The Last Guardian Performance Analysis

*Settings are the same across the board

*1080p on the PS4, 1080p mode or 4K(1900p) on the Pro

*PS4 and PS4 Pro in 4K mode struggle. Frequent dips into the mid 20's

*PS4 Pro stays locked at 30fps for the most part in 1080p mode

*Most stable experience is on the Pro in 1080p mode. Apparently a night and day difference between this and the PS4 Pro in 4K and the regular PS4 in terms of smoothness.

*Base PS4 has by far the worst performance. Cannot maintian 30fps at all.

Shitty. I was gonna grab a Pro in a couple weeks, so I might wait to pick this up then. Hopefully there will be some kinda bundle.

Man, these multiplats gonna really cut deep into those stuck with a Bore and now must feel like they must upgrade to the Poo to get the definitive edition.

That's got to hurt. lol :P

So PS4 flops, PS Pro in 4K flops. So PS Pro in 1080p mode is the way to go, and still can't do 60fps. WTF.

Not much of a lose, the game still looks amazing and will pick up TLG in January 2017.

I don't know why people think games will run well on these under-powered devices......

Yeah, that blows. I'm not going to pick up a Pro just to play TLG at a slightly less shitty frame rate, but it's not like I can hold out for a PC version in this case either. Looks like I'll be playing this game in pleb form then.

****. I haven't played a 30 fps game since Bloodborne lol. And this is going to be even worse.

Maybe I can just lie to myself and say it's more cinematic, that seems to work for plenty of other people.

@ConanTheStoner: I feel for ya. The first thing I noticed about Bloodborne when I played it was 'not 60fps'. It sucks that some games are just exclusively gimped.

I don't expect these games to truly run at an acceptable frame rate (60 plus), but is it really too much to ask for a stable 30?

Seriously, they could at least scale the resolution back to 720p, I don't think gamers will mind if it makes for a smoother experience.

What a disappointment. I was about to go buy it but hell no. Till they fix it if there is any fix to this dumb shit.

@ConanTheStoner: Yeah If I had to chose: I'd chose lower graphics settings for a stable, decent frame rate every time.

@pyro1245:

Definitely bro. Well at least the upcoming Nioh has a slew of options like that, maybe it'll catch on with other console devs.

So I have a question. Do you think TLG on Bore deserves a 9.0? For extra credit, will GS use X1 or Scorpio to review games?

Eh, don't answer, it's a trap, we all know GS is shameless in this regard and they'll use X1 in order to give the games the lowest score possible. :P

With the dismal performance of the PS Pro, they really should drop the Pro from the name...it's deception. Maybe change it to PS Slo?

Inb4cows start saying FPS doesnt matter. Damn thats embarrassing. Ps4 cant even run what was supposed to be a Ps3 launch game at decent framerate

Haven't played it, but poor performance isn't always a game killer. Like Bloodborne is still one of my favorite games of the gen, even with its mediocre frame rate and frame pacing issues. If the game is well designed I can tolerate these issues.

These games would obviously benefit big time from having acceptable performance though. Bums me out when good games are limited by shitty hardware and poor priorities on the devs part. I mean shit, Nintendos hardware is terrible, but at least their developers know to put performance first.

I wouldnt really buy this game even if everything ran smoothly, mainly because Im hearing the controls are troublesome.

Is it true 4k? Or is there some 4k trickery?

@kvally: I have a question

What do you think is going to happen with multiplat and exclusive games across the normal X1 and the scorpio?

I predict similar issues just like the base ps4 and pro.

1900p then uses checkerboard rendering which upscales the output to 4k.

Well depends on which system the games is on as to whether or not they choose to deduct points for poor performance. Serially.

Anyhoo, I saw what you said in another post and agree, lower the rez to accomplish optimum fps performance but then Sony pulled the wool over the cows eyes and are afraid if they lowered to 720P, cows would start writing hate mail to Sony's headquarters. Well, not so much that last part heck, games could run at 540P and they'd still defend it. :P.

Makes sense since SONY is pushing the boundaries of technology, innovation and function.

I believe they will be similar as well, but the Scorpio will be more successful at getting the framerate solid and image better than the PS Pro....but will still not be fully 4K native on Scorpio in many cases.

Ugh, I really don't want to fork out for a PS4 Pro, but compelling reasons to upgrade are accumulating. 20fps is pretty painful

Wish Team ICO just stuck with 900p for the base PS4. Hell, even 30fps is bare minimum for the ps4 pro at 1080p.

