The year was a big one for PC games. We saw remarkable achievements in fidelity in titles such as Dying Light 2 but also fundamentally broken PC ports.
I focus on the technical aspects of PC releases and Elden Ring is one of my favorites. It doesn't show up in this list in the same way.
Due to how few people can actually play the game, I considered putting it on this list. Portal RTX is a great example of how ray tracing can be used to change the look and feel of games.
The best showcase of ray tracing in the past was when the lighting and reflections were too much. Physically-based materials, more efficient path tracing techniques, upscaling, and frame generation are some of the techniques used to bring more realistic lighting into games.
I am excited about what the future holds for the project. I will be looking at these games more in the future.
It is an ugly look into the past, but it is on the other side. The PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight had massive stuttering issues and lackluster raytracing options. A stable frame rate is not possible with a plethora of upscaling features.
The game looks old. It was designed with last-gen consoles in mind, but it fails to live up to that standard. There was a flood of images comparing the graphical fidelity of the game to 2015's Arkham Knight.
This one was hard to take. I was excited to play the game even though there were some issues in the review. The stuttering that hasn't been fixed even months after launch is too much for me. It's worse than Elden Ring's stuttering and any other game I've played this year. The patch for the game made it impossible to play on the platform. That's really bad.
There is an example of how to do a PC port right. It's rock-solid performance, a wide breadth of graphics options, and pre-compiled shaders make it a smooth experience on almost any rig.
Compared to God of War and Spider-Man, the original console release of the game is mostly intact. Instead, the port focuses on stability by using the menu to build shaders to avoid stuttering and provide upscaling for any GPUs in the form of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2 and the Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLS).
A lot of the install size is on the back of the enhanced texture. Games like Far Cry 6 allow you to skip the higher-resolution assets for a smaller install size, which I would've liked to see in the game.
It is a good thing that the install size for a PC game is not something I can complain about.
Even though it has a lot of technical issues, it is one of my favorites of the year. A lengthy and bug-filledbeta period led to an even more broken release at launch, which featured constant network disconnections, game-breaking crashes, and numerous visual errors.
Skin wouldn't render on characters if skin was turned off, ray tracing performance would crash the game, and lens flares could cause a massive reduction in frame rate if they were turned on.
Fat Shark has continued to improve the game since it was launched. The launch state of the game is disappointing since it was one of only a few new titles released with the newest version of the game.
The approach to Sony's PC ports was different from the one taken by Spider-Man and Miles. They are both stable games, but they are also packed with ray tracing and other tech.
In Spider-Man, Ray tracing makes it possible to push reflection and shadows beyond what is available on the PS5.
I hope Spider-Man 2 can be seen on the PC. If the first two releases are any indication, the second game will be even better for high-end gaming rigs.
Stray and Elden Ring both had the same problem. Stray and Elden Ring have been patched into a better state, but they still stutter on PC.
Elden Ring uses a custom engine to show that it can affect games engines. The programs need to move to your graphics card before they can execute.
The bad news for these two releases is that they are not currently available for purchase. It was disappointing to see the stutters in the two games that were considered the best of the year.
Unreal Engine 5 shows a bright future for the massive number of titles that use Unreal. The Callisto Protocol release is one of the titles we are still seeing on the other side.
More PC releases are embracing technologies that help games run better on the engine side. We will see more progress on that front in the years to come.
This article is part of a weekly column called ReSpec, which includes discussions, advice, and in-depth reporting on the tech behind PC gaming.
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