Summary
ThePlayStation 5Pro has been officially announced, promising the high frame rates players have become accustomed to with the high-fidelity graphics they desire. While there are games yet to be released that will make the most of the machine’s horsepower, a handful of experiences from the past could also be greatly improved.
There are many titles on the PS5 that, for one reason or another, simply don’t align with gamers’ current expectations. This could be due to an uneven frame rate, poor resolution, or other factors. These ten games would be greatly helped by a PS5 Pro patch, transforming them into their best possible iteration and future-proofing them for later console generations.
Plenty of games on the PS5 run and look phenomenal, and we’d love to see their technical wizardry pushed even further with the PS5 Pro. However, this list was constructed with games that struggle on current hardware in mind, focusing on titles that could see substantial playability or visual enhancements rather than choosing the most impressive games and pondering how they could be made even more stunning.
Traveller’s Tales games are a part of millions of childhoods, but no brand under its umbrella carries as much weight as Lego Star Wars. When the first entry was released in 2005, it became an instant classic, and 2022’s The Skywalker Saga was met with a similar level of commercial and critical success.
Much was made of TT Games’s new engine before launch, and The Skywalker Saga boasts an impressive level of detail when recreating the look of Lego’s iconic building blocks. However, some visual concessions clearly had to be made, resulting in a blurry image when playing at 60 frames per second. The PS5 Pro’s added power could help increase the pixel count, resulting in a presentation that better honors the films TT sought to recreate.
The Final Fantasy series has always had a history of pushing console hardware to the limit, showing off what the machines are capable of in the hands of industry-leading designers and artists. With that in mind, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is a bit of a step back, featuring resolutions that wouldn’t seem out of place in the mid-2000s.
While the game is developed by Team Ninja instead of Square Enix proper, it’s still hard not to be confused by the on-screen image quality. Jack’s journey appears noticeably pixelated, and at times struggles to maintain a consistent frame rate. The superior internals of the Pro console could significantly improve the graphics and performance, cementing Stranger of Paradise as a worthy tribute to the broader Final Fantasy series.
A huge part of the marketing for Massive’s Star Wars Outlaws was that it would be the first ever open-world game set in the galaxy far, far away. The developers succeeded in many areas, namely bringing the atmosphere of the iconic franchise to life, but other aspects suffered, such as the performance mode.
In order to achieve 60 frames per second on base hardware, the resolution of the game had to be tuned significantly, sometimes hovering around 720p. Upscaling does its best to make the image more palatable, but it simply introduced more visual noise and dithering. PS5 Pro would boost the native resolution, helping Outlaws better reflect the beauty of the game’s varied environments.
Team Ninja returned to its Japanese roots in 2024 with Rise of the Ronin, a fictionalized depiction of the Bakumatsu period. While the game has focused on an interesting time in the country’s history, fans were more concerned with its graphics, claiming it looked like a lost PS3 game.
Much of this criticism was levied at texture quality and lighting, which felt many years behind current industry standards and even Team Ninja’s previous titles. A prospective PS5 Pro patch has the opportunity to upgrade the original release’s shortcomings and potentially cause the public to reevaluate Rise of the Ronin on the merits of its gameplay.
While it was met with skepticism before launch due to the reception of Marvel’s Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy surprised gaming audiences,offering a compelling single-player narrativethat delved into the character of Peter Quill. Developer Eidos Montreal was praised for its efforts and nominated for a handful of Game Awards, but there are a few areas where the game can still be improved.
Performance mode in Guardians comes at a very steep cost, allowing for 60 frames per second at a mere 1080p. This choice to cap resolution didn’t lock the frame rate either, with some particularly busy moments causing noticeable slowdown. If these problems were ironed out, Eidos would have a game worthy of standing side-by-side with the Guardians cinematic outings.
Sonic Frontiers launched with one of the most ambitious pitches in series history: what if the Blue Blur was set loose in an open world? It was an enticing prospect for longtime fans, but the specter of Sonic Team’s previous technical failures loomed large.
These fears turned out to be (partially) correct. Although the game ran at a satisfactory level, there were other technical complications; Frontiers suffers from extremely noticeable pop-in, a problem only compounded by the title character’s extreme speed. Put plainly, base PS5 consoles can’t keep up with the demands of the game’s design. The draw distance and resolution can be radically improved by a more powerful machine, enhancing the visibility of the world and, in turn, creating a more playable end product.
For as long as he’s been in the public eye, James Cameron’s films have always focused on pushing the technical envelope. He took perhaps his biggest leap ever with 2009’s Avatar, which helped popularize the use of performance capture and introduced the world to the Na’vi. In 2023, Ubisoft Massive delivered Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora,the first canon gameset on the titular alien planet.
It makes sense that a game inspired by one of Cameron’s greatest technological feats would itself be a graphical powerhouse, and Frontiers of Pandora delivers. In fact, its world is so dense with foliage and populated with detail that sometimes the PS5 can struggle to keep up, with the frame rate taking significant dips. The additional heft of a Pro console could negate these stutters, boasting performance that Avatar’s creators would be proud of.
Final Fantasy returned for its sixteenth mainline entry in 2023, introducing gamers to Valisthea and its complex world of kingdoms and politics. Throughout a multi-year marketing campaign, Square Enixshowed off 16’s massive summon battles, gameplay sections where players would take control of the iconic beasts as they do battle on a never-before-seen scale.
Creative Studio 3 should be applauded for its ambition, but set pieces that large will usually impact the game’s technical profile, and this was certainly the case in Final Fantasy 16. The frame rate attempts to stay around 60, but there’s often too much happening on screen, leading to frequent dips. On top of this, the dynamic resolution will drop shockingly low to facilitate the fast-paced combat, but at a certain point, it just becomes an unintelligible sea of visual noise. Final Fantasy 16 could really benefit from having more hardware power to work with, and that’s just what the PS5 Pro offers.
Respawn Entertainment is chock-full of first-person shooter talent, so the company surprised the world when it announced it would be developing a third-person action game set in the Star Wars universe. Jedi: Fallen Order turned out to be a great success, and years later, the sequel Jedi: Survivor was released. Unfortunately, Survivor is marred by pretty significant technical issues.
Cal Kestis’s second adventure can appear quite pixelated as its dynamic resolution solution adjusts frequently to support the game’s frame rate. Unfortunately, it seems that isn’t enough in some scenarios, causing stuttering in key moments. The result is a game that, at times, is both visually murky and hard to play due to performance woes. PS5 Pro support may be the key to unlocking Survivor’s potential and solidifying Cal’s story as one of the best in the new Disney era.
Hidetaka Miyazaki was already a legend in the games industry for pioneering the Soulsborne genre, but he may have released his magnum opus in 2022 with Elden Ring. It captured the attention of gamers the world over with its layered world design, hidden lore, and tough challenge, ultimately earning it Game of the Year at that year’s Game Awards. With that being said, there are areas where Elden Ring can be improved.
From Software hascreated an amazing environment to explore, but that obviously has its drawbacks. Texture quality in the Lands Between can be spotty at times, and the game never locks to a rock-solid 60 frames. The increased technical overhead of the PS5 Pro could make these issues a thing of the past, offering the best way to play one of the greatest games of all time (outside the PC).
