Tell me about bad PC ports

[It's Not Lupus]

I've been slowly clearing out my Steam backlog. Some games I only play for a few minutes.

One of the worst IMO is Dark Souls. An ugly 2011 game with no graphics options. Framerate is locked at a measly 30FPS. And GFWL which I forgot existed since I haven't played anything in a while. It's almost OK that I bought this on sale.

I played a bit of Metro 2033. 45 degree FOV on the PC; what were they thinking. I tried editing the config file but it didn't seem to stick and then I didn't care anymore.

In GTA4, I couldn't get past the helicopter scene in the end without lowering my FPS.

In BioShock 1 and 2, there was some weird mouse sensitivity or acceleration issues.

What games have you had bad experiences with?

 

[linthat22]

Witcher 2 for me.

Loved the way the first Witcher game controlled, but it's like they overhauled every aspect of it for the sequel where a controller would be more useful. That made every aspect of that game a chore to play. I ended up not playing it anymore once I got past the dragon in the beginning.

*edit* yes, it's not a port, but the way the controls were in that game, it might as well have been.

 

[BSim500]

What games have you had bad experiences with?

Lots. I didn't think Bioshock (original) was too bad (it was Bioshock Infinite that needed the .ini tweak though a later patch adjusted the default scale somewhat). Really bad ports:-

Deus Ex 2 (Invisible War) & Thief 3 (Deadly Shadow) - Basically, they used the same engine, and had to squeeze everything inside the original XBox's 64MB memory limit. End result = almost all large sprawling levels from the originals had to be nerfed down in size by 80%. Hud was giant sized "designed for 10ft" with no attempt at 2ft PC scaling (which took modders less than a week). Pretty much everything that worked in the original games was stripped out or dumbed down due to the Xbox's limitations.

Dragon Age 2 - Again, virtually everything that "made" the original was dumbed down or stripped out.

Oblivion & Fallout 3 - Same again - they both use the same engine, but modders basically had to finish off the UI for the developers (DarnifiedUI) to make the games actually playable from 2ft away on a PC without feeling the urge to lean back in your chair to read text or see more than 6 inventory objects at once.

Skyrim - Same again - How can people play this without SkyUI? It's like typing a word document using size 28 font for the whole body text and not just the headings.

Watch Dogs - Pretty much everything. GFX dumbed down deliberately for "parity" with consoles, laggy input, inconsistent mouse acceleration from one menu to another (phone menu is a "simulated analog stick"), texture pop-in, one slot autosave-only save-game corruption, etc.

Add on pretty much every other generic FPS which "ticks the consolitis boxes" of:-

- No attempt at HUD object scaling for 10ft Console vs 2ft PC differing view distances
- 2-3 weapon limit & consolized weapon selection wheel (because controllers have no F1-F12 hotkeys)
- No redefinable keys (sheer laziness).
- One-slot checkpoint-only save system (ie, no manual / quick saves leaving it prone to save-game corruption).
- Laggy, sluggish or inconsistent input (due to using a "controller translator" for keyb / mouse)
- Quick Time Events (because nothing screams "lack of creativity" like a game of "simon says").
- 30fps locked games (because "next gen" is all about pretty slideshows)
- Time delayed "exclusives"
- Random / sporadic non-performance related stutter due to the way games engines "stream" data like a console.
- Sequels to PC only games which remove / dumb down inventory management (because you need a mouse)
- Games with broken VSync / triple buffering
- Contextual action (due to lack of controller buttons for separate crouch / jump / sprint / sneak controls)

And there are sadly simply too many games with one or more of those to list...

