There’s now a pair of Warhammer 40,000 games that have been given the PS5 Pro treatment, with the recent launch of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide on PS5 having support built in at launch, and a patch for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 adding new graphics profiles to make the most of the mid-gen console. They’re both great games if Warhammer, hordes and co-op are your jam, but one definitely has a leg up over the other than to the vagaries of PSSR upscaling on PS5 Pro.
Let’s start with Darktide, making its way to PS5 after a period of console exclusivity on Xbox Series X|S, and having recovered from a rocky initial launch on PC in 2022. The grimdark sequel/successor to the Vermintide series does a great job of capturing the Warhammer 40,000 universe’s grimy blend of gothic architecture, sci-fi and malevolent Chaos gods, sending you and your expendable buddies into the Hive world of Tertium to fight Chaos-addled hordes in Left 4 Dead-style co-op.
One of the main cuts for the game on console was to cleave out the very costly ray tracing effects from the PC version, and that’s true across the board on PS5 – there’s no ray tracing on PS5 Pro, even – but it’s still a very striking looking game, thanks to the emphasis on its lighting and strong use of colours amidst the darkness to set the tone.
The game on base PS5 looks and feels very similar to the Xbox Series X version, with both fidelity and performance modes. I would suggest that the PS5 has a slight edge in performance, as I felt fewer frame rate hiccups, though all graphical modes have a fair bit of aliasing and there is also a fairly significant amount of detail pop in really quite close to the camera at times.
PS5 Pro comes with just a single mode and no performance options. The aim here is the mid-gen console’s publicised goal of having quality mode visuals and performance mode frame rates. It does a decent job of this, but the leaning on PSSR is Darktide’s undoing here, as the upscaling algorithm introduces more shimmering on edges even when stood still – in fairness this can also happen in the base PS5’s visual modes, though to a lesser degree. The bigger symptom is that there’s just a lot of noise introduced, almost like a film grain filter but at a deeper level, and which is completely unintentional.
Look to the rafters in the hub between missions, and all of the lit edges shimmer even when stationary.
We have to hope that this can be improved in future updates, whether Fat Shark need to do some backend work to better adapt to PSSR or Sony improves the PSSR algorithms. The quickest fix might be to simply let players choose between having PSSR and using the game’s native TAA. If we’re legitimately getting the quality mode resolution or close to it at performance mode’s 60fps, that would be more than good enough!
Space Marine 2 is a whole other kettle of fish, and still offers up both a 30fps quality mode and a 60fps performance mode on PS5 Pro – again assisted by PSSR… but in a good way.
Looking strictly at the resolutions, and this PS5 Pro update solves one of the main weaknesses on base PS5, which was rather blurry and soft in its performance mode. Performance mode jumps from a 720p to 1080p base resolution range before FSR2 upscaling to a 1080p to 1440p range with PSSR upscaling.
And in this case, PSSR works absolutely perfectly. Space Marine 2’s implementation looks absolutely pristine with no hint of shimmer or noise – perhaps aided by the solid implementation of FSR 2 previously.
Performance is also improved by the slightly higher CPU clock speed on PS5 Pro, so that performance dips aren’t anywhere near as bad and should be able to stick better within the VRR range that PS5 consoles offer.
PS5 Pro performance mode isn’t a like-for-like in PS5 quality mode fidelity, though. Ground detail seems to be one notch below base PS5 quality mode, and the shadow map cascade and level of detail is also closer to base PS5’s performance mode. So there are tradeoffs being made.
But not for PS5 Pro’s quality mode. This has, per Saber, got a very wide resolution range, from a native 4K all the way down to 1080p, with PSSR there pick up any of the slack, and you can see the jump in shadow quality, better textures and more detail in general very clearly. It looks great, and I also like the very wide resolution target window. This “future proofs” the game so that future consoles with backward compatibility could very easily push the practical window up to 4K almost across the board, and the only thing that would make this better is having a frame rate limit toggle added as well.
All in all, Space Marine 2’s PS5 Pro patch is a success. The console’s improved CPU helps with the frame rate, the GPU powers both resolution and visual detail increases for both graphics options, and PSSR seems to work pretty well in this instance.
PSSR is still quite the mystery right now, with some games clearly able to benefit from it very easily, and others plagued with visual issues from its use. It seems that some developers are too quick to jump onto the PSSR bandwagon as a drop-in replacement for TAA, FSR 2 and other anti-aliasing and upscaling techniques, without being able to give a full QA pass to ensure that it’s working at its best. Hopefully it can be improved by Sony to work more universally, but failing that, developers should be more wary in using it and include an optional toggle if they can’t guarantee good performance.
