Sony Limits Player Experience of First 8K PS5 Game

The Touryst… Why did this have to be the first 8K game? Like, I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine serviceable game, but… ‘Touryst’? Like, that’s the most interesting way you could think of to spell it? Not ‘Touriste’ or ‘tuerist’? Or heck, maybe ‘Toryist’ would fit if the game wanted to have some Michael Moore inspired political commentary.

Back on track: Touryst is the first 8K game on consoles to run at 60FPS (that’s frames-per-second. Not to be confused with the other kind of FPS, we don’t measure games in shooters, contrary to popular belief). The action-adventure puzzle game was developed and published by Shin’en Multimedia, released a couple years ago on Nintendo Switch.

Despite the new Playstation version having 8K resolution, Sony’s Playstation 5 currently reduces the image quality to allow for play, so the imagery of the game comes out in 4K resolution. In lay terms, this is to say: The super pretty-looking ultra-expensive new console makes the visuals of a game come out less pretty, but still reasonably pretty.

The PS5 has the HDMI 2.1 hardware needed to output 8K – 60fps video imagery but, for now, Sony seems to be locking that feature off. Makes you wonder why Sony’s restricting it for the time being. Maybe there’s some kind of bug, or some fine-tuning in other areas like audio being needed to match up with the visuals. Alternatively, maybe a charismatic billionaire tech tycoon is putting the console on training wheels mode because the he doesn’t want the cool features getting in the way of someone’s personal life… Nah, I’m messing with ya (but drop a comment if you understood that reference).

Either way, I’m sure that the PS5 will have its 8K resolution pop back on sometime in the near-future, hope everyone who’s into that has a gay ol time. That said, I’d like to take this moment as an opportunity say graphics aren’t always everything. I mean, look at me. I’m not ugly, I just sacrifice graphics for better performance if you know what I mean- Jokes aside, while it’s easy to say these days in an era where pretty-looking games are fairly easy to come by, for real, graphics aren’t everything. Being a good-looking game isn’t always a matter of how realistic it is, you can also look towards games with stylised art styles. Persona 5 and Royal are essentially ‘What if anime and western comics had a baby that was delivered by the local weed-dealing graffiti artist’ style-wise. Greak goes for a more simplistic storybook style that communicates to your lizard-brains that the story is going to be reminiscent of traditional good-vs-evil narratives, what with the player being a literal dim light in contrast to the more intricately designed but darker-looking enemies. Greak is available on PS5, Xbox and Nintendo Switch if you’re interested. And heck, Broforce, a 2D 8bit shooter, despite looking like it could’ve been made in the late 80s, still has an easy time communicating in visual language what different parts of the environment are what. Plus the older-looking style ties into the game’s popcorn-addled loving homage to 80s and 90s action flick cheese, and not of the cheddar variety.