Sony’s PS5 Pro console might be touted as a superior machine, but the performance is notably worse when running Konami’s remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
With a £220 price difference between the standard PlayStation 5 console and the more powerful PS5 Pro, you’d expect all games to run noticeably better on the latter.
Whereas the standard PlayStation 5 console often has to prioritise either performance or quality modes, in visually demanding games, the promise of the PS5 Pro is that you can have the best of both worlds through its improved GPU and PSSR AI upscaler.
However, while this appears to benefit Sony’s first party titles, the results with third party games are far more mixed, including new release Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.
The performance of the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake on PlayStation 5 was tested by Digital Foundry, where they compared the standard PlayStation 5’s performance mode, the quality mode, on the PS5 Pro.
Surprisingly, the PS5 Pro fell short in some key areas. The outlet tested footage from the same shot in the opening jungle, where they found the game’s resolution was 864p in performance mode on a standard PlayStation 5 and 1412p in quality mode. And yet the PS5 Pro had a resolution of only 756p.
While the PS5 Pro is noted as having advantages in motion over the base console, thanks to the PSSR upscaler, the outlet found the image clarity was worse when ‘left to settle’.
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‘So it’s a win in motion for the PS5 Pro, with a smarter handling of inclusion artifacts and swaying grass, but if left to settle, the resolved reconstructed image seems to struggle to match the clarity of the base PlayStation 5,’ they note.
The PS5 Pro falls short, too, in the frame rate. ‘The other surprise is that PS5 Pro’s frame rate in actual gameplay is on average lower than the base PlayStation 5’s performance mode,’ they added.
As an example, they pointed to the game’s immediate landing area which showed dips under 60fps on the PS5 Pro, whereas there are none on the base console.
While they state the PS5 Pro’s performance is improved when in interior areas, the outdoor jungle areas are described as ‘a clear, unexpected downgrade’.
While it’s the third mainline Metal Gear Solid game, in terms of release date order, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is, chronologically speaking, the beginning of the saga – hence why developer Konami decided to remake this title first (that and it’s widely considered to be the best of the series).
In an interview with Rolling Stone, game producer Noriaki Okamura said Konami hired a bunch of ‘younger developers’ to work on the remake, in the hopes that they would be able to ‘carry on the legacy’ of the franchise moving forward.
‘So, one of the reasons why we brought in a lot of fresh meat — all the new, younger developers — is because, not only did we want to give them a chance to figure out how to create and develop a Metal Gear game, but also give them a chance to experience the game themselves,’ Okamura said.
‘And we’ll still be here for a while, but right now the goal is to build a team that could carry on the legacy on our behalf and could produce, hopefully in the future, more exciting games.’
While it remains to be seen if this will just result in more remakes or a new game, it’s hard to imagine a new Metal Gear without its creator Hideo Kojima, as the franchise’s quirks are so rooted in his unique sensibilities.
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is set to launch August 28 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
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