Been playing this game on PS2 and emulator just as much as each other since on the latter, it’s well optimised for decent rigs such as mine. But when playing it on PCSX2, I’ve noticed that certain parts/scenarios will run smooth like butter, while they’ll slow down when running it on PS2, whether it be because there’s too much stuff on the screen or it just happens for no apparent reason.

It’s like the slowdown this game will often display sometimes seems to exist nowhere else besides when playing it on real hardware.

Granted, I have been learning the ins and outs of this game mainly for fun, but I’m a little bit concerned that this might create some sort of unfair advantage over real hardware.

I'm not a fan of banning emus personally, if the emu has some major advantages/disadvantages over the actual hardware I'd be more likely to simply make them separate categories. This is interesting because the last time I tried to emulate this game it was slow as hell basically everywhere.

I suppose those people were just that determined to optimise a game that’s really just average at best, huh? Still, pretty interesting to hear how different emulating this game has been on both sides.

Anyway, even when I was playing the game on PCSX2 and recording with OBS at the same time, the game was always running at a constant 60fps for me with no visual or game-breaking bugs/glitches.

But just to prove my point about the slowdown, I’ve decided to compile footage of Missions 2-1, 2-3, 4-3 and 8-1 being played both on emulator and console.

And as for the rig I’ve been using, well:

PCSX2 Settings:
Aspect Ratio: Standard (4:3)
Renderer: Direct3D11 (Hardware)
Interlacing: Auto
Texture Filtering: Bilinear (PS2)
Internal Resolution: 3x Native
Anisotropic Filtering: Off
CRC Hack Level: Full (Safest)

PC Specs:
CPU: AMD FX-6300 Six-Core Processor @ 3.50 GHz
GPU: Radeon RX 460
Ram: 16GB
OS: Windows 10 Home

I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a “beast”. As I’ve said, it’s just decent.