Dying Light 2 Stay Human Performance Review - PS5 vs Series X vs PC

ign.com:

Popping out for a bite to eat took on a brand-new meaning with 2015’s Dying Light, and now again with its bigger, darker, and even more dystopian sequel. Light and dark plays a big part in this vampiric tale, including ray tracing editions for new-gen consoles and higher-end PCs. So, let’s sample the bits and bytes of Dying Light 2 Stay Human.

Parkouring our way through the console & PC versions, we have a collection of modes and settings to work through. The last-gen versions weren’t ready in time for coverage in this review, so we instead will concentrate on the Xbox Series X, Series S, and PS5 along with our AMD-powered PC with an RX6800 GPU. First up, let’s examine the three modes Techland’s proprietary Chrome engine (or C-engine) offers – on Series X and PS5, at least.

Two of the three modes are 30fps, with Quality mode boasting ray tracing that adds full-contact hardening sun shadows, enabling soft dithered shadows across both static and dynamic objects. These are a big increase in the quality and accuracy of shadows and can drastically change certain scenes due to the upgrade, but they are expensive. In addition, ambient occlusion of a screen space variety and screen space shadows all combine to create more accurate lighting and darker tones in recessed areas in both indoor and outdoor sections. Reflections also offer better quality than other modes, but are still screen space in nature. All these are identical in quality and coverage on Series X and PS5, but some other minor bugs do crop up.

Next is Resolution mode, which turns these ray traced shadows off and greatly reduces the ambient occlusion. This lack of depth and grounding of objects in the scene does stand out and again highlights some odd differences from