Support NeoGAF

[SlashBringingHasher]

am playing some old ps3 games, and buying ones I missed out on. mostly third parties since I picked up all the first party ones

the first party games run just fine, but oh boy, oh boy the third party games run like crap. this shouldn't have been acceptable. 80% of third party games had terrible framerate. I'd say around 40% were downright unplayable. especially games pre 2011. and oh god pretty much any black label third party game ran at like 20 fps.

how the hell do you put out a system like this?. I actually didn't buy a PS3 until like 2011 so I missed out on all that good unplayable stuff. but oh man, owning a ps3 pre-2010 must have been hell.

as an electrical and a computer engineer that system was terribly made.

 

[benjohn]

Come on, they're not that bad

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

They mostly weren’t that bad, but I do remember buying one of the wwe smack down games on ps3 and the frame rate was mortifying. The Xbox version was like 60fps and the ps3 version barely reached 20fps and that’s being generous.

 

[greenpower22]

Could you name a few of the unplayable ones?

 

[Petrae]

I still remember buying Bayonetta for PS3. What a fucking mistake that was. Shitty frame rate in an action game is flat-out unacceptable.

 

[Armorian]

Most TP 7 gen games had performance problems - it was bad even on 360 but horrible on PS3. To name few: AC series, FC series, GTA series, RDR and few more franichses. This gen with x86 HW is much better in this aspect.

 

[TLZ]

Yes that generation was crappy regarding performance. PS3 in general had vsync on so most of the time not screen tearing but less fps, while 360 no vsync with maybe better fps but full of screen tearing.

Ugh.

 

[bilderberg]

Yes that generation was crappy regarding performance. PS3 in general had vsync on so most of the time not screen tearing but less fps, while 360 no vsync with maybe better fps but full of screen tearing.

Ugh.

Unless it's assassin's creed, in which case you get shit performance and screen tearing!

 

[SlashBringingHasher]

Could you name a few of the unplayable ones?

I will make a comment here tomorrow listing the ones I found Unplayable. gonna have to open up the ps3 game box.

 

[bitbydeath]

Warhawk made every other game look bad. Why even bother trying to go up against that juggernaut was a frequent saying by devs last gen.

 

[Inviusx]

I think I remember the FEAR port being borderline unplayable

 

[SlashBringingHasher]

I think I remember the FEAR port being borderline unplayable

gonna list a few on the top of my head that were unplayable

overlord, enemy front, bayonetta. I will add like 10-15 more in the least when I check all the ones that I actually stopped playing due to how awful they ran.


oh. both riddick games. ran like fucking crap too. both of them.


oh its all coming to me, heavenly sword, LAIR. those are damn exclusives too. 20 fps games. in the case of lair must be like 15 fps.


all the fallout games, all of the elder scrolls games. all the bethesda games that aren't made by arkane studios basically.


the castlevania, at least the first lords of shadow, was like 25 fps and jittery as fuck. idk about the second one because i havent played that one.

 

[SlashBringingHasher]

Most TP 7 gen games had performance problems - it was bad even on 360 but horrible on PS3. To name few: AC series, FC series, GTA series, RDR and few more franichses. This gen with x86 HW is much better in this aspect.

i agree. even he 360 was by no means a great system. but it was so much worse on the ps3.

I remember owning a ps2. and I could count on one hand the times I actually lagged way below 30 fps. gta sometimes when cars explode or when you drive really fast. but thats about it. some a few hitches here and there.

but man. wtf was sony doing. last gen had some great games that were borderline unplayable technically.


props to insomniac games for being the only non-first party dev that actually knows how to code their god damn games. 60 fps on ratchet tools of destruction in 2007 and that game looked better than most ps3 games in its late lifecycle. resistance ran well too

 

[cireza]

But they were HD !

 

[SlashBringingHasher]

But they were HD !

many ran at like 600P or like 575 or something. tho yes some ran at 720P or higher. which was a fucking awful idea. I think lair ran like crap because Sony forced 1080P. 1080 fucking P on the PS3?.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

Could you name a few of the unplayable ones?

EDF 2025
Mass Effect
Bayonetta
Red Dead (ran awful for me..)

