Totally agree Bingham. Totally. Some of what you are seeing is the end result/bantering of nearly a year of "old builds" and "hater" comments coming to their due end ;) Good old jockular fun. The game is a great game -- no one is bagging on the physics, AI, framerate, online, customization depth -- and is more of a "lets see those screenshots showing how old those builds were" roll the eyes attitude. I know some will give a free pass because the game is exceptional, but I think there is a lesson in here, namely what everyone should have learned from E3 2005: be honest with consumers and don't treat them like idiots. It doesn't help that the media sites often cave (Motorstorm looking like the CGI anyone?), so there has to be some voice of reason out there. I know fans can get really worked up about games they like. Me personally, well, it isn't really an issue of dissappointment. I like to follow the industry in general and the movement and themes we, as consumers, see and endure. The industry is quite huge these days, yet they often act like it was 20 years ago. I want to see the industry mature as a medium with more openness and honesty toward consumers. I also have friends in the industry (none at BC btw), so when I see a company use another as a springboard for their PR and then fail it grates on me. How many "Halo killers" do we have to endure before people just shut up and create a great game and let it do the talking?

And that is one of the sad things about the industry: It is very PR/Advert driven. What is a "AAA" game is often decided LOOONG before a game is released. Some games, based on how they are built, are able to show off stunning gameplay almost immediately to give this impression. Gears, Assassin's Creed, BiA3 all come to mind. Others are "positioned" earlier on in their lifecycle (Too Human and FM2 for example) and have choices:

Do we talk about our gameplay vision?
Do we talk about the story?
Do we hype the graphics?
Do we hype new interfaces and experiences?

I think it is an utter mistake to hype graphics from a list of features--as it is a mistake to hype content that you may not be able to include. Turn10 did both of these. The game ROCKS. They would have been faaar better off taking the angle of "this is an awesome sim that is totally approachable" and talked at LENGTH about customization. Yet at first the emphasis was heavily toward justifying the CGI they showed: PGR killer, near photorealistic, near CGI. Opps. All could have been absolved with a little mia culpa instead of the lies about photomode and the "old builds" tactic. So fans are left either not buying the game -- the best sim to date by far -- or defending the game's goals as if they were met, or just conceeding the point with a "yep, graphics are not what we were promised, but the game is great and makes up for it".

I am in the last camp and take issue with the middle camp. The middle camp though overlooks my looong time praise of the franchise, and even what was delivered, and are still overhyping the graphics the same way Turn10 did. The game's graphics are servicable and sadly have a lot of artifacts. It doesn't make it a worse game at all, but it does impact the immersion. And strategically I think it was an issue MS needed to resolve a long time ago. MS has some internal problems with 1st party stuff and as a consume I want MS to take a more Nintendo/Sony approach to software and not an EA/Activision one. Games like Turn10 and Shadowrun (another game with some graphic-no-delivery marketing) make me wonder who is running the show. And on the flip side seeing how Bungie has handled themselves (wonderfully!) and BC with PGR re-inforce that studios with more independance, as well as the mantra of showing the game when it is ready to be shown, is definately the right approach.

Too Human has needed a miracle to undo the damage MS has done to them. Visuals are absolutely vital in a TH like game and what MS had SK show was nothing short of horrible. Yet SK backed off and re-engineered the project to resolve these issues. MS should have known that showing off an incomplete game could harm the title -- and worse SK! -- yet they persist. So some of my points are perephrial: MS needs to be more careful how they handle their internal IPs. And while FM2 as a game is NOT a let down, they would have been better off taking another approach if they were not willing to conceed falling short (kind of like the whole "our console doesn't have issues yet we are extending our warranty" mindgame).

PR, especially that that damages companies and images, is bad. And I think MS has some growing up to do here. As for FM2, it totally delivered on almost everything but graphics. It wouldn't be such a big deal if a. Turn10 didn't make graphics a big deal and b. people would stop making them into something they are not. That is really what is boils down to. And until PGR4, and then GT5, are released we will endure the continued theme of, "FM2 rules graphically" with dogging the other titles. Of course with realtime gameplay of FM2 out there is some relevant discussion.

Of course no one is really discussing all the forms of aliasing, bloom overload, white spec artifacting, and typically low AF. It has all boiled down to, "You criticize my favorite game? How dare you! It is awesome looking! The other games suck!" :| Welcome to Xboxyde!Absolutely.They haven't said. A long while back they showed some 3D grass (supposedly animated per the PR?) but we saw it once or twice and then never again. Recently there have been some shots with sparse sprite based grass, but how much/dense and frequent it is is unknown. On the topic of grass, Halo 3's grass looks very good. Sure, it isn't perfect, but it sure beats looking at flat "grass" textures. One of my next gen pet peeves is flat textured grass and it is nice to see some games taking this issue seriously.