We’re starting this deep dive into Saros’s technical performance with one important reminder: don’t judge it purely by raw pixel count. What Housemarque has done with Returnal’s winning formula is best appreciated in motion, because it’s all too easy to get lost in Carcosa’s environments and the mesmerizing projectile patterns unleashed by its many threats. As a title that’s being positioned as one that aims to push the PS5 to its limits, and as a showcase for the console, we can safely say that Saros achieves its goals.
But what has made us so impressed with this bullet hell action title from Housemarque? How has it built upon what was so magical about Returnal? Join us and find out more about everything we’ve been seeing during our time with this upcoming title, and how it manages to make the most of the PS5 and PS5 Pro’s spec sheets.
An Evolution That Makes Sense
Before we get into how the game looks and performs, it’s important to look at how Saros has built on Returnal’s gameplay loop, and how those changes have impacted its approach to presentation. For starters, where Returnal was akin to an obstacle course in which you were aiming to avoid taking damage from enemy gunfire, Saros presents bullets as a resource that you can use to turn the tide in your favor. That’s thanks to the Soltari Shield, which you deploy tactically while facing off against enemies, collecting the energy from their gunfire and sending it back at them for extra damage.
That mechanic works very well with what Hosemarque is calling a “bullet ballet” style of combat, and a revamped approach to VFX that makes its battles feel denser and more stylized. There’s also the fact that Saros takes a more character-driven approach to its story that lays an emphasis on cinematic presentation, a factor that we’re going to dive into when we examine its cutscene quality. And finally, it’s important to remember that the game features procedurally generated side paths that vary every time you visit a biome, allowing for a more dynamic gameplay loop even as the main path through an area still feels authored.
From a graphics perspective, Returnal handled its characters with purpose more than depth, relying on Selene to anchor the emotional core while the broader experience drew its strength from Atropos, the oppressive atmosphere, stark darkness, and eerie enemy designs. In contrast, Saros seems to shift the spotlight firmly onto its characters, prioritizing expressive performances, a stronger ensemble dynamic, and more cinematic presentation. Housemarque is clearly leaning into this direction, emphasizing the realism of its cast and the meticulous process of translating each character from written concept into a fully realized on-screen presence.
A similar progression shows up in the game’s environments and effects. Returnal defined itself through a darker, more restrained aesthetic, bioluminescent lifeforms, writhing tentacle tech, and overwhelming bursts of projectiles that made Atropos feel both threatening and mesmerizing. Saros, on the other hand, looks to retain that signature Housemarque clarity and visual intensity while pushing things further. Its setting, Carcosa, appears more intricate and fluid, with greater environmental diversity, cleaner image fidelity, and more advanced rendering overall, especially evident in its PS5 Pro upgrades and the added focus on higher-end character detail, lighting, and post-processing during narrative sequences.
All of these are relevant to how the game performs, as they are all evolutions of what Returnal brought to the table in some form, especially in terms of design and rendering. How, you ask? That’s exactly where we’re going next.
The Image Quality
This is an easy one. Saros is a stunner, whether you’re playing it on a base PS5 or the PS5 Pro. It runs at a solid 60 fps on the PS5 while the image holds up even when you try to pinpoint any compromises. If you don’t have a Pro on your hands, you’re going to be fine.
But with the game coming with PS5 Pro Enhanced features at launch, it’s important to look at what the mid-gen beast brings to the table. Firstly, Saros supports PSSR 2, delivering a sharper image that’s quite close to native 4K. That gives the game a clean image source for its higher base render resolution prior to upscaling, which is important because it means that you’re getting an image that’s both sharper and cleaner while sustaining the base version’s consistent framerates.
Of course, there are differences in reflections and overall quality, making the PS5 Pro version more than just a resolution leap. The cinematic cutscenes run at 30 fps with the aim of a better quality that places an emphasis on characters, lighting, and post-processing, and the PS5 Pro does have an edge over its base variant. On both consoles, you get great texture readability, object stability in motion, sharp edges, and well-designed geometry, making the game quite pleasing to the eye.
The PS5 version of Saros has set a strong baseline with a focus on performance-led presentation, while the Pro builds on that core experience with cleaner reconstruction, sharper output from scene to scene, and a boost in quality of reflections and cinematics. There’s also reduced shimmering and breakup on the Pro, but they aren’t going to be too noticeable on the base PS5 unless you’re really looking out for them.
But how good an image can get is only one part of the equation. It’s time to dive into how those images translate to a solid experience.
