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Lowest Average Frame Rate In a Game You Finished?

A bunch of N64 games, I'd guess. The ones that were 20 fps for you NTSC guys were 17 fps over here in PAL land. And yeah, they were sluggish. But still great.
 
I remember some PC games having absolutely horrendous performance on the PC I had in the early 00s. I think WarCraft 3 and the Sims ran like absolute trash.
 
I beat The Witcher 2 on my current laptop, FPS ranged from like 5-30 averaging probably like 15 or so, not only that but it was having overheating problems at the time. Tried to load it up again recently and instantly said a big "fuck that". Not entirely sure how I did it, just really liked the game and wanted to play on whatever I could get my hands on.
 
I had a rig that could barely run Crysis competently on low settings when it first came out, so naturally I cranked things up to Medium/High and played it at about 8-10FPS. I still don't know what possessed me to play the game like that, but I enjoyed it.
 
Probably Oblivion or the original Far Cry. I cranked both at 1280x1024 with visuals maxed out. Probably averaged ~20 FPS outside, but it was worth it.
 
Far Cry 3 you fuckers. God that game was just screaming "please take me to next-gen" on these old consoles.
 
Playing Halo 2 Vista on my HP PC in 2008. I don't remember the exact framerate, but I'd say an average of 10fps.

AMD Athlon X2
1GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 6150LE

Yes, I was running Vista on 1GB of memory, it was dreadful.
 
Orayn said:
I didn't say that the games were always poorly received, just that framerate problems didn't go unnoticed. It's hard to find the original versions because of how old the game is, but many of those reviews at least mentioned the slowdown.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, but can you imagine a game running at 15-20 fps receiving such a high aggregated score in 2014?

I don't doubt that critics noticed discrepancies in frame-rate between games, it's just that they didn't consider that to be a fatal flaw, and neither did most gamers who have fond memories of enjoying games that preformed so poorly.

30-60fps was standard in the SNES/Genesis era, but suddenly when the N64 came out 20fps became acceptable, before finally returning back to 30-60fps in the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era.

The N64 is a very strange interlude in gaming indeed.
 
Probably Enslaved on the PS3. I'm really looking forward to my replay on PC, because there was a great game under all....that.
 
My PC was pretty far below spec for the PC version of FF7 when Eidos put that out, but i didn't own a PSX at the time, and was determined to complete it...

And complete it I did...
in about 45 hours...
at probably 5 FPS.
 
Well if it's average lowest framerate... Fallout: New Vegas on PS3. Seriously, when you have a big enough save file, it literally drops to slideshow speeds frequently, after 20-60 minutes of smooth playtime. I love the game- one of my favorites from this past generation, but seriously- the PS3 port was significantly brought down because of this.
 
Sonic R on my old PC as a kid ran at probably less than 7 FPS. I played it a lot as a kid. In fact, the game itself ran so slow that when I played it on Gems collection I couldn't believe how fast that version was. I thought the races were supposed to take 15 minutes to complete.
 
I think OoT is the lowest I've played. In the past 3 years, South Park is has been the lowest with an average rate of 30fps on my PC
 
I dunno if it counts but I played through Ultima VI in the early 90s on a POS PC, where pressing a directional key would move you 1 step a second.
 
WoW with my shitty laptop.
1 FPS BABY!
That was during WoTLK in ICC 10 Heroics. I was a Mage getting consistent top 1 dps rank expecially on Marrowgar.
 
HL2 probably 5-10 FPS and I had to look at the ground/sky whenever there was an explosion or it would crash, thank you intel integrated graphics :')

I also got all the medals in Trackmania nations at 15FPS
 
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Xbox version played on my Xbox 360. Definitely hits sub 20 frames per second for the most part, but I tolerate it because besides the HD Trilogy that hit PS3, there is no other way to play it without the game breaking issues of the PC version.

Not surprisingly, this is also the case with Splinter Cell: Double Agent. While the PC issues can be fixed to an extent, I just rather deal with the frame hit on the Xbox 360 version over the unfixed problems. The frame rate hits aren't as drastic as Pandora Tomorrow, but long play sessions can leave me with a headache.

Some other special case scenarios of console/handheld exclusives I usually tolerate as well, but never if I can have a PC/Emulation alternative.
 
lordchompy said:
Why was it so acceptable back then? Less than 60 fps these days and everyone cries bloody murder, less than 30 and folks are ready to call the better business bureau and get their money back.

But in the n64 days? Everything was like 20fps, and everyone loved it.
Click to expand...


3d was new back then and the n64 was providing experiences beyond the competition so there was some forgiveness. Some of the games like oot ran at sub 30fps but were consistent. Having a steady, even if low framerate is better than one jumping around like crazy trying to hit 60.
 
I don't know, maybe GTA4 or GTA5. I just know GTA5 annoyed me more, GTA4 may have been worse but so much other stuff annoyed me about it that framerate slid by.
 
lordchompy said:
Why was it so acceptable back then? Less than 60 fps these days and everyone cries bloody murder, less than 30 and folks are ready to call the better business bureau and get their money back.

But in the n64 days? Everything was like 20fps, and everyone loved it.
Click to expand...

because out tv's sucked and we didnt know any better.

jet force gemini. (still a great game, even with all these framedrops)

played day z with an average of 15 fps. (hitting moving objects was so hard that i tried to avoid every fight)
 
Wow ran on my old pc really bad during burning crusade. In bigger raids fps was constantly single digits. I had to face away from fights to be able to heal in some bosses.
 
big_z said:
3d was new back then and the n64 was providing experiences beyond the competition so there was some forgiveness. Some of the games like oot ran at sub 30fps but were consistent. Having a steady, even if low framerate is better than one jumping around like crazy trying to hit 60.
Click to expand...

Ignoring the above clause, which I think is a little subjective, why then were many PS1 developers hitting 30 fps or thereabouts? Tomb raider, Crash Bandicoot, Final Fantasy, Spyro the Dragon: all had quite impressive graphics yet were able to maintain a higher frame rate.

I doubt Rare made a game that ran above 25fps on the N64, most were closer to 20 -- and in some cases worse -- yet they were the greatest thing since sliced bread, almost unanimously praised.

Some mind bending shit when you think about it.
 
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