I’ve spent the last week playing Saints Row on last-gen PS4 and Xbox One systems – and honestly? It’s really not that bad. The fundamental technological issues remain: the glaring shadow pop-in is back – and actually a bit worse here. The buggy NPC animations and physics return too. And lastly of course, the 60fps target of the PS5 and Series X versions gives way to something lower on last-gen machines – a sub-40fps frame-rate or even sub-30 in stress-test scenarios. Performance is still unlocked too, when a 30fps cap really would have made a positive difference, but I went into this one with low expectations, which the last-gen versions comfortably exceed.
Similar to Xbox Series S, the wealth of performance mode variations seen in the Series X and PS5 releases are gone. There are no graphics toggles of any kind. On top of that, ray tracing features are absent, of course, but that’s fine. There seem to be fixed pixel counts on all systems with no obvious dynamic resolution scaling, but what is interesting is how the HUD overlay actually does seem to change res. It’s very, very odd. In-game DRS can’t be entirely ruled out, but the game looks consistent in terms of image quality, with only the flickering HUD giving any sense of a resolution change.
Looking at the qualities of the last-gen versions, you’d expect Xbox One X to deliver the best rendition of the game – but that’s only partly true here. At least in image quality, you’re getting a very decent turn-out here at a native 2560×1440, up from the less than stellar 1080p on PlayStation 4 Pro. The One X’s 1440p also trumps Series S’s full HD output – but quality settings are dialled back (particularly in terms of foliage density) and the unlocked performance level is actually worse than the PS4 Pro experience. With that being the case, there’s no real ‘winner’ here in terms of the last-gen machines as while the One X looks significantly cleaner, frame-rates can hit a 24fps nadir – Pro is smoother overall, if far from smooth and consistent in its delivery.
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