And what about Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally?
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2is one of the most visually stunning games of the year.
How scalable is Hellblade 2 and can less capable hardware still deliver a good experience?
The most obvious hit here comes down to reflections.
Series S instead swaps in screen-space reflections, without Lumen’s ray tracing to fall back on.
Water surfaces can look bereft of lighting detail, and sometimes have a somewhat matte appearance.
Xbox Series S also features lower-resolution volumetric lighting than Series X.
There are other lighting tweaks in some scenes.
The Series S doesn’t seem to have the same water dripping animation as the X here.
Low lying volumetric fog looks a little coarser on the S too.
The actual makeup of the terrain also sometimes slightly differs between the two machines.
The game has a very soft final resolve though, in part because of extensive post-processing.
We have motion blur, depth of field, heavy film grain, and quite intrusive chromatic aberration.
The motion blur can be turned off, but puzzlingly the other post-process effects cannot.
Neither console is ideal, but the Series S is obviously less clear.
Thankfully, is quite consistent on both consoles.
Series S is very close to a locked 30fps with only very occasional issues.
Moving onto Steam Deck, the challenge in delivering a consistent, good-looking experience is far more daunting.
Across a range of scenes, we observe the same pattern.
Foliage sees obvious tweaks, but elsewhere the visual presentation looks quite similar for the most part.
I didn’t find any measurable frame-time improvement with the technique on, so I decided to forgo it.
So with our tweaks dialed in, how does Hellblade 2 actually run?
We’re mostly hovering around 30fps on Deck, though some sequences run consistently in the 20s.
Some cutscenes also provoke sub-30fps dips, and we do encounter some larger frame-time spikes at times as well.
It’s a very demanding game.
Beyond performance, I did find the game to be a pleasant experience on my Deck OLED.
Hellblade 2’s dark tones are conveyed effectively on the OLED display, and HDR works fine as well.
However, noticeable stutter still manifests.
The opacity of atmospheric effects seems a bit much on the Ally, relative to other platforms.
In terms of the gameplay experience, Hellblade 2 probably isn’t going to be to everyone’s tastes.
It’s built around limited environmental exploration, basic puzzles, and simple but brutal combat.
It’s also not a long game, clocking in at maybe a half-dozen hours for a full playthrough.
However, in exchange, Hellblade 2 offers some of the best graphics in gaming today.
That visual splendor really sells the game experience, and I think it justifies the game’s reduced scope.
This is the best-looking Unreal Engine 5 title on the market in my opinion.
Crucially, Hellblade 2’s visual impact is similar across its key platforms.
