Resident Evil 5 is perhaps not the masterpiece that we expected, but there are nonetheless many reasons to add to his arsenal fun: excellent graphics, a gunplay to Resident 4, a co-op mode Online absolutely amazing. The good news is that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are both worthy of consideration, but only one will emerge triumphant from the examination without compromise Thunder Dome of Eurogamer. [Note by the Drafting Chief: I do not have authorized the creation of a Thunder Dome ...]

Resident Evil 5 is based on the own engine Capcom MT Framework, which made its debut on the Xbox 360 with Dead Rising. However, its origins date back more distant at the time of Onimusha 3 on PlayStation 2. Through a series of presentations to CEDEC 2006 reported in extenso by the Japanese press and translated on the valuable Beyond3D forum, we know very well that technology. The initials MT, for example, are an abbreviation for Multi-Target, Meta Tools and Multi-Threaded. Moreover, as surprising as it may seem, less than 10 developers headquarters of Capcom Japanese were used to create it.

The development of the game starts on the PC and the program is then easily carried, either on the Xbox 360 or on the PlayStation 3, which are then programmed optimizations specific to each platform. The advantage of MT Framework is that even if the game is designed for consoles, Capcom gets a PC version facto “free”. This is only the frame version, used as a reference, and it will take considerable reworking before it was ready to emerge as a commercial product – which may explain in part why we should wait a bit before to see Resident Evil 5 on PC land.

Based on official data supplied by the developer CEDEC, we also know a lot about the engine performance. Each image is composed of a number of polygons ranging from three to four million, which gives the maximum astonishing 120 million polygons per second. Moreover, these figures date from 2006, which means it is likely that Capcom has since improved and refined technology. It should also be pointed out that the PS3 version of the engine has been developing a year after the 360 version was developed and functional.

Its comparative performance on both platforms has been rather variable. Devil May Cry 4 sweetener many of the effects of MT Framework to achieve a rate of 60 frames per second (the technology is designed primarily for games running at 60 frames per second) and is one of the most faithful conversions we have seen. For against, Lost Planet on PS3 suffered greatly with a poorer visual quality and speed of images significantly lower – although they released a year after its 360 counterpart.

Of course, Capcom has learned much since then, because the first impression of Resident Evil 5 is not bad at all, as you can see in the video below. As usual, the action was slowed down to keep the details and the image calibrated so that a pixel on the reader Eurogamer corresponds to one pixel on your HDTV. Furthermore, as is the norm in comparison to Eurogamer, we offer screenshots RGB 24 bits made from the HDMI ports on both consoles. You can see them in our gallery comparative Resident Evil 5. There are also other videos on the website Digital Foundry blog.
View this video on EGTV

We must first of all clarify that Resident Evil 5 on PS3 is an impressive conversion more than Lost Planet, but still sharing some of its shortcomings: the flow of images is lower in the very demanding scenes, some effects Special missing and, as with all previous games released on the platform, we need a large hard disk. In this case, this represents a volume of 4.8 GB which the transfer takes 10 minutes from the Blu-ray, compared to 6.7 GB of optional optional installation via the NXE on the 360.
The smoothing of the contours

The engine of Capcom MT Framework uses some effective tips to maintaining good image quality. It runs at a native resolution of 720p and uses anti-aliasing 4x multi-sampling on Xbox 360 and the technique 2x Quincunx on PS3. If we put together the same images, this means that the visuals of 360 are stronger (the QAA 2x flouts all textures), but the smoothing of the contours is very similar. The intelligence process is obvious when the engine is stressed. Rather than decrease the flow of images, the engine reduces the anti-aliasing. According to Capcom own figures, it can give a performance gain of 20% when the engine needs. The concept is that the gameplay is intense enough so that you do not notice a reduction of temporary smoothing contours. On Xbox 360, for example, anti-aliasing from 2x to 4x before being completely removed. By against, on PS3, the Quincunx is either enabled or shut down.

It turns out that Killzone 2 uses exactly the same technique. That said, things are slightly odd on the PS3 version of Resident Evil 5 that the anti-aliasing can be activated and deactivated at any time, even when apparently the engine is not at all stressed. In fact, this happens early in the game, as shown in the video below. You will see the first game in the classic mode 1 pixel = 1 pixel, and then zoom to 200%. If you look at the roof and palm trees, you will see a rapid succession of activation and deactivation of the AA scene in a relatively low threshold.
View this video on EGTV

Resident Evil 5 MT Framework pushes much further than previous titles cross-platform use the same engine, therefore, although we expected an impact on speed, it is rather surprising that an effect also seen that it has been retained in the final program. Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 is behaving exactly as expected, although this is not without some compromise on video which we will return later. Discuss more on Gamers Chat