The game is fraught
with frame rate drops, which are unpleasant and very noticeable.
It looks great, even
with some frame rate drops at times.
I won't go so far as to say this game is poorly optimized, because it definitely isn't — especially in comparison to the backlog of PC ports that have come before it — but there are some issues
with frame rate drops and stutter, particularly in battle sequences.
Video recording at 720p was disappointing as well,
with frame rates dropping to around 15 frames per second.
Not exact matches
The two games in the series were ported to the Nintendo Switch by the developer Red Barrels and they seem to hold up surprisingly well against the console version, however
with a penalty to the
frame rate that
drops from the 60 FPS target on PS4 and Xbox One to 30 FPS on Nintendo Switch.
Anyway, while both the console versions maintain a 60 fps
frame -
rate with the sun shining on the tracks, it's
with bad weather conditions and rain that it
drops down «to 50 fps and lower.»
Project Cars is better on PlayStation 4 according to Digital Foundry, Xbox One suffers
frame -
rate drops with wet weather condition.
One issue
with the graphics is that at times the
frame rate does
drop a little but its nothing too major.
Aside from that, the game runs extremely smooth
with only momentary
frame -
rate drops every now and then.
It runs at a solid
frame rate, but
with very few
drops.
The
frame rate also manages to hold steady at 60 FPS which improves the experience but the central hub of the game felt odd because I noticed that
frame rate was
dropping with no reason at all.
I never saw a
frame rate drop even when I had all three of my fighters performing their ultimate attacks at the same time which fills the screen
with a lot of insane animations; it never affected the look of the game.
Fortunately the game is very scalable so those
with older systems will be able to easily
drop some of the settings down to get a playable
frame rate and enjoy the zero - gravity madness.
I am relieved to see that the Switch usually only suffers from a
frame rate cut and a resolution
drop on these multiplatform releases as opposed to the butchering games often got on the Wii due to power, storage medium limitations such as on the Gamecube and N64, and being hard to port to due to an entirely different development environment as the case was
with the Wii U. I realize that these statements are a little oversimplified because it IS more complicated than that but there are a whole lot of worse ways that Nintendo ports have gotten neutered for the last two decades because of Nintendo's tendencies to veer left when the market goes right.
As mentioned in my own review I did encounter
frame -
rate drops but they weren't that frequent or that strong,
with only two or three examples of the 15 FPS Games TM speaks of.
Add to this that the characters are actually smart and the whole thing is delivered
with perfect tongue - in - cheek timing and I'm almost ready to excuse the
drops in
frame rate as part of the whole «crappy movie» feeling.
Graphically it's almost (but not quite) on par
with the GameCube and PS2 versions of Chaos Theory, and it's impressive that it runs on a 3DS
with minimal
frame -
rate drops even
with the 3D effect on, but it's still not a very good game.
Screen tearing was a constant problem even
with V - sync enabled, and
frame rate drops from the high 60s to 30 and below occurred several times, too, especially during a few nightmare scenarios.
True, it still can't compete
with a midtier GPU like an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (6.5 teraflops) or an AMD RX 580 (6.1 teraflops), but it does mean that the Xbox One X should do a better job than the PS4 Pro of rendering 4K graphics without
dropping frame rates.
Along
with the atrocious load times, I had also experienced very noticeable
frame rate drops at seemingly random times that brought the crisp visuals to an ugly choppiness.
The handheld version outputs to a maximum resolution of 720p, leading to a smoother performance of the game compared to the docked 900p mode, which visibly struggles
with recurring
frame rate drops.
Anyway it has improved
with all the patches and
frame rate drops are nearly none existent.
The game runs at a constant 30 FPS for most of the time on both formats,
with most dips in
frame -
rate being almost negligible on the 360 — commonly, we're talking about a two
frame drop at the very worst in most cases, whereas on the PS3 there can be a few noticeable dips.
while the vehicle models are somewhat decent along
with the different environments, it does suffer from performance issues, namely environment pop - ups, occasional screen tearing and
frame rate drops during times when a lot is going off on screen, especially in the zombie modes.
