Been doing video stuff for a very long time, can always see artifacts with those.

I understand this. I bought uncharted 3 2 days ago. And to be honest the visuals are way over rated.

Regularly there is low res textures, and some poor distant scenery. Loads of prebaked lighting used andloads of clipping animations.

Crysis 3 was a lot better across the board as was halo 4 and I even prefer god of war 3 technically over uncharted 3.

Cant comment on the last of us yet. But uncharted is overated visually. So much the engine hides and isnt doing. And its funny when someone mentions low res textures then says naughty dogs are gods. When allmi see regularly throughout uncharted 3 is blocks of colour on the floor.

Particularly the floor in the jungle of france is some of the lowest textures ive seen recently

The game engine rocks, in my opinion, and the graphics get better and better as you get farther into the game. You can explore a multilevel apartment building, go out on a terrace and see detailed sharp views of buildings and streets in the distance, go back inside and see incredibly detailed rooms, it's really amazing how much detail there is. The lighting is great also, if you shine your flashlight on a red wall, the ambient lighting turns red, illuminating other nearby objects with red light. If sunlight is shining through a stained glass window, the colored light design of the window is projected onto objects in the room, and your characters as they pass through the projected light...incredible stuff.

It is the same, no? Just different shot angles.

Something funny to consider. Happened to me this week.

When I first saw the game running before my eyes, it was on my friend's TV. I always told him his set wasn't properly calibrated, and that his games looked bland on it. Colors weren't poping out, brightness was too high making the dark areas look washed out, while the blacks were basically gray.

Basically, it made the game look bad.

A few days later, I finally got the game, and played it on my own TV. Which has been calibrated to meet the THX standard.
It was night and day. The game looks a lot more solid. And you get to appreciate the stellar graphic artistry of ND.

I know it seems like a no brainer, but most people don't have their TV or monitor properly calibrated (if at all), and you'd be surprised by the impact it has on the visual fidelity. Basically, most people don't play the game with the image set the way it was meant to be played by the developers.

Agreed. My friend's TVs look like horse shit.

You know why my friend had set his brightness so high on his TV?

Cause he can't see a damn thing in Demon Souls and Dark Souls. His favourites games. xD

But when I finally calibrated his TV, I showed him that he just had the impression that he could see better. The dark areas were just lighter tones. Basically, the dark spots still lacked details, but they were white/gray-ish, instead of dark gray or black.

After I finally calibrated his set, he thought the game's graphics looked much better. Ha ha.

Honestly I was never impressed graphically even in the very first trailers. They looked good, but not overly impressive compared to the top. Really the PS3 was pretty much maxed out with GoW3 in early 2010.

On top of that we've seen lots of Xbox One and PS4 game footage very recently, which makes not good looking parts much easier to spot.

I try to do it to my friend's TV sets but they just say I make it yellow and blurry.  They take the TV remote with them when they leave the room now.

Too high brightness irritates me the most, nothing is uglier than greyish blacks. Funny thing is, it can wash out shadow detail making it harder to see.

I didn't :P.  I'm just saying I found Gaikai pretty good.  Onlive was pretty terrible.