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Digital Foundry: High on Life 2 DF Review: PS5/PS5 Pro/Xbox Series X|S/PC - Big Fun But What About The Tech?

Bojji said:
In general, UE5 games tend to show smaller differences between Pro and PS5, and that is weird when Pro has over 60% more compute power.

Series S version... Fuck me lol.
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There seems to be a common denominator here. And it's not the hardware.
 
Bojji said:
In general, UE5 games tend to show smaller differences between Pro and PS5, and that is weird when Pro has over 60% more compute power.

Series S version... Fuck me lol.
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Memory bandwidth for certain. UE5 games really stress memory buses it seems. It's the main reason Lumen just does not work even in supposedly 4+ TFLOPS handhelds like Ally X.
 
DĂ©cima engine still the best engine and no need Ray tracing.

Lets see gtavi.


More devs should sell their engines.
 
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rodrigolfp said:
"Nintendo Seal of Quality"
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Robin Williams What Year Is It GIF
 
I don't know how the Xbox version was, but the PS5 version of their first game was also kinda shit on PS5. It was UE4 and had more stuttering than the worst UE5 games. Not really surprised with the results here.
 
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Bojji said:
In general, UE5 games tend to show smaller differences between Pro and PS5, and that is weird when Pro has over 60% more compute power.

Series S version... Fuck me lol. And no HDR support, another typical UE5 flaw. It supports HDR but MANY games don't have it.
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Probably limited by memory bandwidth.
 
For those of you who only read the summary and didn't watch the video, both John and Oliver were very high on the game. They enjoyed it tremendously.
 
They need to take a leaf out of ark raiders devs book, they took what they wanted from unreal 5 and made a very solid game.
 
Skifi28 said:
I don't know how the Xbox version was, but the PS5 version of their first game was also kinda shit on PS5. It was UE4 and had more stuttering than the worst UE5 games. Not really surprised with the results here.
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The P55 version was shit cause they aimed for a higher resolution. Looked sharper, ran much worse.

Xbox was 1440p/60 in performance mode and was pretty good and within VRR. For PS5 they changed that to 1800p but it ended up with the game getting a lot of drops and tearing.
 
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welshrat said:
They need to take a leaf out of ark raiders devs book, they took what they wanted from unreal 5 and made a very solid game.
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If they wanted to make game with horrendous IQ on PS5/XSX and PS5 Pro, with no lighting on Series S - they delivered!
 
adamsapple said:
The P55 version was shit cause they aimed for a higher resolution. Looked sharper, ran much worse.

Xbox was 1440p/60 in performance mode and was pretty good and within VRR. For PS5 they changed that to 1800p but it ended up with the game getting a lot of drops and tearing.
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I played it on the pro so framerate was pretty steady. Just stuttering around every corner.
 
adamsapple said:
The P55 version was shit cause they aimed for a higher resolution. Looked sharper, ran much worse.

Xbox was 1440p/60 in performance mode and was pretty good and within VRR. For PS5 they changed that to 1800p but it ended up with the game getting a lot of drops and tearing.
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A dev problem with poor decision making, yeah.
 
That's insanely bad even by UE5 standards.
Looks like shit too on consoles, whatever graphical improvements they gained from going with UE5 are completely negated by the insanely bad image quality.
 
Until consoles have a Present K, M and/or L like solution I actually pity you cats.


I didnt believe in 720p to 2160p till I tried it.
720p to 2160p using TSR sounds like a nightmare.
 
adamsapple said:
You really don't, but then again this is a small game made by a small team, I wouldn't put the same kind of emphasis on this like a game from an EA or Square Enix or Capcom. Squanch Games is reportedly around ~50 people in total.
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You should as they are charging $60 for it and Sony $700 for the Pro.
 
Fbh said:
That's insanely bad even by UE5 standards.
Looks like shit too on consoles, whatever graphical improvements they gained from going with UE5 are completely negated by the insanely bad image quality.
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They should have turned off software lumen reflections (looks bad, use cubemaps), VSMs and maybe even nanite. No one will fucking notice in a game with art direction like that.

Leave lumen for lighting and IMPROVE IQ - this would make the game look much better using the same resources. Fucked up priorities.

adamsapple said:
This feels like one of those games that looks like shit but will be incredibly fun to play.
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Maybe, I'm not the biggest fan of HoL1.
 
Black_Stride said:
Until consoles have a Present K, M and/or L like solution I actually pity you cats.


I didnt believe in 720p to 2160p till I tried it.
720p to 2160p using TSR sounds like a nightmare.
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Couldn't they have picked a better letter or naming convention?

Like V1, V2b, V2p
 
MidGenRefresh said:
UE5 is a joke. Look at KCD2 running on their custom tweaked Cry Engine. It looks insane and is so well optimized I can play it on a Steam Deck.
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Look how good Crimson Desert is looking. Remains to be seen once it's released, but looks to be running well with that fidelity and clean IQ.

 
DeepEnigma said:
Couldn't they have picked a better letter or naming convention?

Like V1, V2b, V2p
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These are not supposed to be consumer facing.
They are for devs, just like the actual DLL that ships with your game you arent really supposed to see that.

Each preset has different behaviors so devs can decide what they want to ship with by default.
They arent inherently improvements on each other more like variants.

For instance Preset J exhibits less ghosting at the expense of more flickering when compared to Preset K.
If a devs game when they test doesnt have many textures or surfaces that exhibit the flickering they may decide to use preset J to limit the ghosting cuz maybe the type of game it is the ghosting is more obvious.

