There’s no easy way to put this so I’ll just come right out and say it: In a head-to-head comparison with the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 version of Ghostbusters looks like crap.
Let’s get this out of the way right from the start. There’s no anti-PlayStation bias at work here or a hidden editorial agenda to bring Sony to its knees, nor are we being paid by Microsoft to breathlessly boost the Xbox 360. It’s a simple fact: The visuals in the PlayStation 3 version of the recently-released Ghostbusters: The Video Game look terrible next to the Xbox 360 edition.
Lens of Truth put the two versions of the game together and the difference is really quite stunning. The texture quality on the PS3 is noticeably inferior and also suffers from “serious compression” that resulted in banding and blockiness. Some effects are missing from the PlayStation 3 version, such as shadows and burn marks on walls. The difference is visible in side-by-side screen captures but even more dramatic in roll-over images that clearly illustrate the graphical superiority of the Xbox 360.
“The texture quality for the PlayStation 3 left us shaking our heads in disbelief. This went beyond the traditional consoles rendering textures differently, as we’ve seen in other Head2Heads,” Lens of Truth said of the comparison. “The PlayStation 3 seemed to have 1/2 the texture quality of the Xbox 360 and in other areas, even less. This was present on all the PlayStation 3 textures, normal maps, spec maps, light maps, etc. Even the dynamic shadow maps looked blocky and half the quality of the Xbox 360.”
Making matters even more baffling, according to the site, is the fact that Mark Randel, president of developer Terminal Reality, had bragged about the studio’s PS3 technology, saying, “We’re one of the few developers who love the PS3 and have a great time with it. We have great technology for the PS3 and we want to show it off.”
What went wrong? Speaking to Joystiq, a Terminal Reality rep said, “For the record, the PS3 version [of Ghostbusters] is softer due to the ‘quincunx’ antialiasing filter and the fact we render at about 75% the resolution of the 360 version. So you cannot directly compare a screen shot of one to the other unless you scale them properly. The PS3 does have less available RAM than the 360 – but we managed to squeeze 3 out of 4 textures as full size on the PS3.”
Yet other new releases don’t seem to suffer so badly in comparison, so it’s a bit difficult to take that explanation at face value. The bottom line is this: If you have the choice, get the 360 version. But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself at lensoftruth.com.
Via: Ars Technica
