Tweet
Last summer's PS4 Battlefield Hardline beta disappointed us with its sub-par frame-rate and a notable lack of visual refinements over Battlefield 4. Surely we should expect more from a triple-A title based on a key franchise? With a new beta released this week, we were eager to see what improvements had been made, based on code that should fall closely into line with the performance profile of the final game, due next month. We've already taken a look at the PC version running on a high-end PC, and it runs as expected but what about the console versions? Have things improved? Well, the 720p/900p rendering set-ups for Xbox One and PS4 respectively are a genuine disappointment, but the good news is that performance has increased significantly since last year's E3 beta, which often dipped below 40fps in taxing scenes. The big revelation on playing this new code is that overall frame-rates are significantly improved: the urban map from last year's sampler returns, delivering much better performance with minimal dips in frame-rate even during the massive environmental destruction episodes. The new modes all seem to operate very smoothly, maintaining a stable 60fps throughout most of the match.
It's only when returning to Battlefield's classic 64-player Conquest Large mode that familiar problems begin to crop up. Jumping into a full scale battle across the game's new Dust Bowl map - closest in scale to Battlefield 4's larger stages - demonstrates plenty of performance hitches and dips on both consoles, more noticeable on Xbox One but still an issue on PlayStation 4. The prolific use of alpha transparency effects appears to contribute to the issues, but on top of that, it seems that the increased player count causes its own impact to frame-rate too - perhaps because of the increased CPU load.
Read more…
More...