Of the three recent Resident Evil PS5 upgrades, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is the most interesting. While the original PS4 version had very little in the way of graphical issues, it was the first title to utilise Capcom's RE Engine. The publisher really stepped up its game in later iterations (Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3), and so even with a native PS5 enhancement under its belt, Ethan Winters' first outing still looks behind the pack.
We're only talking visuals here, though, because the game itself is still a great one. Returning to the Baker property is a healthy reminder of just how good the title was back in 2017, with its new first-person perspective, protagonist, and enemies. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is still worth playing today, but it still looks last-gen.
That's even with a native 4K resolution and ray tracing to boot. The Baker household is a dark, dark place and it leaves fairly little room for reflections to actually make themselves known. Despite some nice lighting here and there, the feature feels wasted on the location. The resolution boost, too, can only do so much. The environments and characters look better on PS5, but the console is still having to work with the same textures as the PS4 version. It means some look quite poor up close. At least the 60 frames-per-second target remains rock-solid from start to finish.
And while there is another mode that targets 120fps, we wouldn't recommend touching it. The visual hit it demands is gigantic, sucking out so much of the atmosphere that makes the bayou what it is. It just isn't even worth considering; stick to having ray tracing on for the best experience.
The PS5 upgrade also has the same basic bells and whistles as the Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 ports: really fast load times, 3D Audio, and simple DualSense controller support. Once again you can get from the main menu and straight into the game within seconds, while the adaptive triggers offer very slight variations of resistance between weapon types. The differences are extremely minute compared to the other two PS5 upgrades, though.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard always faced an uphill battle in comparison to the two other PS5 upgrades, and the mountain has proven too much. While the game looks and runs better, it's still a long way off Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3. It's like playing a really good-looking PS4 game rather than something native to PS5. Still, at least the game itself remains a cracker.
Comments (44)
Agreed, still a fantastic game and it runs very smoothly on PS5 but no significant difference that I noticed vs. PS4 Pro (to the naked eye).
@LiamCroft
So Resi7 PS5 raytracing on still locks at 60fps?
(even if RT is 'wasted', might as well have it on if that's the case)
@Futureshark From what I could tell, yes. Just don't expect to see much of any actual ray tracing.
Does the PSVR still work on this version or did they strip that feature out?
I‘ve binge-played RE2, RE3 and RE7 in a row and was really disappointed how last-gen RE7 looked as a native PS5 Version. RE2 and RE3 had far better graphics.
Tried the 120 out when first started the upgrade and I didn't think much of it either, couldn't notice anything tbh. So the RT don't seem great either but it's supposed to be better than 120, I'll have to check it out later
Personally I think I like this one more than Village. While Village obviously refined the format, I think this was more of a novelty, and I think the Bakers are great antagonists.
@TripleKing333 No PSVR in this version because the headset only works with PS4 games.
This one was more fun that 8, but Village had much more variety in it (controlling a tank/hide&seek)
@get2sammyb fingers crossed for psvr2
@get2sammyb going back to this, I think its a much better horror game than Village and dome of rhe ideas in the early areas are really clever, not to mention some very good dlc and that Kitchen demo. Village had promise and does deliver on it in the first couple of areas, though I still feel the castle never realises its true potential
I just finished Village and haven't actually played 7. Really want to go back and try it but from what I can tell it's way more terrifying than 8.
@Futureshark this one I very stable from what I've played, probably due to the complete lack of reflections meaning the RT is just lighting. As @LiamCroft says it won't be obvious what the RT is and you can't switch it on and off in game to see. I know in RE2 it does make quite a nice difference to the lighting
@mcdreamer much scarier than Village and it doesn't hang about trying to ease you in either
Resident Evil 7 was and still remains my favorite of the series. They really nailed it with the exploration and setting (obviously reminiscent of the original) and the fact that it really brought the horror back and made you feel underpowered.
I really liked Village as well, but it was definitely the less scary of the two.
4K+60fps(without raytracing) and using your OLEDs black frame insertion setting to get gain more motion resolution and a lot less motion blur seems like The best way to fly.
So disappointed about the core visuals taking a battering with 120fps. I thought the PS5 would of been able to handle RE7 at 120 + 1080p without any visual compromises….
