Okay, to start off, a few things: this blog is not about how good the gameplay is, how good the games are or anything at all about that. It's fully and only about graphics, nothing else. If you do not care for graphics at all, this is not for you. This thread is not a flamebait, but my honest opinion.

Your right, I also have a ps3 and I often think the same thing. I have to buy two copies of games just to have a sharp clear high rez texture version because sometimes the pc version was delayed. Pc has higher resolution, high rez textures, more anti aliasing and aniostropic filter, and more frames.

Metaphorically, if you were used to watching blu ray movies, then you went back to upscaled dvd, you will think something doesn't look right here, it's not sharp enough and looks blurry. (don't forget, pc has higher rez textures because you install it onto the hardrive and stream it. Consoles has a limited amount of v ram and has to stream it through the disk. It's not just resolution, everything is technically superior on the pc)

PC games look better than consoles games... shocker.

Well to be fair 720p is always going to look shitty when you are used to looking at 1920x1080 for 95% of your gaming time.

Wait, are you telling me these games for consoles that were already middle tier computers when they were released don't look as good as games on new computers from today or even a couple years ago!??!?!?!?! WHO KNEW?

 What I now ask Internet, is why?

Crysis still has the best graphics of a videogame, ever, and nobody has been able to write a compelling videogame story since the late nineties. These are facts.

Because most of the people arguing over this have not actually seen Crysis 2 run on a PC, just on a video of someone running it on their PC, but they have played Killzone, so it's still debatable in their minds.

great job

" PC games look better than consoles games... shocker. "

This thread is the definition of redundancy.

" @Spoonman671 said:

" PC games look better than consoles games... shocker. "

"

(my 720p TV + the PS3 costed more than my PC setup, FYI)    

"

(my 720p TV + the PS3 costed more than my PC setup, FYI)    

Irrelevant? TV's cost double the price of a monitor with all the same features for the simple fact that they have TV tuners which cost crazy amounts to even license. You can have a 32" 1080P monitor with two HDMI ports and it would cost half as much as a 32" 1080P TV with two HDMI ports. "

Well I think the thing to note is that the generational gap is already here. What is playable on PC with a single graphics card pretty much marks the maximum potential of next gen consoles assuming they release 2013-2014. 

Yeah, PCs are better than consoles. Still, though, I suggest at least checking out Uncharted 2. It's still the pinnacle of console graphics. It's very pretty. Also, you might enjoy it.

This thread is officially pointless.

Nigh unplayable? Really? That's a self-imposed problem. If games had that short of a graphical shelf life, people wouldn't still be buying titles from 20-30 years ago. 

Yep, computers look better. they also cost an exorbitant amount more. This coming from a guy that just had a friend help him build a pretty decent setup. Great deal on nearly everything I needed and it still cost over 400 bucks. I can't imagine what I would have paid if I was going for a top-of-the-line machine with all the parts brand new out of the box. My TB hard drive by itself would have cost three times as much. 

I was done responding to everyone, then Windows Updated snuck up on me in amazing irony and killed my browser.

The simple fact of the matter is that the cheapest goods will inevitably be the most widely used. So for a much larger portion of the gaming population their standards will be derived from consoles and how good it looks on PCs will be irrelevant to them. In principle I agree with you, I plan on getting a new beastly PC myself so I can max everything out for the next couple of years. This console generation is too early for full HD graphics: they would've been better off going for lower resolutions at higher detail settings instead of going for 1080p, which they are ill-equipped to handle.

I've had almost the exact opposite experience. I play mostly console games, and when I recently played Crysis on the highest settings for the first time I thought: "Is this really what people have been talking about for the past three years?"

"

(my 720p TV + the PS3 costed more than my PC setup, FYI)    

Irrelevant? TV's cost double the price of a monitor with all the same features for the simple fact that they have TV tuners which cost crazy amounts to even license. You can have a 32" 1080P monitor with two HDMI ports and it would cost half as much as a 32" 1080P TV with two HDMI ports. "

" I've had almost the exact opposite experience. I play mostly console games, and when I recently played Crysis on the highest settings for the first time I thought: "Is this really what people have been talking about for the past three years?"

