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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – The Last Generation Review

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Teaching old dogs new tricks

 Good ideas never die they say, Star Wars and cross Gen games prove that true once again. . EA use some force magic to port Jedi Survivor to last Gen, yes including the Xbox One. A game that struggled across all formats only last year.

 The first cuts noticed are the FoV slider and mode selection, both absent here. Like the Series S, the PS4 and Xbox One, Rookie and Pro models, all have but a single mode that targets a 30fps frame rate.

Xbox One X and PS4 Pro presents a big delta, the One X takes the crown at 2560×1440 and PS4 Pro is a mere 1920×1080. These both appear to use FSR2 to reconstruct back to those targets and from a similar 1600x900p base. The Base PS4 targets the consistent standard it has achieved throughout its 11-year life span, 1920×1080 via an FSR2 output. Fixed from all counts, 1280x720p Base resolution. Lowest on the rung, again quite common, the Xbox One offers a 1600×900 resolution, again using an FSR2 output. Here we do appear to see Dynamic Resolution Scaling(DRS) in use, with highs of 1067x600p down to a low of 800×450. DRS maybe in use on all four console. Likelihood is all consoles use it but no changes were spotted in a selection of counts. The low-level temporal reconstruction solutions within Unreal Engine 4, TAAu, could also be used but is likely not, as it can be more demanding than FSR2 and the dithering artifacts and ghosting is similar to FSR2’s fingerprints.

 Image quality is respectably high on PS4 Pro and X1X,  with the X1X taking the lead, but they look great on a 4K screen. Even the PS4 presents a sharp image with detailed textures. It is only when we hit the Xbox One do we see an image more suited on a 1080p screen. But here we do see far more image noise, looking very soft, dithered and unstable. Still very playable and impressive quality from the team here and the little Microsoft VHS console.

 Cutting through the pack

 Obviously, none aim for the Quality Ray Tracing mode, instead comparison come from the performance mode. The much needed patched one that came a few months after launch, as I covered in previous IGN Performance reviews. The launch mode had Ray Tracing enabled with Global Ilumination and reflections, not the most performant in UE4 that this game was built on. Once these were removed both frame rate and resolutions increased.

Shadows are significantly culled, with lower shadow resolution , filtering, effectively the lowest cascade for sun and moon at all times. Spotlights use lower resolutions and less shadow casting light sources use, with less light sources overall which can be obvious at times. Screen spaced shadows are still used with SSAO but are now much lower quality than SS even. The Xbox One uses the lowest settings of all consoles.

 Screen Space Reflections, a relatively heavy GPU effect, is not culled completely but is now used on a reduced amount of surfaces. Such as the opening chapter with the highly reflective floors and hanger removing the effect entirely across all last gen machines. Instead now relying on projected Cube-maps and proxies used on reflections, materials are still excellent with a mix of diffuse and specular well enough to still look good throughout. But these areas can leave a more diffuse, almost marble or stone look. The reduced specular maps can affect other surfaces across the game, along with a significant cut to textures and object detail is one of the big signs between generations, memory.

 The is no more evident that in the install size, which is a mere 50GBs versus the 130GBs on current gen and PC, less than 40% of the size. A result of much higher textures, assets and increase data geometry used on current generation and PC including for Ray Tracing.

Level of Detail (LOD) is another big nip & tuck, with foliage heavily pruned back with entire trees and shrubs gone, view range is much shorter with clutter far lower than performance and quality. Polygon count is another, with characters, objects and such all being more orthogonal now which is very intelligently done, by and large. Another big and largely ignored benefit of the newer consoles and PC is the much higher level of primitives they can process. You often get very low polygon models, mip-5 level or so textures and they will load in after a few seconds. This is better the further up the stack you go, with the far faster CPU and Memory subsystem of the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, making a big dent into the gap between last and current generation.

Post Effects are another area on the austerity list, with lower quality, but still great per object motion blur, needed for the 30fps rates here. Depth of field is present, complete with those lovely Bokeh shapes, just of a lower Filter and pass, resulting in a more dithered look. As is hair cards, alpha and GI all being far lower quality or removed entirely in the case of light bounce.

Performance

  All these cuts do work well to the aim of performance, in fact this really impressed me even on the Xbox One during the opening mission. Taking PS4 & X1 first, 30fps is maintained well, helped by the use of adaptive v-sync which helps CPU and GPU bound moments, which this often will bounce back and forth along with memory. We see this on all versions with aggressive culling on alpha tick rates. Fire, smoke, mid distance animations and even shadow maps which can update every 5th frame. Object can draw in with grids, causing large 3D checkerboards when moving the camera from dis-occluded areas or opening a door. Sometimes you can see the room behind draw in, a cuboid at a time as you open it.

 It pays off though, as this is never a huge eye soar and allows both machines to run through most of the opening section without issue. No big dips from that 33ms target, helped as noted by an adaptive V-sync. Out into the open world though we do see some areas causes deviations from that. A long run into the main hub caused issues on all formats before, and here PS4 and Xbox One can dip and tear more than anywhere else, never heavy or for long periods and tend to be at sector streaming pockets To instantiate or destroy asset allocations in Ram or when fill rate limited with Alpha, Geometry, SSR on water bodies and such. Both consoles perform with margin of error of each other, showing the cuts and settings changes to X1 over PS4, such as resolution, more imposters, lower effects, all work to alleviate GPU and memory pressure. The results are often better than the previous Fallen order on the same machines. As I noted then it was never related to Hard Drives or access at all, but simply memory management and general engine code issues. The updates here aid all version with even the PC and current generation consoles all seeing big improvements to performance and quality in previous patches.

 Xbox Series X and PS4 Pro are almost rock solid through the same tests, not a surprise as they offer far more powerful hardware and we see an almost locked 33ms frame time throughout. Some sections, again memory limited, can see both skip into 16ms and some occasional 50ms spikes. No tearing was noted but is likely enabled just not required on the Professional consoles. If you want the best performing and visual quality of the last generation, then the Xbox One X takes the top spot but the PS4 Pro is almost identical.

 Loading Times

Platform   |   Loading from Menu   |   Fast Travel
PS5 Load        |  12:07 Seconds                |       10:22 Seconds
X1 load            |  1.34:51 Seconds            |      23:59 Seconds
PS4Pro            |     35:19 Seconds            |       15:28 Seconds

Summary

 The quality across all last generation consoles belies the issues I covered at launch on current gen and PC. The 18 month or so development time to get these last gen version up and running along with general UE4 updates the team have made across all formats was time and effort well spent. Some may call this a remarkable port but in reality it personifies what the majority of this generation has been. Jedi: Survivor is an incredible game, with some current gen technology within from Ray Tracing and SSD use, but at its heart this is a last gen game that was improved on PS5 , Xbox Series X and even Series S. This is glaringly obvious in the PS4 Pro and X1X versions which, at a glance could pass as current gen. That said this does not distract from a solid and high quality port, with some bugs still present such as memory stomp on X1X crashing to desktop and a broken boss battle on X1, again likely limits within that memory space. But if you never moved to PS5 or Xbox Series X then these version deliver all the quality, action, fun and enjoyment even on the Xbox One. Sure, image quality is lower, effects and the polish of the current gen but a few minutes in the look and feel of one of the best games of 2023 is present and correct.