Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is here and boy what a game it is. Featuring an action packed gameplay, an engaging story and improved mechanics, the game is simply put a massive improvement over the original. The game doesn’t revinvent the wheel but trumps in its story building and and improves upon the core gameplay that made its predecessor such a great game. Besides the game itself, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is actually quite a looker and a drastic improvement over the original in terms of lighting, PBR support and volumetric effects. The game now uses id Tech 6 and just like last year’s DOOM, the game benefits from a number of enhancements.
The improvement in visuals can be compared to the recently released The Evil Within 2. The original Wolfenstein and The Evil Within were both released back in 2014 and both were cross generation platforms. But this year, Bethesda have ensured that both of their IPs will be current gen exclusives and the impact of that decision is clearly visible.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is quite clearly a generational leap over the original in terms of material based lighting, screen space reflections, better texture filtering, character models and higher quality shadows. However the game still employs pre-rendered cutscenes to tell its story. This are rendered off engine at 1080p and 30 frames per second. From a resolution point of view, the game employs a native 1080p presentation on the PS4 at an almost locked 60 fps which is a bit of surprise for us given how intense this game looks. On the Xbox One front, we see a disappointing resolution of 1440 X 810. The frame rate performance seems to be a similar to the PS4 but the reduction in image quality is immediately noticeable.
On the PS4 Pro front, the game runs at 2560 X 1440 resolution in 4K mode. Performance again is similar compared to the original PS4. However the PS4 Pro version has a few benefits such as improved texture filtering, better asset streaming, less pop in and better shadow quality.
So there you have it, the best place to Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus on consoles is on the PS4 Pro and PS4. However this equation is bound to change when Microsoft launches the Xbox One X next week. Is native 4K resolution on the cards? Hard to say at this point but clearly not impossible given how the PS4 Pro runs the game at a rather respectable 1440p resolution. But we will see how it pans out so stay tuned for more in-depth analysis.
