A short survival guide to navigating the perks of your PS5 Pro
Upscale your upgrade with this handy guide to destination titles
Congratulations! You have elevated your craft from consumer to professional through the purchase of a PlayStation 5 Pro: Sony’s incredible iteration upon its current generation of hardware. Though your console reserves a revolutionary “game boost” feature, particularly excelling in upscaling image quality on PlayStation 4 titles, developers of both a first-party and third-party persuasion are committed to optimising their software for your device. However, as your PlayStation retains the same CPU as its predecessor, titles designed to target 30fps will remain locked - though stability at this standard will be an easier feat through your improved GPU, notably in producing clean 4K images. Thus, to take these renewed capabilities for a spin, here are a few titles that will demonstrate the ultimate power of the platform.
Alan Wake II (2023, Remedy Entertainment)
Quality: 3840 x 2160 (4K) at 30fps, ray-tracing inclusive.
Performance: 3840 x 2160 at 60fps.
Alan Wake’s fabled haunt benefits greatly from the inclusion of ray-traced lighting, particularly in its motivated lighting and eerie layers of fog. Regarding the Performance Mode, the game renders at an internal scale of 1536 x 864, upscaled through PSSR: PlayStation’s AI-upscaling algorithm. Its evident fluidity and crispness in this case is a solid indicator of its competitiveness against its contemporaries. As Alan Wake II is a complex cinematic venture, its presentation on the Pro delivers a holistically next-generation experience further blurring animated fiction and reality - as is Remedy’s desire.
Resident Evil Village (2021, Capcom)
High Frame Rate mode: 1920 x 1080p at 120fps, with an optional ray-tracing setting.
Resident Evil Village is the Amnesiac to Resident Evil 4’s Kid A: a collection of experimental pieces against a complete statement - both are kindred, yet divergent in their intentions. Or, in a more apt analogue, the Resident Evil 3: Nemesis to Resident Evil 2. Village, nevertheless, is a smörgåsbord of setpieces, delivering on chilling chases to terse trials; a cathartic conclusion as Chris Redfield lets you blast the terror away with aplomb. Capcom updated the game to run at 1080p/120fps, with an optional toggle for ray-tracing. However, ray-tracing returns the frame rate to a median of 60fps in complex environments; VRR may help to curb potential oscillations.
Stellar Blade (2024, Shift Up)
Pro & Pro Max Mode both support PSSR at 120hz; the former reportedly runs upwards of 82fps.
Shift Up’s major commercial debut glistens anew through a pair of dynamic functions, each supporting HFR to rather effective ends. The game itself was noted for its kinetic combat and wardrobe in kind; slashes of Eve’s sword and the seams of her costumes will render in pristine detail upon the platform. Additionally, as its manner of control is reminiscent of NieR: Automata by way of Sekiro, the extra frames elicited by PSSR will provide generous support throughout its suite of skirmishes.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (2023, Insomniac Games)
Performance Pro: 4K at 60fps with ray-tracing and optional VRR - equivalent to its predecessor’s Fidelity Mode.
Fidelity Pro: 4K at 30fps with expanded ray tracing and civilian/traffic density.
Insomniac are the bards of the PlayStation 5, exhibiting an aptitude in its architecture in a manner exceeding their first-party peers. Spider-Man 2, in particular, allows players to explore the upper limit of the console’s hardware; toggles to adjust each degree of ray-tracing are accessible to toy with the image quality to one’s preference. On the original PlayStation 5, the game’s fidelity was masterful - this evolution in environmental rendering imbues its gooey tendrils and bolts of lightning with higher impact and sophistication.
Demon’s Souls (2020, Bluepoint/FromSoftware)
Fidelity Mode: 4K via PSSR at 60fps.
Emerging within the cataclysmic shroud of 2020, Bluepoint’s remake of FromSoftware’s first foray into the Souls series is a sumptuous union of technological tribulation and art direction: torchlight bounces against decrepit bricks, lining the frame in a portentous haze. The softness of its rays glisten against your silver armour, delivering a gothic journey into the bowels of terror. This November marks its fourth anniversary; few titles have managed to approximate its aesthetic sublimity since.
Following on from these five, I recommend these titles - not optimised for the platform, however their presentation will benefit from additional GPU assistance:
Sifu, a pulsating roguelike rumbler through the canon of martial arts cinema;
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, a charming jaunt through space with an amusing band of rascals; and
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, a legacy sequel that both iterates upon and honours the mechanics of its predecessors, overlooked due to its inauspicious release one month before the original PlayStation 5’s launch.
If a fair portion of your living room is devoted to this obelisk, settle in and luxuriate within these rich worlds; each are worthy of the power draw required to satiate its hunger. Once again, congratulations upon your purchase of a PlayStation 5 Pro - though I must warn you of the pair of sixes on the horizon, Grand Theft Auto and … PlayStation. Four years of incumbency await!