Support NeoGAF

[wanderingprostheyltite]

Reading through the recent Palmer Luckey "high fps or die" thread has got me wondering what PC games in the past few years have the most optimized performance? Can be exclusive, multiplat, indies, anything goes. Just a game that when you ran it you were pleasantly surprised just how smooth it ran across the board. For me the last good one was Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. Yeah it's not the greatest looking but the IQ and framerate were rock solid throughout, and has had me craving more games that scale well for a variety of different hardware setups. What say you PC gaf?

 

[MRORANGE]

Sleeping Dogs.

ran it on a 4850 and it looked pretty damn good.

Source games should also get a nod as well.

 

[sibarraz]

Im amazed that Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed can run in the shitty pc of a friend

 

[TrueMenace]

Dark Souls 2.

 

[Dictator93]

Crysis 2, Crysis 3.

Those games run like butter (60fps!) as long as you adjust your expectations for running on Very High.

Also, Dark souls II is a fantastic PC release. Runs at 60 fps quite well.

 

[KojiKnight]

Insert Blizzard title here.

 

[JordanN]

Pretty much any Valve game.

Blizzard's games also scale well on any hardware.

 

[TronLight]

Devil May Cry 4. You can get 60fps on anything. It's so stupidly good.

 

[Krusenstern]

Most of Capcoms output. Devil May Cry 4 runs on a toaster.

 

[perorist]

Valve games run on toasters

 

[dracula_x]

All Valve games – Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, etc.

 

[ComputerMKII]

DmC Devil May Cry

Source Engine games

 

[LTWheels]

DmC, Dark Souls 2.

 

[_S4MUR4I_]

Burnout Paradise.

 

[Nokterian]

Crysis 2, Crysis 3.

Those games run like butter (60fps!) as long as you adjust your expectations for running on Very High.

Also, Dark souls II is a fantastic PC release. Runs at 60 fps quite well.

Hmm no it was a console port and it was pretty horrible.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=424630

Because crytek gave a big fuck you to the pc community at large. They removed every single option what Crysis had and somewhat put a little back in Crysis 3 but also tessalation was a joke in Crysis 2.

 

[antitrop]

DmC. Ran at over 100fps on most modern setups.

 

[BY2K]

Sleeping Dogs, Just Cause 2, Capcom games.

 

[Persona7]

Every time you see the word toaster in this thread, take a shot.


Dark Souls 2 is a recent one.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

Crysis 3

edit: but it is dx11 only for it.

 

[Cizeta-Moroder]

All Crysis and Valve games. Maybe Skyrim.

 

[Redx508]

yea DmC ran super well

 

[jabuseika]

Capcom games as of recently, run pretty well on old-ish systems.

 

[epmode]

Square's recentish open world games are impressive. Just Cause 2 and Sleeping Dogs, I mean. Lovely ports.

And whoever mentioned Sonic All Stars Transformed is right.

Both Dark Souls games run incredibly well, although you'll want to mod the first one, obviously.

 

[ThaiGrocer]

Dark Souls 2.

It was a joy to see it run without a hitch on my old system in 1080p. Don't forget about the nearly non-existant load times. You know it's doing much better when you don't have enough time to read the item descriptions in the load window.

 

[Zeth]

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is crazy. 4k 60fps on a Potato. (not quite, but you get the idea)

Of course lots of Valve games too. I play Dota 2 at 90fps 2560x1440 on my 680.

 

[JohnGrimm]

Max Payne 3.

Edit: Can't forget Far Cry 2.

 

[haikira]

I think Max Payne 3 is well optimized. Seen some very old systems running it well, with the game still looking pretty decent. I was actually expecting the opposite, before release, but it ended up being a really solid job.

I also agree with all the votes for DMC4.

EDIT: Was beat to it. Hah.

 

[Firebrand]

Sleeping Dogs.

For me the game is constantly dropping frames despite the frame rate counter being way above 60 at all times. Could be a Win8 issue rather than the game though, don't know.

Pretty much any Valve game.

Well, maybe not TF2 post-hats.

2007 release: "Wow this game runs so smoothly"
new machine: "Wow finally TF2 runs smooth again"
even newer machine: "Wow, finally TF2 is smooth, again, again!"

