is obviously the master version, possessing the highest-quality lighting options, superior anti-aliasing and tweakables covering many aspects of the environment, such as the vegetation, shading, texture quality and ambient effects. Both Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game have all of their variables hard-locked, so it's difficult to tell exactly what has been pared down, but it's fairly obvious that texture quality has taken quite a hit (that said, it's only really noticeable close-up and on ground textures). Water, shadowing and environmental effects have been dialled back significantly, but during the course of the action, such window-dressing is hardly essential to the gameplay.

The overall impression is that the console versions are doing a supremely impressive job of emulating the superior PC visuals. Nothing is missing in terms of actual environmental objects; the African wilderness has been left unmolested in its transition to console. Even on measurable, repeatable instances of pop-in, both PS3 and 360 worked in the same way as the PC code.

However, there are some minor gripes. You can't have failed to notice the poor shadows in the 360 code. Dunia is using the NVIDIA hardware PCF technique (percentage close filtering - Google 'NVIDA PCF' for arguing-the-toss purposes) to merge its shadows with the environment - no problem for PC and PS3, but PCF isn't implemented on the ATI Xenos chip. Rather than try another solution that produces a similar look, Ubisoft simply turned off transparencies on shadow edges. All shadow edges. Instead, there's an interlace/screen-door style effect that looks a lot worse than the PS3 or PC versions and is by far the biggest blemish on the Xbox 360 game's copybook.

PS3 for its part invokes quincunx anti-aliasing to smooth off its jaggies. In that respect it works well, but as is usually the case with this technique, the entire screen is blurred a touch as a direct result. The overall effect isn't so bad in this case, but the 360 game, with its more usual multi-sampling anti-aliasing has both the required smoothed-off edges and the retention of fine detail.

Page 1 of 2

Comments (50) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • mcbi4kh2 #1 3 years ago

    Rich Self, is that really your name?

  • Widge #2 3 years ago

    Told you it was coming ;)

    I love watching the videos for a resounding game of "they look the same".

  • Moonprince #3 3 years ago

    Can you imagine - all that uni time and effort to end up writing dull shit like this?

    Wasted life :/

  • Widge #4 3 years ago

    oh my god! the shadows! its the END FOR US ALL.

  • the_dudefather #5 3 years ago

    compare the chrono trigger and far cry images on the front page :D

  • DB2k #6 3 years ago

    I have voted this game 6/10. Its just not interesting enough

  • DFawkes #7 3 years ago

    This one didn't actually have that tinge of venow in the writing that they usually do, so I believe it totally. I still really, really wish they'd get the colour balance sorted out so we can actually compare them ourselves instead of having one picture look overly bright/dark.

  • Thunderbolt #8 3 years ago

    Regret buying this game should have rented it in retrospect

  • Weezer #9 3 years ago

    A beautiful, engaging game that's broken by a fuckwitted structure (endless travelling punctuated by endless shoot-outs) and which should have been sorted out at the game design phase. All it does is make you play for longer and get more frustrated.

    Shame.

  • Darren #10 3 years ago

    Odd that the article says that the console versions don't use v-sync when had that been the case surely you'd have seen more than 10-30% screen tearing? I always thought Far Cry 2, like many other well coded current gen games such as Gears of War and its superior sequel, only disables v-sync when the framerate drops too low, otherwise the image is v-synced and free of screen tearing.

    I have Far Cry 2 for both the Xbox 360 and PC. The PC version, as the article says, is the best version, looking and running better on my ageing setup without any screen tearing and with better shadows and textures, and at a much higher resolution of 1680x1050. That said, it has crashed more than the 360 version (which actually hasn't crashed at all) and has a tendency to corrupt my sound card's EAX presets for some reason thus wiping out my sound so the 360's shortcomings are more than made up by its stability IMO!

  • phoopipe #11 3 years ago

    Should i try one of the pizza's that are prepared instore from asda ?

  • StooMonster #12 3 years ago

    Keep up the good work Rich, technical analysis of the output is interesting.

  • andromeda #13 3 years ago

    @Weezer

    spot on.
    getting fed up of being shot to fuck everywhere i go

    im still playing it religiously though, its got an atmosphere.

