(Pocket-lint) – If you were to ask us for one word to sum up the last-generation of consoles, we’d say “remasters”. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were awash with them. Even remasters of remasters flooded stores.
It made sense, to be fair. With the greater processing power and significant graphical upgrades – up to 4K on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X – games could look significantly better than their respective PS3 and Xbox 360 counterparts.
However, while the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S also feature much beefier processing, there is less need for remastered last-gen games. They can simply be improved for the current-gen. And are.
We’ve already seen system level, game-changing boosts in frame rate for a number of titles, such as Days Gone and God of War on PS5, and Skyrim and Super Lucky’s Tale on Xbox Series X/S (thanks to the FPS Boost feature). Even resolution and details upgrades.
Some developers are also pushing their own updates to existing games, often for free, including Marvel’s Avengers and Crash Bandicoot 4. Now Zombie Army 4: Dead War has received a significant current-gen patch and it got us thinking. Maybe we’ve finally seen the end to the needless stream of remasters.
After all, ZA4 now runs at 4K60 on PS5 (with dynamic resolution scaling as appropriate), while the Xbox Series X version even gets the added option to play it at 1080p 120Hz. Both get loading optimisations too, thanks to SSD storage and intelligent loading tech.
The best news is that it’s also a free upgrade. PS5 and Xbox Series X/S owners might not even have had to do anything – it could be there automatically for you to try already.
It’s this kind of additional support that, for us, is already definining this new generation of gaming. Where you previously had to reinvest in a game to see it run better on your new machine, you now get it either gratis or for a small update fee.
We won’t see the back of remasters altogether – after all, we’re gagging to see something, anything on Final Fantasy VII Remake chapter 2 – but thanks to a swathe of morally responsible, caring games developers and publishers, and what seems to be a change in attitude to new hardware, we can save our pennies for new games. Not just tarted-up remakes of old favourites.
Writing by Rik Henderson.
Be the first to comment