Question What ported games have been your favorites? Which fell short?

[McStabStab]

Game ports have had a shaky history. I feel like we all can recall ports that missed the mark, and others that seemed as if they were designed for PC in the first place. Here's a couple of examples:

Death Stranding ported for PC seemed like it should have been on PC the entire time. A great port that by the time it reached our platform was practically flawless.

The flip side? Red Dead Redemption 2. I played through the first half of the game trying to ignore and avoid bugs. The worst of which was a bugged aspect ratio that stretched everything but the UI. It completely removed the immersion. I still need to replay it to experience it the way it was meant to be played.

Which are your favorites, and which were you excited about but missed the mark?

 

[ZedClampet]

We had good luck with the Halo games, and God of War was an excellent port. On the downside, I was really disappointed that the Yakuza games didn't bother putting in proper mouse/keyboard support. They probably spent more time on the splash screen that said, "Real yakuza use controllers" than they did working on the keyboard layout.

 

[Zloth]

They probably spent more time on the splash screen that said, "Real yakuza use controllers" than they did working on the keyboard layout.

I played 0, 1, and 2 with mouse/keyboard just fine. Real Yakuza are nasty gangsters, why would you trust their opinions on game input methods??

It's often hard to tell if a game is a port or if it was originally made with PC mind. I guess you can look to see if a third party did the conversion - it should be somewhere in the credits.

Worst: Saints Row 2. It was one of those ports where your CPU has to be going at a certain speed for the game to work correctly! The massive Gentlemen of the Row mod fixed that, along with many other things, or the game would be unplayable on most PCs today.

Worst but it was largely my fault: Last Remnant. There's an option to make it display prompts with mouse/keyboard that I completely missed. I didn't figure it out until very late in my first play-through or somewhere in my second. (eye roll)

Best: the Tomb Raider rebooted games. Quite a few games do ports well enough to seem like native games, but Nixxies went above and beyond that by making the games work extremely well with 3D Vision, too. Hopefully that will translate to a game that works better than most with VR, too.

 

[Johnway]

Christ the console ports of the early 00s were horror shows. MGS2 in particular was pretty dire. resident evil 4's original PC release was dreadful with no optimization or consideration of PCs KB+M and had to use joypad. it was lazy and embarrassing.

Dark souls in particular gets an honorable mention. if i recall namco couldn't get the game running above 30 frames upon release and said it was impossible. The modding community humiliates multimillion dollar company by releasing a fix in a matter of weeks. i might be wrong, but i'm pretty sure it was Dark souls.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I'm not sure if I count Microsoft games as ports these days. Horizon Zero Dawn was definitely a port, though, and I thought it was great on the PC.

 

[DXCHASE]

The flip side? Red Dead Redemption 2. I played through the first half of the game trying to ignore and avoid bugs. The worst of which was a bugged aspect ratio that stretched everything but the UI. It completely removed the immersion. I still need to replay it to experience it the way it was meant to be played.

Huh, had absolutely no problems running it and actually thought it was a great port. I did play it well after its release though.

 

[McStabStab]

Huh, had absolutely no problems running it and actually thought it was a great port. I did play it well after its release though.

After several months they finally came out with a fix for the aspect ratio and the bugs have largely been squashed, it was just early on that it was in bad shape.

I'm not sure if I count Microsoft games as ports these days. Horizon Zero Dawn was definitely a port, though, and I thought it was great on the PC.

Playing Horizon Zero Dawn now and it seems to run great.

 

[Sarafan]

Dark souls in particular gets an honorable mention. if i recall namco couldn't get the game running above 30 frames upon release and said it was impossible. The modding community humiliates multimillion dollar company by releasing a fix in a matter of weeks. i might be wrong, but i'm pretty sure it was Dark souls.

The problem with Dark Souls 1 was that From Software didn't have too much experience with modern PC games. The port was released at the request of gamers and the lack of experience made it bad. 30 fps was only one problem. More serious was the fact that the game didn't render properly anything that was above 720p. It only upscaled the image, so the graphics quality was very bad. And of course there were problems with mouse and keyboard controls. The game was literally unplayable without a gamepad.

 

[Zloth]

Dead or Alive 5 did a notably bad job, too. First, if the game saw anything it thought MIGHT be a controller, it would force you to use a controller. Second, it apparently used some sort of old API to deal with controllers. Many controllers wouldn't work at all, or wouldn't work without modifications to the game!

It was clear the game was going to be in trouble. When it was first put on Steam, the system requirements claimed it needed Windows 7 Professional to run!

 

[Pifanjr]

The problem with Dark Souls 1 was that From Software didn't have too much experience with modern PC games. The port was released at the request of gamers and the lack of experience made it bad. 30 fps was only one problem. More serious was the fact that the game didn't render properly anything that was above 720p. It only upscaled the image, so the graphics quality was very bad. And of course there were problems with mouse and keyboard controls. The game was literally unplayable without a gamepad.

