Guess what everyone? It’s that time of the year. And oh I know that a lot of you have been waiting for this. The following games really let us down (tech-wise), and we consider them to be the worst-optimized games that came out on PC in 2023.
But what do we consider a badly optimized PC game? In our opinion, a game that is not optimized for the PC is one that cannot scale well on multiple CPU cores, that is plagued by ‘console-ish’ side effects (like really low FOV, controller-only on-screen indicators, awful K&M controls and mouse acceleration/smoothing issues). We also take into account the stuttering issues that affected a lot of PC games in 2023. Furthermore, a game that does not justify its CPU/GPU requirements, or one that cannot scale on older PC hardware is also a game that falls on this list.
Do also note that we judge the latest version of the games and not their launch version. And yes, we’ve reinstalled and replayed all of the games that came out in 2023. So, spoiler alert. You won’t find below The Last of Us Part I, Forspoken, Gotham Knights, or Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. All of these games run SIGNIFICANTLY better than their launch versions. Oh, and we won’t include any Early Access games. So, don’t expect to see The Day Before or ARK: Survival Ascended.
Lastly, this list is in random order. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at them.
Wanted: Dead was a game I was really looking forward to. However, it launched with numerous issues on PC. And sadly, Soliel hasn’t fixed any of them. The game still relies heavily on one CPU core/thread which means that older CPUs may encounter performance issues. Not only that but there are still major shader compilation stutters. And yes, there are still a few traversal stutters. Using the keyboard and mouse to navigate the menus is also a pain. On top of that, the graphics settings on PC are very basic. Man, what a letdown.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was one of the worst games of 2023. It was also an ugly game with average 3D models for its characters and dated lighting. Ironically, this game used Ray Tracing but even with its RT effects, it still looked bad. Oh, and let’s not forget its annoying stuttering issues.
This right here may be the worst-optimized PC game of 2023. WILD HEARTS was a huge technical disappointment on PC. The game still has MAJOR stuttering issues, and the mouse movement still feels weird. Plus, WILD HEARTS’ graphics do not justify their high GPU requirements. Just stay away from it, plain and simple.
I’m really bummed to include Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty in this list as it was one of my favorite PC games of 2023. Honestly, it was one of the games I loved playing. However, it still has a lot of tech issues on PC. There are still traversal stutters and optimization issues. Team Ninja has been working hard to fix bugs and add new stuff, and I have to give them credit for that. And, to be honest, its gameplay is top-notch. However, I could only enjoy it because I have a high-end PC. Technically, it was a huge letdown. But that’s to be expected from KOEI Tecmo and Team Ninja.
Immortals of Aveum was one of the first games to use Unreal Engine 5. And while, for the most part, it’s looking great, it cannot scale on older PC hardware. Ascendant Studios has released a few patches to improve the game’s performance. However, even on Low settings, it still requires a powerful GPU. And that’s the big difference between Immortals of Aveum and all the other UE5-powered games. Layers of Fear, Remnant 2 and Lords of The Fallen have better settings, allowing them to properly scale down on older GPUs. And then we have some annoying stuttering issues.
Remember when I said that WILD HEARTS was the worst-optimized PC game of 2023? Well, somehow, I’d completely forgotten about Cities Skylines 2. Ironic, isn’t it? Although to be fair, Colossal Order has released a couple of optimization patches for it. Despite that, though, Cities Skylines 2 remains a technical mess on PC.
And there you have it. Those were the Worst Optimized PC games of 2023!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Robocop, AW2 weren’t particularly optimized, big releases seem to require brute power to come close to running smoothly for the last few years. And in UE5 even lowest settings req a lot of hp relatively, and stutters are across the board. I doubt most of the move to UE is going to bother with scalability, many devs have said nah you gotta buy the hw our owners and partners sell at 1200% markup lol
Robocop and AW2 are among the best looking games of 2023 😛
Yeah if you cherrypick robocop sure, the cars look like SA DE level, some of the interiors are not so good either like garages and such, some npcs are not more than fo4 level but the jarring dissonance of some of the exteriors and combat interiors that look amazing. And this isn’t about graphics it’s about optimization and of course UE5 is not good unless lazy devs do some work on that, I’m not holding my breath there.
