Returnal’s PC version is absolutely fine for the most part, and certainly leagues beyond many of the Unreal Engine 4 PC ports we’ve looked at over the last year or so – but there are still some key issues to be aware of before making a purchase. By and large, we’re looking at a game that can scale significantly beyond its PlayStation 5 origins, but there are some issues with ray tracing in particular I’d like to see addressed. Optimised settings? We’ve got those for you too, but in common with much of the work I put into creating these, ultimately what you end up with is a visual balance for the game highly reminiscent of Housemarque’s existing work on PS5.
There’s much to commend this release though and that begins with the game’s first boot, where Returnal pre-compiles all shaders, meaning no shader compilation stutter during play. It’s a quick step too – just a six second delay on a Core i9 12900K and an admittedly beefier 35 seconds on a mainstream CPU like the Ryzen 5 3600. There is still stutter, however, of two types. First of all, running any of the UE4-based ray tracing effects can cause hitching and stuttering which the developers are looking to track down and eliminate. The current working theory, we’re told, is that it may be related to mesh creation. There’s also traversal stutter too – nothing new to Returnal veterans, as this is in the PS5 version to this day. Stutter on opening doors? That’s a touch offputting too. Traversal stutter can be minimised with a high-end CPU, but it’s still there to a certain extent – and it’s much more of an issue on less capable CPUs.
Next up, I’ve got to say that the benchmark is terrific. No, it’s not based on gameplay, but arguably its seven scenarios encompass situations heavier than standard action. What’s really cool here is that as you pass through each scenario, the benchmark highlights what the game is stress-testing. The after action report for the benchmark requires praise as well: much like Gears 5, you gain a complete understanding of where the bottlenecks are thanks to the information it gives to you, telling you where and when your CPU or GPU were the limiting factor based upon which section of the benchmark was causing issues.
