On to performance, and this is curiously where the PS4 starts to slip. It's a superior release on balance, but with textures, lighting and so much else a match for PS4 and Xbox One, it does take side-by-side screenshot comparisons to catch many of these points.
We see a boost to object LODs too, meaning pop-in occurs at a farther point in the distance than on console.
The PC advantage is easy to summarise too: reflection and shadows quality is one setting higher than console, texture filtering is cleaner at range, and effects like bokeh depth of field are also unique to this version. The rest boils down to the resolution divide, with textures and high-contrast meshes affected at range on Xbox One, and less so on PS4. There's only a slight quirk on PS4, where texture positions are offset, marks any contrast in our shots. The PS4 and Xbox One are entirely identical, right down to the form of ambient occlusion and their texture filtering. The approach here, though passable in spots, is simply too distracting when working with the upscaled console framebuffers.īut what's the story for the actual settings on each version? Pitting both console editions against PC at its ultra graphics preset (rendering at 1920x1080 to easily match shots), it's surprising to find how little there is to distinguish each. Just like Battlefield 4, it drives home the series' dire need for a better-rounded AA method that can also tackle temporal aliasing.
Fence-work in the opening Prologue mission suffers enormously on both PS4 and Xbox One, and the more open-ended Gator Bait stage (one of few levels to give players freedom to roam) also looks a mess - a swampy setting with swathes of trees and grass that flicker wildly at each turn.
Yet again the quality of the upscale, plus the cheap post-process anti-aliasing on console, produces some glaringly poor results. However, as with the multiplayer side, we can confirm the PS4's solo gameplay still runs at a 1600x900 native resolution, while Xbox One sits at 1280x720.īattlefield Hardline's image quality is disappointing on both counts.
To a point, the use of pre-rendered cut-scenes minimises the impact of the lower native resolutions on console - the video sequences are locked to 1080p and 30fps.
Each format uses the exact same quality of compression here, and as a result all boast a sizeable total download size of between 36GB to 44GB, with consoles veering towards the upper end. A great many of these sequences are rendered in-engine, and at least on a technical level, the game strikes a surprisingly high standard of facial animation this side of LA Noire's MotionScan tech.Īlas, a good chunk of these scenes are simply pre-encoded video files. Mimicking the format of a modern crime drama, its characters are put centre-stage with a heavy push for motion-captured cut-scenes, backed by a film grain post-process effect. The first thing to note is Hardline's single-player follows a different, more plot-driven formula than previous games in the series. Testing both console editions in identical scenes, the clear advantage once held by Sony's platform with Frostbite 3 is no longer a resolute one, though its raw pixel-count remains an advantage. While our multiplayer analysis suggested only conservative tweaks to DICE's engine, the solo play brings out some different results in frame-rate metrics - for better and worse. Visceral Games' cops-and-robbers shooter may bear many similarities to its predecessor in its core tech, but Battlefield Hardline's single-player shows a key change to how PS4 and Xbox One performance stacks up.