AW2 is way overrated in so many ways. Forest wasnt’ that amazing tbh. The nursing home was nice though, but nah overall it’s not cp77 levels, a 3 year old game. If you want to go for best graphics do that there, not here.
I understand what You Say partially but aw2 si really top off graphics. And cyberpunk 2077 is not a 3 years old, pathtracing is a 8 month algo update, and a really new tecnology
No cp77 was released in 2020 and I was talking about that don’t matter whatever else you’re talking about. I don’t even have the rig to use that tech so doesn’t apply. And no this article if you can call it that , AI chatgpt product really, is about optimization so johns comment is out of left field. Yeah a 4090 salesman etc is not going to focus on anything that isn’t game breaking because it doesn’t matter if you brute force it but regular systems it’s much easier to tell what you’re getting for the cpu/gpu usage.
And nope at med settings with even some low and off settings AW2 is a terrible stuttery mess in many places and that’s on an nvme, it’s unplayable on hdd because they want it that way. That’s also with dlss2 perf setting. I wasn’t impressed in the forest areas, but some places did look great, but for the stated cpugpu usage nope. So joanna here overlooks the herd approved games which are very poor overall for the prices and the optimization. Sites just a bulletin board for new mods really for me the rest is selling stuff like the rest of them.
Alan Wake 2 is one of the stutter free AAA in 2023, at least in my experience, even on my modest Rig (R7 5700X + RTX 3060 Ti) it run well on High surprisingly
Actually yea, It worked perfectly with an HDD if you dont count 10 seconds map loading every time when you press M. Beside that, it didnt had almost any stutters in game
You supposedly have a $10k machine but you still run games off a hard drive? I just bought a 1T MX500 SSD for $46 and I didn’t even need it but the price was too cheap to pass on
I said I dont have 10k machine. I love hard disks. Ill stick to them till I absolutely really have to upgrade
Sometimes 40 year old technology just has to go, that’s just the way Progress works …. I still have the first SSD I ever bought way back when I had a FX-8320 and it’s still going strong …. In the meantime I’ve had 3 hard drives fail including the one currently on my workbench. Before I give up on it I’m going to try to rework the USB connector because sometimes it’s a problem with his model but even if that works I’ll just recovery the contents and pitch it in the recycle bin.
I do have the hardware to run both games at max settings and AW2 is a much better looking game than Cyberpunk in basically every way, and it runs better
Obviously wey experience different games. I have an 9400f and a 3070, and SSD(no nvme) I experience 0 stutter and that was a really good surprise this year and the Forrest for my was ok, but I really love the town area. For me was a good performer in reality
High settings and dlss in quality. Also I know I have a slow cpu to my graphics card but I’m working in buying something new
Immortals of Aveum looks and runs better then Robocop, at least with the latest versions.
Seeing Gollum reminded me of the new ‘genre’ that has been created called “gollum-likes” games like Skull Island: Rise of Kong, the day before and the one I can’t forget to name is Redfall, all these games were and still are absolute trash. Couldnt help but mention them.
Well, it’s hard to make a good game when even developers don’t want to make it. Arkane just wasn’t on board with the whole GaaS r*etardation.
Jedi survivor should’ve been here.
For me, It’s criminal that Jedi Survivor isn’t here. I know it’s better but far from good.
It’s still awful.
I swear Iim the only person had have barely any problems with that game. (5700XT) I had a great time
You not alone, I have a RX 6950 XT and had no issues with Jedi Survivor, Wild Earts, Hogwarts Legacy, Dead Space and even Wo Long.
I played all those games on maxed out settings while streaming, without a single FPS drop or stuttering.
