Digital Foundry

With Epic Games hard at work on a showcase Unreal Engine 4 title for next-gen platforms, it falls to satellite studio People Can Fly to give the current engine one last victory lap on existing console hardware. We've already seen Sony pushing the PS3 to incredible feats in recent months, but for the Xbox 360, the series that has consistently reflected the console's technical virtues has been Gears of War.

Casting our eyes back to 2006, it was the series' debut that had gamers dropping jaws over its intricate HD visuals and cutting-edge effects. Since then, for every new entry in Marcus' chainsaw-wielding odyssey, we've been given a grand tour of what's possible with the latest rendering technologies grafted into Unreal Engine 3. From meat blocks to increasing numbers of on-screen Locust, these titles are a roadmap of the engine's progress, showing the development community what they can achieve with the very same tools.

But the question is, does Gears of War: Judgment follow suit and bring something new to the table, or has the roll-out of new visuals features finally dried up? Even in late 2011 we saw Gears of War 3 mixing things up by removing multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA); a move which allowed the 360 to free its GPU cycles up for superior lighting and textures plus a more consistent 30FPS refresh. It was a worthwhile improvement on the whole, and really showed what Unreal Engine 3 was capable of - especially when development could focus singularly on the Xbox 360 hardware. However, even then, the advances stood as marks of evolution rather than outright revolution, the suggestion being that UE3 had hit the ceiling of its capabilities on current-gen hardware.

So let's lay all cards on the table: Judgment is very much your game if you love the core, meaty mechanics of Gears of War. If you love Horde mode. If you love the arcade-style scoring systems of the People Can Fly's wacky billiards-with-guns FPS, Bulletstorm. It offers up a campaign built around surviving in one walled-off arena in a turret defense fashion, racking up points, and then moving on to the next without so much as a boss battle or ride on the back of a giant Brumak. In other words, the grand set-piece moments that peppered Gears of War 3's adventure are shorn in favour of a tighter formula. But despite conceptually rooting its feet firmly to the ground, Judgment still manages to rank among the most visually breathtaking shooters we've played this generation.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-gears-of-war-judgment

I wonder what CGI-Quality thinks of this ·3·

Tech wise seems like no improvement over Gears 3 (some tricks in lighting).

Its not a huge improvement from a tech point of view

But its still easily one of the best looking shooters this entire generation.

Digital Foundry

"Despite conceptually rooting its feet firmly to the ground, Judgment still manages to rank among the most visually breath-taking shooters we've played this generation."

"Other effects are of sky-high quality, from the fluid simulations on blood splatter and the lambent Locust's toxic spills, to the water shader and mortar fire alpha effects during the impressive Normandy landing-style siege."

"We get a strong implementation of the UE3 light-shaft tech in Judgment, streaming between tree branches and even the stained glass materials used for buildings - complete with a diffused effect."

"Overall visual quality fires on all cylinders and the striking level designs hold their own against the very best locales in Marcus' original adventures."

Nice to see this generation of consoles still pushes out a little something extra.