Inspect Kratos' HD facelift in God of War Collection

by Andrew Yoon on Nov 9th 2009 3:30PM

Sure, the upcoming God of War Collection is a lot more resolution-y than the original PS2 games, but does that produce a noticeably better-looking game? Bitmob tested the original God of War games on their backwards-compatible PS3 systems and took comparison shots of both. It's clear that the Blu-ray remastering is better than the PS2 original, even with the PS3 upscaler turned on.

It certainly helps that the original source material was so good. Looking back at the first game has us impressed -- we'd forgotten how much muscle the last generation could flex.

Source - Graphics Comparison (part one) God of War 1 vs. God of War Compilation
Source - Graphics Comparison (part two) God of War 2 vs. God of War Compilation

Tags: action, comparison, god-of-war, god-of-war-collection, god-of-war-ii

Reader Comments (55)

Now THAT is a chin!

Did he enable the HD mode on the PS2 version before taking the screenshots?

"the Blu-ray remastering is better than the PS2 original, even with the PS3 upscaler turned on."

I think he's talking about the code you enter on god of war 2 title screen. anyhow I think that essentially does the same thing as the PS3 scaler

I also really haven't seen much of a difference from the PS3 upscaling. It's a minimal improvement at best.

worse lighting/shading in the ps3 version

PS3:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3500/4082333346_aaaa155e11_o.jpg

PS2:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2652/4081567617_e29979c63d_o.jpg

@DeepFriedSushi

Wow, I don't recall God of War I looking that bad on the PS3. I thought the graphics were great (with 480P on) and the only complaint is that it doesn't fill the whole screen width-wise. Still, I might pick this up!

Where's the lighting issue in that pic? Are you just talking about the bright spot on the boards near the fire chain? It's just coincidence, that's just the same bright spot as on the PS3 pic, it's just the different gammas make it look like a big deal on the PS2 pic.

Yes, I was talking about the HD mode that actually renders the game in 1080i. It's not just an upscale, which is entirely different. Especially since the HD mode is coded in the actual game, and not some generic PS3 mode

Rank me down for actually knowing the difference though

There is no HD mode in the original GoW2, just something that was mistakenly labeled that by some blogs. The game still ran at 480p, just with a smoothing effect.

Seeing this...I want a few other games remade.

Dark Cloud, anyone?

Yeah, after I played the GOW3 demo, I canceled my order for Collection, the graphics were outstanding I cant go back and play a last gen game, maybe I will buy it when its cheap, which I expect to happen near the GOW3 release

Shadow of the Colossus.

/end

Don't forget Ico! It needs it more. That game looks awful on my ps3/HDTV.

I tried playing Ico again and it gave me a headache within 20 minutes. It was somehow blurry and jaggy at the same time.
Ico and SOTC really need re-releases like this. The improved framerate especially in SOTC's case.

Protip: Never play SD games on an HDTV. It actually looks BETTER on an SDTV because you don't notice the flaws.

A lot of SD games, mainly ones that support 480p, actually look a little better on an HDTV. GoW and SotC, for instance.

Ico is not one of them. The game ran at 320x240, half of what even most PS2 games run at. On a modern TV it looks like one of those old realplayer videos stretched up to fullscreen.

Definitely a good candidate for an upgrade.

I'm really impressed with he difference. It looks a LOT better. Can't wait to get my copy in the mail.

Is it just me or do the collection screenshots look washed out compared to the original?

gow 2.5??

I don't get it. Are you saying you want an HD version of Chains of Olympus?

Chains of Olympus is really 0.5 not 2.5

Shockingly this is the game I'm looking forward to the most. When GoW came out I worked all the time (sometimes seven days a week) and had little time for gaming. I remember renting the first one and not buying the second.

Now I work normal people hours (thanks a lot College) and plan on taking my time and enjoying these great games.

i'm the opposite, i had much more time to play games back in college. now that i'm working, i hardly have time anymore. ahh, such is the life of an overworked and underpaid animator.

i'm looking forward to these HDfied vesions too, as i never had a PS2 (i was only a PC gamer back then).