I mean, I'm sure that all the rendering techniques they're using are very impressive and advanced and cutting-edge and cool and neat and so on and so forth. But it really just... doesn't look that good. It looks good. But not that good. As far as I'm concerned the only thing worth making a fuss about is the possibilities: what could be done with the tech if people who have made stuff like Okami, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Street Fighter III and the Prince of Persia reboot  -- games I think look far better than Crysis -- with tech that looks laughable next to Crytek's were to embrace it and use it to its fullest.

"

" I've had almost the exact opposite experience. I play mostly console games, and when I recently played Crysis on the highest settings for the first time I thought: "Is this really what people have been talking about for the past three years?"

I mean, I'm sure that all the rendering techniques they're using are very impressive and advanced and cutting-edge and cool and neat and so on and so forth. But it really just... doesn't look that good. It looks good. But not that good. As far as I'm concerned the only thing worth making a fuss about is the possibilities: what could be done with the tech if people who have made stuff like Okami, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Street Fighter III and the Prince of Persia reboot  -- games I think look far better than Crysis -- with tech that looks laughable next to Crytek's were to embrace it and use it to its fullest.

"

" Crysis still has the best graphics of a videogame, ever, and nobody has been able to write a compelling videogame story since the late nineties. These are facts. "

" @AlexW00d:@Jimbo:  I don't think you can separate engine from art style so cleanly, as the experience of a game visually is based on the combination of its engine and design.... "

" @AlexW00d:  @Jimbo: I'm not talking about art style, but overall graphics, i.e. everything that dictates how the games look (art style, tech et cetera). And comments like the following lead me to believe that that that's what the thread creator is talking about as well:

" STILL waaaaay better looking than anything on console"
" I find most of these games nigh unplayable graphically after being way too accustomed to my PC."
"why are people arguing console games look good or even great?"

 Who would say something was "nigh unplayable graphically" if he wasn't talking about the overall graphical experience? "

It's funny how ppl hates on crysis because it's photorealistic. What console games are photorealistic? None, so you hate on something you can't achieve with your current gen technology and art design is a compensation for the lack of technical graphics. With more realism, there is less room for art design and realism takes alot more technical power and you ignore it because it looks real. Rather art design pops out at you saying hey, look at me, while realism says, ignore me while i'm rendered in the background, which is more difficult to achieve. You will like a comic drawing over a photorealism drawing probally like alex ross, or realistic landscape painting, that's what you are arguing about, I totally disagree. The realistic art takes more skill, time and ability, the other one is to compensate. Who is to say a realistic painting isn't art, just as photorealistic videogames? How can you say one art is high quality art (cartoony) over other realistic art. I mean renaissance art is realistic and it's highly regarded over animated cartoons. You seen ENB (photorealistic) settings for gta 4, it looks better than art design gta 4.

Not only are consoles like upscaled dvds compared to blu ray, it's also like an upscaled toy story shrek 3d cartoon compared to something that looks almost like live action on blu ray and you hate on it because it doesn't have art design? Also who is to say realism can't be considered a type of art? This is not to hate on console gamers btw and their sensibilities, all i'm telling you is the truth. Whether you accept it is up to you.

Did you like how you could just put the game in and it works?

" @AlexW00d:@Jimbo:  I don't think you can separate engine from art style so cleanly, as the experience of a game visually is based on the combination of its engine and design. I realise that graphics whores only care about the technical side but it's based on a false dichotomy, which conveniently ignores the design aspect entirely, as evidenced by the lauding of photorealism and the absence of stylisation. What they forget is that 'realism' is a design - the least imaginative, costly, or (arguably) interesting design possible. On that basis I'd take Metro 2033 over Crysis any day because of its bizarre setting and greater stylisation, even if it suffers from poor optimisation.

