Smells like bullshots: 10 notoriously 'polished' screenshots

These days it's much harder to spot a bullshot, as publishers tend to display games running on high-end PCs to source screens. Still, over the years there have been some incredible forgeries and we've decided to collate the worst offenders for your amusement.

[dedicatedtogamers]

An article devoted to bullshots, and not a single mention of Gears of War?

[maniacmayhem]

DO you know something we don't?

[Why o why]

Ha ha, dont you remember. I thought it was common knowledge.

I'm not hating on gears as I've stated a few times it was the first game that reached out and slapped me to tell me next gen has arrived. Epic have used bullshots for years. As epic/gears are big in the industry so its strange they aren't in this article

http://www.abload.de/img/ge...

This is one of the many pics that were used as 360 images. Probably the pc build or maybe its the 360 version touched. Either way its not what the game looked like on the 360 thus a bullshot

[papashango]

N4G is probably the last place on the internet that doesn't know what a bullshot is.

The amount oh hype that fills the comment section when a blatant bullshot is making the rounds is mind blowing.

[darthv72]

I dont know what 360 you were using but it looks like that on mine. j/k

As to the article, when doing these sort of comparisons isnt it best to try and find a shot that is as close to the "bullshot" as possible?

some of those looked like 16x9 vs 4x3. Or running on different quality inputs like composite/component/hdmi.

The irony of all of this is games are created on computers and the argument is if the images are computer rendered (aka cgi). Its not like we were being shown supermodels in swimsuits and then being given stick figures and told to use our imagination.

[maniacmayhem]

In all honesty I never figured that shot to be an actual gameplay shot when I first saw but only a promotional pic. I thought the purpose of the Bullshots were pics shown of gameplay that turned out false..

[ProjectVulcan]

The Getaway was ridiculous, the shots were probably pre rendered on a powerful PC at the time and there was no way in a zillion years PS2 could pull off those shots. Well, maybe at 10 seconds per frame lol...

In fact only a totally new generation of hardware like PS3 could actually get closer to them, even then it is pushing it!

http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2...

http://www.gamershell.com/s...

[AngelicIceDiamond]

The last I checked Gears Of War did meet expectations in graphics.

With that being said I'm glad this article popped up because I will be looking for CGI, pre-renders and bullshots come E3. It all started with Sony infamous Killzone game. The media and fans were floored by the reveal. That was short lived when sources confirmed it was fake. And the real Killzone was in the very early stages in development.

I'm not implying Sony will do it again nor am I implying Sony only. I'm just making a point because Sony's infamous Killzone presentation made tons and tons of headlines and I'm using Sony as an example.

I'm speaking for all devs this E3.

[HammadTheBeast]

But Killzone looked pretty good in it's own way anyways, it didn't need to live up to the trailer anyways.

[GrandTheftZamboni]

Try using your eyes instead of just reading the article. Check again and see which of the two Killzone screenshots has better lighting and more details, on the rifle for example.

[matrixman92]

wut? gears of wars graphics are amazing!

[adorie]

on PC, yeah, but on Xbox 360 the textures look rather muddy.

[WrAiTh Sp3cTr3]

Compare to what? You haven't played Gears on 360 in a while then.

http://www.gamespot.com/for...

http://images.eurogamer.net...

http://images.eurogamer.net...

http://images.eurogamer.net...

[PeaSFor]

wait, ....you do a comparison based on the uc3 BETA?

really?

scratching the bottom of the barrel much?

[matrixman92]

gears of war 3's graphics were top of the line for consoles

[omi25p]

PeaSfor

Compared the Uncharted 3 beta with the Gears 3 Beta. Seems fair to me.

[PeaSFor]

@omi25p

both final version would be fair.

the textures in the final version have nothing to do with the beta, here, put some of this against whatever image of gears3 you will find
http://img31.imageshack.us/...
http://img850.imageshack.us...
http://img820.imageshack.us...

[Y_5150]

@adorie Does PC only have the first Gears of War though?

[mayberry]

I clicked on this article to find out if that was in it too... funny its not....

[Mkai28]

Yeah I Agree, gears 3 looked like it was running on an high end PC . But I have to say, kill zone doesn't look that much different .

[Angainor7]

Aahhahahahahahha! You are kidding right? My friend you are a troll, one of a kind...

[Amplitude]

Hmmm. I almost have a feeling some of these were PC screenshots on like a billion dollar PC, and then the final is probably the PS3/360 release.

