Half-Life 2: Better on PC or 360?

UPDATE [Oct 18, 2007]:
In light of reader feedback, we're happy to supply the details of how we tested and sourced the images for our comparison. We hope this will clear up any queries you have.

All shots were captured direct-feed, PC shots by using Fraps and 360 shots by using an image-editing suite to pull the image directly from the input, using component.

We ran the PC at its highest quality settings, but in a 1024x720 window to replicate the 720p resolution setting on Xbox 360. No resizing or other editing was applied to the images.

Oct 17, 2007

So, The Orange Box finally brings Half-Life 2 and its wonderous litter of accompanying titles to Xbox 360 and PS3. But does it match up to the PC version? We thought we'd have a look, comparing the 360 and PC editions for visual quality. Here's the results...

Note: PS3's version of The Orange Box is out later than 360's. Expect an update when we've seen Sony's version.

Above: Both Alyx's look great in this first comparison, but look closely and you can just see that the colours are slightly less vibrant on Xbox 360.

It's not really noticable while playing, though. Our only concern was that, in situations where you can see great distances, far away textures on Xbox 360 tend to look a little grubbier than on PC.

Hit the gallery for several full size shots from both versions.