Looking back, moving forward
I Resident Evil 4 was a love note to the 80s, gory, gothic Italian horror genre such as The Beyond, House by the cemetery and of course Zombie Flesh eaters. The original Gamecube exclusive (oh the irony) quickly became the most ported game outside of Doom, covered in my full retrospective about 5 years ago now. Here though the latest remake takes a new slant on that classic Miyasaki-san rebirth but also leaves half of the last gen behind. Thanks to the limits of the XboxOne and likely helped by its Esram development design and constraints, this game does not have an Xbox One and X1X version. A shame as I would predict that like Re2 and 3 the X1X would run the game better than the Series S. The other aspect will of course be Return on Investment and effort versus sales, as such we get a PS4 and Pro version which we can use to compare against the Xbox Series S, I started with this as I thought it was the most interesting comparison. But do not worry I have PS5, SX and PC all coming shortly after.
Resolution Evil
Boring stuff out first, resolution takes a hit over previous releases on PS4 and Pro, with the base PS4 now being interlaced almost certainly to a 1600x900p ceiling, meaning the image is running a half width of 800 and then each 2 frames are interpolated/reconstructed back to that final target. As this was the level the old X1 ran at you can already see where that one would have sat. In addition other cut backs are made but I will get to those in a moment. The PRO and SERIES S both have the same dual modes, a Resolution and Frame-rate mode. All 3 consoles run an unlocked fps like all Resident Evil games under the RE-Engine, and obviously the changes come down to pixel frequency and pixel clarity. Pro in Pres mode targets 2240x1260p and DOES NOT appear to use the Interlaced mode as the tell tale signs do not show up on alpha hair cards, thin diss-occluded edges, post effects all appearing stable under most movement and fast cuts. The Series S does appear to be running Interlaced mode, as signs show up on dithered hair, but 30% higher at a 2560x1440P output target. Which does help clarity and reduces high frequency flicker at points in such a high contract title. In action though they both have a very similar visual output with other effects standing out more than the resolution.
The FrameRate mode appears turn on FSR2 at the balanced level on Series S, dropping 43% of that resolution to a new target of 1920×1080, which is quite obvious but still not a bad looking game. The tell tale signs of dithering, break up can be seen between the 2 modes on hair for example and the image is considerably softer, amplified here with the zooms. The Pro drops 48% of its pixel output now, going down to the same level now as the PS4’s 1600×900 again though with FSR2 engaged but it still runs better AA and effectively Depth of Field which is heavily reduced on the PS4 as that console will be heavily GPU bound all the time in this title. The result is a Pro image that is more stable than the PS4’s yet softer due to less Post process AA and effects running on that. In fact, even at 1080p the Series S image is also more stable but softer due to the FSR2 pass, something I will cover in more detail on the next video. The cutbacks here all seem to be related to the output resolution only and once we get to performance we can see the difference that can make. In terms of visual quality the PS4 and Pro are close, BUT the Pro does run better AA as mentioned, more post effects such as Depth of Field and bloom, higher specular maps and general FX quality is better due to the higher resolution levels in that mode or faster frame-rates in the other. But they loose out on some additional effects over the Series S, which again is identical in both modes just lower precision and 1 noticed effect, the S runs Sub surface scattering in Res mode which the Pro and PS4 rely on the base Lambert diffuse shader pass. But in the FPS mode the Series S also turns this off which shows it can be a high GPU impact depending in the flesh and lighting in screen. The series S runs better and more shadows and AO than the last gen Playstation consoles, creating much better contract and shadows in many scenes, as shown here. The S also has higher LoD with trees and grass popping in often on the last gen consoles and showing far more billboards than the Series S. Finally all consoles can suffer from loading in Texture mips very late, the PS4 and Pro are half the install size of the current gen, so some of that will be the base assets installed. But the Pro suffers the most due to its much higher resolution demands and disproportionate Memory and Bandwidth upgrade, meaning you will often see moments like this were walls, faces and such will look very blurry and have a mixture of Mip levels. In a case of most prevalent the Pro is highest, then the PS4 and then the Series S, showing that memory constraints continue to be a big hurdle for developers and I am sure they are juggling memory and HDD access aggressively here under the hood, which as I have mentioned is going to affect the Series S this gen as much if not more so than the Pro. The biggest increase the S offers is the enhanced lighting effects that the extra shadows and AO offer, making a dark game look much better, aligned with the higher LoD levels in may sequences it does offer a subtle but welcome boost in quality. That said almost everything remains in tact on the last gen consoles and really offers a great level of visual quality that shows the improvements to lighting, materials, destruction and seamless loading the Re-Engine and team have added here. The last big change is CPU related mostly, with animation cycles and skinning being cut back at a distance on PS4 and less so the Pro, but also dynamically in action with some shots of characters showing half and even quarter interpolation of animation, which is obvious when it happens with many characters on screen. The Pro is res mode is less affected here, with the FPS mode showing it more but overall the bump in CPU and GPU helps it. The Series S does not appear to be affected in any area or mode here and is not a surprise with the significantly faster CPU it offers.
