SHADOW WARRIOR 2 NOTES 1080P
SHADOW WARRIOR 2 NOTES PS4
SHADOW WARRIOR 2 NOTES PC

The result here is noticeable pop-in of grass and debris while moving through the stage. In this case it appears that the console versions utilise the PC's high option as opposed to the higher-density ultra setting.

SHADOW WARRIOR 2 NOTES PC

The medium and low options on PC are a fair bit lower quality than the shadows used on console, however.Īnother important visual element is the use of foliage and debris. Shadows are an interesting example - the quality and resolution is a match for the PC's high setting (the highest available option in this case) but they utilise a more aggressive LOD that reduces quality at a closer distance. The console versions appear to share equivalent settings for many rendering features, while there is not a direct match with any of the PC presets for others. The PC version offers quite a host of customisable options in addition to four presets - low, medium, high and ultra. In fact, the console implementation suggests that an option to use lower-quality reflections on PC would have worked nicely considering their massive impact on performance. Despite this difference, the effect still looks excellent and far exceeds the ugly cubemap alternative used on PC when mirrors are disabled. Reflections are also altered by whether or not they fall into an area of shadow, while the PC version produces more accurate reflections in all circumstances. It's implemented in a very subtle fashion, however, with little obvious object pop-in visible during normal play. In addition, there appears to be a clipping distance in play where less important objects only become reflected within a certain range.

SHADOW WARRIOR 2 NOTES PS4

Most noticeably, the console versions do not accurately reflect all aspects of the scenery - light sources, active 2D elements (such as arcade monitors) and other elements are not reflected on the PS4 or Xbox One.

SHADOW WARRIOR 2 NOTES 1080P

Use 1080p at full-screen for the best experience. A side-by-side look at Shadow Warrior in motion on PS4 and Xbox One. Surprisingly, the team has managed to implement these on consoles, but there are some sacrifices made on the way. While many games these days utilise screen-space reflections, which are limited to reflecting only objects immediately visible on-screen, Flying Wild Hog instead opted for planar reflections that prove quite demanding for both the GPU and CPU. One of the most demanding visual features present in the PC version is its reflection technology, which many users were forced to disable in order to reach a stable 60fps. The game demands some hardware muscle to operate smoothly though, making higher resolutions difficult to reach with a consistent performance level on many PCs. However, last year's PC version still has the real edge in this regard with support for arbitrary resolutions and additional hardware MSAA. Considering the target frame-rate, image quality is acceptable in both cases, though clearly PS4 has the advantage.

Post-process anti-aliasing along the lines of FXAA does a decent job of smoothing out edges without overly blurring the image. Image quality is crisp on PS4 and although a bit blurrier, it's still relatively clean on Xbox One. The PS4 and Xbox One versions of Shadow Warrior operate at 1080p and 900p respectively. So how well do the console versions fares against the PC original? In its original PC form, one of the game's limitations was its inability to scale well across CPU cores, translating into performance issues with specific settings. All of these elements have been successfully translated onto console with minimal loss in quality. For Shadow Warrior, the team introduced a host of improvements, including completely dynamic lighting, parallax occlusion mapping (POM), and screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO). Shadow Warrior is built on a unique, in-house graphics technology known as the Road Hog Engine, first used in Hard Reset on PC. Can PS4 and Xbox One attain and sustain the target? Of course, hitting 60fps and delivering a consistent experience are two different things. With developer Flying Wild Hog announcing a target of 60 frames per second on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One earlier this year, it was clear this was an ambitious project. Shadow Warrior made a splash last year on PC with impressive visuals and kinetic action, but high system requirements left us wondering how well it would translate to console.

Shadow warrior 2 notes