  • #14 3 years ago

    Ekkk shadows look fucking awful on the 360. Anywho....

  • BurningR #15 3 years ago

    My god who reads this stuff? Read about stuff that matters instead, like "The constant gardener" or some shit. This isn't even entertainment, it is pure meta-game wanking... and yeah yeah I know "that's our business not yours", blah blah

  • mainaman #16 3 years ago

    Given the scale of the enviroments and the objects in it FarCry 2 looks impressive,but it's still not as pretty as the better realized Unreal 3 engined games like GoW2,Mass Effect,even Mirror's Edge!

    The game itself is a mess,both off and online,its only saving grace the awesome map editor.



  • mainaman #17 3 years ago

    Far Cry 2 looks miles better than any UE3 powered game. Unless you like watching texture pop-in. Shame about the terrible shadowing found in the 360 version of Far Cry 2. Perhaps they should have implemented a different technique.


    I disagree.FarCry 2 has noticeable objects pop-in in the driving sections and no texture pop-in,because the texture quality on the console versions is average at best.The Unreal games has their own issues,but for eye-candy almost nothing comes close on 360.

    Do you have large screen?I have noticed that on smaller screens stuff like GTA4 looks more impressive than Mass Effect.However on 75'' screen GTA4 looks like PoS,while Mass Effect is simply jaw-dropping and you can really appreciate the advanced texturing and high polygon counts.
    Edited by 1 at 28/11/08 @ 17:42

  • Darren #18 3 years ago

    @Schrödinger - Something tells me you're not the brightest of sparks... since, as you infer, I'm the only one who reads these face-offs but you thought you'd post a comment here anyway, presumably without having actually read the article! Wow, some real intelligence at work there, I see!!! ;)

    Whatever, my point was that the game corrupts the sound on my PC when it crashes because that's the nature of games on the system - there's so many trillions of combinations of hardware that it is impossible for any two people to enjoy the exact same experience on the system. Sometimes getting the games to work properly means you end up spending more take doing that then actually playing it. Not so with the 360 or PS3 so while the console versions may well be inferior, they work perfectly out of the box and run the same for everyone on that particular platform. Thus poor looking shadows are a worthy compromise for the convenience of actually been able to play the bloody game!

    Oh, you've nodded off again, I see... :p

  • mainaman #19 3 years ago

    Yeah,it's noticeable,but hardly all the time.Fair price to pay for the graphical fidelity,but obviously it buggers some people to no end.

  • Chufty #20 3 years ago

    No mention of the fact that the PC version was lumbered with consolisms, like a completely useless matchmaking server browser, no 16:10 support and some really stupid bugs? Because it's this sort of thing that people actually care about.

    The reason EG can afford the bandwidth for these super high resolution comparison videos is because noone fucking watches them.

  • Scimarad #21 3 years ago

    I think I prefer the smoother look of the PS3 version but bloody hell does that tear or what?!

  • UncleLou #22 3 years ago

    These articles have to continue, if only for the amusing comments of people who are so ANNOYED by them, but just don't manage to ignore them.

  • UncleLou #23 3 years ago

    no 16:10 support

    Eh, what? Works perfectly fine in 16:10. Unless you're on about the old widescreen non-issue. Hint: 16:10 on the PC gives you exactly the same field of view as on the consoles (apart from that it's 16:9 on the latter). It's designed for widescreen, and 4:3 adds stuff on the top and the bottom.

  • Yaz #24 3 years ago

    ^^^ No-ones forcing you to read them.

    Besides, I like them, and many others do too. :)

  • Shakey_Jake33 #25 3 years ago

    Most of the arguments in the comments sections of Rich's articles are not by rabid fanboys trying to protect 'their system', it's by people who take these comparison articles extremely to heart, and feel the need to mention it every time, going on about how they spark fanboy arguments (which presumably must be taking place somewhere between all these comments, somehow).

    Honestly, some people here do find these articles interesting, and if there's any negativity associated with these articles, it comes stictly from thje people who don't like these comparative articles, not fanboys.
    Edited by 2 at 28/11/08 @ 20:50

  • Widge #26 3 years ago

    I tend to sit on Richards site now because its quite an interesting read.