Maybe not unplayable but christ did they run awful.

 

[Fahdis]

Lol, remember playing AC1 and thinking I'm in a slideshow in Damascus.

 

[SlashBringingHasher]

Lol, remember playing AC1 and thinking I'm in a slideshow in Damascus.

i used to live there around the time ac1 came out and went to school near that historical district it was really fun being there. ofcourse its a war zone now kinda sucks. was peaceful and nice. I bought ac1 on pc back then and the game required internet connection to work and I had none at the time. fucking uplay.

 

[Fahdis]

i used to live there around the time ac1 came out and went to school near that historical district it was really fun being there. ofcourse its a war zone now kinda sucks. was peaceful and nice. I bought ac1 on pc back then and the game required internet connection to work and I had none at the time. fucking uplay.

So awesome. I'm guessing you're from the ME then? My favorite part of any game is inclusion of different cultures. Although I am South Asian I loved Prince of Persia, Uncharted 2/LL and AC because of its relevance to those regions, religions and cultures being closer to my own. How accurate was AC1 btw in regards to historical archives for Sham or Damasq?

 

[SlashBringingHasher]

So awesome. I'm guessing you're from the ME then? My favorite part of any game is inclusion of different cultures. Although I am South Asian I loved Prince of Persia, Uncharted 2/LL and AC because of its relevance to those regions, religions and cultures being closer to my own. How accurate was AC1 btw in regards to historical archives for Sham or Damasq?

am from Iraq but I lived in syria for a few years. syria was really nice. nicer than USA, its not that rich of a nation but it was relatively very peaceful and most people were nice.


i didnt play that much ac after ac1. i played half of ac1 and never played it much again. so i can't say. but the architecture looks pretty similar. a lot of the old buildings still exist in that area that i went to school in. very old houses and shops. and people still have really old antiquated jobs and hobbies. they make cool ornaments like really nice knives etc, a lot of woodworking and blacksmithing and what not. it was a time capsule. there were so many damn tourists too. the alleys were so small.

 

[ULTROS!]

I dunno but I was able to platinum Bayonetta: warts and all.

 

[HeresJohnny]

It was a system that was intentionally designed to be difficult to work on by the company's own admission, what did people expect? It was a mess of a system.

 

[SlashBringingHasher]

It was a system that was intentionally designed to be difficult to work on by the engineer's own admission, what did people expect? It was a mess of a system.

thats not even half the story. it was not supposed to have a GPU. or a second ram pool. they added that after they delayed it in 2005 because 360 was too powerful on reveal. so it became 10x harder to design games for because you'd have to micromanage the resources and RAM between two parts and the bottlenecks were stupidly huge.

 

[CaseyTappy]

Never forget the beauty of Lair

Spoiler

Trailer

 

[Clear]

The main issue was the memory arrangement, and even then had not 360 used a unified pool ports wouldn't have suffered so much.

Part of the problem was that although you could run code anywhere, running it on the wrong side of the split incurred a huge penalty.

This was why Unreal Engine based titles needed such a lot of bespoke work.

 

[Puskas]

Like the console itself, the 7th gen games in general were pure garbage perfromance wise. It was screen tear and slide show galore galore in far too many cases. The only good thing about the PS3 was the XMB.

 

[Aintitcool]

Mass Effect plays better on PS3 then on 360, you're right about most games but not that one.

 

[Inviusx]

gonna list a few on the top of my head that were unplayable

overlord, enemy front, bayonetta. I will add like 10-15 more in the least when I check all the ones that I actually stopped playing due to how awful they ran.


oh. both riddick games. ran like fucking crap too. both of them.


oh its all coming to me, heavenly sword, LAIR. those are damn exclusives too. 20 fps games. in the case of lair must be like 15 fps.


all the fallout games, all of the elder scrolls games. all the bethesda games that aren't made by arkane studios basically.


the castlevania, at least the first lords of shadow, was like 25 fps and jittery as fuck. idk about the second one because i havent played that one.

I agree with you about Lair being technically abysmal but god damn I love that game.

 

[The Bloody-Nine]

Like the console itself, the 7th gen games in general were pure garbage perfromance wise. It was screen tear and slide show galore galore in far too many cases. The only good thing about the PS3 was the XMB.

