Digital Foundry: The Outer Worlds 2 - DF Review - Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PS5 Pro - Impressive on Xbox, PS5 Needs Work

strange... this part is really weird on the xbox... is the whole reflection like that?

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Wouldn't bet on this. It's a shallow action RPG without a good modding scene. PC players don't care for those.
One of the positives that almost every review mentions, are its deep rpg mechanics and reactivity.
 
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game unlocked early for me on win game store (cheap cdkeys key) despite expecting tomorrow -edit- Premium edition

shame no OT for this game
 
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lol, just watched the PC video from DF.

the hardware lumen setting has RT shadows that look completely broken...

and people still claim developers aren't using Lumen as a crutch.
you can absolutely tell that Lumen is used 99% of the time not to make a game more visually impressive, but to take shortcuts and avoid needing to hand-adjust lighting.
having a lighting setting that completely breaks local shadows is so telling. noone working on the game gave half a shit about how it looks. just slap it on, and ship the game... that's the Unreal Engine 5 way. why care if you can automate it?
Lumen Slop.

same with the clearly incomplete shader precomp that gives glaring graphics issues and destroys CPU performance.
why care if the first time playing is awful? just ship it! the UE5 way of game development!
Some people here blame the hardware like saying the PS5 Pro sucks.
 
Have to admit I'm impressed with how well this looks and runs in 60fps mode on series X considering it's ue5, would be nice for a hardware lumen upgrade at some point tho.
 
The first one was quite shallow and I'm expecting this one to be more of the same.
For what it's worth, from my perspective as someone who disliked the first one, I don't think it is. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but the writing and the RPG implementations (plus the graphics tech, less loading etc), it feels a lot better to me, idk. This is so much more enjoyable, and it many ways it reminds me of when I played Fallout New Vegas back in the days.
 
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TSR is lighter to run vs PSSR, so I wonder if the average resolution jumped a bit.

Since it's effectively the base PS5 version now, DRS and frame rate metrics would (should) hopefully improve and reach their max bounds more often.
 
Stupid decision to remove PSSR from the Pro version. I've never seen a game using TSR that has better motion stability and sharpness compared to PSSR. The Pro thread on Resetera confirms that now the motion clarity and image sharpness is worse now (I haven't played the game myself though). All they needed to do was put a toggle in to choose between PSSR and TSR.

I fully acknowledge that PSSR has strobing and flickering issues on some areas of lighting and foliage in various games, but this is being overly emphasised to the point where people are thinking that TSR is the obviously better choice. It's not because it comes with the tradeoff of worse sharpness and clarity in motion. I prefer PSSR with its tradeoffs compared to TSR with its tradeoffs. If this decision was motivated by Digital Foundry's video then that's unfair. Why does Oliver's preference override everyone else's preferences? They need to put PSSR back in and make it optional. I really hope other developers don't listen to DF and remove PSSR from games entirely.

To be fair Oliver didn't outright ask for PSSR to be removed in this game, but he did state that he wanted it to be removed from Silent Hill f. And in this video, he stated that he doesn't know if PSSR is the right upscaler for this game. The image quality preferences of some people shouldn't determine what everyone else gets. A PSSR on/off toggle is all that needs to be added, it shouldn't be removed.
 
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started playing on base PS5 yesterday. Balanced mode is definitely the way to go. Looks pretty good, feels really good. Some minor issues here and there but honestly nothing egregious (for me)
 
started playing on base PS5 yesterday. Balanced mode is definitely the way to go. Looks pretty good, feels really good. Some minor issues here and there but honestly nothing egregious (for me)

Yep, that has been my preferred way to play as well. I would play every game in a 40 FPS mode if the option was there.
 
I played the first game and found it a bit problematic because it lacked a good tone.

Poorly placed jokes; it tries to be satire but sometimes gets too serious.
It also has good parts, like when you go to a new planet and there's a disaster caused by a corporation, a great atmosphere of mystery and a bit of horror.
It has several highs and lows.

It's light years away from Fallout New Vegas; anyway, nobody who worked on F:NV is even there anymore.

From a technical standpoint, it's never going to be a great game... After all, it's "day one game pass".
Comparing the performance on PC, it wasn't so bad on PS5.

Regarding the "definitive edition" with all the DLCs being added to PSN Plus, I will play it, just like I did with the first game.
 
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From a technical standpoint, it's never going to be a great game... After all, it's "day one game pass".

What a dumb thing to say.

Last year's top 2 technical games from both DF and NXGamer were "day one game pass" too.
 
Really? And what are those games?





 
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