Woah, since when does Kratos have a scar?

Looks like the same model with better textures. I guess that's not surprising, given how much more work would go into re-doing the models. I'd like to see these two pictures with a shot of the GoW 3 Kratos model for comparison there.

it's the same models, with the same textures just rendered natively in 720p. Which is exactly what they said they were going to do when it got announced. What were you expecting?

I never read the details of exactly what they were doing, so I didn't know what to expect. I'd still like to see these images compared to a GoW 3 image, just because it would be interesting to see how far things have come.

HD tits. YEEEEEEEEEESSS

Yes the GoW games set the bar high on tit rendering.

I can't believe it when wii fanboys say HD doesn't look better and that HDs useless HD looks so much better

One of my biggest problems with the wii is no HD output. They don't have to impove the graphics, just add a little extra ram so they can render at 720p. People have done it with emulators and it's a world of difference, especially since 480p looks so horrible on a 1080p tv.

Of course, they're too busy printing money to care.

It's not a little RAM, you have to quadruple the video RAM just to get to 720p. And then you need to quadruple the memory bandwidth since you are accessing 4x as much RAM in the same time (1/30th or 1/60th second) as before. And if any of those textures are computed on the fly you need to quadruple the speed of the thing doing the computing, either the main CPU, GPU or etc.

"I can't believe it when wii fanboys say HD doesn't look better"

I can't believe it either. But that's because they don't say that. Any person with a wii would be happy with HD. Me i don't care either way since i have all the consoles.

This is Awesome, now I only need RE4 - DMC - MGS2 - MGS3 and I'm complete

Kratos is hawt.

Nice, can't wait for this, only a few weeks to go!!! ;)

The new screenshots do look "washed out", but they also reveal more details about the environment. What was too dark is now lightened to enhance detail. This however has the effect of making what was already lightened lighter. All in all a beneficial compromise.

I think it looks that way because it's more of a natural looking lighting(according to IGN) if you go to there site and click on the full size images the difference is night and day. Especially for GOW1.

Looks very slightly stretched horizontally, but still beautiful.

Yeah, this looks great. It really makes me want more old games from the ps2/xbox to be remade in HD.

I can't wait for this collection to come out, I'm actually glad I did not play the originals now. :P

Thanks for the NSFW links...

I personally will be buying this day one. These games were so great that I am ready to play them again. The GoW3 demo is definitely a plus but this is a bargain at $40.

There is only so much they can do to upscale a old game to HD graphics. Any SD texture is never going to hold up in HD resolution. To do any better they would have to remake the game.

I don't get the people who want to wait for a price drop on this.

It's $40. That's $20 per game. The same price they have been for the PS2 versions. And they have been at that price for a LONG time.

Just buy it already. Maybe it'll encourage them to remaster more of the PS2s excellent library.

It's already been said but I want a HD Shadow / ICO bundle to coincide with the launch of TLG. Now THAT would be sweet.

My god...not that i need more reasons to buy this but wooooww..

I was thinking the same thing

Errr, they don't look that much different, especially when looking at the textures. It's just like going from 640x480 to 1024x768 resolution with AF turned on, the game looks less jaggy and sharper, but not much improvement anywhere else. The least they should've done is to improve the textures used, but obviously this is just a scam so people would re-buy their PS2 games instead of putting back PS2 backward compatibility.

It's noticeably less blurry, which is one reason i had a hard time getting into them on my hd set.

Yes, it's just like upping the resolution, but that alone is a huge improvement. SD games look like crap on HDTV's.

Whether this is a "Scam" or not, to some people it's a good value. If I were to buy the games new for the PS2, it would cost $40. Plus, I'd have to buy a PS2, and really that's not worth it for me. If you already own a PS2 and these games, it probably wouldn't be worth it. But it doesn't have to be for everyone.

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Inspect Kratos' HD facelift in God of War Collection

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