Silent Hill 2 on Xbox: Series S' 30fps Comes at Quite the Cost

After an apparent year-plus console-exclusivity period on PlayStation 5, Silent Hill 2 remake is now out on Xbox Series X and S consoles. We were immediately compelled to investigate, as much to confirm visual parity on Series X and base PS5 as to see exactly how the game might fit within the lesser Series S's 4TF hardware limits.

Both ports adhere to the same Unreal Engine 5 base of features as seen on PS5, including software Lumen, with aspirations to deliver the same atmosphere-driving effects that the horror series relies on. Bloober Team has opted to leave all of these Lumen features enabled, only with noticeable compromises applied - and while the tradeoff is intense, it does lead to at least one piece of good Series S news.

Bloober Team has opted to limit Series S to only one visual mode, which not only locks the frame-rate at 30fps but also renders natively at 1280x720 - with no noted adjustments via dynamic resolution scaling (DRS). Its base 720p pixel count is then upscaled by way of Unreal Engine 5's Temporal Super Resolution (TSR), just as TSR is used on all other console versions.

When lined side-by-side, Series S's base resolution sometimes proves too low for TSR to amply resolve, and Silent Hill 2's visual characteristics suffer as a result. Lead character James' head sways noticeably while walking, and TSR here struggles to resolve the disocclusion artefacts of his head moving back and forth, even more so than other consoles. Plus, distant details like power lines and fence meshes either poorly resolve or don't materalise compared to Series X's 60fps performance mode.

More noticeable are Series S's lower-resolution Lumen-based effects. In motion, reduced reflection resolution and poor signed distanced fields (SDF) accuracy combine to add a noticeable, constant flicker to reflections on surfaces like puddles and wooden floorboards. And while a form of global illumination (RTGI) remains enabled on Series S, its light-bounce setting is drastically reduced compared to other consoles' 60fps performance modes.

The Series S cuts continue in other settings, including significant drops to texture fidelity and geometry tessellation. Yet Series S does at least maintain shadow and ambient occlusion parity compared to Series X's performance mode.

And importantly, all of this is in service of what may be a worthwhile trade for Series S owners: a nearly locked 30fps update. We've only encountered a few severe frame-time traversal spikes in our Series S testing that, as of our current impressions, do not derail an otherwise impressive performance profile. Curiously, we've noted cut-scenes where the camera movement does not update at 30fps, causing motion to appear juddery at points - despite the environment and character updating at 30 as they should. It's a bug noted in Alex's review of the PC version last year as well, and while infrequent, does occur at points on Series S.

Series X, meanwhile, appears to mostly match base PS5 in resolution and performance aspects. Its 30fps quality mode employs DRS to operate between 1224-1512p - the same range as base PS5 - and enjoys a mostly steady 30fps refresh, with the exception of certain traversal stutters and alpha-effect resolution dips while the DRS system kicks in to return the refresh to a 30fps cadence.

Its 60fps performance mode renders at a range of 864-1152p - again, identical to base PS5 - and has the same issues as Sony's console in often running beneath its 60fps target. Without VRR enabled, Series X's performance mode exhibits more screen-tearing than the v-synced PS5. Ultimately, VRR is recommended, as Series X's slight 2-3fps lead over base PS5 in equivalent regions isn't enough to reach a steady 60fps line, especially since sudden camera turns or appearances of monsters has the same frame-rate impact on both consoles' performance modes.

Series X in both modes turns in slightly higher pixel counts within the same DRS window than base PS5, as well, thus additionally reflecting its slight horsepower lead.

Ultimately, Bloober Team's decision to reduce both resolution and quality settings, Lumen and otherwise, gets its Series S port to at least a performative state. We've seen other UE5 ports opt for their own aggressive Series S treatments to maintain 60fps modes, ranging from Marvel Rivals' utter slicing of UE5 features to Lords of the Fallen's incredibly low base resolution. Perhaps neither of those extremes might have done justice to Silent Hill 2's fog-lined, Lumen-dependent aesthetic - which, while still noticeably cut back, retains enough of its character on the lesser modern Xbox.