Then again, it's a 7 year old game and still active, I guess that might warrant bumping up recommended specs gradually.

 

[Dictator93]

Hmm no it was a console port and it was pretty horrible.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=424630

Because crytek gave a big fuck you to the pc community at large. They removed every single option what Crysis had and somewhat put a little back in Crysis 3 but also tessalation was a joke in Crysis 2.

At Its second to highest settings (not even Very High/ultra), Crysis 2 looks better than almost every PC game that is not Crysis 3.

Yes, Crysis 2 is a disappointment in a lot of areas. But this thread was about optimized titels.

Cryengine 3 / Cryengine runs amazingly well for how it looks.

 

[Unai]

Crysis 2 and Tomb Raider (2013) are VERY optimized.

 

[StalkerUKCG]

Sonic All Stars is great.

 

[CrackPebbles]

DmC ran at 90+fps on my Laptop with a geforce GT 630m, native 1366 X 768 and max texture quality etc. Shits dumb.

Same with DMC4 locked at 60fps.

 

[GravityMan]

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Dark Souls II

 

[TheAdmiester]

Just Cause 2, Max Payne 3, absolutely anything from the Source engine.

EDIT: Oh, and DiRT 2 and DiRT 3. I can run the second game at 4k and 60fps.

 

[The Janitor]

I think BF3 runs well considering how good it looks

 

[Mupod]

off the top of my head, DMC4 ran amazingly well on pretty much anything.

 

[Unai]

Hmm no it was a console port and it was pretty horrible.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=424630

Because crytek gave a big fuck you to the pc community at large. They removed every single option what Crysis had and somewhat put a little back in Crysis 3 but also tessalation was a joke in Crysis 2.

This is so wrong. Crysis 2 run well in very old machines.

 

[Pimpbaa]

Just Cause 2. It used dx10 yet still ran great.

 

[OldAsUrSock]

Crysis 2 looks and runs amazing even with Maldo's mod. 7850 easy 60fps.

 

[Salsa]

based QLOC

best port in recent years, easily.

 

[Easy_D]

Sleeping Dogs.

ran it on a 4850 and it looked pretty damn good.

Source games should also get a nod as well.

Hell yeah, I can run it at a locked 30 on Max settings (with HD textures) with a HD5870 and an E8500 dualcore. Very impressed by how well it runs.

 

[charsace]

The new Devil May Cry. It can run at 720p high settings, no AA on a 8600m at a playable frame rate. Devil May Cry is a prime example of what efficient artists can do in optimizing a game.

Metal Gear Rising can run fast on an 8600m at 720p with a lot of high settings.

 

[Schlomo]

Assassin's Creed 2 was very well optimized. After AC1 that was a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately I haven't heard good things about 3 and 4.

 

[Danneee]

Just Cause 2 and Two Worlds 2 both ran fantastic on high settings on my old laptop with a 5650 GPU at release. Impressive.

 

[MedIC86]

Pretty funny people mentioning ports because no port can touch the optimization level old pc devs like blizzard and valve get.

 

[injurai]

Well, maybe not TF2 post-hats.

2007 release: "Wow this game runs so smoothly"
new machine: "Wow finally TF2 runs smooth again"
even newer machine: "Wow, finally TF2 is smooth, again, again!"

Then again, it's a 7 year old and still active, I guess that might warrant bumping up recommended specs gradually.

To some extent, but transistor blocks go bad in cpus overtime, so it should be a surprise when games start running worse over time. Sometimes critical PLA's go bad and that can drastically affect things depending on the logic being ran.

 

[DJIzana]

Sleeping Dogs.

ran it on a 4850 and it looked pretty damn good.

Source games should also get a nod as well.

That first post...

 

[Ambition]

Crysis 2, DmC4, and all Valve games except maybe CS GO, I don't know how it runs now but the BETA ran like crap for me :/

 

[Hollycat]

Freelancer has a heck of a lot going on for only 512mb requirement, so I'll go with that.


Edit: oops, you meant recently.

 

[AmFreak]

Pretty funny people mentioning ports because no port can touch the optimization level old pc devs like blizzard and valve get.

True, that's why 4v4 games in SC2 runs like shit on my pc, cause SC2 only uses 2 cores.