Face-Off: Child of Light

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Ubisoft's delightful RPG Child of Light is brought to life using the same UbiArt Framework technology behind the last two outstanding Rayman games - but with a twist. Beautiful and imaginative, the world in Child of Light is created via rich water-coloured artwork where characters and scenery are displayed with fine brush stroke details, leading to a vivid and dreamlike painted appearance. Various layers are used to create depth and give locations a real sense of atmosphere, while the use of dynamic lighting forms an integral part of the gameplay - light sources are used to illuminate hidden or dark pathways during exploration, solve puzzles, heal your characters, and slow down enemies in combat.
All of this is presented at a smooth 60fps update that one would expect from any high-quality 2D game. In fact, one of the stand-out features of the UbiArt Framework engine is the ability for it to handle native 1080p visuals running at 60fps across a wide range of platforms - as demonstrated by Rayman Legends and its equally superb prequel. With this in mind it comes as a surprise to learn that with Child of Light Ubisoft Montreal has elected to use a very different rendering set-up from the Rayman games, with the last-gen platforms failing to hit the full HD standard.
The topic of resolution is particularly interesting where PS4 and Xbox One are concerned. Child of Light provides us with a crisp 1080p presentation, but some evidence suggests that elements of the presentation are derived from rendering at a much higher resolution and then down-sampling - a process known as super-sampling. The lack of long straight edges makes pixel counting difficult, but our analysis throws up two separate numbers for horizontal resolution - 2304 and 2112 were both extracted from the same scene - while vertical resolution is consistent at 1440. This isn't entirely confirmed, then - it may well be the case that a form of multi-sampling is in effect, but the edge-smoothing is quite unlike any other form of MSAA we've seen before. You can peer at the effects on all six platforms by checking out our expansive comparison gallery.
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