how 60fps transforms the game on PlayStation 5 • Eurogamer.net

Days Gone is one of two proprietary PlayStation 4 titles we’re aware of with some level of PS5 awareness, essentially unlocking the frame rate on Sony’s next-gen machine, limited only by the 60Hz refresh. of your TV. At first glance, the upgrade is limited in functionality, but similar to Sucker Punch’s PS5 work for Ghost of Tsushima, it’s transformative in terms of fluidity and response – and it’s a great way to revisit a game. Awesome PS4.

Coming back to Days Gone, I actually found a title that had come a long way since Digital Foundry first covered the game – so while there is a clear advantage over PS5, it builds on it. made on a solid version of PlayStation 4 that fixes a lot of the issues we’ve discovered. during launch. Developer Bend Studios has received praise for Patch 1.61 in particular, which reduced the initial 60GB storage footprint to just 38GB, consolidating a number of optimizations that significantly reduced the ephemeral performance issues that we found in early fixes.

Not only that, but additional content has since been added and I’m especially taken with the challenge mode, which unlocks the key game mechanics of the sprawling open-world adventure and focuses them on downsized arcade challenges. They are also a wonderful way to experience Days Gone’s signature feature – the Horde. Based on a precedent IGN technological functionality, there are actually 40 hordes scattered around the map, each with a number of entities of up to 500. There seems to be a fixed limit of 300 Freakers in challenges, but there is still a lot to be done, and there is has a variety of interesting places to fight. It’s also the only way for me to consistently rock Days Gone on PS5 from its 60fps performance level.

A look at Days Gone, with PS4 and PS4 Pro combined with the turbo-boosted PlayStation 5 rendering.

To be clear, the promised 60 fps upgrade for PlayStation 5 is provided for the vast majority of the game – with the exception of some lost singular random frames that we noticed that were so spaced out that they escaped notice. Warning. And in that sense, you get a huge boost when playing the game on the latest gen systems – crossover stuttering (much reduced since launch) is still present, more noticeable on the vanilla PS4, and these seem to be mostly fixed on PlayStation 5. It is only when facing off against the Horde that any noticeable drop off the target at 60 fps is evident – and even then it takes big explosions to trigger at a reasonable distance of. ‘a large amount of Freakers to make any stuttering trigger. And when it does, it is fleeting.

Challenge mode amplifies this somewhat, but it does it by design by setting up a contained mass of 300 freakers that you can “ channel ” through the map, taking out slices of it via napalm molotovs, explosive packs , fuel trucks and of course, the weather. – red barrel honored. This is where we encounter a momentary but profound CPU limitation as the console deals with the impact of these explosions on so many nearby entities. In similar scenarios, we noted a massive 284ms freeze on the base PlayStation 4 when bombing a Horde of 300 people, dropping to around 200ms on the PS4 Pro. As the Horde clears up, stuttering becomes less of a problem – presumably because the CPU is taxed less with fewer entities to deal with. On PlayStation 5, the stutter here drops to 83ms at worst – and in fact, finding that slowdown required several runs. Usually we get a handful of 16ms drop frames and that’s our lot. Long story short: Days Gone doesn’t perform flawlessly at 60 fps, but beyond the weird frame-loss, it forced me to actively design storylines via challenge mode to really mess with the game. The vast majority of the game is silky.

Beyond the increased frame rate, it looks like Days Gone, just like you’ve played it before. Similar to Ghost of Tsushima and indeed Cyberpunk 2077 (but not Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order!), nothing changes much in the transition from the PS4 Pro to the PlayStation 5. Checkerboard artifacts occur on the stage sections, seem to confirm the 4K reconstruction – just like the existing game – and the viewing distances, the shadow quality and other graphics features are a match. The beefed up processor and storage seem to eliminate some pop-ins, but that’s also not a big deal on older PlayStations, it’s just an extra level of refinement you get on PlayStation 5.

Ghost of Tsushima offers a similar upgrade to Days Gone.

And I totally agree with that: Few open world games played at 60 fps in the last generation because the CPU and GPU power just wasn’t there, but more specifically, the reduction in the input lag is palpable. Games like Days Gone, The Last of Us Part 2, and Red Dead Redemption 2 feature great animation, but mixing that animation between different user input adds extra latency. Days Gone on PS5 can’t fix this, but doubling down on visual feedback provides an inherent boost that simply improves the game – especially useful during Horde-induced panic.

Ultimately doubling the frame rate is the deepest improvement you can get from backward compatibility – or “ back compat plus ”, as I would call it in this case. And while other improvements would be nice, the point is, Days Gone’s visual makeup and feature set are great as is. Some may have hoped for native resolution rendering, but I don’t see the point here – Days Gone looks very, very close to “ real ” 4K, to the point where I much prefer to see the extra power. enter. support 60fps as much as possible.

Days Gone is also part of the PlayStation Collection – a range of great games that you get by default if you own a PS5 and subscribe to PlayStation Plus, which brings us to the whole issue of PS5 upgrades for PS4 titles. part one. Simply put: we would love to see more! Days Gone and Ghost of Tsushima lead the way, but some titles can be more difficult to upgrade without significant technical effort. That said, we’ve already seen some evidence that more of Sony’s excellent proprietary titles could get a similar boost: The Last Guardian and God of War are also in the PlayStation Collection – games that we know can run at. 60 fps at full resolution on PS5, but don’t … unless you have disc copies of the game, where the Gold Master Code can run with an unlocked frame rate. But for digital downloads, and those looking for patched versions of these games with the various enhancements they bring, bespoke patches are needed – and I hope to see them roll out in due course!