2021 was a really weird year for PC gaming. Although we didn’t see a lot of games that had performance/tech issues, we did witness some questionably PC releases. From minimal PC graphics settings to really awful stuttering issues, these are the most disappointing PC game releases of 2021.
For this list, we’ve decided to only include triple-A games. The reason we are only including these high-profile games is simple. These games come from some of the biggest companies, so you’d expect their PC versions to be more polished than some PC indie games (or even double-A games). Also note that the following games are listed in no particular order.
The Medium
The Medium was one of the first current-gen only games. Developed by Bloober Team, the game uses Unreal Engine 4 and suffers from major performance/tech issues. At release, the game had GPU usage issues, that the team was able to resolve. Still, the game has numerous unoptimized scenes. The game also suffers from numerous stuttering issues. Not only that, but its graphics are nowhere close to what you’d expect to see from a current-gen only game. Bloober Team had the opportunity to show what current-gen games could look like. Instead, the team offered an unoptimized game.
Far Cry 6
Far Cry 6 is a game that uses the Dunia Engine and suffered from all the tech issues that affected all the previous Far Cry games. Ubisoft has not addressed any of the performance issues that plagued its engine. As such, FC6 suffers from major traversal stutters. Not only that, but due to its collaboration with AMD, Ubisoft released an HD Texture Pack that required GPUs with more than 10GB of VRAM. What’s really disappointing here is that these textures are not THAT different from those found in other games that require way less VRAM. The game’s visuals were also inconsistent. And lastly, its Ray Tracing effects were a big disappointment.
Crysis 2 Remastered/Crysis 3 Remastered
The remasters of Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 were huge disappointments, especially for those that have already played the original PC versions. While Crysis 2 Remastered looks better than the original game, it has some truly unoptimized scenes. These scenes tank the framerate to ridiculous levels, without anything happening on screen. Moreover, it has major stuttering issues. On the other hand, Crysis 3 Remastered looks exactly like the original game. The only major additions are the inclusion of DLSS and Ray Tracing reflections. However, and for PC standards, this is an awful remaster.
Halo Infinite
Microsoft and 343 Industries delayed Halo Infinite for almost a year. And despite 343 Industries’ claims (that it would treat PC gamers as first-class citizens), the PC version has major issues. The game suffers from 30fps animations, stuttering issues, performance issues, and cannot scale on older generation GPUs. The cut-scenes also feel stuttery, even when running at really high framerates, and there is a screen-shake effect that makes everything feel jittery when running (thankfully you can disable this). Hell, the game had the same tech issues that were present in its Open Beta Testings (so what was the point of running a beta if you can’t really address those issues?)
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade
Let’s get one thing straight. The reason we’re including FF7R here is not due to its performance. Performance is actually great on a wide range of PC configurations. However, the overall quality of the PC version was abysmal. Square Enix has not included any graphics settings at all to tweak, locked the game’s INI files behind PAK files, had enabled DRS by default (and did not provide any way to disable it), did not include any PC-only tech features, and raised its price. That price hike is inexcusable. For 80 euros, you’d expect premium features. Instead, what we got was a barebones port. For 50 euros, this would have been a must-have purchase. For a game that is available exclusively on Epic Games Store and costs 80 euros, this PC version is a joke.
Battlefield 2042
How the mighty has fallen. Battlefield 2042 was one of the worst game releases of 2021. The game came out in a really broken state, and was even worse than Cyberpunk 2077. Battlefield 2042 suffered from performance issues, network issues, gameplay issues… and all kinds of issues. Not only that, but EA and DICE tried to copy Fortnite and COD by implementing Specialists. Say what you want about Call of Duty, but at least Vanguard worked at launch, and had a single-player campaign.
https://youtu.be/Bgep9D6W-VY
Grand Theft Auto The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition
A lot of gamers were excited when Take-Two announced its plans to release remasters of the first three 3D Grand Theft Auto games. After all, Rockstar had previously produced some of the best games. And, honestly, the first gameplay trailers looked great. All three games had major graphical improvements, though their 3D characters were more cartoon-ish than what most of us were expecting. However, all hell broke loose when this trilogy came out. It was obvious that the trilogy released in an unfinished state, and there are still numerous issues with all three games. As I did with BF2042, I’ll simply let the following videos do the talk. A truly embarrassing release for Take-Two and Rockstar. Oh, and let’s not forget that Take-Two took down numerous mods for the original versions of these three games. Pathetic. Truly pathetic.
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.”
