Steam reviewers lambasted Forspoken for looking worse than its trailers-and worse than contemporary open world games-while being basically as demanding as Cyberpunk 2077.A game isn't unoptimized just because you can't set everything to Ultra, which we typically could do during the PS4 generation, from 2013 to 2020.īut I still don't think that's the root of most of today's criticized ports: "Optimization" is a tricky word that Durante wrote about in 2016, because it can often be player shorthand for "this game doesn't run well on my PC." With a new generation of consoles on the field, we might need to adjust some of our expectations of how demanding a PC game should be. Either you've spent loads of cash and expect a game to run like a dream with all the bells and whistles, or you're on weaker hardware that suffers mightily when a port isn't as optimized as it could be. With the prices of graphics cards today, no wonder we're looking at PC ports with a more critical eye. You could've easily built an entire 2080 gaming rig and still had some of that difference left over. The Nvidia RTX 4080 costs $1200-$500 more than the GTX 2080 cost five years ago. Ultra-enthusiast hardware pricing is currently strangling PC gaming. "What I want to see from PC gaming hardware most of all this year is some semblance of value," our hardware editor Dave James wrote in January. But they still often bungle some of the details, and gone are the days where we were thankful to have any PC port that wasn't a flaming dumpster fire.Īlso gone are the days where better-than-console performance was still reasonably affordable. And those console ports are arriving in numbers we couldn't have dreamed of a decade ago, which is great. Compared to eight years ago, I think it's fair to say that many console ports are arriving with more graphics options and fewer locked framerates. Many of his points expand on the ones Durante laid out in 2014. "I was almost broken as a reviewer for Digital Foundry ," Alex Battaglia said in a video about the ways developers can avoid repeating last year's crop of "lousy" PC ports in 2023. With the prices of graphics cards today, no wonder we're looking at PC ports with a more critical eye these days Meanwhile the strides publishers like Microsoft and Ubisoft have made to include important accessibility options in their games should become universal (though there's still much room for improvement). In 2014 we published an article by Dark Souls modder Durante titled The features PC gamers want, which outlined essential elements like rebindable keys, unlocked framerate and resolution support and other important features like adjustable FOV and aspect ratio and moddability. Some major publishers sure don't seem to be learning, though.īuilding a feature-rich, well-optimized PC game is obviously a huge job, but the guidance on what a PC version should include is easier to find than ever before. And "same as it ever was" is a poor excuse-it's reasonable to hope that past mistakes won't be repeated, like, forever. But we've raised our standards after years of quality ports like Grand Theft Auto 5, the Tomb Raider trilogy and Days Gone. We've written about some of the worst ports ever, from 1993's DOS Street Fighter 2 to 2015's Arkham Knight. Of course there have been bad PC ports as long as there have been PCs. It's the year 2023! If we can't have flying cars, surely at least we can have PC games that don't stutter every 30 seconds. There's a feeling in the air right now that game studios are turning in shoddy PC ports, and that PC performance in general is getting worse. It reminds me of Final Fantasy 7 Remake's " disappointing, barebones port" from late 2021, and Elden Ring's stuttery PC performance, which Digital Foundry said " simply isn't good enough." It reminds me of when Nier: Automata was review bombed because Square Enix left it unpatched for four years, then released a better version on the Microsoft store (a fix finally arrived on Steam months later). The instant cratering of Wild Hearts' user reviews reminds me of what happened to Warhammer 40K: Darktide in December (currently mixed, with 30,000 negative reviews). One awarded it the prestigious Michelangelo trophy. Five people reacted with a slow clap emoji. "The price is higher than the FPS you will be able to pull in this game," the review reads. The top-voted Steam review for monster battler Wild Hearts, when it released in February, was a thumbs down: one of approximately 1,700 negative reviews posted in Wild Hearts' first 24 hours on the store, earning it a "mostly negative" rating.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |