Classic FPS Remastered: Just Cause 2 (Patreon)

Hey - it's Rich here. Let us go back, all the way back, to March 2010 when I first received review code for Just Cause 2. Avalanche Studios delivered a pretty sensational game: an impressive open world, phenomenal physics, excellent graphics. I captured some comparison clips and performance captures on which I built the Eurogamer Face-Off article of the time, then 67.3GB of AVI files were RARed in an enormously time-consuming session (typically I'd do this overnight, or when I was going out) and then copied onto a 3.5-inch 500GB SATA HDD.

4069 days later, the hard drive was accessed again, that RAR file was decompressed, and its footage re-analysed with the latest performance tools we have. The 720p lossless video captures upscaled to 2160p for your viewing pleasure and there it is - Just Cause 2 revisited and 'remastered'. The remastering in question is a simple nearest neighbour upscale. One 720p pixel becomes a 3x3 block for a 2160p output. For my money it's the best way to preserve the original pixel structure for modern displays.

But what of the port itself? It's an interesting one. Quite a few games in the Gen 7 period saw PS3 running with v-sync fully enabled, while Xbox 360 opted for a double-buffered 30fps, dropping v-sync if performance dropped. While both games ran at native 720p, there were also AA differences: Xbox 360 retained standard MSAA while PS3 chose quincunx AA - smoother edges but more blur to detail overall. 

Performance? Well, the video is certainly a little strange here. PlayStation 3 clearly has profound struggles when it comes to the engine-driven cutscenes. It looks like double buffer v-sync, where drops to performance can see sustained dips from 30fps to 20fps to 15fps. However, in-game, thing look better. It still seems to have a performance penalty up against Xbox 360, but there's none of the intrusive screen-tearing. The Xbox seems to have a 30fps cap, while PS3 seems to have some rogue extra frames.

The sequence at 3:25 is interesting. Both systems are under load, neither can sustain 30fps, but performance is mostly ballpark. Looking at the frame-time graph you can see the strengths and weaknesses of adaptive v-sync vs full v-sync: smoother frame-times on 360, but plenty of tearing, while PS3 has regular dips as it drops frames. It stutters where the Xbox does not, but there are no screen-tearing issues.

It's been quite interesting to revisit this one - a reminder of how quite different approaches were required for console ports back in the day. As for the make-up of the video itself, I've included both the fps clips and the comparison clips, which is why you see some very short bouts of action towards the end. Back in the day, we used to daisy chain some very short comparison clips which could be stuff as simple as walking forward, or jumping into a vehicle and pressing the gas and so forth. There was some interesting performance data here too, so I included it. 

As always, I've put both upscaled 2160p and native 720p versions of the content available for download: https://www.digitalfoundry.net/2021-05-19-just-cause-2-classic-fps-remastered