Contact: Email
Overall a fair list, im surprised that GTA demasters are included since so many defended that crap here.
Stockholm syndrome is strong in many gamers, that’s why companies can keep lowering the bar and thus send more money to the shareholders. Shame way to many “drones” keep pre-ordering games that keeps turning out to be trash rather than wait and see…
Brand loyalty can become pretty dumb, and studios know how to take advantage of that.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/gyYJYyCPezUWI/giphy.gif
A very fair list. I did enjoy Medium for what it was an I personally haven’t had issue with it. All the rest are spot on from my point of view. Especially the additional list from the members in the comments.
yes.fair list
halo infinite? wtf.
Yeah doesn’t surprise me and they want to charge more money for pc games LOLOLOLOL, not to mention digital release YEAH NO, digital releases should be even cheaper than physical
Psst play ashes 2063, its like mad max and metro exodus set in the late 80s with retrowave music. Tons of content in it and its content is better than AAA games meaning its not repetitive and copy paste. Its free on moddb.
Also if you want witchaven done right play arthurian legends.
ashes looks interesting, despite being a doom mod.
Watching the snow fall while scrolling down the screen and being able to move it around with your mouse is kind of cool.
How can John missed Deathloop? That game was atrocious.
This article is about technical disappointments. Did Deathloop run poorly?
Im pretty sure the performance was a mess on launch, and also quite buggy…probably patch out already.
A shooter with utterly broken mouse input. Yes, that qualifies as a technical disappointment.
They fixed the issues in < 2 days with the JulianaShotme build, but the critizism is well warranted.
I don’t think they did. I remember a DF video saying that the issue had been made less prominent in some conditions but was still there under other conditions. I’m sure it’s easy to find but frankly I won’t waste another second of my life on that trash game. Watching several minutes of footage of it on youtube was already a mistake.
This article is about “overall quality” disappointments, not technical disappointments. I think we made it crystal clear at the beginning. Also Deathloop currently has only one tech issue (jittery framerate between 60-120fps) that you can easily fix by locking the framerate to 60fps.
“Although we didn’t see a lot of games that had performance/tech issues, we did witness some questionably PC releases. From minimal PC graphics settings to really awful stuttering issues, these are the most disappointing PC game releases of 2021.”
The “from minimal PC graphics settings” to “awful stuttering issues” is what made it seem to me like it’s technical performance focused, as these are technical issues, as opposed to issues with the story, pacing, or gunplay for example.
Yeah, I meant as a PC product (tech/optimization is one area, PC features is another, bugs/glitches is another, publisher policies regarding the PC version is also something we took into account). We are not judging the games for their stories or gameplay.
Overall quality of Deathloop is abysmal and worst of the year.
Perhaps aside from Halo, did anyone expect something better than this? Look at the publishers.
I have a feeling that the big releases of February will also flop in terms of technical issues
To be honest not only do i agree with this list’s argument, but i’dd add Age of Empires 4. One thing i really disliked is that Microsoft/Ensemble Studios used the Virtue Signal card to portray Saint Joan of Arc, as a Feminist Rebellious Icon…
Similarly, the devs completely changed the Game pace & the way of play; which may be a good or very bad element, because it breaks with the Franchise’s tradition in terms of RTS gameplay.
1- The AI Pathfinding is abysmal.
The A.I. groups all group-attack on 1 target, then take too long, in reaction time, to switch to another unit nearby, by then, they’re already more than injured, and already engaged by enemy units.
– On another note, in terms of management of resources and units, the prices are way too high from the Dark Ages start to Feudal Age.
– Lancers, even the sh**ty Dark Age ones don’t deal enough damage to Cavalry.
It’s like the devs never heard of the Art of War formula of Spear beats Cav, Cav beats Inf, Sword beats Spear, Archer does medium good at distance. (then you add stuff as terrain advantage and climate/natural elements like Wind, Shallow water (slower movement) Fire, etc.)
– If only they allowed for ground units both infantry/cavalry to be able to walk or ride across the forests. Something that’s rarely seen in RTS games.
– Also maybe the ability / or a tech, to regenerate the Woods/Forests, as the deforestation is way too fast for what little resources we get for what we try to achieve (Gathering too fast, Resource points too low per tree, and then there’s a lack of trees / hence player is fucked).
– A way for troops who are located in Forests to do Ambushes (Stealth element where your
troops are not visible to enemy players).
– Same with Quarries, they run out of gold and then you can only make it up with Trade boats/carts or tax collectors (CN faction).
There’s more, I don’t know if they are fixed, but I played few days after release and compiled a list of major issues:
1. AI often behaves very dumb:
a) they stand next to my walls like they were trying to get through (they stand in very very tight group in one place) instead of destroying it
b) Hardest difficulty is easier than Hard in AOE2DE
c) if you attack AI’s base, it tends to ignore you attacking force and send his units somewhere else
2. No “Aggressive/Defensive/Stand ground/Hold fire” stance for units and production buildings. Only “Stand ground” for units
3. 8 civs vs 20+ in AOE2DE and no “Random” option
4. No color setting and by default you have “team colors” in settings. During gameplay this leads to confusion, eg I’m blue and my friend yellow, and for him he’s blue and I’m yellow. Fortunately you can disable this
5. “Smart selection” is bugged, it selects military and villagers
6. No “idle villager” selection options, doubleclicking on idle villager selects every villager on screen even working ones
7. Can’t display player’s scores during game
8. Scout doesn’t have “auto-explore” toggle
9. Only “Standard” and “sandbox” game modes, with very little config options
10. Only 17 map types vs much more in AOE2DE, and no “Random map”
11. No replay system
12. Can’t destroy trees
13. Can’t display map after game’s end/quit
What a disastrous cash grab
dude they made an entire expansion for 2 with africa, they re did the voice acting so it doesnt sound “stereotypical” but now it sounds muffled and less passionate, not believable. They renamed the colonial age to commerce era because “colonialism is bad” and they were advised by “indigenous people” groups on what to change.
Seriously microsoft’s virtue signaling is insane.
Yeah dude AOE4 needs to be on this list. I’m a massive age fan and it was a major disappointment
Yikes
a) microsoft is mostly automated now. if you’re getting banned its because you’re getting reported by multiple people. b) gears 5 campaign was good. thx for posting a rant about how much of a bigot you really are.
Think I’ve missed some but here’s more:
– Alan Wake Demastered
– Werewolf the Apocalypse Earthblood
– Balan Wonderworld
– SMT III Demastered
– Graven
– Back 4 Blood
– Ninja Gaiden Demastered Collection
– All the annual sports games
– Surgeon Sim 2
– Sonic Colors Demastered
– Life is Strange Colors
– Deathloop
– Skyrim Demastered
– Gaylo Infinite (this atrocity deserves another mention)
To be fair dissapointment implies expecting something positive…i didnt expect something good from the get go with 3/4 of those titles
eFootball 2022 & Diablo II
& I forgot about that Werewolf atrocity.
We were considering eFootball 2022 but it’s an early access release and we don’t cover those. But yeah, eFootball 2022 was awful.
Good policy as Early access is basically alphas and thus can majorly change down the road. Seen quite a few go from horrible to quite good but it can really go either way
Early access LOL. And when is full version be released? 2 weeks before eFootball 2023?
I completely agree with this comment. Was a bad year for gaming for the most part. Some gems here and there, but a lot of these “major releases” were a disappointment.
And companies will blame it on covid, but in reality they can blame it only on themselves and their greed to release games asap.
Greed and that many seem more committed to lecture politically than actually provide entertainment, thank god there are hope in many indes – The tripple a is more like triple z nowadays, with a few gems hidden in the bulk of creatively bankrupt trash that is spewed out
gems?
Yes, gems. The term used for good games. Usually “hidden gems”, for good obscure games that not many people heard about.
You could at least talk about the gems.
For instance?
I am sure you can find various articles online about hidden gems of 2021 that would contain a much better list.
But to name a few that instantly come to my mind:
Nebuchadnezzar
Bonfire Peaks
Grime (some would say that this is not a hidden gem, but I think it should be more popular than it is)
All of them are indie games, i thought you were talking about AAA hidden gems
Oh, no. I don’t think anything AAA can ever be a hidden gem.
Sadly in that we can pretty much all agree
gems?
Why Graven? Out of all the boomer shooters that one seems to be of the highest quality, but yeah its not a immersive sim.
Also play ashes 2063.
hey at least it will come out at some point cant say the same for wrath, system shock 1 and 3 or maximum action.
The System Shock 1 remake is nearing completion actually.
lol, it will be a broken mess on release.
Alan Wake Demastered(whats wrong with it? epic store?)
– Werewolf the Apocalypse Earthblood(agree)
– Balan Wonderworld(yep)
– SMT III Demastered(yep)
– Graven(havent heard of it)
– Back 4 Blood(dont know)
– Ninja Gaiden Demastered Collection(absolute abomination)
– All the annual sports games(yep every year for nba and madden)
– Surgeon Sim 2(havent played but wanna hear why)
– Sonic Colors Demastered(why?)
– Life is Strange Colors(dont know havent read up on it)
– Deathloop(yep)
– Skyrim Demastered(yep lazy and unfortunately engine ties physics to game so 60fps till the case wiithout mods)
– Gaylo Infinite (this atrocity deserves another mention)(havent played yet but 30fps animations I read were ridiculous)
Alan Wake Demaster adds nothing if you already played the game on PC a decade ago…it was clearly a cashgrab to sell it on the new consoles (same goes for almost every remaster launched…specially the Crysis games).
Sonic Colors afaik looks and runs worse than the original on the Wii
Alan Wake Demaster adds nothing if you already played the game on PC a decade ago…it was clearly a cashgrab to sell it on the new consoles (same goes for almost every remaster launched…specially the Crysis games).
Sonic Colors afaik looks and runs worse than the original on the Wii
Deathloop is an awesome game but I can’t even play it because it crashes constantly and it’s insanely frustrating to lose all your progress because of crashes.
I only put a few hours into deathloop over the course of 2 sittings, but I didn’t have any stability issues or crashes in that timeframe. Have you performed troubleshooting with others in Steam forum? Might be something with your hardware config.
It’s almost a coincidence, along with the Demoralization phase of society of all Medias by marxists (as portrayed by Yuri Bezmenov)
Will you do a list of games that didn’t disappoint too? ha ha
I’d say Tennis Elbow 4 (most realistic tennis game ever made), but it’s not even officially out yet. Same for many good indie games. Actually, indie games are the only ones I enjoyed in 2021.
AAA gaming is dead to me.
No, just no. That early PS2 graphics and more importantly, physics is hardly even in top-20 Tennis games.
Also, by the time you finally master this game, you can do the same IRL.
Here are steps to start fixing this issue:
1. Play the game on Ultimate Game Pass.
2. Don’t give your money to these companies again until they fix a lot of bugs.
3. Look for other games that don’t have these problems on PC.
4. Always understand that companies can do better.
5. Wait for the game to be on Steam also. It’s true that games work on the Epic launcher, but I don’t see any reason to buy a game on there.
It’s a f*king mess, but Game Pass can be good.
Gamepass can be of great value if you play casually, which is not the case of most people here.
In the same way you can subscribe to Netflix if you dont care too much about the quality of what are you watching and you want to kill time or an excuse to hook up with somebody.
Ultimate Game Pass on PC has over 100 games, but it still doesn’t have everything that the Xbox version has. When will MS fix this issue? Anyways, I was just trying to give some good advice because a lot of these AAA games are a mess lately.
Here is a few examples:
Forza Horizon 5 – A racing game that won’t let a player skip the pronoun screen.
Some PS5 and XSX games – Do any of these games have seventy dollars worth of content when they launch? Answer: No
New COD game – Why do any of these games need an always-online connection?
havent played halo infinite yet, but wow 30fps animations??? hahaha
Damn that list hurts. Lots of games I was really looking forward to play.
you can fix the stuttering and performance issues with ff7 remake by forcing the game to run in dx11.
I love how no one remembers the disaster Warcraft III Reforged is.
It came out in Jan 2020.
2019 game…..
John, Forza 5 should have made this list. I have seen multiple videos of cars being frozen in midair while the player continues to earn xp for doing nothing. I have seen players get stuck in rocks and not able to free themselves.
Yeah, DX12 is not great. Vulkan is much better.
Hellblade enhanced edition should be here, the Pc version is a dam joke, full of stuttering and doesnt matter if on dx12 or 11, its just a mess, put me off looking at hellblade 2
Such a sad year but from all these games Battlefield was the worst, you literally just want to close the game immediately
If i worked for a PR company i would hire you
Mmm hasn’t the GTA Trilogy got most of it’s glaring issues quicky fixed?
(I dont care about water effects or edge case stuff)
Hard to tell who is the worst among those, but i will go with Final fantasy as Square has a bad record of not fixing their shat even after a wile.
Just like with Nier.
Battlefield 2042 is an insult the fans shouldn’t buy the game at all. EA and DICE don’t care about their customer, okey noone do but they are the worst companies ever around
Halo Infinite doesn’t belong in this list. MP gameplay is very good, while campaign is not the best, it’s far from worst. I also haven’t encountered any technical or optimization issues. Game ran perfect.
All the big hyped pc releases were pretty disappointing. I didn’t even really like Halo… was decent but it felt so lifeless and cookie cutter walking through copy/pasted dull corridors. Best releases this year to me were
-Valheim
-The Riftbreaker
-Tetris Effect on Steam
All indie games. Resident Evil/Forza were decent but forgettable.
Battlefield 2042 is already discounted by 34%, lol.
Still too expensive
It’s already established in the gaming industry that millions of gamers will buy buggy sometimes completely broken games on release for full price so Publishers will continue releasing games like this. They have no incentive to stop doing this. Maybe the Developer will fix all of the bugs. Maybe not. Hell, look at Fallout 76. They are still patching the game 3 years later but when it was first released it was a complete and utter mess and the Developer must have known this. Cyberpunk 2077 had 8 million pre-orders.
No matter how many times or how many people advise gamers to stop pre-ordering or buying games on day one of release they keep doing it. It’s like they have no self-control.
That’s because the last two Generations have been brainwashed by FOMO …. Gotta have the latest fad/game/device or you ain’t cool …… EA pissed me off way back in 2004 and I haven’t bought a single game from them since, I won’t even play their games on Game Pass PC for free ….. Rockstar is also on my short list because it was 2 months before RDR2 PC was even playable for me and 6 weeks before I could even get it to start up consistently which is why I didn’t get conned by the GTA Trilogy …. Rockstar/Take Two don’t care about anything other than milking the Whales on GTA5 Online of every last dime before they release something new
Agreed, the customers don’t veto with their money and thus some pubs/devs will keep lowering the bar until they do. Many gamers have in big parts themselves to blame for letting it happen…
Indeed. Battlefield 2042, for example, is on Steam’s 2021 Platinum list (i.e., best selling games of the year) and it’s an unfinished mess.
That filth from that Coca guy who calls himself Administrator there from that garbage called Gamevicio, he’s the same garbage from that Green Lantern and he’s also the CS16 guy, and he still hasn’t posted this news there on that Gamevicio garbage to make money from fights on that site bankrupt, which only exists because of the fights that the Moderators themselves invent over there.
Most of them for sure, a few have been good thoo but that list is VERY short
You really haven’t played FF7R as it runs exceptionally well on a wide range of PC configurations (the stuttering issues are over-exaggerated, we’ve already shared a video showing that at least on our PC test system there aren’t other stutters than the traversal stutters), and has amazing Keyboard & Mouse support (no mouse acceleration/smoothing, has on-screen prompts, and the battles are a joy with the K&M).
PCGW has listed potential issues, they haven’t really tested anything. They simply include all the reports that appeared on the Internet, without really looking into them. Basically, consider this list as “potential” issues and not actual/real issues. And I’m not saying they are doing a bad job. It’s good to have all the issues that MAY cause issues on one page.
As for FF7R, we have a really detailed PC Performance Analysis so there is nothing more to add here. The game runs fine on our PC test system with both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. That doesn’t mean though that it’s a great PC product or that it doesn’t have other issues (lack of settings, DRS enabled by default, high price, no PC-only features for a game that costs that much).
Once you limit the poolsize for textures in the game (if you are limited in VRAM) and optimize the way the game handles loading for the textures and shaders it runs fine even on high. Of course you have to look around Nexus and see the mod that allows you to use custom .inis and the commands from UE4. Forcing DX11 and disabling DSR specially helps too.
The game out of the “box” runs awfully, with user tweaks is OK.
The issue is them asking $70+ for a game that should have these kind of options in the game menu.
Dx12 is not too bad tbh… just harder to properly code for and with an “easy does it” attitude of many code(monkeys with that attitude?) it’s not hard to see where it goes bad
the most disappointing games? this article is insane. I suggest that you separate whoever wrote this from this publisher. you name a few games that are acclaimed and played by people on a daily basis with taste and technically well done. This note oozes hatred towards the video game industry. For which it will be reported and completely repudiated. I await your comments and people’s comments. cheers jack vulture
The article is spot on. And the games on the list are not just performance disaster but also gameplay disaster.
Nice bait.
Surprising that you trashed GTA Demakes (rightfully) after praising them before.
Watch Dogs Legion needs higher frequency RAM modules, and this has nothing to do with the DX12 API. The same thing would have happened with any API. It’s how Ubisoft created this game.
I was also disappointed by a few games, usually when I buy on https://royalcdkeys.com/ and the prices are much lower there.