Seems like the PS5 can only run PS3 ports or low scale graphically undemanding PS4 games at 120fps without taking a hit to the core graphics
Do I get upgrade if I have the PS4 PS Plus Collection version?
@jFug
I thought the first half of RE7 was excellent and a great return to form, especially in VR. but once you get to the abandoned ship and mines it takes a nose dive only to remind you, that it’s a Resident Evil game.
It’s funny too, Evaline was a bio weapon designed to look like a 10 year old girl that would ‘fit in’ yet her appearance was already malicious looking since they gave her this semi cliche long haired Japanese ghost girl look, with pale Skin and dark clothing.
I thought her design and how she acted was lame and the complete polar opposite of scary. Capcom missed the mark with that one. Final boss battle was very easy, half-scripted and barely lasted too. Great design, but totally underwhelming overall.
Still, one of the stronger RE games and it’s first half is most definitely the scariest the franchise has ever been
@Beerheadgamer82
What kind of TV do you have? If you’re not using a modem LG OLED for example the benefits of 120 will be much less noticeable.
Night and day difference on my LG C1 vs 60. 60 doesn’t move as realistically or as smooth as 120.
60fps moves like a video game, 120fps gives games real World motion as if you’re looking through a window 👌
@WaveBoy Yes, the house/greenhouse/swamp section of the game was definitely scarier than the ship and cave part.
@nyXhc420
Unfortunately, PS+ subscribers will have to buy the game for the upgrade.
@jFug
The ship played out like a maze, where as the mines were nearly straight up action aka mowing down the molden as If it were RE4(amazing game, mind you)all Over again. Plus the lack of variety in enemies degraded the experience a little bit too.
Still, playing from start to finish in VR was pretty insane. I’ll never forget the level of dread I felt heading down to the bakers hellish basement for the first time and being introduced to the molden. Talk about nightmare fuel!
I thought it was neat too, when Lucas’s booby trap farm house started playing that dirty sounding grunge rave music through out the bakers back yard once that section of the game opened up. What an insane situation to be in lol
RE3 (which I love) seems to look the best out of the bunch. RE7 to me still looked really poor (muddy textures) outside in the daylight. No real noticeable difference for me while playing it.
I've put the most time into RE7 so far on my PS5 with the new update and mabey it's because of my TV, (LG C1 OLED) but the game looks great in 120fps mode and ray tracing mode. I personally prefer 120fps mode because clearly the gameplay is much smoother and it makes aiming easier (for me at least).
The updates are minor, but welcome none the less.
Ray tracing, 120fps, VRR, 3D audio, & adaptive triggers. All great additions to some of my favorite games!
Thanks Capcom! Bring on RE4 Remake & RE Village Gold Edition!
@DTfeartheBEARD
So the core visuals don’t look quite as bad at 120 like the reviewer made them out to be?
Capcom needs to patch these with Duel sense gyro motion aiming already. Twin stick analog aiming is trash by comparison. Why are we still aiming with a stick in 2022? Heck, the wii remote destroyed that control scheme back in 2007, as does inside out tracking in VR.
If a 3rd party company came out with a Nintendo switch & ps5 gyro motion sensor bar we’d probably be getting the same level of wii remote motion accuracy and reliability with the duel sense and switch Pro controllers gyro
Wow I actually thought this was a great difference but I went from original ps4 to ps5. But the rays of light coming through the house when you enter and and other areas give it even more immersion. Wierd as I thought it looked great and personally noticed the ray tracing in a lot of areas.
@WaveBoy it's an LG Nanocell86 thinQ 2020 or 2021 model. Supports 120 VRR but no OLED. Maybe should have waited a bit longer to get a deal for an OLED. It's still a very capable TV plus I got such a good deal on it new I couldn't say no. Only played about 10 mins of RE7 in 120 so didn't get much time to notice much. Maybe in a few years I'll grab an LG OLED when prices lower a bit, still a bit on the pricey side for me at the mo
@LiamCroft "Just don't expect to see much of any actual ray tracing."
The ray tracing is constant; it's just not necessarily very noticeable.
RE Engine uses RT Global Illumination and RT Reflections. The lighting is what gets the biggest boost for RE7 since there isn't a whole heck of a lot of reflective surfaces. Unfortunately, RTGI is also the least noticeable to the naked eye - but it is a more natural representation of lighting conditions.
