Re:And Valve is no where? (Score 1)

What on earth does a game engine have to do with the aesthetics of a game? Sure the fidelity of the final rendered image is very much the result of the engine, but the overall look of a game is still a conscious decision made by the game developers. Valve wanted HL2 to be set in a post-apocalyptic eastern Europe, so they made it look like that. Take a look at Dark Messiah of Might and Magic for an example of the kind of visual vibrancy you're talking about, which is made with the Source engine.

..is an aesthetic trainwreck, devoid of almost all visual appeal.

Each to his own I guess, I personally love the look.

That's not to say the Source engine is without it's faults though. The lightmapped BSP approach is getting too cumbersome for the level of detail expected from modern games, and their level editor is quite frankly horrendous. They seem to be generally moving more towards using static meshes for detail though, so they can probably squeeze a few more years out of it yet.

And I'm not trying to say Unreal Engine is bad either, I'm just saying that what you're saying is bullsh*t.
Also Gears of War is pretty much the greyest game series since the DOS version of Prince of Persia.