Red Dead Redemption 2: does Stadia live up to its pre-launch promises?

The opportunity to take a closer look at Red Dead Redemption 2 on Stadia gives us the chance to expand on the tech review we posted earlier in the week. In our first piece, we looked at the high-end Stadia experience delivered by the controller/Chromecast Ultra bundle pack with 4K HDR 'Pro' subscription enabled. Red Dead 2 is fascinating because the nature of the experience changes very significantly if you don't have the premium sub in place. And remarkably, in some respects, it's actually an improvement.

But before we dive into the game, there are some bizarre oddities in running Stadia on my connection. I can download at 340mbps and upload at 34mbps - significantly better than the already stellar 200mbps hook-up used in Rich Leadbetter's test sessions. However, in Stadia, my connection is only rated as 'good' with a 33mbps download rate, while Rich's session was rated 'excellent'. Thankfully, I could rely on our existing Chromecast videos and bank my own 1080p captures.

And surprisingly, there is a big difference. You may think that the RDR2 experience is identical between Pro 4K and balanced 1080p modes, but that is not the case. On the former, RDR2 runs with a native resolution of 2560x1440 with frame-rate capped at 30 frames per second. In the balanced configuration, the game boots at 1080p instead, targeting 60 frames per second. There are obvious latency advantages to the higher frame-rate mode, offset by a lack of consistency in performance - and a hit to image quality. Fundamentally, not only is the game running at 1080p, it's using a lower bitrate feed too.

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