What is the most jank console game you’ve ever seen running?

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

So, in the wonderful world of PC, jank is life. It’s an open platform where everyone has different specs, so getting video games to run is a lot harder. Consoles aren’t like that. They’re, by their nature, a closed box where most everybody has the same defaults. The best console developers are used to this, and love using loopholes and neat tricks to make the hardware do things it wasn’t designed for, which works because the hardware is standardized. Besides: who would ever want to sell a broken game?


This is the broken console games thread. This is where we post games on video game consoles that are completely busted and almost beautiful in how borked they are.

I’ll start with a classic(?): the original release of Cyberpunk 2077 on the PlayStation 4.

An ambitious action adventure game on the best of days, Cyberpunk prides itself on a giant city setting all running in real time. It also, at launch, prided itself on being the PC version sloppily downgraded to run on a system released in 2013. While better now, it must always be remembered how rough this game’s launch was. So much so that it was removed from the storefront, being the only AAA title I can remember to have that dubious honor. When you’re too rough for even Super Scammy Sony, that’s when you have to take a moment to fix this.



A bonus shoutout goes to any and all Bethesda games on the PS3. I saw that one of the younger forum members was trying to play it and was asking about how to make the game not run like cheeks.
I’m so sorry, young one. The elders have failed you. Fallout New Vegas doesn’t run well on the PlayStation 3.

 

[moonbits]

just name any early multiplarform PS3 games.

 

[MemeAlert]

Sonic Adventure 1, GOT'EM!!!

 

[juanchikbzmusic]

House of the dead 1 on saturn. framerate is terrible, loading screens constantly, and it's known that the lowres textures on everything where PLACEHOLDERS until they could replace them further in development, but because of sega rushing the game for christmas, they didn't had the time. I hope someday someone fixes that game in the same way they are fixing saturn doom, it's the only home port of hotd 1 :( (pc doesn't count)

 

[X y b e r - S k u ll]

just name any early multiplarform PS3 games.

Yeah, basically this. Still can't believe Bayonetta's PS3 version shipped in the condition it was in.

 

[moonbits]

Yeah, basically this. Still can't believe Bayonetta's PS3 version shipped in the condition it was in.

and that one was 3 years into the console's life lmao

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

Fight For Life is an odd one. The final Atari Jaguar game is tragically one of its worst, being some kind of unholy Virtua Fighter/Mortal Kombat hybrid that just ends up making Eternal Champions look like Street Fighter 3 Third Strike. The game has very little flow, most character animations are miserable, and it feels like half the damn game is missing. It’s awful and really would have been prime for the AVGN’s video on the Jag, but finding a copy is rare because it was released in 1996, mid Atari’s liquidation. The story of the game is fascinating though! But, that doesn’t change that this game feels poorly put together from top to bottom.

 

[UnDubious]

Fight For Life is an odd one. The final Atari Jaguar game is tragically one of its worst, being some kind of unholy Virtua Fighter/Mortal Kombat hybrid that just ends up making Eternal Champions look like Street Fighter 3 Third Strike. The game has very little flow, most character animations are miserable, and it feels like half the damn game is missing. It’s awful and really would have been prime for the AVGN’s video on the Jag, but finding a copy is rare because it was released in 1996, mid Atari’s liquidation. The story of the game is fascinating though! But, that doesn’t change that this game feels poorly put together from top to bottom.
View attachment 82836

Possibly the worst 3D fighter. What makes it so bad, IMO, is that you start with so few moves, and they do so little damage, that you have to hit the opponent a million times with the same weak punch or kick to beat them. It's just so dull.

I wish the 3DO had gotten its own 3D fighter too. The 32X port of Virtua Fighter is really good, so in theory the 3DO should have been able to run a 3D fighter too.

 

[sijaab]

unreal engine 3 on the vita (borderlands 2 and gal*gun)

and lets not get started on ue5

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

The jankest console game I've seen running in person would be Doom on the SNES. Don't get me wrong, it's a miracle it's running at all, but boy is it a rough way to play Doom.

 

[Sumea]

My vote is likely, easily, Deadly Premonition on PS3. It is worse on other platforms but that thing should not be trying as hard as it is, and for me, it even has game crashes, though as far as I understand there is no save corruption bugs or anything like that. It feels like rebooting the game regularly is a good practice to "flush the system" or just try to prime it to run better.

SOTC HD on PS3 has unintended amount of drain on your stamina because of it running at solid 30FPS, while the original ps2 version was sliding between 10-24 fps. That is jank that could been avoided and is adjusted in the PS4 remaster.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

The jankest console game I've seen running in person would be Doom on the SNES. Don't get me wrong, it's a miracle it's running at all, but boy is it a rough way to play Doom.

As a Saturn lover, I raise you the infamous Saturn Doom. It’s pathetic. Saturn is the only system where you can say its version of Quake runs better than its version of Doom.

