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the-power-button · 7 years

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Top 6 Games to Revisit on PS4 Pro at 1080p

4k console gaming still isn’t cheap. At $400, a PS4 Pro is hardly a trivial investment. Add to that the cost of a 4k display, which has gone down significantly in the past few years but still pushes the upper limits of the average consumer’s budget, and the result is that many gamers cannot afford to upgrade both their hardware and their displays all in one go. Consequently, many PS4 Pro owners like myself are still hooked up to 1080p displays. This may seem like a waste, but the truth is that there are many games out there that can benefit massively from the power of the Pro, even on 1080p displays.

6: OVERWATCH: ORIGINS EDITION: Overwatch on base PS4 targets 60fps at 1080p with an adaptive resolution. This means that when the game hits a stress point, rather than dropping frames it temporarily lowers its rendering resolution in order to get each frame out on time. The PS4 Pro upgrade was certainly a letdown for many 4k users. Those hoping for a meaningful boost in resolution were met with only a lock to 1080p, improvements to anisotropic filtering, and a 4k HUD. For 1080p users, however, there is little to be disappointed about. Yes, we miss out on supersampling, but the game is now locked to a native resolution, and the improvements to texture filtering are immediately noticeable. The base PS4′s extremely low texture filtering made floor, wall, and even weapon textures look extremely blurry when viewed at oblique angles. On Pro, the texture filtering is cranked up, allowing the high quality art assets to shine through.

5: Watch_Dogs 2: Watch_Dogs 2 is a very impressive game on base PS4. Materials and animation are all top-notch, and the sequel improves upon the original Watch_Dogs in both resolution (1080p vs 900p) and framerate (both target 30fps, but Watch_Dogs 2 holds its target much better). The main letdown for Watch_Dogs 2 comes from the mediocre antialiasing, which cleans up shimmering at the cost of messy sawtooth and dithering artifacts. On Pro, these messy artifacts are cleaned up fairly nicely thanks to supersampling for 1080p displays.

4: ASSASSIN’S CREED SYNDICATE: Assassin’s Creed Syndicate runs at 900p on base PS4 hardware, and the resulting upscaling artifacts combined with the mediocre anti-aliasing can create a blurry and shimmery presentation at times. On Pro, owners of 1080p displays get a considerable boost in image quality to 1080p with supersampling, cleaning up most of the shimmering and blur and allowing fine details in characters’ skin, clothing, and hair to shine through, even if the core artwork remains unchanged.

3: TOMB RAIDER: DEFINITIVE EDITION: Released on PS4 and Xbox One in 2014, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition brought a host of graphical improvements over both the PS3 and 360 versions, and even surpassed the PC’s highest settings in some areas, with additional effects such as subsurface scattering on characters’ skin. Unlike the last-gen versions, it ran with an uncapped framerate on PS4, and in contained areas such as the challenge tombs it could hold 60fps reasonably well. However, larger areas and intense firefights often saw drops into the mid 40s. In a fast-paced shooter like this, stable framerates are crucial for a consistent controller response, and the uncapped framerate could make some gunfights needlessly difficult. On PS4 Pro, however, the “Boost Mode” setting unleashes the full strength of the Pro’s CPU and GPU upgrades, and the more powerful hardware has much less trouble holding 60fps. With the improved visuals of the Definitive Edition, and the stable 60fps that previously could only be achieved on the PC, there has truly never been a better time or place to revisit this last-gen classic.

2: ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY: Even after a hefty set of patches, AC Unity still runs poorly on base PS4 hardware. In particular, the over-ambitious NPC counts place a heavy strain on the console’s underpowered CPU, resulting in severe slowdown in densely-populated areas. One of the best places to see this is directly in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral. This area has one of the largest crowds in the game, and the CPU bottleneck it creates can drag the game’s framerate down into the low 20s. As with Tomb Raider, though, Boost Mode comes to the rescue, and the supercharged hardware can brute-force its way through even the most taxing areas of the game at a near-flawless 30fps. Not only does the additional stability make traversal easier, but it can help bring out some of the beautiful animation work that has gone into this game. If you have a PS4 Pro and were underwhelmed with the original release, I highly recommend giving it another chance.