A good example is to shine a flashlight on something that is very bold in color and you will see said bold color suddenly appear on any nearby wall/floor as the light bounces off the object. Again, probably not much there on RE7 as it's not like there are orange traffic codes laying around the Baker's house.
The other subtle difference with RT lighting is that areas might be darker than you remember or areas might be slightly lighter than you remember.
But, again, you really need a side-by-side comparison to really notice.
Even still, the RT is there and the lighting is technically more "natural" than before, it's just hard to spot. It is probably a huge shout-out to the art team for nailing a convincing look out of the gate without the use of RT.
I know people moan about RT not being worth it. But, when CPU/GPUs can finally render the full suite of various RT visual aspect (reflections, shadows, lighting, etc.) at a high stable framerate, it's a huge burden taken off the game artists.
No more manually animating shadows as the shadows will "just work"
No more faking darkly lit scenes with probe lights as light bounce from light sources will do the work for them.
No more deciding which method is best for reflective surfaces.
No more worrying about SSAO as, again, that will "just work".
We will eventually get to a point where we won't even discuss RT as it will just be standard. We need the R&D to get there. So the more RT used (even if it seems needless) the better! We dealt with sub 30fps when 3D first hit the scene and look where we are now with 3D graphics.
Anyways, glad to hear that RE7 is the most stable game when using RT! Sorry for the rant.
@Beerheadgamer82
Well, another advantage with OLED aside from the true blacks is the faster motion response time which means noticeably less motion blur and zero smearing which can plague LED tvs.
I value good motion and the only way to get good motion on modern OLED TVs when it comes to gaming is to either run a game at 120fps(this alone will reduce motion blur by half along with a few other upgrades), or 120fps combined with the lowest 120hz BFI setting for even better motion, OR using an LG C1(or G1, C2 or G2’s) 60hz black frame insertion titled Motion Pro High. There’s also the new Samsung S95B QD-OLED which is basically the holy grail of gaming OLEDs 😙
Anyways, motion pro high basically increases the motion resolution up to about 700p(without it you’re stuck with only 300p. Meanwhile, 120fps gives you 600p)unless I’m mistaken, and curb stomps so much motion blur to the point where it almost makes it feel like you’re gaming on a CRT, and especially plasma.
But it comes with a few compromises. Brightness gets cut in half, there might be noticeable flicker, latency shoots up to about 22ms and it causes shadow detail crushing. The latter might have a work around at least.
Dual sense, faster loading times and some semi-crap RT. Dunno if it worth the upgrade but i will buy it when its 10 euro, (currently 20). Already got it on PS Plus collection, don't worth more than 10 for this upgrade when you can already play it for free and hardly notice any difference
Actually finished this yesterday, much prefer village. Great game none the less, but it was definitely refined and better. Very few puzzles compared to village. All personal opinion
@EquiinoxGII hated them both but I'll play village again in third person mode just because I bought it so why not.
The only resident evil game I've ever liked is 4. Which is my favourite game of all time! I've tried all of the others & never really liked any of them! I think 4 is it's own thing & nothing like the others
@Ryany I've never actually played 4, so I have something to look forward too, so far 2 is definitely my favourite. And to your other comment, yeah I can see why you wouldn't like either tbh. They are definitely very different to other resi games.
And if anyone asks himself, if "Oxide Room 104" is worth buying, since it's almost nowhere reviewed...
It's actually a good game. Keep in mind, it's an indie game. It seems it was a very little studio. It was made with the U4 Engine and even on PS5, it looks just like a PS4 game. The PS5 features are getting no real use.
But the game itself is interesting. It's like a combination of Resident Evil, with monster design from Silent Hill and somewhat like a Rogue Lite approach. The game is shockingly short, but if you die, you have to start all over. Just hidden papers are saved. There are several endings and with my first complete, I had a bad ending. There's more to explore. As a half price game, it's worth playing and has a unique approach. But don't expect a full meal like Resident Evil.