Performance
Starting with the PS4, it targets 60fps and even with the cutbacks from its peers and previous Reengine releases, this never hits that rate in my tests. No matter where you are walking into a small close of room, trying to a doge a chainsaw wielding lunatic and more so in any dense vegetation area, which is a big increase on the hardware and engine over RE2 and 3 remake, this is a game that will have both your base PS4 and Pro spinning up fast on the menu screen due to this. What we see is a performance rate that is approximately 30% above an ideal 30fps cap with my framerate graph showing it stays within the 33ms frame times almost always but is on average only 40fps after a mix set of moments and real time cutscenes in the demo. The heavier drops from 50to 30 are very obvious and although I doubt it will be added, having a 30fps cap in the menu would be a nice addition for some and would certainly be my recommendation for the PS4 version, something which is similar to the Resolution mode on the other 2 consoles.
Resolution mode
With 2 modes each on the Series S and pro we will kick off with the Resolution mode, as noted the Pro in this mode appears to use a native 1260p output rather than the Interlaced solution of the base PS4 and the Series S. This offers a 96% increase in Pixel throughout to the screen along with a minor uplift in Depth of field and AO. The interlaced mode has a cost though and normally provides around 20/30% performance back from the same native output, albeit using a PC. As such the levels we see here are often lower than the base PS4 in this mode, with some sections in this demo dipping below 30fps, the choices here make sense IF they capped the game at 30fps in this mode, which they may do in the retail version but taking a good selection of areas from the demo the game averages out at 35fps and in reality the increases we see over the PS4 plus not using the interlace mode all make sense. Adding to this is the fact the choices on the Series S mean it is offering better visual quality, higher Lod, SSR, better AO and shadows and still manages to perform on average throughout these matched sections, 40% better in the resolution mode. Again reinforcing the settings used here as the Series S GPU is very close to the PS4PRO level, and should really be able to run the same game with the enhanced effects here at similar levels. What we see represents the choices made by the team are for the best and reinforcing what I say often, resolution numbers are largely meaningless past a point and here the 2 consoles look very close in that regards but the SS takes the lead in performance. That said, even with a big performance boost over the PRO, the Series S is never close to being a 60fps title and VRR will not help as it can often dip below or close to the VRR range and as such I would still prefer an option to cap this mode if you should choose. As you are often around/above the PS4 performance levels in this mode it is welcome, yet still has a sufficient gap in performance demands to call this a true 60fps mode, but at this point in the tests the Series S does win out in quality and performance, if only just.
FrameRate mode
Finally the FrameRate mode is the one that should deliver all the goods right, well it is significantly better. The PRO now uses the FSR2 solution and because of this it actually makes a small bump to LoD increasing effects further above the base PS4, but still below the Series S. It can now hit 60fps and it holds that in many sections, but as you would expect the same areas that could cause it to dip down to 30fps in the resolution mode now cause some low 50s for long periods, specifically in the middle of a Yocal mob looking to take your head as a trophy. This is my preferred mode to play in though on the PRO as it not only improves the visual response to match most screens, feels smoother to play but helps a great deal with the input times, which I will cover in my next video, but they are very slow and heavy in the Resolution mode and some of that is the dead zone on the sticks but also the frame times this mode offers do help the response and aiming in the title, as close as we get to a 60fps mode and now that the resolution targets are closer, albeit with a 44% lower final output, the Pro is now within 5% performance on average for the Series S but we do see some areas that can be a little more. This is a mode that is close enough to that 60fps level to be a true option for players.
The Series S does an even better job here in keeping close to 60fps, albeit only in these demo sections I can show here, the areas of dense foliage, alpha effectively Fill rate and bandwidth can cause some small skips into 33ms but it is never bad enough to warrant concern and the extra graphical effects this offers, although the Sub surface scattering is a minor reduction, it really is practically the same as the res mode just with a softer image quality but it certainly take the win here for the best of the 3 formats to hit the staple of 60fps that the majority of RE powered games target. The choices on this console really work well to get as close to the other now gen consoles, it is just the same ray Tracing effects that are now removed, which were present in the RE2 and 3 updates but here the team choice to drop them in favour of likely higher resolution, effects and arguably more effort squeezing the BVH and work needed on this mini white speaker. But the only sounds you can hear from it are the cries of death and victory as it takes the crown in my RE4 remake comparison.
