PC Digital Foundry: Flawed PC Ports Revisited: The Callisto Protocol, Dead Space, Returnal, and Forspoken - Are They Fixed?

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Flawed PC ports re-tested: The Callisto Protocol, Dead Space, Returnal and Forspoken

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2022 and now 2023 have been rough years for AAA game release quality, with many games releasing in an unfinished, broke…

 

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2022 and now 2023 have been rough years for AAA game release quality, with many games releasing in an unfinished, broken state - particularly on PC. We recently reported on big improvements to The Last of Us Part 1 on PC, so we decided to go back, revisiting four of the most contentious releases we've reviewed recently. How long does it take to fix a PC game? Do they actually get fixed at all? Of course, the truth is that the situation is different on a game by game basis. Some games have only had minor tweaks, and of the four we tested, only one has addressed the foundational problems we highlighted in our initial review.

 

The results of our investigation are found in the video embedded below, but Dead Space, Returnal and Forspoken came under the microscope - and I began by taking a look at The Callisto Protocol. This launched with astonishingly bad shader compilation stutter, which was quickly addressed.

 

However, other problems remain as they were. The options menu remains confusingly hyper-nested, with menus within menus and options that cannot be changed in real-time, meaning you need to restart the game to see the difference. This essentially makes settings optimisation impossible unless you have a photographic memory, or a capture card.

 

 

[stepee]

i can’t watch videos but from my own testing on these ones. Dead Space is the same as on launch about, but even before my cpu upgrade I just didn’t find the slight hitching when entering some rooms to be offensive. By the time I upgraded the cpu it was really nothing to complain about.

 

Returnal I believe they find differently according to resetera posts but at least with dlss3 it honestly runs amazing on both my desktop and laptop. The hitches at this point are less than the ps5 version. This one felt like an absolute mess at first and I find the performance improvements with ray tracing on since then to be substantial.

 

Forspoken runs significantly better than launch and no longer has its weird dramatic fps swings. I think this is the one they say is most improved. I feel like that’s actually Returnal. It runs well now but it’s still not hitting mostly 120fps on either my laptop or desktop, unlike pretty much every other game besides Calisto. And I’m not seeing the graphics to warrant that. Though this is one of the more demanding games without dlss3 so that’s a big part of it.

 

Calisto Protocol is an amazing looking game but is still optimized like shit on the cpu. I don’t understand the need for such cpu usage in a game so damn linear without much happening on screen a lot of the time. It’s way better than launch where it was impossible to hold 60fps on ANYTHING but its performance is still lackluster and needs dlss3 badly.

 

Bonus: Hogwarts Legacy - Cleaned up big time. Tried it on my laptop last night maxed out and it was almost a constant 120fps locked no matter where I was. Crazy.

[best3444]

I TOTALLY forgot about Forspoken! I may go back to that at some point. 

[stepee]

1 minute ago, best3444 said:

I TOTALLY forgot about Forspoken! I may go back to that at some point. 

 

This was one I enjoyed most for the story. I think it’s underrated in that aspect honestly. I bet it’s a better story than FF16. It’s a fun play through but really nothing special on the gameplay front and the parkour is mostly wasted.

[best3444]

Just now, stepee said:

 

This was one I enjoyed most for the story. I think it’s underrated in that aspect honestly. I bet it’s a better story than FF16. It’s a fun play through but really nothing special on the gameplay front and the parkour is mostly wasted.

 

Yea, I got a few hours in then dropped it. Forget why...maybe Dead Space remake? I remember liking the main character in Forspoken and her cat. 🐈 

[stepee]

6 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

Yea, I got a few hours in then dropped it. Forget why...maybe Dead Space remake? I remember liking the main character in Forspoken and her cat. 🐈 

 

yaaaa I REALLY liked Frey. There was such a weird reaction at launch trying to drag the main character of this game as being too corny or cringey or whatever just because this person who is from our time talks like someone from our time. She is sooo much better than most game characters.

 

They messed up making her back story that she was a criminal, like give people a Black female main character finally and you just have to make her a criminal to try to make sure my nieces can’t admire her too much. Lame as shit.

 

But Ella nailed the role and I think her character and some of the development even as she begins to grow into her powers and the responsibility that means is well done.

[Xbob42]

10 hours ago, stepee said:

i can’t watch videos but from my own testing on these ones. Dead Space is the same as on launch about, but even before my cpu upgrade I just didn’t find the slight hitching when entering some rooms to be offensive. By the time I upgraded the cpu it was really nothing to complain about.

It literally hitches any time you get near a door. In some rooms there's like 4-5 doors within a few feet of each other, making these rooms total hitch fests. It bugged the shit out of me and I'm still annoyed they haven't bothered to fix it in the slightest. The original never suffered from this problem and that released on machines with 12 megs of ram and a pack of smokes for a CPU.

[Keyser_Soze]

5 hours ago, best3444 said:

I TOTALLY forgot about Forspoken! I may go back to that at some point. 

 

They dropped some DLC for it recently so no better time than now to play it!

[AbsolutSurgen]

19 hours ago, stepee said:

i can’t watch videos but from my own testing on these ones. Dead Space is the same as on launch about, but even before my cpu upgrade I just didn’t find the slight hitching when entering some rooms to be offensive. By the time I upgraded the cpu it was really nothing to complain about.

 

Alex, for whatever reason, has a vandetta about UE hitching for shader compile.   I see it, I wish it wasn't there, but since it usually happens during area transitions, it doesn't bug me all that much.

For Alex, however, it seems to ruin his experience.  Last night he was commenting about seeing it in some of yesterday's trailers.

[Dre801]

Shader compilation stutter is Alex's nemesis.  I don't know if anyone rages at it more than him.

[Keyser_Soze]

28 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Alex, for whatever reason, has a vandetta about UE hitching for shader compile.   I see it, I wish it wasn't there, but since it usually happens during area transitions, it doesn't bug me all that much.

 

The more he rallies against it the more a dev is likely to fix it. Heck Max went on about rollback netcode for 10 years before developers decided to address it so things can change.

Street Fighter 6 for instance has an option to compile shaders when you boot the game to avoid any compilation stutters, maybe other devs should look into doing something like that.