Let's talk game ports

[Monocle]

honestly, Wii port was my favorite port of the game but this one... THIS ONE.... masterpiece. now I gotta find a way to play this version

[ShiraNoMai]

I swear, between Resident Evil 4 and Skyrim, who will win out on most ported title in modern gaming history?

This topic needs hella love. Lately, that's all companies are making, but this also creates the topic of what constitutes a port? Is it a direct upload of the exe file with minor fixes to allow it to run on whatever hardware it needs, or can they include upgrades like graphical improvements and quality changes?

[Monocle]

I would include remasters as ports honestly. Making a game just a bit prettier but not really changing anything else shouldn't be a remake.

Take Nier Replicant. if you do side by side comparisons, a ton changed. not just graphics that was put through an AI for improvement. There are whole new models, fighting is smoother, every line is voiced and it was completely redubbed.

buuuuut, even the director, Yoko Taro, says it's not a remake. It really is like right in between the two.

I also don't think the change needs to be as drastic as FF7R to be considered a remake. That is basically a new game tbh

[ShiraNoMai]

For things like FF7R that was what I'd classify as a new "re": re-imagining. It takes the existing property and expands upon it from the ground up, but it's separate from a "reboot" which can rehash the existing property with hopes of gaining a new audience. One targets old audiences and the other targets new audiences.

[Monocle]

I'm fine with reboots honestly. DmC was terribly scripted but the story was the same stuff as always. Dante fights demons. But man. the dialogue. cringe. but the gameplay was a ton of fun!

it's weird. like I'm playing Legendary Edition now and it's definitely a remaster but, in the end, it's still a port. the game plays the same., still janky. still got weird eyes and animations. same same same. I don't know what I would consider an excellent port honestly.

[Moonface]

This topic needs hella love. Lately, that's all companies are making, but this also creates the topic of what constitutes a port? Is it a direct upload of the exe file with minor fixes to allow it to run on whatever hardware it needs, or can they include upgrades like graphical improvements and quality changes?

I think if a game is basically the same at its core, then I would call it a port. GTA V on PS4 is at its core the same game, but with better graphics and the addition of first person, and so I would still call it a port; nothing fundamentally changed for the game. Crash N. Sane and Spyro Reignited are games I wouldn't consider ports, since they were completely remade and so are entirely different versions.

Something that comes to mind as more of a gray area would be something like Minecraft, which has a few different versions. Java and Bedrock are the current two variations of the game, where both are at their core the same experience, but don't necessarily get updated at the same time, can not interact with each other (Bedrock players can not play with Java players), and have slightly different ways of handling certain things like redstone and block interaction, and feature things not possible in the opposing version due to the different coding languages. I wouldn't call them both the exact same game, but I don't know if they're different enough to call them both their own thing.

Also, back in the day before Bedrock, when Minecraft was ported over to PS3 and 360, the worlds had a size limit because of the limitations of the hardware, and again updates were not same day as the PC updates. Is that called a port, or is it something else because of the disparities?

[Dragon Lord]

I also don't think the change needs to be as drastic as FF7R to be considered a remake. That is basically a new game tbh

Well, that's because it is a new game. The remake in the name isn't referring to the game itself, as you very well know.

I agree with Monocle that I would consider remasters to just be prettied up ports. I'm okay with porting/remasters though. I'm fine with double dipping on games (or triple dripping in some cases) if the ports all have their own trophy lists. Used to love seeing a game released on PS3, PS4 and Vita and all three versions had their own trophy lists.

But yeah, I own multiple copies of a lot of games just so I could double dip on the trophies, haha. It's kind of fun to play through one version normally, taking my time and enjoying the game, getting the platinum, and then using the other port to see how fast I can platinum the game compared to my casual play through.

[Moonface]

But yeah, I own multiple copies of a lot of games just so I could double dip on the trophies, haha. It's kind of fun to play through one version normally, taking my time and enjoying the game, getting the platinum, and then using the other port to see how fast I can platinum the game compared to my casual play through.

