
When we put together our PlayStation 5 backwards compatibility test, we focused on the biggest and most popular games. While we were extremely impressed with the results posted by Days Gone and Ghost of Tsushima, the other titles left us a little bit dismayed; Grand Theft Auto V and The Last of Us: Part II enjoyed no real gains, while God of War could be played at 60 frames-per-second – but only in 1080p.
Obviously, the latter examples are not the fault of the hardware, as it all comes down to the design of the original titles. But this coloured our impressions a little bit, especially with load times being barely improved on the next-gen console.
However, one title we’d wanted to come back to once we had a bit more time was Train Sim World 2. Now obviously this release won’t be on many radars, and that’s why we waited before testing it out. Perhaps we should have taken a look earlier, though, because the results are quite frankly remarkable on Sony’s new hardware.
Naturally this is far from the best looking game on the PS4 Pro, but for whatever reason it was unbelievably demanding. We liked to play it in 4K, although it appeared to use resolution scaling, meaning sometimes it would drop lower than 2160p. Worse still, the performance was dreadful, regularly slipping below 30 frames-per-second and stuttering a lot.
We picked the fastest train in the game, the DB BR 406 ICE 3, which can travel at up 300km/h. And we set a course for Aachen from Koln in the most demanding weather conditions possible: a snow storm. The results, as demonstrated below, are buttery smooth:
Not only is the resolution sharper, but it runs at an almost locked 60 frames-per-second. There are still micro-stutters as some elements of geometry load in, but these are minor compared to the PS4 Pro, where it would sometimes pause completely for over a second at times. We’re running the game from an external HDD, so it’s possible the SSD may improve the asset streaming even further.
While we’ve been impressed with the results we’ve seen in Days Gone and Ghost of Tsushima, this is by far the best example of PS5 backwards compatibility we’ve experienced thus far. We simply can’t stress enough how poorly this game runs on the PS4 Pro, and almost all of its problems are cleaned up and corrected on Sony’s next-gen console. Incredible results!
Are there any other games you'd like us to try with PS5 backwards compatibility before launch? We're open to suggestions where the results may be as impressive as this. Let us know in the comments section below.
Comments 41
I play this game way too much!
That’s really quite impressive. I’m loyal to Train Simulator 2021 though, they just added my local line and those fetching purple ScotRail trains. Until such time as Train Sim World grabs me, that’ll be my train sim of choice, which is possibly the dullest sounding sentence I’ve typed out 😂
Please try Kingdom Come Deliverance
@get2sammyb
Can you try Doom? Dynamic res and up to 60fps combined. Would be interested to see if it can get max on both simultaneously.
So is the new port begging gonna be BC test begging? 😉
Can someone try games like trails of cold steel 1,2,3 and 4??
Maybe other niche games like disgaea 5 and dark rose valkyrie.
Excited to try this on PS5 now
@get2sammyb I’m very, very interested in this series. I’ve never played it and am overwhelmed by the various versions of the game, expansions, and honestly I don’t know the difference between 2 and 2020. Is there a clear starting point you’d recommend?
Marvel Avengers
Genshin Impact
the Hunter Call of the Wild
Black Desert
Fallout 76
@glassmusic Train Sim World 2 is the best one, and they're porting all of the content they've ever released to it, so it will be the most complete once they've finished as well.
@mclarenrob2 I second that
@get2sammyb Thanks! I see that neither edition has been on sale since it’s August launch, so I’m sure they’ll serve up a bargain on BF/CM. I’m keeping an eye out!
Skyrim fallout 4 in heavy fps areas please.
@get2sammyb
Hi Sammy,
Would you mind firing up XCOM 2 and letting us know if it too is improved please?
They were always a bit cagey about the Pro improvements so would like to know if it's buttery also, cheers!
Could u guys test some vr?
Skyrim for example.
Or resi evil
@get2sammyb nice to have feedback on BC. Great things heard from DF also. I've sold my Pro like 20 days ago so I'm waiting for Dec 4th (expected delivery date for PS5 here) to play the huge catalog I've left untouched from PS4. Imagine I haven't played Witcher 3 (1&2 on PC a decade ago, loved those)...
Anyway, there's something that's really bothering my mind. What's happening with the loading times of BC titles from internal storage? Why xbox is so much faster in many titles (I've to pick up a Series S on Nov 18th so I m not asking as a sony fanboy or whatever) ? If the loading speed difference was a few percent, you could say it's because the 10% faster cpu speed on xbox, but there's a huge difference in some titles. What's going on here? Could it be Sony's ssd solution being really worse than MS's?