And, being an American-made game, it had to compete with the PlayStation port of Doom, which is one of the best ones ever made.


Also, since somebody brought up 3DO earlier in the thread, you know 3DO Doom has to get a mention.

Post automatically merged: Today at 6:18 PM

My vote is likely, easily, Deadly Premonition on PS3. It is worse on other platforms but that thing should not be trying as hard as it is, and for me, it even has game crashes, though as far as I understand there is no save corruption bugs or anything like that. It feels like rebooting the game regularly is a good practice to "flush the system" or just try to prime it to run better.

SOTC HD on PS3 has unintended amount of drain on your stamina because of it running at solid 30FPS, while the original ps2 version was sliding between 10-24 fps. That is jank that could been avoided and is adjusted in the PS4 remaster.

Don’t you just love a game being broken more because the original game was built around a low frame rate? It happens more often than you’d think.

Even on PC!

 

[bjork]

I didn't see it in person, but I'm gonna go with NBA Elite 11

 

[Not_Red]

Honestly, Scarlet and Violet. I believe that even to this day people are still finding new glitches and bugs, which will only increase with time as the Switch 2 is probably gonna have some exclusive ones.

I believe it was also the only game that Nintendo was willing to give people refunds on release just due to the sheer size of bugs and glitches it had, something they have never done before.

 

[Cosmiken]

Janky controls, janky camera, janky difficulty, janky ethics and morality.
I still love the bollocks out of this game.

 

[ciro64 ciro64]

Almost any third party Switch game lol, but I'll pick Mortal Kombat 1

 

[Glimbo]

Shadow of Mordor on PS3 is a mess.
They also removed the main feature of the game, the nemesis system.

 

[Morgana Veil]

Rocky on the PS2 is a 100% totally jank fest. The AVGN made a video about it if you really want to see it. It's like an interactive horror show straight from the depths of Lovecraft's mind.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

Shadow of Mordor on PS3 is a mess.
They also removed the main feature of the game, the nemesis system.

Wait, WHAT?!
I had no clue that they took out the main gameplay system to make the game run on the PS3. That actually makes even less sense, because the PS3 is very good on CPU power and is lacking in GPU power. I understand the game running like garbage because of the necessity for multithreading, but you’d think the CPU intensive task of the Nemesis system would be perfectly okay in this port. For goodness sake, they patented that system so nobody else could use it!

Post automatically merged: Today at 7:54 PM

For my next personal pick, and I’m sorry to bring out fighting games so much, but I’d have to go with this guy:

From a visuals and gameplay function point of view? Actually not bad at all, and very faithful. The problem comes in with the fact that the arcade version’s control scheme was dumb in the first place, with two large buttons that would need to be struck to perform moves, and the strength of the move was dependent on how hard you hit the button. Also, because of this system, the action is performed when the input is released. In the arcade, while dumb, it made sense and felt nice. It was bad there because people were beating the arcade boards so hard that they were dying. But on the poor PC-Engine? You have no analogue button input, so they calculate strength based on how long you hold a button down.
Guile players rejoice! Welcome to the fighting game where EVERY MOVE IS CHARGED! And also, all basic inputs rely on negative edge because of the arcade’s input system!

It’s so dumb. Why didn’t they find a way for the game to feel right on the PC-Engine controller? Or, if not that, package the game with a special controller that has pressure sensitive buttons? It’s so sad, but thankfully the PC-Engine would redeem itself with a pretty good version of this game’s sequel.

 

[moonbits]

Wait, WHAT?!
I had no clue that they took out the main gameplay system to make the game run on the PS3. That actually makes even less sense, because the PS3 is very good on CPU power and is lacking in GPU power. I understand the game running like garbage because of the necessity for multithreading, but you’d think the CPU intensive task of the Nemesis system would be perfectly okay in this port. For goodness sake, they patented that system so nobody else could use it!

It's good for those era of games a pain in the ass too, but Mordor was a next generation title build on a standardized x86 instruction set. No fucking way they would spend time and money to make it work on the old, overcomplicated CELL arquitecture.

 

[Kesolr]

Most of the pre-bloober silent hill games were very technically jank, not even in a fun way or "we're using UE5 and that engine is a complete pig to make it work", but in a very "nothing is working as intended"

Silent Hill Homecoming have characters looking like barely animated corpses with the lighting constantly blocking their eyelids, making them look like black voids, despite trying to make combat to be action focus, you can just feel the character snap into each other with each animation they do, hell
the human enemies are straight up just using the exact animations Alex have.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

It's good for those era of games a pain in the ass too, but Mordor was a next generation title build on a standardized x86 instruction set. No fucking way they would spend time and money to make it work on the old, overcomplicated CELL arquitecture.

At that point, I’m shocked they even brought it out on PS3. Later in life, games would only get last gen ports to the 360, especially if they were western developed titles.