 

[SPBHM]

AC2 was pretty bad, they didn't bother at all with the mouse and keyboard experience

 

[Borealis7]

in my opinion...any modern FPS game. but it's a prejudice, i don't play FPSs except Borderlands.

oh oh and PS/2 emulated games on the PC - the developer did absolutely zero work to get them to run on my PC

 

[Maximilian]

Parallel ports were pretty crap, hugeass cable just for a printer :|

 

[futurefields]

AC2 was pretty bad, they didn't bother at all with the mouse and keyboard experience

and the LOD is set so poor that you literally watch the city draw itself as you free run around. "oh look at that empty courtyard" *suddenly 50 NPC's pop up*

 

[Fire&Blood]

Worst PC port ever: Red Dead Redemption

 

[runzwithsizorz]

Dead Space No keyboard re map POV
TW2 Limited keyboard re map, QTE However, love the series, so will slog through the imperfections Not a port, by the way
POP Warrior Within Horrible camera angles, gave up playineg
As for TES games, no problems because of the MODS IMO Half the fun of these games is modding them first!
Agree with most everything BSim500 said except for TES games

The Wife

 

[MrPickins]

(it was Bioshock Infinite that needed the .ini tweak though a later patch adjusted the default scale somewhat).

Out of curiosity, what was tweaked? FoV?

Parallel ports were pretty crap, hugeass cable just for a printer :|

I'll admit, I loled.

 

[BSim500]

Out of curiosity, what was tweaked? FoV?

For Bioshock Infinite, the ini tweak involved skipping annoying intro movies, adjusting mouse sensitivity (both MinMouseLookSensitivity & MaxMouseLookSensitivity in XUserOptions.ini (the lower end was set too high at default)) and FOV (MaxUserFOVOffsetPercent - default was "+15%", ie, you could only increase FOV by 15% over default (70 + 15% = max in-game slider FOV of 80.5 degrees), so increase it to 30 to allow a much greater range up to 90 degrees / 50 for 105 degrees, etc)).

Also one of the later official patch versions (mostly) cured the "streaming stutter bug" where BI would stutter regardless of your hardware upon reaching certain "stream points". (Deus Ex Human Revolution suffered from the same thing until that was patched out.) It was the non-performance related stutter issue I mentioned earlier where in some games, you'd get random stutter even with CPU & GPU usage well below 50%. The bottleneck wasn't the CPU, GPU or HDD / SSD, it was the way the engine "streams" in data at pre-determined intervals almost like a console reading "live" off of an optical disc whilst playing.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Titanfall is one freaking pos,fun game but this game runs miles worst on my gtx650 then BF4. All low minimum settings on both games at 768p and Titanfall can drop into the 40s while BF4 may drop below 60....Titanfall is unplayable while BF4 runs like a dream.

Titanfall also requires a insane amount of vramfor its craptastic textures,it's gonna be fun when i get my gtx970 and see how pitiful they look on insane.....or how much vram is needed.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

One of the worst IMO is Dark Souls. An ugly 2011 game with no graphics options. Framerate is locked at a measly 30FPS. And GFWL which I forgot existed since I haven't played anything in a while. It's almost OK that I bought this on sale.

I don't actually have Dark Souls, but I remember that a guy on NeoGAF fixed the graphics so it actually used high resolution textures correctly. You might give that a try if you're still interested in playing the game. You can find out more here.

 

[futurefields]

Saints Row 2

sucks because its a really fun sandbox from what i hear, very much in the vein of GTA San Andreas but unfortunately the port is so bad i wont waste my time on PC.

 

[futurefields]

Mass Effect series should have been handled far differently on PC as well.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Saints Row 2

sucks because its a really fun sandbox from what i hear, very much in the vein of GTA San Andreas but unfortunately the port is so bad i wont waste my time on PC.

You mean 3 and 4? They are great.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but Dead Island was supposed to be an amazing PC game (kinda is), but the whole UI was dumbed down and you're actually unable to get an achievement if you don't use a controller.

 

[Bateluer]

Mass Effect series should have been handled far differently on PC as well.

I remember one of the feature points of Mass Effect 1 for the PC was its 'improved inventory system'. Never played the X360 version, but if ME1 PC improved it, I can only assume the X360 version's inventory system caused the game to crash and the console to melt.