Greetings
@WaveBoy apologies if this sounds rude I couldn't understand half of what you said which is obviously not your fault because I dunno what a lot of it means but I definitely appreciate the reply and feedback. I did try my best to future proof as best as I could with the budget I had. Everytime I power on my PS5 I get an instant game response notifications from my tv which I think is a good thing. Maybe when I experience a really good OLED (when a little more affordable) I might be able to understand more and then I'll read about it more when the time comes and I'll be able to have a much better reply for you ha. Again I don't mean to offend by not understanding
Changes are subtle but most definitly there: bugs fixed on the sky at the beginning and in lights at the zone of the first screenshot, improved vegetation render that now bends as you walk over it, most of outdoor zones greatly improved for trees and vegetations in the background, if I'm right, there are added dualsense haptics for "spoiler heavy" scenes I won't go into here (but I'm not 100% sure of that after replaying their PS4 counterparts, it's more a timing and force tweaking smart use). I think we will mostly appreciate those changes once an obligatory PSVR2 patch rolls out, hopefully around the same time as the Village VR mode and DLC and the headset release.
@Barryburton97 look closer at shadow aliasing, native resolution, and artifiacting. The sky in the PS4 pro version is quite literally one giant artifact.
@WaveBoy I can't tell if the resolution is 1080p, 1440p, ect in high frame rate mode, but it still looks good. Same as with RE2 & RE3. And the 120fps makes the game more enjoyable. Mind you, I've been playing it on my 48" C1 and not my 77" C1, so mabey the smaller screen makes it look nicer? You haven't tried it yet? I'm waiting for the Digital Foundry video for the games, because I'm curious what the resolution is when high frame rate is on. That's my only complaint with the PS5 version, still no Gyro Support SMH. Twin stick aiming is hard to go back to after playing Switch shooters that support gyro...
I LOVED resi 7 when it came out it was the best looking game I'd ever seen I was amazed at how realistic the inside of the caravan looked in vr my only criticism would be that it needed more enemy variation
I find the two 1st person games scarier, but more shallow gameplay wise. I still enjoyed them though.
Finally I can now play this for the first time in the best quality possible, thank you!
@DTfeartheBEARD
RE2make has been confirmed to be 1080p @120fps with battered visuals. Not sure about 3&7 but it's probably the same scenario. Yup, down sizing to 48" Will make the picture look noticeably sharper than the 77" C1.
At 77" you really need to feed it native 4K content. 1080p might look ok if you max the sharpness & play with the Super resolution Low, Med & High settings, when in game mode.
Unfortunately, the C1's game mode picture looks noticeably soft and dimmer compared to the regular ISF Bright & ISF Dark room picture modes. LG had to make some sacrifices in their own way to reduce the input lag i guess.
It's almost like you lose more than half the sharpness, which is why it helps raising the sharpness setting in GM and fiddling with the super resolution settings to compensate, depending on how low the games resolution is.
Mario Odessy for ex, is blurry at 900p when docked with the default sharpness set to 10 in game mode on my 65" C1. I have to max sharpness to 50 then use the 'high' super resolution setting to get things looking good. Meanwhile, in ISF Bright mode Odyssey looks beautiful with the brightness boost(think it's over 25% brighter actually) and regular sharpness, or even about 35, again for low res games like Mario & BOTW.
BTW, i forced 120fps(by setting de-blur to 10 in the motion interpolation setttings) outside of game mode in ISF Bright for numerous switch games just to see how they'd look, and man is it rough going back to 60. Mario Odyssey loses twice the amount of blur, motion resolution doubles and the game looks so smooth and realistic in motion. But forcing 120 is totally pointless since lag shoots up to about 90ms which is unplayable and then you wind up with this weird motion jerking/twitching effect at times.
RE2, RE3, & RE7 all run at 4K with checkerboard on PS5 & Series X in both ray-tracing and 120fps mode. And 1440p on Series S, confirmed by Digital Foundry. So idk where you got 1080p with battered visuals from 😝. All the games look amazing on my Series X & PS5 on both my 77" & 48" LG C1 tv's. Of course I play games on my tv's in game mode because that's what it's for and the image quality looks amazing! I see that you adjust the sharpness and use super resolution settings which I use neither. I personally prefer 120fps mode for all 3 RE games, it's so smooth with VRR enabled and it makes movement and aiming much more responsive. There is a YouTube channel on what settings should be used for the LG C1 for PS5 & Series X to get the best picture quality out of game mode. But to each is own when it comes to that... here is the link anyway, if you want to check it out and see if it makes game mode more enjoyable for you 😁...
https://youtu.be/S0G8sHcFQq8
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