If you had the ability to delete trophy progress for a game so that you could see how fast you can get the trophies again in it? In the instance of a game not having multiple versions for you to do the technique I quoted you on.

[Dragon Lord]

Nah. As fun as it is to do it with games that have separate trophy lists per platform, I wouldn't go out of my way to delete my trophy data for a game just to re-do it. It's just one of those, "Well, I can stack these trophy lists, so let's have some fun with it!" things.

The one I'm most excited for is Star Ocean 4. I took about 500-600 hours to finish that on PS3, scattered across... 5 years? So my goal with the PS4 version is to see not only how much time I can shave off of that (aiming for 300-350 hours), but to also see if I can get myself to complete it in less than three months (being generous here as work/laziness/other games might interfere with progress once I do start it up).

[Moonface]

I just remembered that if you make a new profile on your PS4, it wouldn't have trophies and you could use that to try re-running a games trophies if it lacks more than one trophy list.

Also, I was looking through this video to see if it had any notably bad ports mentioned, and the one that stood out to me that I completely forgot about was Skyrim on PS3 having a bug where the save file would grow until your console had no more free space.

[Maniakkid25]

That seems a bit exaggerated, because you'd already start seeing it affect your game at 6 MEGS. But yeah, it would cause massive amounts of lag, make the game unplayable, and that's if the save file didn't outright crash it. Bethesda SUCKS at their job!

[Moonface]

One would hope Bethesda might not have as many bugs in their games now that they have Microsoft parenting them, but I won't hold my breath.

I just remembered a really bad port I played, which was Rayman Raving Rabbids on PS2. The game itself runs fine, but because the game was originally designed around the Wii, there are certain minigames that had motion controls mapped into the analogue sticks instead. The one I really recall is where Rayman needs to run to a goal, and with motion controls you would alternate moving each controller up and down; however, for PS2 that was changed to require you move the analogue sticks up and down alternately (one up while one is down), and the faster you did that the faster Rayman would run. Trying to do that is one of the hardest physical tasks I've ever done playing a game to the point I gave up and asked my dad to just waggle one stick like a lunatic up and down while I did the same to the other.

[Dragon Lord]

The sad thing about Skyrim ports is that the PS4 and Xbox One ports still ran like shit. Sure, the PS4 version didn't have the memory leak issues that completely ruined the game, but man, nearly every other issue was still present in the game.

I actually ran into an issue on my PS4 play through that forced me to make a new character so I could do one of the DLCs for the trophies. I couldn't access the last DLC on my main character because the game would crash every time I got near Windhelm, which is where you needed to go to be taken to the DLC area. So that was really fun for me.

Not sure how much Microsoft will actually be involved with Bethesda (they probably just want to cash in on their games more than anything), so I'm expecting TES VI to be a bug-ridden, broken game experience yet again.

[ShiraNoMai]

The problem with Bethesda games is they have SO many little systems inside the larger system (the game) that it's much easier for things to break and fall apart when small things go wrong (or conflict, for that matter). There's only so many layers you can add to a cake before it starts to topple on top of each other and fall apart, ya know? I don't think they'll ever solve it because of how ambitious they make their gameworlds be. There's no amount of bug-testing in the world that can prevent every happenstance that can possibly occur on game with that many interwoven systems in place IMO.

[Maniakkid25]

Yeah, no, I call bulls***, because that doesn't justify why they ported a COMPLETELY UNFIXED version of the game onto Switch SIX YEARS after its initial release. The bug fixes the original version got? NOPE! THEY'RE ALL GONE! Bethesda just suck are their jobs, period; at least when Obsidian was Bug-sidian, they had the decency to try to fix their major bugs in a decent amount of time (when the publisher let them, LucasArts...). And no, I'm not just saying they added new bugs; THEY LEFT IN ALL THE OLD ONES!