1: RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER: Rise of the Tomb Raider offers one of the most comprehensive PS4 Pro upgrades I have seen to date. By allowing users to choose between a high framerate mode, a high resolution mode, and an improved graphics mode, there is something here for all tastes, even on 1080p displays. The high framerate mode runs at 1080p with the exact same settings as base PS4, but with an uncapped framerate. The game does occasionally hit 60fps in smaller areas, but most of its time is spent in the 45-50fps range. If you’re sensitive to framerate drops like I am, this mode may not be the best choice for you, but it is certainly a nice addition for those that don’t mind it. The improved graphics mode runs at a native 1080p, targets 30fps, and adds a host of extra graphical goodies over the base version, including soft shadows, improved texture filtering, higher levels of dynamic foliage, improved draw distances, and tessellation on certain surfaces. Unfortunately, improved anti-aliasing is nowhere to be found in this mode, and it does suffer from the same shimmering and sparkling that can be found on base hardware. Lastly, there is the high resolution mode. This mode runs at 4k using checkerboard rendering, and supports downsampling for 1080p displays. Because of Rise of the Tomb Raider’s underwhelming anti-aliasing, this is my favorite mode to play the game in. The downsampling does an excellent job of cleaning up the mess of jaggies and shimmering left behind by the game’s anti-aliasing method, resulting in a game that looks exceptionally clean in motion. It truly is a night-and-day difference.

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the-power-button · 7 years

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Assassin’s Creed Unity

“Next Gen Starts Here.” This was the tagline Ubisoft Montreal used to hype up Assassin’s Creed Unity, way back in the summer of 2014. It was a bold statement to be sure, but with the game looking amazing in both promotional screenshots and gameplay trailers alike, it was one it looked to be able to uphold.

On launch, however, Unity was a complete disaster. Frame-rate issues, visual glitches, gameplay bugs, and even hard crashes made the game almost unplayable for many fans. I played the game at launch, and was less than impressed, to put it politely. But now, after 3 years and several gigabytes worth of patches, I decided to give it another look. Was Unity really as bad as we remember? Or did a combination of over-hype and a troubled launch blind us to what is actually a decent game deep down?

GRAPHICS

First off, it’s impossible to discuss Assassin’s Creed Unity without fawning over the gorgeous visuals. It was one aspect of the game that drew universal praise on launch, and even three years later Unity outshines many new releases on that front. Thick volumetric fog fills the streets of Paris, absorbing and scattering light realistically. Global illumination is used to bounce light off of surfaces, which combined with precalculated ambient occlusion results in some staggeringly realistic indirect lighting. Sub-surface scattering is used on characters during custcenes to mimic blood under the skin, and don’t even get me started on Elise’s hair! Frame-rate, however, is a different story. I own the game on PS4, and Unity targets 30fps at 900p on that platform. In sparse areas with few NPCs, the game sticks to 30fps fairly consistently. However, in more complicated city centers with dozens of NPCs on screen at once, the game tanks. It is not nearly as bad as it was at launch, but it is still a definite issue.

GAMEPLAY

It was difficult to evaluate Unity’s gameplay at launch, because frankly most of it didn’t work. Combat was sluggish, parkour was unresponsive, and many side missions were glitched. One time I even had an enemy give up halfway through a kill animation and just walk out of combat! Many of these bugs have been fixed, but some persist. (Some of you will be happy to know that the infamous “corner kill exploit” has never been patched). However, as a whole Unity is a functional and playable game now, and it’s actually quite enjoyable. While the free-running can still be a little laggy sometimes, it is quite satisfying to watch Arno twirl. spin, and flip his way across Revolutionary Paris. Combat feels more responsive and accurate than it did at launch, and while it’s still easy once you’ve acquired the highest level gear, nailing perfect parries and rolling out of the way of gunfire is fun and rewarding. The stealth is much improved as well. Although the series’ distinctive “social stealth” takes a general backseat in favor of more traditional cover-based stealth, all of the mechanics are at least functional. The enemy AI is, for the most part, passably intelligent and reasonably fun to toy with, excluding persistent bugs of course, and tools like smoke bombs and cherry bombs definitely come in handy if you choose to go this route. The game world in which this all takes place is massive, filled mostly with collectibles but also containing a reasonable amount of side quests. The Murder Mysteries are a definite highlight, but the co-op missions are fun as well, especially if you have a friend to play them with and you enjoy learning about the history of the French Revolution.

STORY AND CHARACTERS

This is where Unity arguably falls flat. Arno starts off witty and relatable, but by the end of the first act this all disappears, leaving behind a bland shell of a character defined only by his obsessive devotion to Elise and nothing else. The plot is a predictable mix-and-match of common cliches, and the ending “plot twist” was so telegraphed that it honestly would be more surprising if it hadn’t happened. There were still some moments that shined through; the hot-air balloon mission had some good quips, and the ending cutscene gives a good take on the old “nothing is true, everything is permitted” motto, but especially after the previous year’s Black Flag, Unity’s writing simply doesn’t hold a candle.

CONCLUSION