And Demon's Souls. And Uncharted 2. And 3D Dot Game Heroes. And The Last of Us. And God of War 3. And Resistance 3. And Yakuza....

That sure is some opinion you hold.

 

[theclaw135]

And Demon's Souls. And Uncharted 2. And 3D Dot Game Heroes. And The Last of Us. And God of War 3. And Resistance 3. And Yakuza....

That sure is some opinion you hold.

Maybe Japanese companies understood PS3 better. Except this topic can't go without mentioning The Last Remnant's problems.

 

[DonF]

Oh yeah, I remember those digital foundry videos. Every time, Xbox 360 had better frame rates and higher resolution. The PS3 was a powerful machine, but a pain to program.

 

[thelastword]

I dunno but I was able to platinum Bayonetta: warts and all.

Yeah, I played bayonetta just fine, had no issues, but it got a bit slow when the two mechanical dogs were on screen, (Red and Blue), perhaps the toughest boss fight in the game.......

Bayonetta was smoother on 360 and looked better on 360, that's for sure, but it was an outlier, most third party games were 1-2 fps in difference between the systems on average......

 

[Puskas]

And Demon's Souls. And Uncharted 2. And 3D Dot Game Heroes. And The Last of Us. And God of War 3. And Resistance 3. And Yakuza....

That sure is some opinion you hold.

I was talking about the hardware and the OS and how it mainly affected multiplat games. In hindsight, I realize my post could've been worded better.

 

[The Bloody-Nine]

I was talking about the hardware and the OS and how it mainly affected multiplat games. In hindsight, I realize my post could've been worded better.

No worries. The multi-platform games pretty much always ran like shit on the PS3. The screen tearing alone used to drive me mad.

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

I made the terrible, terrible mistake of buying the 2009 Ghostbusters game on PS3 because I figured hey, Ghostbusters is a Sony franchise so certainly PS3 would be the lead platform, right? RIGHT?

I believe it's defunct now but there's used to be a site called Lens of Truth that had articles comparing PS3 and 360 versions and the comparison between the two versions of Ghostbusters and it was unbelievable how much worse visually the PS3 version was compared to 360, just totally unacceptable.

Thankfully I was able to wash the bad taste out of my mouth by playing the PC version a couple of years later.

I think the only other third party multiplat games I played on PS3 was Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I have no idea how that compared to the 360, but it had exclusive challenges where you played as the Joker, which was neat and Soul Calibur 4, which had the better exclusive character.

But yeah, as a rule I stayed far away from any multiplat games on PS3.

 

[Aintitcool]

Maybe Japanese companies understood PS3 better. Except this topic can't go without mentioning The Last Remnant's problems.

Japanese companies were almost bankrupt because of failing to make good PS3 code without lots of investment and time. It was naughty dog who themselves created a team to improve the debugging process and testing environment of the PS3 for other developers. Sony had an "ICE" team that would go to different devs and improve their code and understanding of the hardware for a couple years to improve performance on major releases on games before release.

Even GTA4's delay was all to bring it to parity with 360.

 

[Breakage]

Something to do with the split memory architecture and the complexities of the "CELL Broadband Engine".

 

[Daymos]

I ranted time and again about how BAD dragon age was on ps3 but it reviewed in the 8.0s and everyone seemed to just not notice. 20fps was common and some areas seemed to have the detail of an N64 game.

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

I ranted time and again about how BAD dragon age was on ps3 but it reviewed in the 8.0s and everyone seemed to just not notice. 20fps was common and some areas seemed to have the detail of an N64 game.

It's really profound how butt ugly some games could be on consoles during the 7th gen.

I'd say the 7th gen was the one generation that was not necessarily an exponential leap over the one that came before it, it was a mixed bag for sure.

Those dark days are behind us thankfully, I really hate it when people say the current gen wasn't a big leap over the prior because that's just not true at all.

Japanese companies were almost bankrupt because of failing to make good PS3 code without lots of investment and time. It was naughty dog who themselves created a team to improve the debugging process and testing environment of the PS3 for other developers. Sony had an "ICE" team that would go to different devs and improve their code and understanding of the hardware for a couple years to improve performance on major releases on games before release.