Been replaying the ME Trilogy though, except for the ending in ME3, its one of the best trilogies ever made. Wish ME1 had better mod support though. For Unreal Engine based games, texture mods seem to be a crapshoot to get installed. And ME1 looks really rough compared to 2 and 3.

Have to see what EA does with ME4 and Frostbite 3.


Edit - Witcher 2 being a port? Eh? TW2 is pure bred PC all the way.

 

[futurefields]

You mean 3 and 4? They are great.

What? No. I meant what I wrote.

Saints Row 2. Thats the bad port.

Saints Row 3 and 4 are fine ports. You do know this thread is for bad ports right? Saints Row 2 is the bad one. Great game though, arguably better than 3 and 4.

 

[futurefields]

I remember one of the feature points of Mass Effect 1 for the PC was its 'improved inventory system'. Never played the X360 version, but if ME1 PC improved it, I can only assume the X360 version's inventory system caused the game to crash and the console to melt.

Been replaying the ME Trilogy though, except for the ending in ME3, its one of the best trilogies ever made. Wish ME1 had better mod support though. For Unreal Engine based games, texture mods seem to be a crapshoot to get installed. And ME1 looks really rough compared to 2 and 3.

Have to see what EA does with ME4 and Frostbite 3.


Edit - Witcher 2 being a port? Eh? TW2 is pure bred PC all the way.

the controls on Mass Effect 2 and 3 are awful. They made the spacebar do everything and you cant rebind it in the game. I think there are some workarounds mods or something you can use but I hate messing with mods. And yes the textures are awful, for such a great set of games, they should have used better textures because future gamers arent gonna want to play these games with their 720p textures when everyone is running 4k this and that...

 

[Zenoth]

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - Ultimate Sith Edition

Why...

 

[Bateluer]

the controls on Mass Effect 2 and 3 are awful. They made the spacebar do everything and you cant rebind it in the game.

Surprisingly, after playing ME2 and 3 . . . ME1's controls feel clunky as all hell.

I think there are some workarounds mods or something you can use but I hate messing with mods. And yes the textures are awful, for such a great set of games, they should have used better textures because future gamers arent gonna want to play these games with their 720p textures when everyone is running 4k this and that...

There are texture mods for Mass Effect, but their installation is a pita. I skimmed a guide or two and decided it wasn't worth it.

Heh, perhaps EA should make a Mass Effect HD Trilogy pack.

 

[Hinda65]

I don't actually have Dark Souls, but I remember that a guy on NeoGAF fixed the graphics so it actually used high resolution textures correctly. You might give that a try if you're still interested in playing the game. You can find out more here.

yes indeed. Dsfix and the mouse fix work great...took me about about 1/2hr to get everything working but it's been well worth it....I have the res set @ 1440 and have been using mouse and keyboard with out any problems. I'm so glad I finally started playing this, steep learning curve but the gameplay is nail biting fun.

 

[darkewaffle]

the controls on Mass Effect 2 and 3 are awful. They made the spacebar do everything and you cant rebind it in the game. I think there are some workarounds mods or something you can use but I hate messing with mods. And yes the textures are awful, for such a great set of games, they should have used better textures because future gamers arent gonna want to play these games with their 720p textures when everyone is running 4k this and that...

The controls throughout the series are consistently crappy. The only thing 1 had going for it was independent weapon switch buttons, 2 and 3 were at least slightly slicker implementations of the 'cover' system but integrating actions all into one button a la Ocarina of Time made it very easy for you to end up doing something you didn't want to (hurdle instead of cover particularly).

That said I doubt texture resolution is going to be anyone's reason for playing or not replaying a game lol. Eventually how games like Mass Effect look will be "retro" and cool because of it

 

[PowerYoga]

I thought BL1 was pretty bad. The inventory was horrible.