In terms of last-gen comparisons on a big open world game, the takeaway is that when docked, Switch has GPU horsepower to spare, but developers need to be creative on the handheld side of things - aspects that would likely translate to a prospective GTA port too. However, the game will again scale down to 75 per cent of this on the horizontal axis - to 960x720 - when it needs to. You get a native 1280x720 on Switch to match its screen, giving it the same resolution as a PS3. Interestingly, Switch's portable mode uses a similar technique. Still, even at 1440x1080, Switch is still resolving far more detail than PS3's native 1280x720. In other words, the game lowers its resolution on the horizontal axis alone, and faced with a busy street, it drops to 75 per cent of the full pixel-count overall.

However, a dynamic resolution technique is in play, meaning Switch scales the pixel output based on rendering load - and at stress points that means a low point of 1440x1080. Surprisingly, this also renders at 1920x1080 when connected to a TV via docking - much like the base PS4 release, in fact. On Switch, you get a fully playable version of LA Noire, with a large, detailed world to explore - unlike anything we've seen before on a handheld. All this meant a heavy reliance on the machine's unique synergistic processing units - SPUs - and the end result is that the Switch version, reliant on just three available ARM CPU cores operating at 1GHz, can suffer from some obvious drawbacks.īut let's start with the good news. It was quite a sight: PS3 managed to run a massive open-world built around an impressive facsimile of Los Angeles, with fully functioning day-night cycles, weather, physics, wandering NPCs and traffic systems. Could the Grand Theft Auto games be in development for Switch? Is it even possible to successfully port those titles? The LA Noire conversion doesn't have all the answers, but it convincingly reveals some of the challenges any prospective GTA conversion might face.Īs things stand, the original LA Noire was built on a custom engine designed with PlayStation 3's Cell processor in mind, and this version was the preferred console edition back in the day. It's also Rockstar's debut title for the console, and we can only wonder what else the publisher has cooking for the system. The LA Noire remaster is available on PS4, Xbox One and their 4K mid-gen refresh equivalents, but the real story here is the Switch port and the fact that it's the first time we've seen an open word game of this type running on Nintendo's hybrid system.

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