Is the Retina display holding back iPad graphics?

Gameloft's sci-fi shooter has seemingly morphed from a Halo homage to a Crysis clone in the span of two games, but you can't fault the technical nous on display here — N.O.V.A. 3 is a fairly stunning game whichever iPad you play it on, with visuals rivaling most of what we've seen on the PS Vita. Oddly, though, both versions will impress you in completely different ways. The game's detailed environments and assets look great on the Retina display, and if you didn't know any better you'd swear it was always meant to look like this. With an iPad 2 on hand, however, you'll quickly notice that certain sacrifices have been made in favor of resolution. The game is indeed much more effects-laden on the older tablet, with depth-of-field blurring and some particle effects such as burning buildings in the background completely removed on the new iPad. The iPad 2 also tends to handle the game at a steadier framerate.

However, it's actually debatable what these effects bring to the game on the iPad 2. While the detailed backgrounds and smoother framerate are a clear win, the depth-of-field effect isn't particularly impressive and often simply obscures what you're looking at. Meanwhile, the higher resolution of the new iPad lets you see further into the distance and cuts back on the ugly aliasing that afflicts the game on older hardware. It's also worth noting that the Retina display is just a flat-out superior screen to the panel in the iPad 2 — you'll get much better contrast levels and color reproduction on the new iPad, and that goes for all the games covered here. Overall we think it's a tossup as to which version is better, and if you're really after a sci-fi first-person shooter for your tablet it's unlikely to disappoint either way.

The obvious place to go after N.O.V.A. 3 is Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation, a similar Gameloft first-person shooter that takes the Call of Duty series as its "inspiration." The titles share a lot in common, and that extends to the Retina display-enabled versions suffering many of the same problems. In Modern Combat 3's case the framerate is a lot less stable, and there are missing effects such as motion blur when you move your camera and a shallow depth of field when looking through your rifle's iron sights. These differences are subtler than what we saw in N.O.V.A. 3, but that actually works to the game's advantage — unless resolution is important to you, there's no question that Modern Combat 3 looks and runs better on the iPad 2.

If there's one game you'd expect to show off the new iPad's power, it'd be Namco's Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy — the arcade air combat title took center stage at the iPad's unveiling in March. Indeed, the new iPad doesn't have much of a problem keeping up with Air Supremacy, as it runs very smoothly at Retina resolution even in hectic dogfight scenes, but then compared with something like N.O.V.A. 3 it has far less work to do. The game looks essentially identical on the iPad 2 beyond the resolution difference, and while that does give the new iPad the edge you never get the sense that either tablet is being stretched particularly far.

Epic Games' Unreal Engine-powered battler has been dismissed as a Punch-Out!! clone, a tech demo, or both in certain circles, but we're rather fond of it ourselves — and there's certainly no denying its visual impact. On the new iPad, however, that impact is somewhat diminished. While it does run at a higher resolution, it's not at the screen's native 2048 x 1536, which gives everything a slightly blurry feel. To make matters worse, the 2D assets such as on-screen buttons and menus remain decidedly low-res. The game does have more detail than its iPad 2 counterpart, but we're not sure we'd say it looks better — it feels more coherent on the older hardware, at least. Infinity Blade 2 is beautiful however you play it, but the slightly haphazard up-conversion draws attention to the new iPad's limitations.

We often use Shadowgun as a rough performance benchmark in reviews, as the Unity-powered third-person shooter was one of the first games to put tablet graphics in the same conversation as modern console games. It still looks impressive today, and the iOS version hasn't made any sacrifices to run on the Retina display. it runs at full resolution without a hint of slowdown, giving the new iPad a clear win over the iPad 2. It doesn't go any further than that, though, which is a little disappointing considering the enhancements made to the game on Tegra 3-powered Android devices such as the Asus Transformer Prime. Had the new iPad run Shadowgun at full resolution with those extra effects and physics modeling, it would have been solid evidence for Apple's claim that the A5X is four times faster than Nvidia's chip — unfortunately that's a question that remains difficult to answer.

It's a similar situation with Riptide GP, a jet ski racer with Tegra 3 enhancements that don't show up on the new iPad. You do get a much sharper experience courtesy of the Retina display, and we noticed some extra background detail such as a launching spaceship that we never saw on the iPad 2, but Tegra 3-specific effects such as splashing water remain absent. The game also has a few more framerate hiccups on the new iPad, but it's nothing too serious and you actually have the option to drop the resolution should you value speed over sharpness.

Firemint is often first out of the gate with updates to take advantage of new Apple hardware, and it's excelled itself on the new iPad. Real Racing 2 HD runs at full resolution and full speed with anti-aliasing and some extra detail on the car models, meaning that it easily bests the already-impressive iPad 2 version. It's a powerful demonstration of the new iPad's capability, and has us already looking forward to seeing Firemint's future work on the hardware.

Like Infinity Blade 2, EA's Mass Effect spinoff can't quite manage the Retina display's full 2048 x 1536 output, instead operating at a sub-native resolution that actually isn't much more impressive than the game's implementation on iPad 2. We found the framerate slightly less stable, too, though it wasn't a huge difference. Thankfully, all the 2D assets seem to be fully Retina-ready even if the 3D action isn't, so the game does at least look visually consistent next to Infinity Blade 2. Given the choice we'd play on the new iPad, but it isn't a showstopping advertisement for the device.