[SonyPS360]

Nothing tops Killzone 2 faking an entire video. Epic do it, but so do a lot of other publishers too. They just get the most flak for it thanks to Ps3 fantards who will never admit Uncharted games were just as bad offenders as Gears of War.

[3-4-5]

So basically every game this Generation.

[ALLWRONG]

lol +1

[Stefanrules7]

Dont forget colonial marines

[ExitToExisT]

In my personal experience , GTA IV had the most amount of bullshots. The graphics shown in the screenshots and the graphics on consoles were day and night.

[HammadTheBeast]

But that can be explained through PC> Consoles graphically, as with most games.

[wenaldy]

But in the then PC port sucked much, mainly for framerate fiasco.

[cyclindk]

I thought bullshots described touched up in-game screenshots... Not pre renders and what unreleased games MAY look like..

[Why o why]

That's what I thought

[MikeMyers]

That's what I thought too.

Anyways Madden was very guilty of per-rendered screenshots of what Madden may look like on next gen. systems (when the Xbox 360 launched). It didn't even look close to those screens. Killzone 2 also caused a lot of controversy. While the game was visually impressive there was no way they could get those animations and that amount of detail.

I'm done believing any of them. That whole rendered shot of the face by Quantic Dream is also a bunch of crap. We won't see actual games with that type of definition. Sure the hardware could do it but in real world settings at 30fps or higher and everything else going on it's highly doubtful. They did the same thing prior to the release of the PS3 and that model didn't look anything like Heavy Rain in real gameplay settings. Forza was also very guilty of bullshots on the Xbox 360.

What I'm worried about is if it took Polyphony so long to render those cars in GT5 and only 1/5th of them were actually that detailed how long will GT take on the PS4?

[InTheLab]

List needs more Gears and CoD. Especially MW2..

[violents]

Publishers have been doing this crap for years, screenshot the beautifully rendered cutscenes and magicly leave out any actual gameplay. I always wait for some gameplay footage to get posted on youtube if I feel that it may be a concern. Its just too commonplace anymore to be able to trust every commercial or hype article anymore. Honestly this has been a big concern for me with all the gta5 screens.

[josephayal]

This Game Smells like PS4-720

[Jagsrock]

The sad thing is even after all these years madden hasn't matched that trailer.

[landog]

every epic game and naughtydog game release TONS of bullshots

totally maxed out on pc with resolutions not even possible on ps4, let alone ps3/360, tons of anti aliasing only pc can achieve

i think it is a practice that should be stopped, along with putting 1080p on the back of the box just becasue its upscaled, i can upscale an atari 2600 game to 1080p

there should be way more regulations against false advertising in video games!

[mochachino]

In my experience last-gens bullshots are next-gens real shots.

[NeoTribe]

Killzone pretty much looked like they said it was going to. I was blown away the first time i played kz2.

[TemplarDante]

Did they forget
Forza 2
Forza 3
Forza 4
?
The in game models are nowhere near as detailed when they peddled the screenshots.

[1nsomniac]

A few dodgy decisions made, Killzone 2 & Grid, both look equally as good if not better than their bullshots.

Also missed out a massive amount of more important (standout) bullshots.

Pretty crap article to be fair.

[Sevir]

LOL the term is used when you take an in-game image and polishish with super hi resoulution assets or in-game footage and have it running on extremely high settings on a PC to show off the game. Not calling Target renders CGI running on PC's and comparing it to games running on actual console hardware. The Madden 2006 wasn't even trailer wasn't even running on xbox 360 hardware it was a PC running CGI, and we all know the KZ2 trailer was a PC CGI trailer.

Now during the course of development GG released Bullshots of KZ2, as Did Epic with Gears 2 and so on and so forth

[vydeljr]

I dont know why people keep bringing up that killzone trailer saying the actual game
didnt meet it expectations. I saw the trailer over and over again and played the game
on a 42 inch lcd tv and it look better than the trailer. The people that keep bringing it up
that its not are either xbox fanboys that never even played the game or if you have the game
you are playing it on a tube television. Someone needs to make a article about this and squash this argument once and for all because Im tired of hearing about it.

[Psychonaut]

This is was straight fanboy outside of the 1 XBOX title at the beginning they dug into Wii, and PS2/PS3. Come on I own all the systems and XBOX is just as guilty as everyone else

[Sidewinder-]

Haha, yeah codemasters deffo should be called out on this.

The 'screens' of OpFlashpoint2 compared to the final game. lmfao.