SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
That's what I've been saying for a while.
On console I'd rather have slightly worse "graphics" but with a nice sharp IQ and solid performance vs better "graphics" with a soft grainy image, shimmering, notorious FSR artifacting, frame rate drops and 60fps modes struggling to hit their target even running at sub 1080p resolutions, etc.
I really think visuals on console games are only going to go downhill for here as devs push better tech at the cost of image quality, resolution and performance (maybe the rumored Ps5 pro will help with this)
On PC if you've got a high end rig that can run the nicer graphics without sacrificing image quality and performance it's another story.
But most games releasing today are well over 1080p base that we played with all gen last gen. So what changed? Did the Pro consoles raise standards and expectations? If so, then wait for pro consoles that should be arriving by next year.
The base PS4 games were mostly 1080p with some third parties targeting 900p as early as 2013 and 2014 when ryse, watch dogs, ac unity, and bf4 all targeted 900p. Nowadays most games are native 4k to 1440p fsr upscaled to 4k. There are rare exceptions like Star Wars and Alan Wake 2, but i would say too many games are targeting native 4k.
Last gen also didnt have to worry about offering 60 fps modes because the CPUs were too weak but now we are finally getting them and then complaining when they drop below 1080p. why? everyone and their mothers knows that 60 fps comes at a cost, and if you dont like that cost, stick with 30 fps.
I think Alan Wake will have its shimmering sorted out and will look fine. I agree that anything below 1440p is probably too low for 30 fps, but AW2's issues are mostly to do with poor AA that can be resolved like they were in Horizon FW. Even Star Wars was recently patched to improve performance and now its 30 fps mode runs at 1440p internal resolution without any shimmering.
I think games with good AA will be fine even at 1080p internal resolution. Just look at Returnal. its soft but no sihmmering or fsr artifcating you see in AW2 which has a much higher base resolution. Fix the AA and you will be fine. Horizon's 60 fps mode is way cleaner than AW2 despite being the same resolution. Downgrading the effects will completely change the look of the game for the worse for everyone. just look at the avatar downgrade from the first trailer. done persumably because the consoles are just not powerful enough to run those visuals. The PC gamers also had their games downgraded. thats not fair to them either.