The Graphics
Spoiler alert: it’s all good news for both the PS5 and the Pro. Beginning with the art style around Carcosa’s environments and their atmospheres, things are quite good. We’re going to stick to the two biomes you’ve probably already seen in the interest of letting you experience the other ones for yourself, but we were quite impressed with how Shattered Rise and the Ancient Depths felt distinctly varied from each other, the cliffs on the former allowing for more open, spacious areas that immediately turn into cramped spaces in the Ancient Depths, which felt downright claustrophobic in comparison.
The way environments are presented in Saros blends geometry and atmospheric factors like lighting and haze quite well. Color grading is applied in a way that makes each new area you explore feel authentic and immersive, while enabling the Eclipse to immediately transform the area in a way that makes the added danger feel palpable thanks to how it transforms the scene before it. That’s thanks to the effective use of overlays that extend to enemy projectiles as well.
It’s here that the new combat mechanics shine through, with the game supporting its ambitions with excellent projectile density and readability, energy absorption effects on your Shield, excellent discharge effects, and, of course, your own weapons and their bullets. It’s all a part of the game’s charm and spectacle, woven into the core gameplay loop in a way that keeps it all readable at 60 fps even in the busiest of battles on both the PS5 and the Pro.
The lighting is a major part of that allure, and it works very well to make everything you see quite believable during both gameplay and the cinematics, lending the game’s horror aesthetic a superb balance between darkness and visual stylization. Contrast and volumetrics are applied well enough to lend each scene a layer of authenticity, while shadow falloff adds to it. You see it in reflections, which are markedly better on the PS5 Pro. Wet surfaces and water throw reflections back at you, while metallic surfaces glow with the light of projectiles around them in battles.
Indoor scenes are similarly well implemented, the soft glow from screens or other sources of light in darker places making everything so immersive that it can get challenging to actually pay attention to what’s unfolding in front of you. That’s because Arjun’s character model, and those of the NPCs you meet along the way, are all well-detailed in both gameplay and cutscenes across the board. It also applies to enemy models and animations, with combat being very readable even in the most intense fights, of which there were plenty for us to test out.
Every dodge, parry, Shield blast (that’s what we’re calling the ability to disperse your stored Shield energy), and weapon transition was animated very well, and it’s all melded in so well with the Dualsense’s haptics and adaptive triggers, which we’re going to comment on shortly. Saros is a graphical treat on the PS5 and Pro, no doubt about it. But how do its atmospherics hold up under the spotlight?
The Core Of The Evolution
Of course, Saros is an experience that sets itself apart from Returnal thanks to an emphasis on setting a grim mood over the spectacle of Selene’s time on Atropos. Carcosa is a planet that isn’t just about what you see, but about what you hear and what you feel while you navigate its biomes. The easiest way to test out how the game handles its atmospherics was to engage with the Eclipse System, which makes everything more dangerous but also more rewarding to overcome.
That’s on the gameplay side of things, but on the visual front, it’s quite a shift with the world getting a sinister red hue while the soundscape also changes once it’s active. That immediately sells the idea that you might be in over your head, but with the gameplay being as technically balanced as it is, tackling those new dangers feels more like a challenge and less like a way to just squeeze out more rewards from a run.
Of course, it’s all supported very well by the effective use of the PlayStation 5’s unique features like Tempest 3D Audio (we recommend a good pair of headphones with this one) and the DualSense’s features. Your weapons and Shield are immediately noticeable areas where the adaptive triggers work with you, giving tactile differentiation to each tool in your arsenal, while the haptics are a definite step up from their implementation in Returnal, as they feature in a larger chunk of the experience in Saros.
Additionally, we definitely did appreciate the blazing-fast load times on both consoles, and getting back into the fight after you die feels almost instantaneous. Triggering an eclipse is similarly well-handled, and you’re not going to do any doom-scrolling on your phone while you wait for the game to get you into Carcosa.
With all that’s been said, you’ve probably guessed that our time with Saros has been quite impressive on the technical front. It’s a refinement of Housemarque’s penchant for sensory immersion and clarity, while it remains uncompromising on the urgency of its gameplay loop that made Returnal so memorable. It’s a game where all of its systems come together so seamlessly you can’t help but want to pause the action just to marvel at it all before you dive back in.
While the base PS5 does a solid job of presenting that core experience, the PS5 Pro does get an edge thanks to a better baseline image quality and an improved upscaled output, along with better reflections in gameplay and cutscenes. But irrespective of the console you’re going to play this one on, Saros is certainly a title that justifies investing in a PlayStation 5. As a showcase of what the console can do, it’s right up there with the best of what the past few years have had to offer, and it’s a lot of fun to play too!