Column: Now I know why they call it the Apocalypse Edition
PC games are buggy, and console games just work right out of the box – that's at least the stigma that console gamers place on the PC. The truth is that PC gaming is miles ahead of the consoles, but I do have to admit that that there are grains of truth to the stigma.
When Dead Rising 3 launched on the PC on September 5th, I encouraged my console-playing friend to play the game cooperatively with me on Steam. So we both got on Skype and fired it up. Immediately upon booting it up, however, I noticed the astonishingly long load times. To be fair, I did install it on my hard drive as opposed to my SSD, but these boot times were abnormally long and my friend noticed the same on his machine. The long boot times would be the least of my problems with the game, however. When I actually got into the game, something was definitely not right, and I'm not talking about the game's impending zombie apocalypse. It felt like I was playing more of a slideshow than a game. The framerate performance was terrible, which I thought was odd considering I was playing on my high-end i7 rig coupled with a GeForce GTX Titan. Sure I was trying to run the game maxed out, but considering I was using a $1,000 GPU on what essentially is a console port, max settings should have been a cakewalk.
More like "Dead Rising 3: Bad Port Edition"
And my friend's more humble PC equipped with a modest 560 Ti GPU? Well, it started sweating bullets on medium. "This is why I'm not into PC gaming," my friend exclaimed. The comment stung a little and we both decided to tone down our graphics settings. I noticed a bump in performance when I ran the game at medium settings, but it still ran like crap. Upon doing some research, I found out that Capcom had capped the game to run at 30FPS. D'oh! Contrary to what console gamers might say, 30FPS is not enough, and friends don't let friends play at 30FPS.
To be fair to Capcom, apparently the company did warn PC gamers that the game would be locked to 30FPS prior to Dead Rising 3's launch, but still, a warning does not excuse a crime. That's like someone telling you, "Sorry, but I'm going to punch you" right before punching you. In other words, it doesn't really help. The straight truth of the matter is that Dead Rising 3 on the PC is a lazy port, and trust us when we say we know a thing or two about a bad port as we've done a roundup of the worst offenders. At this point, we'd have to say Dead Rising 3 is a dead ringer to be on that list (see what I did there?).
On the brightside, yes, there is an easy .ini fix to remove the 30FPS cap, but even Capcom advises against this because the company suggest that users 1)might need really beefy hardware and 2) it could potentially cause "issues." Furthermore, I'm personally a little afraid that the tweak might conflict with a future update down the road. In addition, this fan-made patch reinforces the negative stereotype that PC gamers need to manually tweak their games just to play them properly. The least Capcom could have done here is to include an in-game menu option to remove the 30FPS limit with perhaps a warning that it might cause some instability on lower-end systems. After all, if we're smart enough to choose PC gaming, we're smart enough to toggle a menu switch. In addition, some of us do in fact have super beefy hardware and would like the option to use it on an occasion such as this. *cough*
Terrible performance issues aside, Dead Rising's framerate is hardly the most pressing issue with the game at the moment. When my friend and I were slugging our way through the co-op campaign, the game crashed on me multiple times and booted my friend out of the online instance as well. I was hoping to play the game all night with my buddy, to show him the joys of Steam and PC gaming, but after four game crashes in an hour, even I had to admit defeat.
Over the next few days, I found out that my situation was not an isolated incident and that TONS of users are reporting game crashes. To Capcom's credit, the company has acknowledged the crashes and are attempting to do something about it, but only time will tell if this specific matter gets resolved.
I haven't given up on Dead Rising 3 and was able to enjoy the game, well, at least from the little that I was able to play of it, but I'd much prefer to return to the zombie apocalypse when the bugs are ironed out. Because really, who likes fighting bugs and zombies at the same time?
However, the bigger thing I want to say to Capcom and other game developers is this: PLEASE STOP THE LAZY PC PORTS! These buggy, unoptimized ports do nothing to bolster the sales of your games. But more importantly, your rush job gives PC gaming an undue bad rep.
Can the NFL get anything right these days?
HP and its subsidiaries face a hefty fine for felony violations of corruption
Thank you Zotac for the confirmation!
Yes, this release date is real