I can however confirm Wild Hearts was the only game that was a mess day one, but nowadays is fine.
The rest of the games on this list I never played so I can’t comment, but going by track record is safe to say all the issues are on NVidia side.
“a game that does not justify its CPU/GPU requirements” john, a lot of times, you said good things about crappy runing games that fell in this category. a LOT of times.
The list was too short… Robocop should also be there
Robocop is in my opinion not the worst optimized game. I played it even with .ini tweaks to push the graphics as far as I could and the I only had shader compilation stutters when loading a new area/hub for the first time.
It’s worse than Immortals of Aveum.
I have not played it so I do not know.
What about Skull Island: Rise of Kong? Or was that game actually adequately optimized and it’s just that everything else about it is crap?
I think even John forgot that steaming pile.
They fixed the incompatability with 12th and 13th gen CPUs in Wo Long a good while ago. Its performed perfectly for me since then, no traversal stutters, never drops so much as a frame. If you haven’t tried it in months, you should. It’s fixed.
Wild Hearts was atrocious! I mean, I dont have state of art 10k$ computer, but still Im pretty sure that it should be able to pull 60fps at minimum with that graphics. Game was just stuttering in constant periods no matter what I did…
Yeah!
Add Starfield and Jedi Survivor to the list.
Alan Wake 2, it was HORRIBLE for me at launch. I know many people didnt have the same issues.. but my god. It sucked. Its my top 2 worst game of 2023, as far as worst optimized games go. It was laggy too. RTX 3070 and 4070 ran it pretty badly at times for me. JUST NOW, they patched it so it runs okay. MANY months later.
I can even show video proof of how bad it was.
Here is proof for my first 2 weeks of the game (it got even worse after the video part, totally broken before the december 15 update) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un7z7_mfgkQ
Robocop was a ton of fun, but also VERY buggy. Every reflective water surface was broken for me. Stuttering when going to new zones, poppin galore…
Cities 2… LOL. What a buggy mess. That might actually win top 1 spot for me. I dunno where to even begin with this piece of trash. I actually went back to the original game, thats how bad it is. If they fully fix it, there is hope… but as of right now? NO! Golum wasnt even a real game, i dont even consider it!
I still don’t play Wo Long for that reason; Starfield was a nightmare, but I did an exception because is a Bethesda Game Studios game. The rest of bad optimized games are mostly bad games anyway.
No Starfield? lol
It runs like sh*t on medium while at the same time looks worse than something like Cyberpunk and in Cyberpunk you usually get double the fps on Ultra.
Immortals of Aveum runs decently well. I’m on a 6750xt, and I got about 80 fps avg at 1440p, fsr3 Quality, no Frame Gen. Med-high settings, looking good, and more importantly FEELING good, with no stutters.
Robocop ran much worse at medium settings with some stutters.
Where is Jedi Survivor on this list? To this day people cannot even launch the game because of the requirement of the EA launcher. There are threads about this on the discussion page on steam for the game.
for me on more potato pc worst performing game be Dead Space. That one simply dies cpu wise and vram wise and sometimes cant load sounds properly and stutters most crazy… Remnant 2 is too heavy for gpu. Alan Wake 2 idk, i wont try that one because of mesh shaders. Despite many people saying Jedi Survivor was more stable stutterwise than first game, but had some gpu related drops, but all game was playable and i wasnt playing launch version, but 1.05 so that helped.
Starfield actually wasnt playable. It freezed and crashed constantly and performance was too meh.
Put Alan Wake 2 on that list for starters… running a 3090 and it’s still incredibly mediocre visuals considering the performance level.
Seems to be a solid list of dumpster fired. Didn’t touch either of them and as for the crying pre-order peeps – Any bets on what will occur first?
1. They will learning not to pre order and place all the power into scummy corps?
2. They get wiped out by the first real AI that goes haywire?
3. They will ask the bank to increase their credit limit?