  • StooMonster #27 3 years ago

    UncleLou: It's designed for widescreen, and 4:3 adds stuff on the top and the bottom.

    The "widescreen" implementation is clearly cropped 4:3 rather than designed for the aspect ratio and 4:3 being 'expanded'; FarCry 2's "widescreen" makes the driving more difficult for one thing and good portion of the gun/arm graphic is cropped off the image.

    But the killer proof is if you split the display over three screens the 4:3 image is cropped so much that it becomes a thin slit!

    Just because it's also broken on the consoles does not mean it's not broken on PC, same was true of Bioshock on Xbox 360 and 2K fixed it.

  • Valver #28 3 years ago

    yup, Unclelou, widescreen is broken in Far Cry 2. The community made patch shows how it should work and makes the image much better. It may not be obvious on the consoles as their limitedto either 4:3 or 16:9, but using some widescreen settings on the PC shows what a mess they made of it. Go see the example images of triple screen setups Stoo Monster mentions above - http://ww w.widescreengamingforum.com/for...

    At the 5040x1050 rez its completely unplayable, you cant see anything. It's cropped to ludicrous levels.

    Widescreen should give a wider view than 4:3. How hard is that for people to get ;)
    Edited by 1 at 28/11/08 @ 21:38

  • miiiguel #29 3 years ago

    Who the fuck is Schrödinger ? Freud ?

    He drops by to talk amount the comments. Freaky stuff... .

  • smelly #30 3 years ago

    If people REALLY DO care about minor differences in the way the pixels are displayed on the games they're playing (as opposed to just enjoying the game) - it really does say a lot about the games themselves doesnt it?

  • bonker #31 3 years ago

    Quincunx.

  • Miths #32 3 years ago

    Regarding those screen tear measurements that are listed in most of these "face-offs", are they actually supposed to be visible to the naked eye or mostly just apparent when you're looking at a list of numbers compiled by your fancy analysis tools?

    In nearly all the cases where these articles have suggested screen tearing on 10-20+% of the frames (regardless of which console version we're talking about, though I do buy the PS3 version of nearly all games), it really hasn't matched what I've actually been witnessing during gameplay on my 40" 1080p Samsung M87.
    A few torn frames here and there, sure, but I sure as hell don't see those ugly tear lines running down my screen for an average of 6-12+ seconds every minute.

  • flippet #33 3 years ago

    The newest trend in these articles seems to be the desire for commenters to flame those who say comparisons invite fanboys. In a sort of post-ironic irony, new battle lines have been drawn, with comparison article fanboys currently ~50:50 to anti-comparison article fanboys.

    Indeed, sometimes the comparison-fanboys are so ardent they post before the anti-comparison fanboys, foretelling of the comparison-hating commenters that will post imminently, themselves trying to warn of impending fanboys.

    Of course the additional irony that many posts chastise others for not being able to ignore these articles, whilst themselves posting about eminently ignorable comments, is entirely lost.

    Keep up the good work!

  • BurningR #34 3 years ago

    @UncleLou

    spot on - and I am one of them! But you're right, we are amusing :)

  • ochinembiri #35 3 years ago

    I like these articles because the 360 and pc always come on top and they are my preferred gaming platforms.

  • Lemming81 #36 3 years ago

    Heh. I'm trying to imagine having this on my PC, then listening to the recommendation of effectivley cuttng off a limb and using an xbox 360 joypad instead of a mouse and keyboard. Haha. Ahahahahahaha! Ha. *cough*

  • Nithron #37 3 years ago

    I like these articles. But only because the PC always wins, thus proving that the Xbox/PS3 willy-waving contest is completely irrelevent.

    Also pisses all over the bollocks about HD gaming from the console manufacturers as well, when a lot of their games barely run at above SD resolutions.

  • Calgon #38 3 years ago

    I don't know what it is but console's are just better than PC's for gaming IMO, they are built and used primarily for one purpose(of course more and more multimedia capabilities are creeping in and also the distinction between PC and console is getting smaller).

