Really impressed thus far. The opening was as spectacular as I had heard and really demonstrates the power of an interactive medium. Sure, the actual gameplay at that point amounted to little more than walking around, but the fact that you felt in control and a part of the experience really enhanced it. It felt far more terrifying than anything you could achieve in a film.
Only disappointment thus far is the framerate. While it does seem to be improving, it certainly hasn't been all that stable. Uncharted 2 and 3 both ran much more consistently than this. Also, some of the visual decisions appear to be going beyond the limits of what they could achieve on PS3. The lighting is extremely nice, for instance, but is compromised by the lower resolution and lack of AF more so than it was in Uncharted. I think it's the more nuanced color palette. These types of visuals demand better image quality. Still, considering the hardware, it's damn impressive.
I'll have to run the cinemas through a capture card and take a closer look, but it's genuinely hard to tell if they are using pre-rendered videos ala Uncharted. Unlike Uncharted all of the cinemas here have the same lesser image quality as the game (jaggies, lack of AF, etc) and I'm unable to spot compression artifacts. However, if they are simply using very high quality video and designed them to more closely resemble the game I could be tricked here. The performance is always perfect in cinema sequences, however, which makes me wonder. Then again, RE6 also worked in this fashion with beautiful cinemas running at a solid 30 fps in realtime alongside the rather choppy gameplay (gameplay which ran much slower than The Last of Us, I should note).
I dont really care about the texture pop in and what have you but the motion blur and filter are just plain ugly. I am a PC gamer and I always turn off motion blur or set it to low on this the slightest movement will cause motion blur and the blur is highlighted by the ugly filter all compiling into what looks like a watercolour painting.
I could not possibly disagree more. I absolutely hate the look of games without post processing. It adds so much to the visual quality. Without such effects even games such as Crysis 3 wind up looking rather ho-hum.
I'm sure divided opinions will continue to exist for both areas, though. It amazes me I see people talking about PC graphics and then present screens with all of the post processing disabled (which looks unattractive and unimpressive to me). Whatever works, though.
