‘Halo 5: Guardians’ maintains 60fps gameplay, technical analysis still yields some minor gameplay issues

“Halo 5: Guardians” by 343 Industries is putting a lot of focus on the game’s frame rate. Apparently, the game developer has strived to maintain a stable frame rate of 60 frames per second throughout the game.

The Xbox One exclusive shooter uses a dynamic scaling technology to achieve full high-definition (1080p) in certain scenarios. Consistent framerates in the game translate to fluid graphics, making “Halo 5: Guardians” a treat to play. This dynamic scaling also serves the purpose of keeping the framerate locked to 60fps, according to a technical analysis conducted by Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry.

"It's clear that hitting 1080p while maintaining 60fps would not have been possible in “Halo 5” but rather than simply opting to render at a low resolution across the board, 343 has implemented one of the most impressive dynamic resolution scaling systems we've seen to date," stated Digital Foundry.

Resolution values in the game constantly keep changing independently to maximise performance through the game’s varying environment. With uncommon resolutions like 1152 x 810 or 1536 x 1080, all created for the purpose of providing a smooth performance, it’s amazing how “Halo 5: Guardians” achieves a consistent fps throughout the game.

High quality shaders combined with depth of field and animations adds a visually stunning appeal to the game. The videos run at 30 frames per second. In a recent review by The Verge, “Halo 5” seems to have outperformed previous releases by Bungie both in terms of storyline and gameplay. It makes changes that complement the game and is a worthy successor to the previous titles.

The game’s storytelling has always been an integral part of “Halo.” According to EuroGamer, other than the intro and outro sequences being pre-rendered videos, everything else is rendered in real-time. Game load times for both the single-player and multiplayer have been decreased substantially. From the audio perspective, the game sports a 7.1 mix and careful attention has been given to even the most subtle details.

While there has been improvements in some aspects, this comes with many compromises. One such aspect is the AI. Compared to Bungie’s "Halo" work, the new game's AI still struggles finding its way especially in a Warthog. By focusing completely on performance, the game uses low quality models from a distance and only changes to high quality models when the player approaches close. Also, the game relies heavily on pre-calculated lighting and since this requires constant adjustments, it makes the game look jagged and unstable.

“Halo 5: Guardians” seems to be more a release that focuses on performance and therefore has made necessary amendments needed to achieve the objective. The game releases on Oct. 27, exclusively on the Xbox One.