I dunno...the thing about the Source engine is that it always looks so 2D to me. Everything is made of flat surfaces, there's no substance. The character looks great but everything else looks very dull to me. Also if you compare that character to Crysis characters then it's not that great either.
yeah, I kinda know what you mean, there are way too many flat surfaces, but that's in the level designing, that's not really an engine issue, at the time, with the computer-power available, maybe they just couldn't put that much detail in the levels, and unfortunately, the CM mod can't do much to the maps
Crysis is all over the place in terms of character models. The nanosuit people look awesome, but the Koreans look terrible! The US soldiers too... And also that woman you had to rescue from the school, ugh... plus the range of facial animations is nothing like what Source offers
The character models in the HL2 CM6 mod are much better looking than the majority of character models you see in Crysis IMO
but then again, Crysis has the most lush, mesmerizing outdoor visuals I've ever seen (indoor is TERRIBLE, worse than HL2 for sure, very bland)
CoD4 is pretty bland, visually, I get the odd moment when in motion that it looks really photo-realistic, but the TERRIBLE (TEERRRIBLLE) character models get in the way of that, and the levels are really not that great, just looks like CoD2 & 3 tbqh
I'm not entirely impressed with the Unreal engine - it seems to rely too much on making things look like plastic/clay covered with saran wrap to have a more tangible look to it, which in effect makes it look cartoony and less real
