If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve heard that the popular Half Life Orange Box title is supposedly substantially worse on the PS3.

Judge for yourself:

The videos really don’t look that different except during the hovercraft portion. During the hovercraft section, the PS3 version shows the text “Quicksaving…” while the 360 version does not. The PS3 version is noticeably choppy until the Quicksaving prompt disappears and then the game runs smoothly. That is really odd to put that Quicksaving section in only one platform during a head to head comparison.

To some extent, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy: whether the game actually has problems or not doesn’t really matter. With high-profile journalists at 1UP, EGM, and IGN giving this such negative commentary, most online-aware gamers are fully convinced before ever seeing the product themselves.

Case in point: F.E.A.R. After reading IGN and other previews, I was fully convinced the PS3 version was terrible. I was so convinced, I posted this to help get the word out so that PS3 owners didn’t waste their money. However, when I rented it and got the chance ot actually play for myself, I found that it was actually completely fine compared to the PC version. It wasn’t “dead in the water” or terrible or any of the other hyperbole the gaming press used to describe how terrible the PS3 version was. The tech was completely fine. Even after studying hi-res comparison videos in slow-motion, I couldn’t spot the slightest lighting flaw, or frame rate drop or texture deficiency. The game was rather repetitive and formulaic, but compared to other platforms, the PS3 version ran completely fine. Either I got a special version of the game that didn’t lacked these major graphical glitches or this is simply anti-PS3 platform bias masquerading as an objective comparison.

BTW, regardless of which version of Orange Box looks better, neither version in those videos look as good as other recent shooters such as Call of Duty 4 and UT3, or even Resistance or Gears of War from 2006.