I love my consoles, but one thing I often find myself not liking is bad console ports. PCs are great for gaming in their own right. as are consoles, but the two are not always equal. There are certain games I cannot imagine playing on anything other than consoles. However, some games are just better played on PC, be it for technical reasons or as a result of a terrible console port. These are some of my favorite PC titles that have terrible console versions and ports that I highly recommend you stay away from.
1
Fallout: New Vegas
You knew a Bethesda game had to be here.
Fallout: New Vegas is the prodigal son of the series. Though it’s not my personal favorite (hate me all you want, Fallout 3 is still my favorite in the series), as someone who’s put a lot of hours into the game, I can confidently say it’s an incredible RPG experience.
Few RPGs can match the writing and branching narrative. Yet, when it initially released, it was an absolute mess. The game was criticized for many of its technical issues, which is a real shame, since if it wasn’t for the bugs and glitches, it would most likely have been as well-received as its predecessor.
Fans of Bethesda are well-acquainted with the buggy nature of Bethesda games. But back then, New Vegas, and no one had it worse than console players.
The game was incredibly glitchy, which made it almost impossible to play the game. Now, the PC version wasn’t all sunshine and radioactive rainbows. It had its fair share of problems. In New Vegas, however, technical issues and bugs were far more prevalent on consoles. At least the PC version had the caveat of the modding community that could iron out the bugs. Console players were simply cursed with a broken game, and the only thing they could do was wait for some fixes.
2
StarCraft 64
A downgrade of the RTS classic.
StarCraft 64 is the oldest game on this list. Released at the turn of the millennium, in 2000, 2 years after the initial release, StarCraft 64 is notoriously one of the worst console ports of a game that was excellent on the PC.
Adapting mouse and keyboard controls to modern console game pads is already a challenge. Now imagine doing this for a real-time strategy game that requires tons of tiny inputs at a breakneck speed. And now imagine doing all that for the N64 controller.
The N64 is an incredible console, but that controller can be a nightmare to handle. It’s hard to imagine playing a game like StarCraft using the N64 controller without any additional accessories.
On top of that, the N64 port of StarCraft also had a significant graphical downgrade (understandable), no online multiplayer options (also makes sense), performance issues (I don’t see anything wrong here either), and it cut the voice acting out of the game (now that is my final straw).
If you want to replay this classic and your only copy is the one for the N64, it’s probably a good idea just to buy it for the PC.
3
Silent Hill HD Collection
An HD collection that somehow looks worse.
The Silent Hill series is one of the best series of horror games ever created. Few games to this day can match the masterful atmosphere and dark tone that those games were able to create decades ago.
Luckily, we were graced with a remaster of the legendary Silent Hill 2 in 2024, but if you want to replay the older games in their original form, it’s highly recommended you avoid the Silent Hill HD Collection for the 7th generation consoles (PS3 and Xbox 360).
Released in 2012, at the tail end of the console generation, the Silent Hill HD Collection was met with a lot of criticism. Despite being marketed as an HD remaster of the first three games released for the previous two console generations, the Silent Hill HD Collection somehow had worse visuals than the original releases.
The HD collection featured muted colors, visibly worse textures, and distorted visuals as a result of stretching the games to fit a 16:9 aspect ratio.
On top of that, there were also numerous audio issues, such as bad lip-syncing and sound effects that were outright missing. If you’ve played any of the original Silent Hill games, you know that sound plays an integral role in the games’ atmosphere, which only adds to the disaster that is the Silent Hill HD Collection.
Here’s a quote from a review that should paint a clear picture of the sentiment around the HD Collection back in 2012:
“Incomplete, glitchy, and visually degraded, Silent Hill HD Collection is Konami’s greatest insult to the series.”
That’s pretty scathing and understandably so. In any case, if you wish to play the old Silent Hill games on newer tech, either get the Silent Hill 2 Remaster or simply buy the old ones and play them on your PC.
4
Cyberpunk 2077
So much controversy, so little time.
Cyberpunk 2077 was such a huge blunder, so much so to the point that Sony even pulled it from the PlayStation store. Sure, now the game has been fixed (mostly), and a lot of new content has been added. But looking back on all the hype that was built up over the years, it’s still crazy to think how much of a fumble the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 was.
There’s a metric ton of footage showcasing the bugs, glitches, and all manner of other technical issues that plagued the game in its first year. But despite the game being hilariously buggy across all devices, no one had it worse than PS4 and Xbox One players.
Now, you could make the argument that Cyberpunk 2077 was released after the 9th generation of consoles (PS5 and Xbox Series X), so it was optimized for more powerful hardware. However, it was released only a month after the new consoles, so a huge chunk of people played it on their PS4s and Xbox Ones.
You know all about the disaster that was the Cyberpunk 2077 launch and its sea of technical issues. Here’s a very limited list of what those issues were:
- Severe frame rate drops (often 15–20 FPS or lower on PS4/Xbox One).
- Frequent crashes.
- Delayed texture pop-in.
- Poor draw distance and asset streaming issues.
- Broken quest triggers.
- Objects or NPCs clipped through the environment.
- Combat AI was barely functional.
- T-posing NPCs.
- Characters’ faces or bodies not rendering correctly.
- Inventory glitches (disappearing items, wrong tooltips).
As with the PC version, gamers had the option of fixing Cyberpunk 2077 with mods to some extent. But then again, that was like putting a Band-Aid on an open wound.
If you were one of the poor souls who had to play Cyberpunk 2077 on the 8th console generation, you were in for a very bad time. And while the PC had loads of technical issues as well, it was still the best way to play the game; “best” is used very loosely here.
5
SimCity
A city builder that should have stayed on PC.
I love all my Nintendo consoles; stationary, portable, doesn’t matter. They never fail to surprise me with their innovation. But regardless of how I feel about the Nintendo consoles, I must admit that they’ve always lagged behind the competition on a technical level. Which is fine, since a lot of the games don’t need the latest hardware to run. So, when you have consoles with limited power, what kind of games should you not port onto them? A city builder, that’s for sure.
Only two other SimCity games ever made it to consoles, which were SimCity 2000 and SimCity 64.
However, for a brief period between 2007 and 2008, the SimCity franchise made its debut on the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS consoles with 2 games: SimCity DS, SimCity Creator for the Wii, and SimCity Creator for the DS.
As you’d expect, these games were very, very watered down when compared to their Windows and macOS counterparts. Fundamental gameplay features, such as zoning and economy, were barebones.
The UI and controls also took a major hit. The UI was very cumbersome and finicky to control. Doing something as simple as zoning or placing a building required you to navigate a ton of menus, while trying to press these giant buttons that were so common in the Nintendo Wii UI. And also, yes, the SimCity Creator for the Wii also leaned hard into the motion controls, and no, they were not fun to use at all.
And worst of all, it could barely be considered a city management simulator. You could spam zones without much thought and still end up with a thriving city.
SimCity has always been a simulation of what it would be like to run a real-life city. So, when your “simulation” game lacks any realism, you have a serious problem on your hands.
I love SimCity, I love the Wii and DS, but the two weren’t made for each other. Instead of playing a bare-bones city builder, I’ll just boot up Super Mario Galaxy for the 700th time.
