“When the most advanced arsenal is at your disposal… Fighting fair, just isn’t an option.”

System Breakdown	Xbox 360 Stats	PlayStation 3 Stats
Resolutions:	Up to 1080p	Up to 720p
# of Discs:	single	single
HD Install:	Optional (Recommended)	6.5 GB mandatory Install
Metacritic:

Welcome back for another exciting Head2Head!  Today we will be putting Ghost Recon: Future Soldier under the lens and perform a recon mission of our own to find the definitive version.  The first thing we would like to point out is that if you have a hard drive on your 360, the sound will automatically be installed.  Furthermore the game will prompt you to install the entire thing on the 360 for the best performance.  Keep in mind that the PS3 version also has a massive 6.5 gig mandatory install to under go as well.  However for this H2H, we didn’t even bother installing the game on the 360 version due to the very clear results found by simply running the game off of the disc itself.

Graphics: The visual aspect of this game does have some rather noticeable differences to cover.  The first thing you will notice is the massive difference in the quality of shadows found between the two versions.  The 360 version sports a very natural look with a fairly smooth implementation overall.  However when it comes to the PS3 version, things aren’t quite as pleasant to the eye.  Not only will you find the shadows in the PS3 version to be less aggressive than its 360 counterpart, but you will also find them to be very sloppy overall.  One thing in particular in this case would be how the shadows trigger a stripped pattern (banding) going down the object it projects itself on as the shades get lighter or darker.  Very sloppy, and very unprofessional of the development team at this point.

It doesn’t just end with sloppy shadows though.  There were no issues with texture streaming and pop-ins, so there is no problem as far as that goes.  However there is a gap in texture quality as they still remain less sharp and pronounced when compared to the 360 version.  This seems to be just a simple case of lower res texture maps overall, as there is no sign of QAA or any other type of anti aliasing present that could cause a blurred image.  It is a shame that after all of the great strides console parity has made over this generation, there are still games that sport differences this noticeable.

Everything else seems to be consistent however.  From lighting effects right down to anti aliasing, things seem to be relatively the same throughout.  When you look at the entire package however, it is obvious who claims the visual advantage overall.

Performance: The performance aspect of Future Soldier was a little better, but still supported a 360 advantage overall.  In this case both games ran smoothly around the targeted thirty frames per second with little to no hic-ups.  At the very least both versions are far from unplayable with that fact alone.  However while the 360 version was able to handle the game with no screen tearing at all during our analysis, the PS3 version would at times jump up to almost ten percent torn frames when the action started to heat up.  This doesn’t hurt gameplay itself too bad, but it does even further botch the visuals of the game a bit.  The averages can be found below and a more accurate depiction of the screen tearing on the PS3 version can be found in our video on the second page.

Loading: We now come to our final category, the load times.  In this area of the game, things came out pretty equal.  Regardless of that however, a massive 6.5 GB mandatory install required to pull this off and did very little to help in other area of the game as well.  This would mean that not only was the install feature NOT utilized properly, but also that the 360 version was able to get the job done just as fast off of the disc while still doing more work overall.  In addition, those that plan on installing the game can look forward to even faster load times.  While things appear pretty equal overall in this area on paper, one has to wonder if everything that could have been done for the PS3 version was really taken into consideration by the developer.

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Move the Slider to see the Difference.

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More Roll Overs, Sliders, Conclusion, Video and Staff Choice on Page 2>>>