I even had to
drop the resolution of the game to get it to run at a decent
frame rate, something all the more insulting when you consider I was using a decent spec gaming PC to run the game that hasn't struggled
with much more demanding titles.
However, the Nintendo 64 version also suffers from tremendous
frame -
rate drops, running sluggishly in the teens
with great consistency.
The only cause for concern is the inconsistent
frame rate that becomes apparent when in battle, retaining some issues previously seen in Pokémon X and Y. For the large part your experience will be largely trouble - free, but
with stereoscopic 3D activated or in more demanding encounters such as Horde Battles there are intermittent instances where the
frame rate will
drop.
The game is filled
with bugs and performance issues, ranging from stuttering to
frame rate drops and complete crashes which occur on the campaign maps and the battles.
With GameDVR running without Game Mode there is a massive
drop in minimum
frame rate, indicating severe stutters in performance.
Not only does everything have a graininess to it
with jagged edges and visible pixels, but the
frame rate also
drops noticeably, causing choppy environments and character movement.
During testing, the team noted that there were various bugs and
frame rate drops with the game, and characters would sometimes be floating in midair or appear to be all glitchy.
Couple that
with the fact that in busy scenes, the
frame rate can
drop, and you will find yourself ungraciously jumping off a massive height to your death.
The game has a decent cartoon - like look to it, nothing to write home about, but it just doesn't seem like the
frame rate should
drop with the basic assets the game has to work
with.
Drops in
frame rate, or «slow down» as shooter gamers know it better, has always been an obvious thing
with Warriors games.
To quote Digital Foundry's report on the Switch's use of Nvidia Tegra hardware, here's how the X1 chip lines up:»... Doom BFG Edition on Xbox 360 and PS3 runs at 720p60
with frame -
rate drops [and] the same game running on the Shield Android TV micro-console, based on X1, hands in a near - flawless 1080p60 presentation.
- the game's shading mechanism has changed, which allows for increased gear texture quality - all graphical aspects and programming mechanisms have been built up from scratch for this sequel - maximum resolution is 1080p in TV mode - a bigger focus for Nintendo was the 60
frames per second - occasionally the resolution will be scaled down when there is too much ink displaying on the screen - Nintendo reduced the CPU load and refined the way to use CPU power effectively to maintain 60 fps in all matches - weapons were tweaked to let players be more creative by thinking about unique weapon characteristics and their best uses - weapons are designed to be effective when they are used during the right occasion - Special weapons are stronger than the original ones when used in the right situation, but weaker otherwise - the damage and effect of slowing down your movement when you step in the opponent's ink are reduced from original - you can jump up in rank if you're good enough, but only up until S - you can't jump up from C, B or A to S + - when you win battles in Ranked mode, the Ranked meter fills and your rank goes up when its fully filled - when you lose a battle, the gauge does not decrease, but the meter starts to crack - once the meter reaches its limit, it breaks - when the meter breaks, you have to start over again from the beginning or from a lower rank - highest rank is still S +, but if you fill up the Ranked meter, you get numbers after the alphabet such as «S +1», «S +2» and so on - maximum number is «S +50», but this number will not be displayed to your opponent - you are the only one to see it, and you can check it on your own status screen - Ranked Power is calculated by an algorithm to measure how strong each player is
with minuteness - this will determine if a player's rank is worthy of receiving a big jump (like from «C» to «A»)- Ranked Power has no relation to your splat
rate, and is more tied into to how well you lead your team to victory - you won't
drop off more than one rank even if you play poorly - stage rotation time was changed to two hours - this was done because the devs expected people to play for an hour or so, but they found people play much longer -
with Salmon Run, Nintendo considered how to implement a co-op oriented mode in a player - versus - player type of game - the devs will monitor how users are playing this mode to see if there's some tweaks they can throw in - more Salmon Run maps will be added in the future, but Nintendo wouldn't comment on adding more enemy types to the mode - rewards are changed each time Salmon Run is played - you can obtain rewards when playing locally, but not gear - originally Nintendo had an idea for this mode, but had no background setting, enemy designs, etc. - Inoue suggested that it should be salmon - themed - when Nintendo hosted the Splatfest that pit Callie against Marie, the development of Splatoon 2 had started - the devs had already decided to have the result reflected in the sequel - they even had an idea to announce the Splatfest