Preset L gives more stable, sharper images than preset K and J at the expense of being more expensive....and pretty much requiring an RTX40 series card.
Preset M gives slightly worse image quality than L but at a cost closer to K and J.
So devs can decide how sharp do they want their game to look vs how much performance they are willing to give up......they might need to increase their min-spec if they ship with Preset L or M.


ITs a better naming convention than Preset More Flicker less Ghosting.
Just tie the letter to the behavior you are looking for.
 
Zathalus said:
1440p with DLSS balanced (4/4.5) or FSR4 would look good. No need for 4k to get decent visuals. A $1200-$1300 PC (even with today's insane RAM pricing) will drive that just fine. Occasional shader stutters is a given with some UE5 games though.
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Im just stirring the pot. What keeps me on console isnt price its physical media
 
I keep saying this everywhere i post.. Unreal Engine 5 is terrible, NOT 1 game have i played which didn't have performance issues, especially traversal stutter.
Why do developers keep trying to use it, there are so many incredible engines which look incredible and run amazing.
Tell a lie, I think avowed was UE5 and that ran suprisingly well on my Gaming Rig but thats more due to the power of the rig. Performance should of been so much better in that game too and likely would of been had they not used UE5.
It doesn't make sense to me why devs keep using UE5.. and the games are so obviously really low native resolution and so look like Vaseline has been rubbed all over the screen. Sad really as UE4 and UE3 whilst they had their problems games still looked good and ran fine.
 
EPG_Every_Platform_Gamer said:
I keep saying this everywhere i post.. Unreal Engine 5 is terrible, NOT 1 game have i played which didn't have performance issues, especially traversal stutter.
Why do developers keep trying to use it, there are so many incredible engines which look incredible and run amazing.
Tell a lie, I think avowed was UE5 and that ran suprisingly well on my Gaming Rig but thats more due to the power of the rig. Performance should of been so much better in that game too and likely would of been had they not used UE5.
It doesn't make sense to me why devs keep using UE5.. and the games are so obviously really low native resolution and so look like Vaseline has been rubbed all over the screen. Sad really as UE4 and UE3 whilst they had their problems games still looked good and ran fine.
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PC can fix image quality vs. consoles but can't fix internal problems with stuttering (traversal stutters, and potential for shaders stutters if devs are incompetent). We hear that CDPR+Epic collaboration fixes stuttering in UE5.6 but who knows how true is that...

Engine has massive problems with stuttering, HDR (so many games without it), stability of lighting and reflections (low quality lumen and denoisers) and few other things.

5.0 was basically alpha or beta version released to developers, it finally starts to look functional with 5.6 version. Even Avowed you mentioned and E33 (that is praised for decent performance) still have all typical UE5 issues.
 
I grown up on DOOM, QUAKE, Unreal, so the atmosphere and art style in this game isnt appealing to me :D, however gameplay seems fun.

That being said, the image quality in this video is absolutely insane...in a bad way. I have never seen such poor image quality on my 4K monitor in any PS5 gameplay. I don't know what the High on Life 2 developer was thinking because people have eyes, and not many will want to play something that ugly looking.
 
adamsapple said:
- Based on UE5 (first was UE4)
- Influences from Halo, Doom, Bioshock, Sunset Overdrive
- New Skateboard mechanic allows for fast traversal across the world
- Conventional UE5 experience (Lumen, Nanite etc) with minimal pop-in

- Software Lumen can cause reflections to look static and 'blobby' in shiny surfaces, PC version also uses software Lumen.
- Screen space shadows can cauase similar issues like SSR where shadows disappear depending on angle from casting source
- Overall the presentation is 'more higher quality' than the first game

Consoles:

- PS5:
- Uses TSR for up-scaling with a single 60fps mode.
- Native 720p up-scaled to higher resolution. The game seems to have an in-game 'rendering scale' setting but that doesn't seem to do anything. It goes from 75% to 200%, seems like a development oversight.
- Performance targets 60 but larger areas run from 40 to 50's, stuttering seen during traversal as well with only smaller areas seemingly seeing locked 60
- Most drops seen seemed CPU bound

PS5 Pro:
- TSR and PSSR toggle
- Both seem to render 792p~ with possible DRS.
- TSR shows more aliasing but PSSR shows more instability and noise
- Difference is more visible in indirectly lit scenes, PSSR has trouble here with flickering and fizzling
- Beyond the above, looks very similar to base PS5 and still shows performance drops here and there


Series X:
- Looks similar to PS5 but with higher DRS (720p vs 792p in tested area)
- Performance also feels smoother than PS5 with less wobble

Series S:
- Strips back Lumen RTGI and looks flatter than other versions by comparison
- Shadow and texture quality also downgraded
- Counts just slightly below 720p and targets 60fps with more GPU bound drops
- DF thinks a 30fps mode with the lighting intact would have been a good option

PC:
- Experience is 'good but with caveats'
- Traversal stutter like consoles and shader comp stutter even though there's a shader comp at launch
- Not as bad as other UE5 games but still there.
- FSR4, DLSS, DLAA and both AMD/Nvidia frame gen supported, native Ultra Wide also supported
- Some frame gen wonkiness noted when frame rate was not capped
- No native HDR supported here

- The game is currently not Steam Deck verified



Conclusion:

- A Switch 2 version is scheduled to release in April and DF wonders if it will have Series S like settings.
- On a separate note, Ark Survival aims to be the first game with 30fps with frame gen (i-e will build from a base of 15fps) for Switch 2.
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Dude, you put a lot of time and effort into these summaries! The Neogaf mods should pay you for them.
 
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