    I agree PC's will always eventually win the price/performance battle but not in the first year... anyone attempting to say as such needs to learn about the overhead associated with PC gaming compared to console gaming, the CPU has the greatest overhead and to a lesser extent the GPU(5-10%) , plus any attempts to just match up the exact paper specs regardless of architectual differences and efficiencies ect is just pointless.

    I could build a PC instead of getting a 360 early next year but:

    a) I find the whole upgrading side of PC gaming wastefull, even if you could upgrade to a better performing machine for the same price, the sell on value of your existing gear is typically poor (good luck selling the parts on and trying to make something back off it) and you are only paying for the gaming performance then too since your existing setup can do all those boasted about extras used to justify the cost.

    b) Power consumption: fine build an expensive PC with SLI cards and quad cores and whopping great big PSU and indeed electricity bill to power it but you can also explain to Bono why the Polar bears are getting sun tans.

    c) Consoles are more portable and plug and play ect... gaming just feels right done that way, its also exactly as the devs chose it for that platform.
    Edited by 2 at 29/11/08 @ 18:51

  • Nithron #39 3 years ago

    @Calgon: Yeah, I don't think PCs are somehow inherently better than consoles. If you wanna play games on a console, go ahead, i'm really not bothered.

    It's just vaguely annoying to me that Sony and to a slightly lesser extent Microsoft go on and on about HD gaming and how fantastic it is when half the time their consoles are only just about running above SD anyway. To be honest, i don't really even care about HD, it just annoys me that the console manufacturers made it out to be so important and then couldn't really achieve it anyway.

    So that's why it's slightly satisfying to see them getting blown out of the water by PC. See?

  • Zappa #40 3 years ago

    LMAO, at 360s dithered crappy shadows compared.

    and lol they have to pay to play the multiplayer..lolz

  • Calgon #41 3 years ago

    Nithron fair point but they couldn't really have afforded to do it they have to sell at a price that comes within the expected range with a market so competative. I can forgive the HD talk because they needed to sell "the next gen" to people, Sony went way way further than anyone else though as usual, for once it's good(satisfying) to see that their game of hype and deception has backfired on them(they got away with it last gen by the time people realised they didnt care because it was all settled by a huge margin which console had won).

    I remember someone, I think it was one of Microsofts devs after Sony's(the irony) claim of "360 does 720p but we do true HD = 1080p"(before MS introduced HDMI) who did actually make some fair and sensible points about the sacrifices that would have to be made for either of the consoles to run games at 1080p native... the fanboys(mostly Sony fanboys) blasted him for it obviously. Its funny how its turned out that PS3 is the one that most often has to drop to a lower res to keep up.

  • TRUTH #42 3 years ago

    I use to love PC gaming - but it's just a pain in the arse to keep upgrading, get it running properly, system errors/crashes etc...I prefer consoles as u just slip it in and play. May not be as fancy as PC games but variety, ease of use, no problems with settings, able to play on a large screen more then makes up for it...Having a 360 and PS3, I opted for the PS3 game - compared to the 360 I did find the colors a little washed out and texture detail also less detailed with more frame stutters compared playing to the 360 version (which I also have as i swapped Ninja Gaiden II for - get more value (Far Cry 2) when trading in) I have to say I fairly disappointed with the PS3, just been playing an import of Resistance 2 - what the fuss about this game is I don't know.

  • Katsumoto #43 3 years ago

    "able to play on a large screen"

    wha

  • monkeywithnoeyes #44 3 years ago

    Its surprising at the "cut back" of details in the ps3 version compared to the 360. I remember ubisoft saying that this game was optimised for all 3 platforms.. you check out the second vid and the ps3 may have the slightly cleaner shadows (though only noticable on the guys shirt), but the details on the landscape takes a huge dip (half the blades of grass are gone from the ps3 version at one point)..coupled with higher frame rate dips, it makes you wonder just if we will see the ps3 show it's much mooted potential and outdo the 360 in one of these head-to-heads.