with a phrase «Your choice will change the next Splatoon» - the timing to announce a sequel wasn't right, so they decided against this - they eventually released a series of short stories about the Squid Sisters to show how the Splatfest affected the sequel's story - Nintendo wouldn't say if Marina is an Octoling, and noted that Inklings are not paying attention to this too much - Inklings don't care about appearances, as long as everyone is doing something fresh - the Squid Sisters had composers who produced their songs, but Off the Hook are composing their music by themselves - Pearl is genius artist, but she couldn't find a right partner because she's a bit too edgy - she eventually found Marina as a partner though, and their chemistry is sparkling right now - Nintendo is planning a year of content updates for Splatoon 2 - when finished, the quantity of stages will be more than the original - some of the additional stages are totally new and some will be arranged stages from the first game - not all original stages will return and they are choosing stages based on the potential for them to be improved - Brella is shotgun-esque weapon, so the ink hits your opponent more if you are closer - it can shield damage when you open it, but the amount of damage has a limit and once it reaches it, it breaks - you can shoot ink, but you can't use the shield feature when it breaks - the shield won't prevent your allies ink - there are more new weapon categories which haven't been revealed yet - there are no other ranked modes outside of the three current options - the future holds any sort of possibility, but the devs didn't get specific about adding more content like that - for the modes, they adjusted the rule designs so that players will experience the more interesting aspects
The
frame rate only
dropped on me twice during my time
with the game, and both times it was only for a brief second.
Games from this era typically handled performance
drops by either disengaging vertical sync, as
with ZOE 2, or simply
dropping to a
frame -
rate evenly divisible by 60Hz (which, in this case, would have resulted in a jump from 60 fps to 30 fps had the developers not employed the use of soft v - sync).
I have only one complaint: such is the extent of the effects used — cryo blasts, tesla sparks, and so forth — that my PS4 did suffer slight
frame rate drops when I was faced
with substantial robot opposition.
Couple that
with weapons having little impact when you hit a Bear, not being able ti climb over fences, clipping issues and
frame -
rate drops and it all adds up.
I also ran into a few moments
with noticeable
frame -
rate drops when there were a lot on enemies on screen, but aside these moments, the game remains relatively stable for the most part.
Aside from the technical problems
with the camera, there were also a handful of
frame rate drops throughout busy areas, while I also had to restart Tearaway Unfolded multiple times when I encountered a glitch that left my Messenger endlessly falling through the world.
The graphics are still top notch
with the occasional
frame rate drop during cut scenes and the musical score still has the grand metropolis feel to it like it did in Arkham City.
Graphically, Destiny 2 is stunning throughout its diverse environments which are fully realised by excellent particle effects on everything from dust and weather to explosions, complimented by amazing lighting, shadows, enemy character models and weaponry as well as a day - night cycle running at a rock solid 30
frames - per - second on PS4
with no
drop in
frame rate regardless of how many enemies are nearby at once.
There are minor issues here
with pop - in, and high - speed driving and massive numbers of zombies can trigger
frame rate drops.
Character and monsters models also look quite good, compared to the latest entries, and everything runs at a smooth 60 FPS framerate,
with only some very small
frame rate drops in hectic situations and big boss battles.
I never saw a
frame rate drop even when I had all three of my fighters performing their ultimate attacks at the same time which fills the screen
with a lot of insane animations; it never affected the look of the game.
All three titles are now running in 1080p at a very nice 60 FPS
with only a few noticeable
frame rate drops, but that's mostly in the cutscene transitions.
The visuals are stunning
with a fluid
frame rate which never seemed to
drop no matter the chaos displayed on screen.
You can also play on one console
with another player
with the Joy - Cons via split screen, however the
frame rate does
drop but still quite playable.