PC ports that (almost) made you cry

[mashakos]

The release of Doom 3 BFG brought back memories of ports/remakes where the original was better in execution AND quality than the "remastered" version. Would be interested in getting first hand experiences of a port or remake that was not only bad, it actually could not even match the quality of the original material which was released on inferior hardware.

For me, the ultimate bad port has to be: Metal Gear Solid for the PC
What a terrible, terrible port! The Psycho Mantis scene, the standard bad port tropes (limited config options, bad conrtols etc.) wre bad enough. The most offensive aspect of the port though was the fact that the atmospheric post-processing effects in the original Playstation version that were vital to the storytelling and vision of the game's designer were completely stripped out! I remember reading an interview where the developers justified simply not putting the effort because they were "targetting a wider audience of PC gamers".
There are many ports that are just as bad, but messing up one of the only two modern Metal Gears released on the PC is unforgivable. As a result, the MGS port is officially the worst PC port ever created in my books.

Anyway, share your opinions.

[Makariel]

Resident Evil 4, obviously. Never tried the MGS on PC but they sound pretty horrid as well.

[Unaco]

Dark Souls was a pretty poor port. Game was alright though.

[mashakos]

Resident Evil 4, obviously. Never tried the MGS on PC but they sound pretty horrid as well.

oh yeah, another big turd! Sadly, while you can pretty much play the Wii version perfectly on a modern PC, the Playstation's MGS version will forever suffer from "shaky walls" because the hardware did not support perspective correction. So you could ignore the PC version of RE4 since the Wii has support for most modern 3D capabilities albeit at a lower resolution, while emulating the PSX version of MGS is still not as good as a proper port would have been.

[DaftPunk]

Grand Theft Auto IV. I was told by the specs page that my computer could run it with ease...

Oddworld: Stranger.

Devil May Cry 3

Onimusha 3

Saints Row 2

MGS 2

[mashakos]

Grand Theft Auto IV. I was told by the specs page that my computer could run it with ease...

Oddworld: Stranger.

Devil May Cry 3

Onimusha 3

Saints Row 2

MGS 2

Really? Aside from Saints Row 2, these are all fantastic ports. Sure, they needed a killer PC to run at launch but in the end they delivered on what a port needs to deliver. Especially GTA IV, this game really got better with age.

EDIT: The specs page of any game is a cruel joke on the young and gullible. Just a heads up.

[Sketch]

Hahaha GTA IV good port ahaha.

[gundato]

Max Payne 2 and Alan Wake. Very emotional stories.

[Finicky]

resident evil 4; no mouse support haha!
Saints row 2.:looks like a ps2 gta and needs a supercomputer to hit 30 fps. Everything else about it is janky too from physics to input lag.
Dark souls. :30 fps cap, some shitty locked sub hd resolution, mouse controls a MESS, truely shameful. They are lucky that a community member fixed part of their game for them.
MW2 : ran like shit on all 48xx series amd cards (never fixed), p2p console multiplayer, horrible fov... after cod4 which was a good port this was shameful.
Homefront: broken horrible performance on all amd cards for a month till it was finally patched. Shameful for an ue3 game....

Saint's row 3: just didn't bother with amd users, the game always stuttered and ran poorly on all but the highest end amd gpus (which could barely maintain 30 fps minimum), they never bothered fixing this... I would call ignoring 50 percent of gamer hardware out there a bad stupid port.

Ubishit:
From dust... 30 fps, no 1600x1200 support, shitty mouse controls
Driver SF: 30 fps lock, no wheel support, ps2 graphics with ps3 cars, no monitor support outside 60hz
rayman origins: no support for anything but 60 fps like most other ubisoft games... nor for any none 16:9 resolutions (other resolutions will just cut off part of what's on screen, which is retarded in a platformer).

[mashakos]

Hahaha GTA IV good port ahaha.

hey, this game ran great at launch for me (except for the lack of AA). Two years later, it looks like this after mods:


Yeah, I want all PC ports to be like GTA 4. Screw the low end PC gamer!

[Finicky]

hey, this game ran great at launch for me (except for the lack of AA). Two years later, it looks like this after mods:


Yeah, I want all PC ports to be like GTA 4. Screw the low end PC gamer!

.

What this video doesn't show is all the horrible shadow flickering and glitching.... (carefully selected shots and fragments)
ENB looks good in screenshots but not when you play it.

Anyhow, people whine about gta4 performance because the LOD slider on xbox is turned to 1 by default... and the pc one to 40.
Turn down the draw distance slider to console settings and it runs at twice the framerate.

[db1331]

All I know about GTA IV is, my PC at the time had several times the power of an Xbox 360, yet the game was literally unplayable. I'm talking 1-2fps.

[mashakos]

.

What this video doesn't show is all the horrible shadow flickering and glitching....
ENB looks good in screenshots but not when you play it.

nah, it looks great. You're doing it wrong(C). BTW, that is a video if you hadn't noticed, not a screenshot.

[mashakos]

All I know about GTA IV is, my PC at the time had several times the power of an Xbox 360, yet the game was literally unplayable. I'm talking 1-2fps.

Intersting. My PC had about twice the power of an xbox 360, and ran it like a dream. Obviously I had half the settings at 50, otherwise yeah it would slow to a crawl if I jack up everything to maximum. Then again, jacking up the settings just adds more people and cars on the screen - doesn't increase the quality of the gfx.

[Internet]

FF7. It needed a fan patch to even progress past the chocobo races.
GTA games. The helicopter keyboard controls show the complete lack of effort.
Ultimate Spiderman. Uses a button mashing system that doesn't work on the mouse.
Shank. Twin stick shooters are harder to play on PC, but the default controls made what should have been a slight difficulty increase far, far worse. Switch the attacks to number pad and its an entirely different game.
Super Meat Boy. They have those incredibly annoying "controllers are the best things ever" splash screens.

These are all just from the consoles, a flood of iOS games have been coming.

[mashakos]

Driver SF: 30 fps lock, no wheel support, ps2 graphics with ps3 cars,

whoa, I am now worried! Have this game sealed and tucked away for a long holiday - are you telling me the port does not match even console level quality?!

[DaftPunk]

What the heck men,how can you say it was a good port at release when it didn't worked on HIGH END computers in 2008,jeez..

Also whats with saying DMC3,Onimusha 3,Oddworld,SR2 were good ports o.O

[mashakos]

Max Payne 2 and Alan Wake. Very emotional stories.

come on! I played Max Payne 2 on a completely craptastic machine - a Pentium 3 "equivalent" Celeron 300mhz with a Geforce 4 MX. Looked 10 times better than the consoles, moue control was excellent and it ran like a dream. Ditto for Alan Wake. What happened on your end?

[Vandelay]

Max Payne 2 and Alan Wake. Very emotional stories.

Care to elaborate? I thought that both of those were pretty excellent ports (was MP2 even a port?)

Then again, I never really understand the whining about RE4. I had never touched the other versions though and I also played it solely on a pad.

[Dariune]

Far too many these days ...

Skyrim
Oblivion
Jade Empire
The Last Remnant
XCOM (OK not a port but blatantly with console optimised controls)
Saints Row 2

And many more which have been lost to the land of medeocrity.