" @Snapstacle said:

"

(my 720p TV + the PS3 costed more than my PC setup, FYI)    

Irrelevant? TV's cost double the price of a monitor with all the same features for the simple fact that they have TV tuners which cost crazy amounts to even license. You can have a 32" 1080P monitor with two HDMI ports and it would cost half as much as a 32" 1080P TV with two HDMI ports. "

Tbh, you won't find a 30" 1080p monitor with 2 HDMIs anyway. You will find a 30" 2560x1600 with DVI inputs for about 3 times the amount of a 32" 1080 TV. "

" It's funny how ppl hates on crysis because it's photorealistic. What console games are photorealistic? None, so you hate on something you can't achieve with your current gen technology and art design is a compensation for the lack of technical graphics. With more realism, there is less room for art design and realism takes alot more technical power and you ignore it because it looks real. Rather art design pops out at you saying hey, look at me, while realism says, ignore me while i'm rendered in the background, which is more difficult to achieve. You will like a comic drawing over a photorealism drawing probally like alex ross, or realistic landscape painting, that's what you are arguing about, I totally disagree. The realistic art takes more skill, time and ability, the other one is to compensate. You seen ENB (photorealistic) settings for gta 4, it looks better than art design gta 4. Not only are consoles like upscaled dvds compared to blu ray, it's also like an upscaled toy story shrek 3d cartoon compared to something that looks almost like live action on blu ray and you hate on it because it doesn't have art design? This is not to hate on console gamers btw and their sensibilities, all i'm telling you is the truth. Whether you accept it is up to you. "

" PC games look better than consoles games... shocker. "

" @kingzetta: we arent't talking about whether it is a good game or not, we are talking about graphics here. Crysis and crysis 2 is a good game, review wise it's acceptable on gamerankings. I care if it's photorealistic because it's so rare these days. If I had a choice, I wish more games were using the cryengine 2, imagine oblivion games with that engine. Imagine uncharted 2 not looking like a semi realistic cartoon, rather the game looks totally real with that gameplay? It would be out of this world and alot more immersive. The only reason why we like the graphics we have today is because it's all the consoles are capable of with their gpu. We can't move foward yet until we get new consoles, so everyone is stuck at their paradigm of how they see graphics. Besides that, I want to make another point in this thread. I have a question to ask of ppl, does consoles have high rez textures? Not, medium rez on the xbox 360 since they have more video ram and low rez on the ps3 for multiplatform games. It's funny how everyone thinks, it's only resolution that's an advantage for the pc, what about high rez textures? What about DX10 and DX11. "

My  Pentium II 300 with Win98 OS runs Crysis 2  like a dream!

"Yeah, photorealism takes the most power technically but the least amount of skill artistically and the least effort designing. How hard is it to copy something that already exists? It's a trivial task for a designer of sufficient ability. I can have photorealistic graphics on PC all I want, but that doesn't change the fact that it's lazy and boring when it's what can already be experienced in reality. When photography developed fine art moved away from the replication of reality. Getting to the level of photorealism makes for a nice tech demo, but is laughable design-wise. Games can do much better. I'd much rather PC take its fantastic engines and make equally interesting visual designs with rampant stylisation and bizarre settings, not humdrum reality. tl;dr Metro 2033 > Crysis. "

Anti-aliasing is the least important graphical effect. I'm flat out amazed at the lack of (or just really low 2X) anisotropic filtering in nearly all games on both platforms. That doesn't affect performance any noticeable amount, and it makes textures look soooo much better when view at angles.

" @kingzetta: I don't know what your talking about, pc gamers plays games to play games, but our games are prettier too. It's having the best of both worlds. Yes I can't enjoy a game with low rez textures, I admit that, but if there is a pc version of it, i'll enjoy it. I can go back to my console at times when I rent games, if I stop playing pc gamers after a few months, I can be wowed again by console games. But I play games because they are fun, it's just I get the graphics with it too. I understand what the op is trying to say, it's just really lowering your standards. You don't understand me because you are probally a console gamer who is used to seeing console games. Like I said, upscaled dvd movies vs blu ray, don't hate on me just because I see things different than you. I like gameplay too fyi, but I have the option of really good technical graphics. "

" Anti-aliasing is the least important graphical effect."

Hey, let's not hate on Civics here.