God Of War Will Have A Performance Mode On PS4

[Archiee]

When it comes to PlayStation 4 Pro games, a lot of people love being able to take advantage of the system's bigger GPU and more horsepower. The latest game to take advantage of the PS4 Pro's abilities is none other than Santa Monica Studio's God of War.

IGN is reporting that during a discussion with fans on social media, creative director Cory Barlog was asked if gamers would need to upgrade their vanilla PS4 to a PS4 Pro in order to get the most out of God of War. Barlog revealed that it wouldn't be necessary to upgrade to a PS4 Pro to enjoy the game.

However, Barlog still threw PS4 Pro gamers a bone by noting that the system allows for 4K output of God of War in upscaled mode, if you have a native 4K television. Alternatively, if you prefer performance over sharpness -- or if you just don't have a 4K TV -- you can enable a performance mode that allows gamers to play the game with highly smooth frame-rates. According to IGN, this means that gamers will be able to choose upscaled 4K at 30fps or 1080p at 60fps for the game.

A lot of gamers in the comment section with 4K TVs are saying that they can't wait to play the game at 4K and 30fps. Some are saying that they will alternate between performance and graphics mode depending on the scene(s) and gameplay segment(s). I suppose some gamers may prefer playing at 60fps during the combat-heavy sequences while switching to the graphics mode for the cinematics.

It makes sense given that frame-rate plays a pretty big part in potential input latency. More frames mean smoother gameplay, which in turn means that players have more frames in which to react and alter character movement and actions. Reduced frames mean lower reaction times, which can play a pretty big part in how the character combat plays out.

It's one of the reasons why a lot of fighting game competitors prefer playing on CRT televisions to avoid screen lag, and playing with certain controls and on certain systems in order to get the most out of the hardware. In fighting games, a frame can make a difference, literally, between winning or losing, which sometimes happens when tournament matches for games like Super Smash Bros., or Street Fighter V come down to the wire.

We still don't know enough about God of War's combat to know if the frame-rate will play a huge role in the actual gameplay. The older games were fast-paced, hack-and-slash titles, not unlike Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. The developers have mentioned that the new game centers its combat around a more slower paced, methodical design reminiscent to Dark Souls.

The change in combat in God of War hasn't won everyone over, but a lot of it will depend on the implementation and how well it all ties together with the rest of the gameplay.

If you're looking to get the game and play it on your PS4 Pro, you can look for Santa Monica Studio's title to launch on April 20th near the end of the month.