Borderlands 2 PS Vita Performance Analysis

Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry tech wizards have published their own “face-off” analysis of the PSVita port of Borderlands 2 but unfortunately they don’t seem to have a lot of good things to say about it. They commend the ambition, if nothing else:

It’s clear some developers are out for a challenge, and Iron Galaxy Studios has seemingly gone for the mission impossible with Borderlands 2 on Vita. The bedrock of any shooter should be an even and dependable frame-rate, but this port sacrifices so much in the visual stakes and earns too little back in terms of performance. Downgrades in everything from shadows, effects, textures and even its co-op player count are unfortunate, but stand for nothing when a game still runs in the 10-20fps range – with stuttering dragging it down further.

All of which is a shame, because from the outset there was promise in this release. The world’s scale and enemy count are upheld from the PS3 and 360 versions, and the presentation is a clean match for the Vita screen’s native resolution. Perhaps we could see a resolution downscale to increase performance, but it’s difficult to guess just how much of a frame-rate uplift we’d see. Certainly, after discussion with developers on the matter, CPU bottleneck is just as much of an issue for frame-rates – if not more so – than the GPU on Vita, and that’s something that wouldn’t be so easy to address.

In its current form then, this Vita edition is difficult to recommend. Despite being one of the most technically ambitious ports for the system, it remains just that – a port, and one which does not seem to be the best possible hit for the Vita architecture.