@MattSilverado
I doubt it’s a hardware issue, must be some software magic MS have worked on for back compat. PS5 games will be faster than series x games loaded off the SSD
@God_of_Nowt I'm happy just being able to play everything from one machine. New games are the real reason anyone is buying a PS5, doesn't hurt that games run slightly better or the same from B/C.
@God_of_Nowt thanks for the answer. I'm a software developer and tech nerd (somewhat) , I'm not in panic mode but it's really strange. I do think there must be something along the lines of what you said, but it came as something really strange that Sony's implementation is "slower" when doing just unoptimized reads (I mean legacy data structures)... But is entirely possible. Of course I'm not worried for ps5 titles because spiderman loads a save game in 2 seconds... Just incredible... And it's just the start of the generation.
@MightyDemon82 BC with PS4 games made the purchase of Ps5 on day one a no brainer. No need to wait for new games, you can enjoy better your ps4 games etc.
@MattSilverado I'm no expert but I wouldn't be surprised if Sony more thought about the SSD for PS5 games that's where the real results are tbh and we haven't seen the same next gen game on both systems yet.
Plus it's worth remembering that Xbox have dedicated huge teams to their BC program and have been doing this for years. Sony won't have dedicated anywhere near the resources on this.
@thefourfoldroot maybe, from a tech info perspective it would be nice to know why.
@MattSilverado yes, I can't wait to play some of the titles that really make my PS4 loud as anything, sometimes I'm terrified that it will just go up in smoke but it tends to quiet down. Pausing those games really sets it off though!
@AdamNovice yes, there could be many things. I'm aware of MS back compat team but I'm not too deep on what kind of improvements they make (how much they can modify the game/code/assets/etc,)...
@God_of_Nowt as a side note, I bought the Series S as a secondary console, maybe for my little daughter, but now I'm regretting not buying the X, I'm really bothered because it seems that's not "the same as X but 1440p". It was a mayor price diff here and buying the PS5 was the priority.
I’ve seen some people say that Sony may be forcing the load times to be no faster than your typical SSD (like the one you could put in a PS4 Pro for example) to maximise compatibility.
Not sure if true.
@MightyDemon82 i'm watching right now the NXgamer review on BC... 4min into the video and there you have: Until Dawn avg fps on PS4 is around 25 vs almost 60 on PS5. I'm glad I've still not played that game 😂
@get2sammyb would be nice to know. I've bought a external 480GB SSD to load my BC catalog on PS5. I'll keep those precious 667GB for next gen games 😬
Can you try division2 or destiny2? Curious how those run on ps5.
That is nice! I know that few people would be interested but could you test rocksmith? The cable, the game and the sound lag?
@God_of_Nowt well, watching the NXgamer review over BC it says the PS5 has 3 modes of "operation" (which Cerny briefly addressed in the Road to PS5, right?) ... Based on that, PS4 mode locks the cpu to 8c/t at 1.6ghz and Pro mode to 8c/t 2.1ghz ... That MAY explain the load speed diff with xbox, if xbox is using the full cpu speed, then it's all said.
@Razrye888 only just started it thanks to Playstation Now and apart from a few bugs and performance issues its great! It will probably be stuck at 31fps though according to Digital Foundrys video but it should be smoother
Oh man I would LOVE to know how Sword and Fairy 6 runs. It's a Chinese "J"RPG that had abysmal framerate problems but that was otherwise a diamond in the rough.
I've held off on buying it specifically because of the woesome performance.
@mclarenrob2

Avengers!!!!
Please can you have a go on avengers and smash some stuff up in the city with Hulk
@get2sammyb can you test SnowRunner on PS5?
Good to know. I picked this up a week or so ago and have been enjoying it. I'll definitely be giving it a go on PS5. It's on my External all ready to go.
@Total_Weirdo Only on Dutch tracks.
Is there a reason no one is covering GTAV on next gen? Does it load any faster?
You played it from an external HDD? I thought you couldn't get improvements on PS4 games unless you played them on the PS5 internal?
I'm going to buy this from the Playstation store today after reading this, I've always wanted it but never bothered because I heard it didn't run very well on a PS4 but now I've got a Playstation 5 it's on my list and at the moment the deluxe edition on the Playstation store is only £25.99
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