Top 10 Worst PC Ports

This “special edition”, was a rerelease that was released to address the original version’s difficulty. A prequel to the first game, “Devil May Cry 3” chronicles the mercenary Dante's early days as he is steadily drawn into the world of demons. When it came time to bring the Special Edition of the game to PC, developer SourceNext was chosen to handle the porting process. Unfortunately, the core game's charms were undermined by an underpowered game engine, poor controls, and the lack of a “save and quit” feature. Not exactly a sterling example of game design, to say the least.

Developer Rockstar Vancouver's much-loved title didn't fare so well in its transition to Microsoft Windows. The original PS2 game focused on new student Jimmy Hopkins' struggles at Bullworth Academy, as does the enhanced remake “Bully: Scholarship Edition”. However, the difference between the original and the PC port lies in overall quality; the latter was found to have noticeable issues. In addition to poor mouse and keyboard support, “Scholarship Edition” on PC also suffered from frame rate issues and a lack of certain environmental textures. Not to mention it was capped at 30 FPS, something we’ll see a lot of here.

Square Enix's critically-acclaimed “Final Fantasy VII” for the PS1 struggled when it was ported to PC in 1998. While the PC version did solve issues with the English translation, it came at a cost: bugs plaguing various aspects of the game, such as the game's FMVs and reducing the soundtrack to MIDI files. The 2012 Steam released fixed most of these issues … but somehow made the soundtrack worse. To give you an example, here’s the PS1 version of One Winged Angel, and here’s the Steam version before it was patched. Given Square's troubles when porting “Final Fantasy XIII”, this may very well be a trend.

As talented as Shinji Mikami may be, he can't overcome poor porting practices. Tango Gameworks' 2014 survival-horror title “The Evil Within” put gamers in the role of Sebastian Castellanos, a police detective attempting to escape a constantly shifting nightmare realm. The game's various strengths were tested, however, with the release of its PC port. Said port was locked at 30 FPS, suffered from graphical errors, and would even crash on occasion. Add in the problem of the letterbox presentation from all versions of the game, and you have an uneven product at best.

This major new IP from Ubisoft had issues, that's for sure. Alongside the eighth generation consoles, the PC version of “Watch Dogs” was said to have been prioritized during development... a detail which doesn't quite come across in practice. As a result, The PC version was plagued at release by numerous technical issues, such as frame rates dropping into the single digits and outright broken save files requiring a restart. Though Ubisoft has since made efforts to fix the game via patches, it seems clear that “Watch Dogs” on PC wasn't quite ready for launch.

The Saints probably feel a little shame from this one. Released three months late after its console counterparts, the Microsoft Windows port of “Saints Row 2” came with problems from the word go. The game's non-linear open-world design and charming cast were undermined by the PC port's glitches, such as movement and voices speeding up or keys not responding with their mapped actions. Combined with crashes and the occasional tendency to run at an abysmal 15 frames, this was a mess through-and-through.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can... except enjoy a good PC port, it seems. Developed by The Fizz Factor to coincide with the release of the 2004 film, “Spider-Man 2” for PC was an odd creation. The Games most notable omission was the lack of a Free Roaming Open World from the console versions, (you know the very feature that made the game good to begin with,) instead giving players on PC more linear and simplistic levels. However, the larger issues were the game's poor controls, questionable camera, and lack-luster character animations. Suffice to say, it was not very impressive in scope or quality.

Rocksteady's third instalment in the “Batman: Arkham” series was, shall we say, flawed on PC. Possibly due to being handed off to Iron Galaxy Studios, the PC version of “Batman: Arkham Knight” launched to overwhelming criticism. The reasons were plentiful: a frame rate cap of 30 FPS, stuttering gameplay no matter the quality of one's computer, plentiful hard crashes, and other problems with performance. To add further insult to injury, the recent launch of Steam’s Refund Policy forced WB to pull the game from the service. Imagine if that was around when other games on this list were launched.

Capcom seems to have some issues bringing their titles to home computers. Case in point: the 2007 PC release of “Resident Evil 4”, ported by SourceNext on Capcom's behalf, was something of a notably flawed release. First and foremost, the PC version was a port of the PS2 version, which was already an inferior port of the original GameCube version. In addition to that issue, “Resident Evil 4” for Windows suffered from no mouse support at all, poor keyboard controls, low-quality cutscenes, and missing lighting effects resulting in drab environments. Such a shame.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:

“Need for Speed: The Run” (2011)

“Borderlands” (2009)

“Dead Rising 3” (2014)

“Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Premium Edition” (2013)

For many, this was a great game lost in translation. Originally released for consoles in 2011, the Special “Prepare to Die” edition came exclusively to PC with the goal of adding content, instead of optimizing for the platform. What resulted was an uneven and almost unplayable port, with the game's noteworthy difficulty made borderline unfair by a complete lack of understanding of how modern PC games function. Besides being buggy and unresponsive, the keyboard controls put necessary actions in hard to reach places. Even if you try to play the game with a USB controller, the moue cursor never goes away, flying around the screen at all times.

Do you agree with our list? What’s your least favourite PC port? For more reflective Top 10s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.