Mediocre console to pc ports

Games
1

Adrenaline Vault has a timely article on the poor quality of console to pc ports - Getting Stern About Ports.

One thing is for sure: If things don’t alter course and the trends of today’s market persist, the future of PC gaming will continue to dim a little more with each new port. As long as well-marketed tripe like Enter the Matrix sells upwards of two million copies, it only proves to those that would foist it on us that wanton and careless cross-platforming is a viable marketing strategy. If we eagerly lap up every leftover that falls off the console table, we may as well put our new gaming rigs in the garage next to the Amiga, grab an ergonomic controller, and pull up a little closer to the TV.

Although I have just picked up Vice City and am enjoying it a lot. Kudos to Rockstar for improving on the original console version.

2

Umm, I was really confused about the way he kept saying GTA3 when he meant Vice City. Because Vice City was, in fact, a very well done port - while GTA3 ran so poorly that VC outperforms it while having vastly improved detail.

3

GTAIII ran better on my machine. But my machine is a P3 700. Not top of the line, is she.

Virtua Tennis is one the best games for the DreamCast (if not the best), but they really fucked up the port.

4

While I hate to bang the same drum, Judge Dredd’s been designed from the start to work on PC, PS2, X-Box, and Gamecube. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

5

I never had any problems running the original GTAIII on my pc (back then it was an Athlon 1.6 GHz / GF4 Ti4600). My friend with a similar spec Pentium and same video card had lots of stutter and had to turn down the detail.

6

Does this article really qualify as “timely”? The concept of sacrificing quality in order to rush a game to one platform or another has been around since the days that Asteroids and Pac-Man were crammed onto the Atari 2600. Granted, the article covers more timely issues like cameras and controls, but that’s hardly news. I was also confused by the way Enter The Matrix and Tomb Raider were used as examples – it’s not like the console versions were very good to begin with, and the PC versions both had their share of things they did better and worse.

Shoddy ports – in both directions – are a way of life in the videogame industry. If there are X “hit” games a year, it’s inevitable that many will get ported, and at least a few (if not the majority) will be compromised in some way in the rush to market. The article I’d really like to see would be for someone to actually sit and talk with the publishers and developers behind these ports about the why – i.e. the economics that decide how much effort goes into a port.

Hmm, I should assign that to someone. :-)

GTA3 and Vice City both ran really well for me, although Vice City seemed a little more polished from a technical perspective. Aside from a console-ish interface, I was really happy with Rockstar’s port of Midnight Club II as well.

7

Well, I can only speak for myself and say that I played GTA3 about a week before VC came out and noticed it had significant slow down in some areas even on a ATI 9700 Pro; not all the time, but enough to force me to turn on the frame limiter (as is recommended) which ran at 30 fps in GTA3. The Vice City frame limiter runs at 60 fps.

8

I think the consensus would be that Vice City turned out far better on the PC than GTA3. I loved both games, but I remember people just screaming bloody murder about technical issues with GTA3 (which, thankfully, I managed to avoid).

9

I ran GTA3 fine on release on a 1.3 gig w/ a Geforce 3. Don’t know what the problem was with other people. Imo I think it was some people expecting to run the game on some P2 with a Geforce or TNT card on 128 meg ram … and lets face it, even a PS2 is above that in graphics. or maybe it was a crappy port… i dont know ran fine for me!

etc

10

Dunno what the problem is about GTAIII either. I never had any problems with it on a 1.2ghz PIII and a GF3. This sounds like the guy is annoyed at some recent events and of course thinks thats how everything is now. There are shoddy ports, and good ones. Games like the GTA series and Splinter Cell show they can be done well.

11

[size=7]AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!![/size]

12

GTA3 runs smooth as silk for me, and i’m only on a 933mhz machine. I haven’t tried Vice City on it yet. The only thing I don’t like is that motion blur effect they use during a lot of the cutscenes… it gives me an awful headache.

13

My experience with GTA3, Stage 1:

128MB RAM
GeForce 3 Ti/somethingorotherblahblahblahcunt
550mhz P3

FUCKEROIDS. Damn thing is crashing constantly before even loading the main menu. Hard crashes requiring a cold reboot. BITTER. Holy shit, I’ve made it to the main menu! Me = :) Start a new game! Well, at least it ran for about twenty seconds before it crashed. Me = :cry: Okay, done wiping tears, now updating drivers like mad, pleading for a patch, retrying constantly. Hey, I managed to get past loading screen again, maybe I’d bette rcheck out the options menu! WTF is this Miles Sound System shit? Standard DirectX sound, please.

My experience with GTA3, Stage 2:

OH GOD YES YES YES. No crashes. Load times are divided by 5,000,000. Framerate consistently hovering around 25-30. This game is so amazingly lovely and fun and rapture-inducing. Whoops, nasty amonts of stuttering when I switch from one island to another due to hard drive swapping. Hmm, probably a result of having only 128MB RAM? Still, WHO CARES, it 0wnz. I just need to upgrade some day.

My experience with GTA3, Stage 3:

384MB RAM. I wonder if GTA3 will run better? FUCKONIA. The damn thing once again has decided that it should default to Miles Sound System. Me = :( , then :x Much pain ensues until I’m able to change it. I do so. Start a new game, and… OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD. Brilliantly smooth. I’m in looooooove.

My experience with GTA:VC, Stage 1:

VC doesn’t somehow get it in its head that I want anything to do with the Miles Sound System. Game = pure bliss. I daresay the framerates are slightly BETTER. I HEART Rockstar oh so much. Adios to my vastly inferior PS2 copy of the game.

Conclusion: I’m hazarding a guess that GTA:VC is a noticably higher-quality port than GTA3. I’m also aware that my personal experience doesn’t amount to much in the larger scheme of things (although I’m hardly the only person offering testimonial along these lines, that GTA:VC is a definite improvement). I’m just saying.

14

I must be missing something. I installed GTAIII on my laptop - 512 meg of ram, GeFroce2 and P 3 1.2 gig and it ran fine but I uninstalled the game 2 hours later. I did not think much of the graphics compared to most PC games and the gameplay was standard twitch reflex driving which just does not do much for me. I could appreciate the open design but its like you guys are describing a completely different game here.

15

When I was investigating possible technical issues for my GTA3 review last year, things seemed really hit-or-miss. Either the game ran fine – or it was a complete disaster.

I don’t know if they ever found the cause, though – there still seemed to be post-patch complaints.