So what's the story? Well the bad news is quite simply that, despite implementing a 30fps cap, Bloodborne struggles to run at a smooth frame-rate. Across the breadth of our tests in both Central Yarnham and the Hunter's Dream hub area, genuine drops are infrequent, but a factor that drags performance down to brief lows of 24fps. Rolling through Havok-based destructible objects (which populate the world in incredible number this time), attacking too many townsfolk at once, and also the use of alpha transparencies are to blame. Essentially, it's the usual culprits for this series.
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And yet something is awry when playing Bloodborne. Its sub-30fps frame-rate drops may be infrequent, but on close analysis the bigger issue here is in its frame-pacing. As it turns out, From Software's implementation of a 30fps cap means that, as promised, we do get an average refresh at that number near-constantly throughout Yarnham city. The problem? As we've seen with the launch builds of Need for Speed: Rivals and Destiny, an incorrect ordering of frames can cause a nasty stuttering to motion.
Though its 30fps average is technically correct, Bloodborne often produces two unique frames followed by two duplicates - rather than one after another - creating a perception of frame-rate drops throughout. It's not smooth in motion at all as a result, and frame-time updates swing erratically between 16ms and 66ms - and sometimes higher. It's an unfortunate oversight by From Software. However, we have seen both Bungie and EA Gothenburg react to the issue in each case, correcting their games soon after launch. We hope this will be the case for Bloodborne as well.
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The obvious question is to what extent upgrading to an SSD might solve the issue. We gave this a test, swapping out the stock PS4 drive for a Sandisk Extreme Pro 480GB SSD, and find that loading times are reduced by around 25 per cent overall.
. Overall performance is very stable!