Even GTA4's delay was all to bring it to parity with 360.

I'm still upset over how the PS3 damn near killed the Japanese development industry.

 

[Bryank75]

Yeah, I mean with some games it wasn't great at all.... RDR and Skyrim were the extreme cases I remember.

However, I think it was a disgrace the way publications gave PlayStation games a lower score for poor performance, I mean if it were up to the games media, they would have killed off Sony completely and only Xbox would be left.
Pretty sad when you think that the games media is supposed to protect us and fight for consumer rights but most of them have completely sold out to corporate interests.

 

[Ozrimandias]

I havent had any problem with third party games on PS3, but one.......and that one shouldnt never been released on PS3.


Fallout New Vegas.

 

[The Bloody-Nine]

I havent had any problem with third party games on PS3, but one.......and that one shouldnt never been released on PS3.


Fallout New Vegas.

That was a bad one. Skyrim was even worse, for me.

 

[Clear]

No worries. The multi-platform games pretty much always ran like shit on the PS3. The screen tearing alone used to drive me mad.

Umm, in my experience PS3 games nearly all used hard vsync'd triple-buffering, so performance tended to appear lower as many 360 titles adopted a adaptive-vsync method. This was a long-time source of annoyance for me with many of the early DF face-offs, as the exact same performance (same hardware, same software) would yield differing results based solely on this.

 

[Chozofication_]

The split ram was not a real issue. It was the fact that ps3 lacked edram and its os used 18 meg more than 360's. Skyrim was a Bethesda problem.

Ps3 actually had more bandwidth for a lot of things like texture filtering, and when 360 edram wasn't properly used you could have higher resolutions on ps3. See ff13 or sonic racing transformed for example.

However 360 was the more powerful and much better designed machine. Ps3 had an edge in cpu grunt however, but it was mostly used to catch up to 360's gpu output as a best case. And even then, you had no edram and less overall memory. Ps3 gpu was junk.

 

[The Bloody-Nine]

Umm, in my experience PS3 games nearly all used hard vsync'd triple-buffering, so performance tended to appear lower as many 360 titles adopted a adaptive-vsync method. This was a long-time source of annoyance for me with many of the early DF face-offs, as the exact same performance (same hardware, same software) would yield differing results based solely on this.

I have nearly 100 PS3 games and there was screen tearing present in a lot of them. Just google 'PS3 screen tearing' and you'll see a lot of people complaining about the same thing.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ps3.....69i57j0l5.3151j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[Ozrimandias]

That was a bad one. Skyrim was even worse, for me.

Horrible too, dindt finish any of those....plus, Fallout 76 its one of the reasons that i dont tolerate Bethesda anymore.

 

[Afro Republican]

I believe it's defunct now but there's used to be a site called Lens of Truth that had articles comparing PS3 and 360 versions .

Youtube channel is still up.

 

[bilderberg]

Yeah, I mean with some games it wasn't great at all.... RDR and Skyrim were the extreme cases I remember.

However, I think it was a disgrace the way publications gave PlayStation games a lower score for poor performance, I mean if it were up to the games media, they would have killed off Sony completely and only Xbox would be left.
Pretty sad when you think that the games media is supposed to protect us and fight for consumer rights but most of them have completely sold out to corporate interests.

it's a disgrace to give worst performing versions a lower score? That's a bit dramatic.

 

[Clear]

I have nearly 100 PS3 games and there was screen tearing present in a lot of them. Just google 'PS3 screen tearing' and you'll see a lot of people complaining about the same thing.

There's nothing hardware dependant about screen-tearing, its just a product of how the software handles vsync. A 100 game sample out of probably 1500+ games on the system is anecdotal, as was my experience of most games triple-buffering. Personally I find screen-tearing an unacceptable trade-off, its just baaaad in my view!

 

[bilderberg]

There's nothing hardware dependant about screen-tearing, its just a product of how the software handles vsync. A 100 game sample out of probably 1500+ games on the system is anecdotal, as was my experience of most games triple-buffering. Personally I find screen-tearing an unacceptable trade-off, its just baaaad in my view!

Triple buffering eats up more memory, which the ps3 was already struggling with.