Silent Hill 2 remains one of the all time survival horror greats - and its story of grief, framed by fogged streets and flashlight lit corridors, remains as haunting today as on its initial release. All of which is to say, there's a lot riding on developer Bloober Team to nail the details of its remake's atmosphere when it arrives on 8th October. To be blunt, the team has had an uphill battle to inspire confidence in long-time Silent Hill fans, not helped by a poorly pitched 'combat trailer' at Sony's State of Play in January that completely missed the brief. Since then, later gameplay showings have put the remake's intentions in much better light. And thankfully, in playing its opening three hours at a recent Konami event - from the start right up to the first Pyramid Head boss - I am now much more positive about it. Despite my worries going in, I'm glad the remake does even dare to make key changes to the game, complete with new puzzles, updated combat, plus the promise of new, additional endings.

Before we get to that, a quick Digital Foundry-style aside. On booting the game there were two graphics modes on PS5: a 30fps quality mode, and a performance mode that targets 60fps. Dynamic resolution appears to be used more aggressively for the latter, but I happily stuck with the 60fps option, which ran Silent Hill's south vale region and later Wood Side Apartment block smoothly. The only problem spot was an early graveyard area - with its obvious sub-60 drops in the build shown - but that might improve by release.

Speaking with the team at Bloober directly, it's also confirmed that both modes use Unreal Engine 5's Lumen technology on PS5 - enhancing its reflections with a software-based approximation of ray tracing. The result being that the rain-slicked streets reflect every shop sign crisply, even if they're out of your camera's view (a problem for the SSR method, which is still used as a fallback behind Lumen here). Added to this the team confirms that Lumen is also used for ambient occlusion, albeit only on the 30fps quality mode. Also, for a bit of fun, an additional 90s filter toggle is included in the remake's menus to change its colour grading to more closely match the fade of the PS2 original's - if you're that way inclined.

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Marvel Rivals is the second new hero shooter to arrive in beta form this month, following on from Sony's Concord as another team-based multiplayer affair. This time though, it's a full cross-platform release, with Xbox Series X and Series S joining PS5 and PC. Rivals also goes further in using the Unreal Engine 5 feature set, with Lumen global illumination and reflections, and features a third-person perspective of the titular heroes and villains that sets it apart from the likes of Overwatch. Early impressions suggest a more deeply ambitious game, but one that also comes with more profound technical challenges in its current form.

We've tested every platform to see how they compare, paying special attention to PS5, Series X and Series S to see how closely they manage to hold to the target 60fps - and in the case of the Series S, how much they sacrifice to get there with more modest hardware. Beyond that, how do these platforms hold up to the game running maxed out on PC, with Lumen GI and reflections set to ultra, and what technical gremlins lurk behind that beta badge?

Before we answer these questions, it's worth looking at the state of play right now. After all, this is a beta in flux, with 21 characters and four map variants on offer during our testing. Developers NetEase Games are no strangers to genre giant Overwatch, having worked on creating versions of the title and other Blizzard releases for the Chinese market, and that comes across in the presentation: slick, snappy and broadly similar.

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Marvel Rivals is the second new hero shooter to arrive in beta form this month, following on from Sony's Concord as another team-based multiplayer affair. This time though, it's a full cross-platform release, with Xbox Series X and Series S joining PS5 and PC. Rivals also goes further in using the Unreal Engine 5 feature set, with Lumen global illumination and reflections, and features a third-person perspective of the titular heroes and villains that sets it apart from the likes of Overwatch. Early impressions suggest a more deeply ambitious game, but one that also comes with more profound technical challenges in its current form.

We've tested every platform to see how they compare, paying special attention to PS5, Series X and Series S to see how closely they manage to hold to the target 60fps - and in the case of the Series S, how much they sacrifice to get there with more modest hardware. Beyond that, how do these platforms hold up to the game running maxed out on PC, with Lumen GI and reflections set to ultra, and what technical gremlins lurk behind that beta badge?

Before we answer these questions, it's worth looking at the state of play right now. After all, this is a beta in flux, with 21 characters and four map variants on offer during our testing. Developers NetEase Games are no strangers to genre giant Overwatch, having worked on creating versions of the title and other Blizzard releases for the Chinese market, and that comes across in the presentation: slick, snappy and broadly similar.

