Cross-platform games are great: everyone gets to play when the games are out. However, with game ports (aka changing the game to work on another platform), PC gamers usually are the most frustrated, because of bugs and glitches. Below are 5 prime examples of PC port problem.
1. Mafia III
Let’s come to the latest of the bunch. Mafia III is among the most anticipated games of 2016 holiday. It is expected to sell well, and it did. However, the desktop version of 2K Games’ crime adventure is littered with a lot of bugs and glitches, and some gamers even said that it’s unplayable. Just one look at the reviews on Steam, and you will see tons of negative ones, because of these errors (although to be fair, some of those are kind of extreme).
The most complained issue is the locked FPS. Somehow, to make performance “consistent across all platforms”, 2K decided to lock the frame rate on PC to 30 frame per second (fps). That means even if you have a powerful PC, you will still get the maximum level of visual the consoles produce. At least, 2K later released a patch to remove this restriction. Yes, not only for this game, PC gamers are so used to patches to fix PC port problem!
2. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Although this game did not have as much issues like the others on this list, the PC port problem still haunts this game. Crashes, minor glitches, fps drops during certain scenes are a few to name. There were also problems with mouse sensitivity and acceleration, to the extent that some players had to use a gamepad. Playing a shooter game with a gamepad on PC? Doesn’t sound fun, really. Fortunately, various fixes and patches have been carried out. The game ok now, for the most part.
3. No Man’s Sky
Back in the summer, when No Man’s Sky first hit the PC market, it became viral for the wrong reasons. Tons of glitches and bugs were spotted, such as fps dropping even with high-end graphics cards, a lot of game crashes, save file corruption etc. There were also some funny events happening to you too, such as getting stuck in a world, or in a damaged space ship you cannot repair (on second thought, those are not really funny). Fortunately, many problems were fixed at the start of September, one month after release date.
4. Batman: Arkham Knight
It rarely happens that after release, a publisher has to suspend sale of a game to fix it. However, that happened with Batman: Arkham Knight. The Dark Knight seems to have many problems, from low fps, disappearing textures, save corruptions, and crashes. Apparently, only devices with 12GB of RAM runs normally (yeah, like everyone has that). The game was also capped at 30fps, but it was bad enough. It was truly the Batman we deserved, but not the one we need then (with all those bugs).
5. Watchdogs
This case happened way back in 2014. The game created a lot of hype, only then to be crushed by the bugs it had in the PC version. Some of the standard issues occurred: low fps, bad sounds, crashes – especially during CGI clips. There were also mouse problems, which made it hard to control in-game. Hopefully, he lesson has been learnt, as Watchdogs 2 will be out in November this year.
PC port problem will not go anywhere soon
Above are 5 glaring examples of PC port problem for games. They have a lot in common (low fps, mouse problems, crashes), but those bugs keeps happening. Granted that they all got fixed in the end, it is still a big annoyance for gamers. Hopefully, there will not be as many problems with future PC port.