Five Resident Evil games tested on PS5 Pro - and the upgrades are substantial
Big boosts for ray tracing, performance and 120Hz support.
Between all of the PS5 Pro upgrades we've tested to date, the Resident Evil series enjoys some of the greatest benefits by running on Sony's new hardware. In order, we have 2017's Resident Evil 7, the remakes for RE 2 and 3, Resident Evil Village, and most recently Resident Evil 4 Remake. Capcom's in-house RE Engine forms the technical backbone for all five games, of course, and each one runs as a native PS5 app. Except, there's often been a catch to their performance delivery on base PS5 - whether it's using RT features at 60fps in some cases, or enabling a 120Hz HFR mode in others, there's potential not being totally fulfilled on base hardware. PS5 Pro offers a solution across the board with its increased GPU power and more advanced PSSR upscaling, via which there's now a genuine means to bridge the gap to those frame-rate targets.
Before we get to the performance, the basic facts first: out of all five games, only RE4 Remake and RE Village are actually updated with Pro support. The other three games still receive a performance boost on PS5 Pro, but the features and visual settings remain the same as the standard PS5. For RE4 Remake and Village, the PlayStation Store pages show a PS5 Pro Enhanced symbol, and sure enough, the upgrade is evident on booting PS5 Pro where we now get a new 120Hz toggle on each. Essentially, this works much like the 120Hz toggles already present in the RE2/RE3 remakes and RE7, but it's a Pro-exclusive feature for the latest two games.
Let's kick off our tour of the series' upgrades on PS5 Pro with RE Village. This is the only game to get PSSR upscaling, with core visual settings otherwise staying in place from the base machine. PS5 Pro runs at a fixed 1536x864 resolution which is reconstructed to 4K using PSSR in every mode - whether you have ray tracing enabled or disabled, or run at 120Hz or 60Hz. The result is respectable, though there is a trade-off when compared to the 4K checkerboarding method used on base PS5, which renders at a native 1920x2160. This makes it more of a side-step visually: base PS5's image is sharper and crisper - but with more pixellation artefacts owing to the checkerboard approach. Meanwhile PS5 Pro's handling of similar fine detail is generally more stable, though prone to its own causes of flicker, depending on the moving content within the frame. Static shots do resolve to a comparably crisp 4K image as information accumulates over multiple frames using PSSR, though, and the only other drawback is that fine hair detail becomes blurred in motion (not a problem on base PS5). It's a mixed result - at times subtly improved in its temporal stability, and at other points worse - though there are thankfully no other visual side-effects as we saw in Dragon's Dogma 2, another RE Engine title.
Jumping over to frame-rate testing, running RE Village with RT engaged is a much more robust 60fps experience on PS5 Pro. We get RT reflections, ambient occlusion and a form of GI here, improving the game's shadows and local bounce lighting for interiors. Looking at base PS5's delivery with this RT mode, it generally holds a stable 60fps and with a VRR display it looks nigh-on perfect - save for the most demanding moments in the game, where the frame-rate can dip into the mid-40s. As for the game's new 120Hz high frame-rate mode on PS5 Pro, it hits its 120fps target almost flawlessly if RT is disabled, and even with it enabled the run of play is typically 55-90fps. Overall, it's a superb turnout if you're willing to sacrifice the ray tracing option.
Resident Evil 4 Remake is more profound in its performance gains, though it's also a more taxing title overall once all visual bells and whistles are enabled. Surprisingly, PS5 Pro makes no major visual changes - and PSSR is a no-show here as well - with checkerboard rendering used instead much like the base PS5 version. The resolution mode runs at 2160p, while the performance mode runs at around 1944p once again. RT is optional, adding RT reflections when engaged, and there's a hair strand option too. Finally, there's a new 120Hz HFR mode on PS5 Pro. Looking back at the base PS5, running the game on the resolution mode with RT turned out to be a recipe for disaster with a 40-60fps frame-rate, at times going below the ideal VRR window. A solution for base PS5 users is the performance mode, which runs at 55-60fps with RT.
PS5 Pro users need not make such a sacrifice; it's now possible to run this resolution mode and RT in combination (and even the hair strand option if you're so inclined), where 60fps is kept almost permenantly locked down. Impressively, compared to the base PS5, that equates to a30-40 percent relative improvement in frame-rate on Sony's new machine, during matching tests in combat and cut-scenes. On the other hand, the fortunes of the new 120Hz option are a little more mixed on Pro hardware. Frankly, it's impossible to stick to a lock 120fps even with all visual niceties disabled. It goes between 85-105fps in the performance mode (with RT disabled) and 70-90fps in resolution mode (RT enabled), which shows the absolute best and worst cases. In performance mode, 120fps is technically reachable in interior areas and in cutscenes, so the HFR mode is viable at points, though a VRR display is recommended for the best possible experience.
Rounding out, let's look back at the other three RE Engine releases: RE7 and the remakes for RE2 and RE3. None of these games have an official PS5 Pro upgrade at the time of writing, but the extra GPU horsepower on PS5 Pro means that the titles still see automatic improvements. This is particularly true with RT enabled in RE2 and RE3, which prompted dips all the way down to 35fps on the base PS5 machine. PS5 Pro realises the untapped potential in this mode, with play running at 60fps for a majority of the time and dips down to around 48fps in one instance. It's just within the VRR range in that case, though those without that display technology need not worry: PS5 Pro still feasibly runs at a locked 60fps 99 per cent of the time. In matching scenes, we measured a 45 percent frame-rate improvement in RE2, with similarly grand margins in RE3 with 60hz as the target. On which note, the 120Hz mode in each remake also sees a similarly audacious gain, replacing the 90-120fps range we saw previously with an almost pefect 120fps lock today on PS5 Pro.
As for Resident Evil 7, the game that debuted the RE Engine back in 2017, there's a less exciting margin to speak on. In short, it typically ran at a locked 60fps on base PS5 - even with RT enabled - meaning there's no room for Pro hardware to dazzle us with such a stark improvement today. Likewise, the game's 120Hz mode ran well as-is on the base machine, and so it continues on PS5 Pro.
Looking across all five Resident Evil games, PS5 Pro turns around almost every instance where the base model failed to hit 60fps with RT. The good news is that this is now a truly viable, performant combination, and likewise 120fps works uniformly well on each game, with the exception of RE4 Remake. It perhaps speaks to a lack of optimisation for those RT options on base PS5, especially in RE2 and RE3 - and a 30fps cap might have made more sense in those cases. Still, the silver lining is that Capcom's use of an unlocked frame-rate back then translates to a stable 60fps on Pro hardware today. The only outstanding criticism is that there's limited ambition beyond these frame-rate boosts. Outside of the move to PSSR in Resident Evil Village, we're being served a matching visual feature set to base PS5. At the very least PS5 Pro addresses the performance issues the series faced for years though, and for that alone, its upgrade across the Resident Evil series ranks as one of its greater successes.