Dark Souls is the reason I got a controller for my PC.

 

[Sarafan]

Dark Souls is the reason I got a controller for my PC.

Same here. I never used a controller on PC before playing Dark Souls. I bought it just to be able to play this game.

 

[technomadic_rony]

I think Persona 4 Golden PC port was pretty good. As for a bad pc port, I know there are many but can't really think of one atm.

 

[Zloth]

!!!! I just picked Persona 4 Golden out as a random game in another topic. Then, the next topic I read is @technomadic_rony's post!? I haven't even had breakfast yet and this day is already freaking me out!

 

[technomadic_rony]

I'm posting this from under your bed as we speak, please don't look there as I'll probably spook you more. Let me stalk you in peace XD

 

[Zloth]

Given the mess that little robot vacuum comes out with every time it ventures under there, I think I may need to call an ambulance soon!

 

[flashn00b]

These answers are gonna be biased as all heck, but having played the original Devil May Cry 4 on both the Xbox 360 and PC, I feel like DMC4's belated PC port was an excellent port and then some. Hell, I couldn't believe my eyes with how well it ran in Legendary Dark Knight mode, and I think i recall using a Radeon 4830. I don't remember what processor I used at the time, but i'm pretty sure it was a mid-range AM2+.

As for a bad port, well... I think i'll take this opportunity to mention Nippon Ichi Software's ClaDun X2, which only runs at the PSP's 480x272 resolution, which can cause some displays to have a panic attack when running on full screen, controller support was practically nonexistent, and the keyboard controls were pretty terrible, which are all pretty minor gripes compared to the long-term consequences of its failure that we're still feeling to some extent.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

These answers are gonna be biased as all heck

Any time you ask for people's favorites, it's always going to be biased.

 

[flashn00b]

Any time you ask for people's favorites, it's always going to be biased.

I was mainly saying that because there's likely a lot more in the way of noteworthy examples of a console game having an excellent PC port.

 

[Johnway]

Another awful port: Sainst row 2. it was an absolute crash fest and ran at 30fps if i recall. had to install mods to get it to work. i believe it was called gentleman of the row mod. but even that was not enough to stop the constant crashing of the game.

GTA4 on the pc wasn't too bad. but there was a crippling bug on the last mission when you had to climb into the helicopter. you just couldn't. So i was forced to take the other ending instead. A bit disappointing but bittersweet all the same.

ninja blade. Game was unplayable if you didn't lock the frame rate. The button mashing sections didn't work on higher FPS.

If i can think of any more awful ports i'll let you guys know...

 

[Zloth]

Another awful port: Sainst row 2. it was an absolute crash fest and ran at 30fps if i recall. had to install mods to get it to work. i believe it was called gentleman of the row mod. but even that was not enough to stop the constant crashing of the game.

You must have played early? Gentlemen of the Row fixed the game up nicely for me. I don't think I had many (if any) crashes. I did get myself good and a few times, though...

 

[Johnway]

You must have played early? Gentlemen of the Row fixed the game up nicely for me. I don't think I had many (if any) crashes. I did get myself good and a few times, though...

Its possible. The game wasn't too bad at first but by the end the whole thing was just a crashing mess of a game. The mod might have allowed me to get across the finish line and i might have got the mod when it was being worked on.


Speaking of bad ports. Dead Rising 3 was apparently pretty poorly ported. The team wasn't up to the task, there were technical issues all around and was unplayable for considerate number of people. I got the game years later and until i unlocked the frame rate the game was practically unplayable. Unlocking made the game playable and i had fun with the game. That said, you could only have one save game profile so when you did the DLC guess what happened to your save game/progress it gets wiped constantly. I remember playing the main game getting near lvl 50 and after playing the DLC my new game + stats were minimal. Absolutely annoying if i wanted to play the game a second time.

Another honorable mention goes to Arkham origins. If only one (minor?) game breaking bug where players might not be able to collect one of the riddler items. When people asked if they could fix it what did warner bros do? gave the player fanbase the middle finger and said no because they were working on the DLC and had no interest in fixing a problem.

Arkham Knight had a questionable release as well. again i got he game much later and had a top of the line pc to run it. But i did have to do my fair share of tweaking with tweaking memory settings, caching etc to get it to work.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Arkham Knight had a questionable release as well. again i got he game much later and had a top of the line pc to run it. But i did have to do my fair share of tweaking with tweaking memory settings, caching etc to get it to work.

To be fair, didn't Arkham Knight run like crap on all the consoles in the beginning, too? I know I bought it on Steam, and ended up getting all of the Arkham games free because of the awful launch.