| DF: Console Analysis |  |
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niQfeglwDZ4]
[https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-control-console-face-off]
Similar to Quantum Break, the vanilla Xbox One uses a base 720p resolution with a temporal accumulation technique that gives the impression of a much cleaner image. Again, like Remedy's previous game, it does tend to lose fidelity in motion, but the overall look is good. The same trick is used on all other versions, just with adjustments to the base resolution. The vanilla PlayStation 4 gets a bump to 900p, rising to 1080p on PlayStation 4 Pro. Perhaps not surprisingly, Xbox One X sits at the top of the pile, with 1440p looking like a fairly close approximation to a 4K image thanks to the temporal super-sampling technique in play. Some aspects of the presentation - like the omni-present film grain - are tied to base resolution, so the progression in resolution across the console stack is fairly easy to notice.
However, as you press further into the game, the more you'll start to notice some serious slow-down. In our performance video, we choose a shoot-out in an Atrium and a battle in a power plant to draw some comparisons. Best of the bunch is clearly Xbox One X. It's by far the smoothest experience overall, but hitching and stuttering still interupt the flow of the game. It's mildly off-putting, but not a major issue. This is followed by the PS4 Pro. It's nowhere near as consistent as the X build, but it's a night and day improvement over the problematic base consoles.
Both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One can see prolonged frame-rate drops in sustained combat, dropping all the way down to 10 frames per second at its absolute worst. Perhaps surprisingly, it's the PS4 that drops hardest and longest, making it noticeably the least performant version of the game. It ran so poorly that we ran through a range of checks, from rebooting the console completely to running Control on other PS4 units (the fan kicking in hard on a launch model). Nothing helped - this is how the game actually plays and it's not pretty. Xbox One S is better, there's no doubt about it, but it's still a highly unsatisfactory experience overall - a notch above PS4 in troublesome combat but still a game it's hard to recommend. The bottom line? Xbox One X delivers by far and away the best console experience on all counts, but the PS4 Pro is a decent enough runner-up.