Tweet
Visceral Games' cops-and-robbers shooter may bear many similarities to its predecessor in its core tech, but Battlefield Hardline's single-player shows a key change to how PS4 and Xbox One performance stacks up. While our multiplayer analysis suggested only conservative tweaks to DICE's engine, the solo play brings out some different results in frame-rate metrics - for better and worse. Testing both console editions in identical scenes, the clear advantage once held by Sony's platform with Frostbite 3 is no longer a resolute one, though its raw pixel-count remains an advantage.The first thing to note is Hardline's single-player follows a different, more plot-driven formula than previous games in the series. Mimicking the format of a modern crime drama, its characters are put centre-stage with a heavy push for motion-captured cut-scenes, backed by a film grain post-process effect. A great many of these sequences are rendered in-engine, and at least on a technical level, the game strikes a surprisingly high standard of facial animation this side of LA Noire's MotionScan tech.
Alas, a good chunk of these scenes are simply pre-encoded video files. Each format uses the exact same quality of compression here, and as a result all boast a sizeable total download size of between 36GB to 44GB, with consoles veering towards the upper end. To a point, the use of pre-rendered cut-scenes minimises the impact of the lower native resolutions on console - the video sequences are locked to 1080p and 30fps. However, as with the multiplayer side, we can confirm the PS4's solo gameplay still runs at a 1600x900 native resolution, while Xbox One sits at 1280x720.
Read more…
More...