Funny because I'd say the exact opposite.

@Juub1990: there are a few cases where forced upgrades on the Pro result in worse performance - but they are games I don't need or want on console. By contrast, there are now a number of PS4 games that I am interested in that offer improved performance (like this) or improved visuals at the same performance. That's what is calling to me. This game is one I really want to play, and I sure would like to play it at a stable framerate

On par with the rest of their releases.

I was going to get this, but this literally drops to sub 10fps on base PS4. No way am I getting that.

I think had Sony upgraded the CPU, we wouldn't see the issues we do with the PS Pro. But like they said, the CPU was a big factor in retaining backwards compatibility with the PS4. Meh, it aint no big deal to me. I do like the fact that there ARE some titles that are doing better...and it's early in the Pro life, so more will continue to get better.

@davillain-: I'm sure if it was an X1 game you'd be saying a lot different closet cow.

@ConanTheStoner: Just to clarify, the game doesn't hold 30fps on base PS4. It drops to ridiculous, sub10fps levels.

This game doesn't deserve a 9. How GS completely omitted the control and performance problems plaguing this game they even mentioned in the previews, but can't bring up on the review, is beyond me.

Most games (across any platform) are usually reviewed on the highest end builds- it's why a Nintendo 3DS game will get reviewed on New Nintendo 3DS, and performance problems on older 3DS builds will be entirely omitted from the review (this happened with Hyrule Warriors and Pokemon Sun/Moon). It's why so many PC games that run like shit on low end builds get great reviews. And that seems to have happened here too.

Had something similar happen to me when I played Fallout 4 on my base PS4, I don't know if it was intended or a glitch

Imagine if this was released on the console it was suppose to be on, oh man. No wonder they tried to dodge a disaster and forced to delay it after delay. I was thinking, couldn't they just patch it over night for the 40mil base model owners, then I realize they took almost ten years to have this game up and running, and it's still having problems. They should have delayed it one more time and release it on the PS5. Until then those 40mil base models have no choice to fork up more funds to barely get a Pro upgrade or just be stuck to subscribing to TCHBO.

@charizard1605: Ah. I did not know that. Thank you for the clarification. It might take more time, but I think they should try both the higher and lower end models, and compare the differences. Especially since a lot of people do not have a Pro yet.

@primorandomguy: Personally I agree (and I always make it a point to test my games on a lower end build too when I review them)- it won't add too much to the workload and the majority of the systems on the market, for any platform, are the lower end ones, not higher end.

@jasonofa36: Ahhh I see

I can get that playing in 4K is going to push the hardware to its limits. But why impose limitations on the 1080 mode for the Pro? There is no reason that gaming in a quarter the resolution of 4K shouldn't free up resources for a performance boost in assets settings and more importantly frame rate. It undermines any reason to get this PS4 "upgrade".

@kvally: one would hope! Incidentally, I wonder what the basis for the 1080p performance improvement is here on this title. Presumably it is running at the down-clocked and down-cored GPU state. I guess either the CPU OC or the newer GPU architecture, or both, must be the reason?

Even with glitches this scored better than all xbone semi-exclusives. TLHBRekt

The devs sure ain't no tech wizards since all their games run badly.

Looks like it's mostly a GPU issue. Decreasing resolution won't free up a lot of CPU resources.

Agreed. IMO, any game that runs at 30fps automatically deserves 1 point knocked off the score and if you can't even do a stable 30fps, another point should be taken off. So, right there it loses 2 points without judging the design and gameplay. Reviewers need to be calling out developers for shit performance in reviews and penalize them accordingly. Developers need to learn to prioritize performance over fancy graphics and other things that negatively affect performance. Frame rate is so important to the feel and enjoyment of a game.

And the game goes as low as 10fps....that my friends means that it was not ready for prime time.

@BassMan: To an extent reviewers do that, but they look for more game breaking performances. Slight drop in frame rates during heavy scenes aren't game breaking issues. They are annoying, and yes can take away from the experience, but if they are few and far between I don't see a need to dock massive points.

I am seriously thinking of buying a PS4 Pro just to play this game and then return it when I am done. LOL

I can't do that sub 30fps shit. 30fps is already torture as it is...

I wonder how Xbox One exclusives would perform on the Xbone. No way to know because the system has no exclusives.

To be fair here, this game is very badly optimized, and the visuals aren't really that impressive either. I can't really blame the hardware for not being able to have stable 30fps in this game.

But most fans of the series won't care, it's still a great game.