Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is an incredible achievement for developers Ninja Theory. It’s a very unique game, with an unsettling atmosphere, excellent character building, and an engrossing narrative. If you’ve read our review, you know we’re fans of the game. But one more thing we’ve mentioned in our review for the game other than all those other strengths is the fact that Hellblade looks stunning.
Here in this feature, we’re going to take a look at the PS4 Pro and the PC versions of Hellblade and look deeper at just how well the game runs on both systems from a technical standpoint. For our PC version, we ran Hellblade on a rig with fully maxed out specs in order to avoid any potential bottlenecks, using a GTX 1080 Ti, with 16GB of DDR4 memory and a Ryzen 7 1700 processor at 1080p.
The biggest advantage the PC version has, though, is that it runs at a steady 60 frames per second. The frame rate doesn’t see many dips, and this impressive performance has a positive impact on several other aspects of the game, including things like controls, movement and the camera, all of which feel and look markedly smoother and more fluid. 60 frames per second is, of course, also available on the PS4 Pro version (the base PS4 version remains capped at 30 FPS), but in that scenario the resolution is lowered to 900p.
However, the higher frame rate on the PS4 Pro is definitely appreciated. It’s not nearly as steady as on the PC, but as compared to the base PS4 version of the game, the action is a lot smoother in the PS4 Pro version. There really isn’t too significant a difference between the three versions of the game. Even the most inferior version, which the base PS4 version, already runs at close to maxed out settings, but each progressive version just dials things up a little bit more.
There are some differences, besides the frame rate settings, such as shadows, extra detailing on some objects such as walls and clothing, and lighting effects, while post processing is also lower on the PS4 than the PS4 Pro and the PC. but these differences are only barely noticeable, and never glaring.
Hellblade is a beautiful looking game that doesn’t have many significant performance issues, and that is something that is true irrespective of what version of the game you play. The PS4 Pro version has the upper hand over the base PS4 version in that it has a 60 frames per second mode, but the PC version is the best of all three with not only a steadier refresh rate of 60 FPs.
The differences, though, aren’t really that big, and if you’re looking for a definitive version of the game to play, as far as technical aspects go, PC obviously takes the lead. The PS4 Pro version isn’t that far behind. But in the end, no matter what version of the game you buy, you’re not gonna go wrong.
