Metroid Prime 4 Treehouse gameplay

[Shaunodon]

h2ohno said:

I'd be shocked if high-end late-gen PS4 games like LOU2 and RDR2 were not pushing way higher polygon counts, texture resolution, advanced lighting, etc, than Prime 4 is on Switch 2. In terms of the base assets, the main difference between the Switch 1 and Switch 2 versions of Prime 4 is that Switch 1 is using the original textures while the last-gen version had to compress and downsize the texture to run on the older hardware. The polygon count, level design, and lighting were designed with the Tegra X1 in mind using the same engine as Prime 1 Remastered, which is itself still largely based on the 2002 engine.

In terms of early PS4 games, I think the comparison works better for Prime 4, as Retro's wizardry does get a lot more out of the Switch 1 than 99% of other developers, and adding better textures on top of that plus 4k and 120 FPS support make for an all-around amazing-looking game. The art is still going a long way in making of the difference in things like polygon count.

The Nintendo game that shows off the Switch 2's capabilities the most is Mario Kart World. That is not an improved version of a Switch 1 game, it's a game that truly could not be done on the Switch. The size of the levels, the amount of stuff that needs to be loaded at once, the chaos of 24 racers at a time. It may not seem like the kind of visual leap MK8 was over MKWii if you only look at the road textures, but it's doing a huge amount beyond that and is a true "next-gen" game compared to what was possible on Nintendo consoles before.

The game I'm most interested in seeing footage of is the new Fast game. That's a series that always pushes Nintendo hardware and compares a lot more favorably to the current-gen Playstation and XBox offerings. I really want to see what a generational leap over Fast RMX will be like.

Those games were mega projects with hundreds of devs working on designing assets. If you're just gonna compare the raw numbers of those straight up obviously a Nintendo game won't compare.

It's moreso about actually playing the game. Are you just planning to stand and stare at a corner of a room or a puddle? If you want to take a bunch of still shots and compare them those games can look better on a base PS4, as long as you can find a shot that's not too blurry or fuzzy.

Use real time footage of playing all the games side by side. The criticism was that Metroid Prime 4 looks dated on a Switch 2. If you were to compare them on a modern tv, even if those PS4 games have generally better asset quality, the lower resolution and framerate will stand out more comparatively.

Not that slapping 4k and 60fps on any Switch game will make it automatically look better, but even as a cross-gen release this looks very impressive.