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Whisper it quietly, but Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater looks like the most exciting Konami project in years. The trailer shown at this year's Xbox Games Showcase contains just over two minutes of tightly edited in-engine footage, but it answers a lot of questions about the direction of the project - with more details provided in an interview between Solid Snake voice actor David Hayter and producer Noriaki Okamura. At its heart, Delta looks to offer extensive reworks to visuals, controls and camera, using Unreal Engine 5, alongside slavishly faithful recreation of the level design and cutscene direction of the PS2 original.

Of course, we've seen Metal Gear Solid 3 polished up in Bluepoint's excellent HD Collection back on PS3 and Xbox 360 - a build that's also been re-used in the recent Master Collection to mixed reviews. But this remake, Metal Gear Solid Delta, is a more ambitious beast. It's shaping up to be a genuine effort to give series fans the best way to play the game. The big question is this: how does the footage we have so far compare to the original via the HD Collection? What's changed, and what stays intact?

While Metal Gear Solid Delta's release date is still unannounced, we do know it's set for release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Steam - and with that being the case, there's no telling what platform we're precisely seeing in the trailer. It could be a mixture of formats, though the smart money is on an early PC build. Practically every shot I've pixel counted shows a crisp native 4K image, a true 3840x2160 with dynamic resolution scaling deployed only rarely. Next there's the frame-rate situation. Oddly enough, the trailer is only presented on YouTube as a 30fps encode, but hopefully that is a limitation of the capture - we'd expect to see a full 60fps in the final product, as we got with the HD Collection before it.

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Fallout's next-gen upgrade came out of the starting blocks with serious issues on all platforms, but a patch for PlayStation and Xbox systems on May 13th promises to fix the most glaring problems. We've tested the game on PS5, Series X and Series S to see what's changed with the new update, and there is plenty to praise here - though some problems still remain. Crucially, Bethesda has at least provided a working graphics mode selector on Xbox Series X and S - a clearly labelled switch between 'visuals' mode and 'performance' mode that replaces the broken on/off performance toggle we saw before. These modes run with what the developer calls standard settings (on performance mode) or ultra settings (on visuals mode), and each deploys dynamic resolution scale to varying degrees too. That same visuals/performance labeling is applied to the PlayStation 5 version today as well, though these modes at least worked as intended in the previous patch.

There's an extra bonus here. Every current-gen console also gains the ability to independently set their target frame-rate via a new in-game option. We have 30fps and 60fps modes available on standard 60Hz displays - while an additional 40fps display mode becomes available when running with a 120Hz screen connected. Essentially, you can now choose an arbitrary frame-rate target regardless of your graphics mode, and so, we can now even target visuals mode at 60fps. In effect this might make sense when running the game on future PlayStation or Xbox hardware, for example, or to maximise frame-rates in the game's least demanding areas at the expense of frame-rate stability elsewhere. With two graphics modes and three frame-rate options, then, we certainly have a lot more flexibility.

The big question remains though: beyond fixing the obviously broken graphics modes on Xbox, does the May 13th update solve the hitches and performance issues we identified with Fallout 4's current-gen console upgrade? How do all the consoles compare now with the top visuals mode selected? And finally, is it actually possible to run the visuals mode at 60fps, or is there still a need for those lower 40 and 30fps options to get a stable reading?

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In the wake of the massive success of the Fallout TV series, Fallout 4 has received a free next-gen upgrade for PC, PS5 and Series X/S that aims to bring the nine-year-old game up to modern standards. The prospect of native PS5 and Series games is tantalising but unfortunately the update arrives with a number of issues - and even at its best the result is somewhat underwhelming.

The patch notes mention two main graphics modes on console: a dynamic 4K 60fps performance mode running at 'standard' settings and a 4K 30fps quality mode running at PC's ultra preset. The game itself presents this as a performance mode on/off toggle in reality, where the off setting is effectively the quality mode referred to in the notes. Beyond these two basic options, Bethesda also adds additional modes for those outputting the game at 1440p and/or 120Hz from your console system menu. As well as these new options, the patch notes mention bug fixes, new quests, new weapons and, on PC, official 21:9 ultrawide support.