  • SaberEdge #45 3 years ago

    Well, I really appreciate these comparisons. Eurogamer does the very best and most detailed analyses of multiplatform games and it really helps out people like me who own more than one current gen console. I have a PS3 and a 360 and they are both fantastic gaming consoles. I personally don't find the Wii to be very appealing.

    Anyway, it seems the PS3 version has smoother shadows, but the 360 version has more apparent detail, less screen tearing, and a better frame rate. I have watched all the videos and I didn't think the shadows were that noticeable--they were a little smoother on the PS3, that's all. The 360 version looked more detailed and I did notice less screen tearing in the 360 version even in the videos. I didn't notice the difference in frame rate, but videos are never going to show you framerate differences the way you will see on an actual HDTV. My eyes are very tuned to notice screen tearing and frame rate drops and those are much more important performance criteria than the question of smoother or rougher shadow edges. Based on this analysis it is clear that the 360 version is the better performing version. So that is the version that I will get.

  • Andee #46 3 years ago

    Again I commend the inclusion the pc version in these comparisons. Clearly the PC version looks the nicest, with the 360 shadow technique looking absolutely awful and the PS3 version tearing like a bitch.

    But despite these differences, and having a PC of the same spec to the test machine, I ended up going for the PS3 version. Old age and rsi overuled the graphic whore component of my brain.

  • m0thr4 #47 3 years ago

    it makes you wonder just if we will see the ps3 show it's much mooted potential and outdo the 360 in one of these head-to-heads.

    See the ES4: Oblivion head-to-head.

    I really can't decide whether to go for the Xbox 360, PS3 or PC version. My 'PC' is actually a 24" iMac Dual Core 3.06GHz with 4GB DDR2 RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS, but then it is confined to a study without comfy sofa to sit on (or decent surround sound speakers). Previously the PS3 always won out for being quieter, but since the Xbox dash update and the Talismoon Whisper Max Xbox 360 fans that arrived this morning, I think the Xbox 360 might now win by default.

  • monkeywithnoeyes #48 3 years ago

    @m0thr4 ,

    I dont think Oblivion would be a valid comparrison though do you? Consider that A) Oblivion was a launch title for the 360. B) it came out over a year later on the ps3. So it would be a given that they'd be some improvements there right? Although saying that.. check out Bioshock on the ps3, a years extra development didnt do that any favours.

    If you want to compare Bethesda's work as being a developer that can finally put the ps3 above the 360 in their multiplatform games then you should really check out A)the oblivion expansion packs. B) Fallout 3.. neither of which had an extra year to hit the ps3, and neither (funnily enough) perform or look better on the ps3. Fancy that.

  • BonzoBanana #49 3 years ago

    My preference is the ps3 as I've had soo many reliability issues with my 360 and I'm on my fourth but its obvious to anyone now that its easier to achieve great results on the 360. The ps3 has a weaker gpu than the 360 and thats a fact but I've read the ps3 has additional support chips which can enhance the ps3 beyond the 360 in graphic terms but that is either a lie, or its too difficult to program or developers simply aren't bothering. It seems to me that the only way the ps3 has a chance of beating the 360 is by developing a game from the ground up on the ps3 which isn't going to happen for a multiplatform title so the end result is 360 wins for practically all multiformat titles. On the odd occasion that the ps3 exceeds the 360 on a multiplatform title the difference is not worth caring about.

    I have absolutely no intention of selling my ps3 I love it but if I only wanted one gaming console I would wait for a jasper based 360 and concentrate on that making sure that I got one with a decent dvd drive. Wii gaming is generally mediocre, ps3 gaming is good but 360 gaming is great if you don't have to put up with reliability issues. People go on about the ps3 coming of age but 360 games seem to be improving generally too above the speed of ps3 improvements.

    Lets not forget though that the 360 has been a massive commercial failure and has cost Microsoft huge sums of money. Its not rosy for Sony either although their gaming/console loses are tiny in comparision. The only real winner is Nintendo. Thats what I like about Microsoft they continue to massively subsidise their consoles so we can play fantastic quality games for a pittance really.

  • warlockuk #50 3 years ago

    PC version best version followed by 360 and then PS3... These face-offs are starting to get a bit... samey. :)