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Following in the wake of technological showcase that is Killzone: Shadow Fall, Sony's first-party studios surprise and delight us once again with a stunning new workout for the next-gen PlayStation 4 hardware - inFamous: Second Son. Unfortunately, owing to a combination of factors (GDC, Project Morpheus, Metal Gear Solid and the late arrival of inFamous code, if you're wondering), we didn't have the time to bring you a full tech analysis at launch, but we couldn't mark the arrival of this beautiful title without a spot of Digital Foundry coverage.We loaded up the game and played through the first hour, bringing you this initial performance analysis, covering off a range of different gameplay scenarios where we can see how Sucker Punch's brand new PlayStation 4 engine performs. The virtually uninterrupted captures include stunning vistas, detailed cut-scenes, exciting set-pieces and intense combat, spoiling nothing other than establishing the characters, seeing how Delsin gets his powers and witnessing his journey to Seattle - and his first brush with the anti "bio terrorist" forces that have occupied the city. In short, what we have here is a range of scenarios to show how the new engine performs - and the results are rather intriguing.
There's been some discussion about the performance of the game, particularly in terms of a fluctuating frame-rate, and what quickly becomes evident is that Sucker Punch has opted to continue the strategy it used on its PlayStation 3 titles: a solid v-sync working in combination with a completely unlocked frame-rate. The difference here is that while the previous titles in the series would frequently drop beneath the 30fps threshold, it takes a mass of action and GPU-intensive post-processing effects to truly impact inFamous: Second Son's performance. Bearing in mind the high levels of detail, and the overall complexity of the rendering pipeline, that's a stunning achievement.
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