To summarise the PC situation in brief, it's a disappointment on a number of levels. For a start, the new ultrawide display support is seriously lacking polish, with select elements of the UI stretched from 16:9 rather than offering a native 21:9 presentation. Worse still, I've noticed visual bugs in the UI at points, such as while naming your character or setting your SPECIAL stats - it looks wrong and needs a fix.

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In the wake of the massive success of the Fallout TV series, Fallout 4 has received a free next-gen upgrade for PC, PS5 and Series X/S that aims to bring the nine-year-old game up to modern standards. The prospect of native PS5 and Series games is tantalising but unfortunately the update arrives with a number of issues - and even at its best the result is somewhat underwhelming.

The patch notes mention two main graphics modes on console: a dynamic 4K 60fps performance mode running at 'standard' settings and a 4K 30fps quality mode running at PC's ultra preset. The game itself presents this as a performance mode on/off toggle in reality, where the off setting is effectively the quality mode referred to in the notes. Beyond these two basic options, Bethesda also adds additional modes for those outputting the game at 1440p and/or 120Hz from your console system menu. As well as these new options, the patch notes mention bug fixes, new quests, new weapons and, on PC, official 21:9 ultrawide support.

To summarise the PC situation in brief, it's a disappointment on a number of levels. For a start, the new ultrawide display support is seriously lacking polish, with select elements of the UI stretched from 16:9 rather than offering a native 21:9 presentation. Worse still, I've noticed visual bugs in the UI at points, such as while naming your character or setting your SPECIAL stats - it looks wrong and needs a fix.

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Even to this day, developer Starbreeze Studios' 2013 classic Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is fondly remembered. This adventure puzzler was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 just months before the next console generation, and packed a real emotional punch for those that caught it. Jump forward eleven years and we have a new remake for a new generation on PS5, Series X and Series S - so how does it hold up on new platforms, including the less powerful Series S, across both performance and quality modes?

In terms of its tech, this is a significant remake: the original game's Unreal Engine 3 is jettisoned for Unreal Engine 5, with Milan-based studio Avantgarden putting in serious work to re-imagine every environment with vastly improved detail via the engine's Nanite and Lumen technologies. Beyond improved visuals, the release also includes new cutscenes, tweaked controls and adjustments to difficulty. Even its soundtrack was re-recorded from scratch, with original composer Gustaf Grefberg returning to the project.

Despite all of those changes though, it's a relief to find that great care has been taken to stick closely to the original's core gameplay design and story. From the main menu design to the physics for its puzzles, the game logic running underneath is often identical. As before, you take control of two brothers simultaneously in a top-down view, with one brother on the left analogue stick and the other on the right. The goal is to navigate an eerie, beautiful fantasy world - full of trolls, wolves and sentient trees - in a quest to find a cure for their dying father.

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Sony's PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming service was introduced last October for PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers, offering 4K streaming of PS5 titles in addition to the old PlayStation Now 720p PS3 and 1080p PS4 experiences. We've been critical of cloud streaming in the past, as what you gain in convenience you often lose in image quality and latency - so how does the Sony offering compare to the native experience on PS5 on that front? And what about Xbox's cloud gaming offering, dubbed Project xCloud? The latter point threw up an interesting curveball during testing: Microsoft's servers are based on Xbox Series X silicon, but the games being streamed are definitely the Series S versions.

We've looked at xCloud before (though admittedly, it has changed dramatically since then) but it's worth having a quick primer on how the PlayStation Plus Premium streaming system works on PS5. In short, you'll see a yellow cloud icon next to any game that supports the tech in the PS Plus catalogue, whether you have it installed locally or not. By comparison, Xbox only offers its cloud option for games that are not yet installed. The range of games supported on Sony's service is certainly impressive, from first-party heavy hitters to popular third-party options and indie darlings. And the biggest perk is that titles sporting hefty 200GB+ installs are playable this way in under a minute.

In terms of video quality, the service supports 60fps at resolutions up to 4K with HDR, though a true 4K is only possible on PS5 titles. This sadly means that PS4 games played over the cloud still only run at 1080p while PS3 titles are limited to a 720p video stream. The resolution cap for older consoles is a huge shame I think, as some PS3 games had the ability to run at native 1080p on original hardware while PS4 games were often playable at 1440p or higher via a PS4 Pro. That said, the audio options are at least respectable, with 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound offered, alongside PS5's Tempest 3D Audio where possible.

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