Quote Originally Posted by champagne supernova View Post
Did you not find the Sunleth Waterscape at times breathtaking? Or some of the areas in Pulse. Even Eden itself (and inside Orphan). The only place I was unimpressed was in the Ark.
I really wasn't impressed by any of it so far to be honest. And since so far is Part of the way into Chapter 11 I've seen a lot. There was some nice texture work here and there, but most of it was fairly flat and uninteresting. Many of the areas really seemed to be little more than flat ground, walls, etc. with some pretty flat textures over top and all of the somewhat impressive looking stuff rendered off in the distance out of reach of your characters. The actual traversible world had no depth or life to it, and the engine itself seemed to be lacking in areas like lighting, particle effects, etc. I think the best way I could describe the whole thing was that it left me feeling like I was playing a PS2 game with a higher resolution and more polygons.

Compared to games like Uncharted 2 which were filled with gorgeously detailed buildings, jungle filled with grass and trees and all manner of other plant life, great lighting and some of the best animation I've ever seen and FFXIII just seemed wanting by comparison. And there was nothing in the game that could hold a candle to climbing and fighting along the body of a massive, fully rendered and animated titan in God of War III. I'm not trying to say FFXIII looked bad because it didn't, but when compared to the wonderfully rich and detailed worlds in these other games I have to wonder what Square spent the last five years making if not art assets.

And Metal Gear Solid 4 was also a lot of style over substance. I would say it is a better game than XIII as well (mainly because there was some diversity which XIII lacked), but it can work very well.
I won't deny that the MGS series throws a lot of cutscenes at people, so it'd be easy to think that it's got a lot of style without a lot of substance to back it, but I will argue any day that every game in that series had some incredibly deep and rewarding gameplay that lived up to all of the hype the games get. That series is hands down one of the best ever from the perspective of gameplay and game design.