Previously promised by Konami back in early May, a new patch for all PlayStation 3 versions of Zone of the Enders HD Collection has finally hit the PlayStation Network.
This 594mb patch aims to alleviate a number of issues involving slowdown, particularly areas in the second Zone of the Enders title featuring high densities particle effects such as during fights with Anubis or levels in snowy locales.
A regular over on NeoGAF forums posted a quick synopsis that covers most of the Zone of the Enders patch’s effects:
Without sitting down and doing a full analysis, here is what I’ve noticed in ZOE2 (haven’t tried the original yet)
1) Framerate now operates at a stable 60 fps making it much smoother than the non-patched version as well as the PS2 original. Only in the most extreme circumstances does the framerate dip and those dips are extremely minor.
2) Post processing anti-aliasing appears to have been added resulting in extremely crisp and clean image quality. The original release did not use any sort of anti-aliasing.
3) Particles effects are now rendered at full resolution. The PS2 original used low resolution particle effects in order to maintain decent performance. I cannot actually recall if this was also true of the initial HD release but I can confirm that particles are rendered at a much higher quality now.
Those are the primary changes and they completely transform the game. The entire snow sequence operates at 60 fps a good 99% of the time providing a faster, smoother experience than even the original release. It feels remarkably good.
I’m also interested in examining the textures as the ship interior appears to be extremely clean and sharp in a way that I would not have expected from PS2.