You make a good point that the Unreal engine is particularly guilty of causing shiny syndrome (Gears of War, Bioshock) but surely it is not the only one? Doom 3 gets a pass for being the first to use normal maps, but by now real-time 3D artists should be able to do better than this. Specular maps, people! This is basic stuff. And yet, the only example of decent skin-shading that I can think of is Valve's work on Alyx and the other human characters in HL2, or the cartoony shading in TF2. It's like nobody else cares?
Why does every game have to look like plastic? We can do better than this.
[/rant over]
Again though, apart from these niggles I've mentioned the game really does look gorgeous and has a great attention to detail (I love the bat-fade
). The music is also worth a mention. It's very nicely reminiscent of the Dark Knight soundtrack and suits the atmosphere perfectly.
It's a pity the game tends towards 'digital' over analog interaction as geggis puts it, but it looks like it could still be a fun ride. I do agree with you as well though that the stealth would be more believable if the dark was a little darker - in this day of HDRI we could really play around with light and dark a little more...
