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With much to prove after Battlefield 4's stability woes at launch, the delayed Hardline takes no chances in getting it right. Having tracked the game's progress since its early E3 2014 reveal, the recent beta showed a clear advance in overall performance levels, promising a more polished end product on day one. Today, we have the final PlayStation 4 and Xbox One code to hand, where to varying degrees we see Visceral Games' efforts paying off - though it's clear a locked 60fps is still a hard won fixture on console.As before, frame-rate in console Battlefield is at the mercy of three factors: player count, transparency effects, and the use of Frostbite 3's physics engine. Given the full breadth of nine multiplayer maps, we can now move past the beta's familiar areas (Downtown, Dust Bowl and Bank Job) to see how the balance of the maps fare. A direct comparison between PS4 and Xbox One is not possible given the variables at play here, but as a broad indication the results show an intriguing trend.
Cranking the player count up to 64, some maps hold up in performance terms more adeptly than others. As ever, triggered events like the collapsing of the Hollywood Heights' central building cause big momentary drops - similar to the crashing crane on the Downtown stage. However, it's compact maps such as The Block that strain PS4 and Xbox One more consistently, where sustained periods at between 40-50fps are possible when a match is in full flow.
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