Before I even sat down to check out the long-anticipated, long-delayed “Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway” on the PC, my jaw dropped.

No matter how it played, I could say this within the first few seconds of seeing it: the rain blew me away. The way the droplets gathered on a soldier’s helmet, the environmental downpour — whether it’s actually dynamic or not is a moot point; it looks the part.

My strong gut reaction to the rain is actually why I wanted to sit down and check out “Brothers in Arms,” even if I’m awfully tired of World War II shooters.

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Unless you’ve downloaded the expansion pack to the downloadable PS3 twin-stick shooter “Super Stardust HD,” you will have a hard time convincing me that it’s not the most graphically-impressive game on Sony’s machine.

And, yes, I’ve played “GTA IV.” I’ve seen “Killzone 2.” But nothing quite blows me away like a level of Endless on the $5 “SSHD” expansion called “Solo Pack.”

What exactly have the game’s Finnish developers at Housemarque accomplished?

• They’ve doubled the base game’s output of 10,000 objects on the screen.
• They believe they’ve almost maxed the PS3 graphics chip.
• And now they’re thinking about making music-based levels and revealing to Multiplayer other expansions they have in the works.

Read on for more on all of that, from a developer that is pushing the PS3 to impressive lengths …

[Images Courtesy of IGN]

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On Friday, November 2, I joined MTV News’ Tim Kash in a face-off of video arguments against Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal and author Heather Chaplin.

We played “The Metagame,” a game show created by game designers Eric Zimmerman, co-founder of Gamelab, and Frank Lantz, co-founder of Area/Code.

The game lasted 70 minutes and was among the most fun things I’ve done on the beat all year. We’ve presented 20 minutes of highlights on video here.

This post lists every argument we had to make in the game. Any time an opinion was challenged, the audience had to decide the winner.

Here are three samples. Read on for the rest… and you decide where justice was served and where my team (Team MTV) or Chaplin/Croal (Team Brooklyn) were robbed.

Opinion: “Tetris” has more randomness than “Resident Evil”

Argument: Team MTV said it does. Team Brooklyn challenged.
Verdict: Overruled — The audience agreed with Team Brooklyn.

Opinion: “Virtua Fighter” is sexier than “Super Mario 64″

Argument: Team Brooklyn said it was. Team MTV said it wasn’t.
Verdict: Upheld — The audience sided with Team Brooklyn.

Opinion: “Adventure” for the Atari 2600 makes better use of writing than “Street Fighter II”

Argument: Team MTV said it did.
Verdict: Uncontested — Team Brooklyn sided with team MTV.

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So much for the crushing requirements of making a next-gen game.

“Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction” for PlayStation 3 only required 15 more developers at Insomniac Games than “Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal” for the PS2.

So said Brian Allgeier, creative director of the PS3 game, in an interview with me at MTVNews.com.

Note that we’re talking a team of 125 people, instead of a team of 110.

The Insomniac team was going for Pixar-quality graphics and have a box-art blurb from The New York Times, of all gaming outlets, to push that idea (said the guy who writes for MTV, of all gaming outlets).

There are a bunch of tidbits in the interview for “Ratchet” fans, but for the wider audience, the thing I think will be most interesting is Allgeier’s pondering of whether a Pixar graphics goal is a meaningful goal for a game.

From my write-up:

Can graphics matter the most? Should they? “I feel like there’s two sides to this,” Allgeier said. “My game-designer side wants to say graphics don’t matter and it’s all about what the player is doing. But the other side is that it really immerses you in a world. … Our burden is to create a world that is very convincing. So the fact that we can improve the visuals and the graphics adds to that.”

Can anyone disagree with that? “Ratchet” is visually stunning. I’m happy to see it look as good as it does (on my standard-definition TV, no less). So were graphics the right priority?

Do top development teams’ graphics goals ever detract from the gameplay they create? Or is the relationship between graphics and gameplay not nearly as zero-sum as people often assume?