Recommendations for best console-to-PC ports?

[Temtastic Muns]

As I had brought up in this thread, I'm in the process of upgrading my old, just-functional-enough-for-running-older-AAA-games-at-low-settings-for-sub 30fps-performance PC. I'm going to try my hand at a NZXT Starter Pro build, which consists of an Intel Core i5-9400F 6 Core 2.9, GEForce GTX 1660Ti OC 6G, and 16GB DDR4 3200MHz.

While the prospect of checking out never-before-played titles is exciting, I must admit it's going to be just as enticing revisiting older titles that might not have been all they could they be, graphics and performance-wise, when I played them on consoles. For instance, I'm looking forward to replaying the likes of Gears of War 4, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Evil Within 2, Dishonered 1 & 2, the Dead Space trilogy, and Death Stranding at higher framerates.

Do folks have any recommendations for titles where the PC experience was exponentially better on PC than it was on consoles? Which are your favorites?

 

[bing]

Pretty much any AAA game from the last 3 years is going to be miles better on PC than on consoles.

Control was a game where I immediately noticed how much better it looked on PC.

 

[PlayBee]

Maybe not relevant to you since you've had a PC before, but pretty much anything from last gen will be fantastic unless the port is infamously bad for some reason. I couldn't believe going from 720p30 (or lower in many, many cases) to 1080p60 when I built my first PC in 2011. Most of those games are incredibly easy to run at 4K nowadays, too.

 

[Uhtred]

Witcher 3! Arkham Knight, belive it or not it's actually much better now a days. You get better frame rate and the awesome particle effects.

 

[Lashley]

Pretty much everything tbf

There's more good ports than there are bad

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

Arkham Knight, belive it or not it's actually much better now a days.

Click to shrink...

Yo! I came here to say this!
The Batmobile sections are so dry without that particle effects.

 

[martincrimson87]

Almost anything from the 360 era onwards it's better on pc. Before that it's hit or miss.

You can always reference pc gaming wiki to check the quality of a port.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

Getting Game Pass and having a field day with all the great PC versions is a great idea there, especially since you won't need to plunk down a lot of extra cash.

Some of the best PC versions I've played:
- Gears 4 and 5
- Sea of Thieves
- Tell me Why
- Wasteland 3
- Doom Eternal
- All Wolfenstein games
- Elder Scrolls everything
- Fallout anything
- Prey
- Forza Horizon 4 (3 looks amazing but is more cpu bound)
- Dirt 4
- Hitman 2
- Ori and tge Will ifbtye Wisps
- Middle Earth: Shadow of War
- Sunset Overdrive (mouse aim, 60fps, and higher resolution! Make is so much better)
- Batman Arkham Series
- Dark Douls III
- Sekiro
- The Darkness II
- Dirt 4 (higher resolution)
- Mafia II Definitive Edition (resolution, framerate, and much less buggy)
- Mortal Kombat 11
- Psychonauts
- Redout
- Shenmue III
- Tekken 7
- Yookah-Laylee and the Impossible Lair

 

[pswii60]

Sekiro is like a totally different game on PC.

With my 2080ti, I get a locked 60fps at native 4k/HDR with everything cranked to Ultra. It's also way more responsive than the console versions. It's glorious.

But yeah, take your pick. When I got my gaming PC last year it was so much fun going back to games I'd played previously on console and maxing them out. Even last gen stuff like Mirrors Edge and Dead Space are really cool to revisit at 4k/60.

 

[ShroudOfFate]

Final Fantasy XV has an incredible PC port. Lots of good options to tailor the game to what you want. Sekiro is also a good one.

 

[Norris1020]

Enjoy! I don't have NZXT but my PC is that same build and 1080p 60fps with high/highest settings still looks so damn good!

 

[Deleted member 1839]

Most ports to PC are.

There's some that are really exceptional like Death Stranding is pretty nice.

 

[PlayBee]

Witcher 3! Arkham Knight, belive it or not it's actually much better now a days. You get better frame rate and the awesome particle effects.

Click to shrink...

Oh man I just tried Arkham Knight on my 3080, 4K max settings with all the GameWorks options enabled. Most of the time GPU utilization stayed below 70% capped at 60fps but I was able to hit 90% when generating as much smoke as possible. Still a solid 60fps with just minor frametime inconsistency blips.

 

[TerremotoDePorta]

Before you play anything, give it a check on PCGamingWiki.

You'll be able to see if there are any recommended mods, even simple things like skipping intro videos.

 

[.exe]

The Division 1 and 2 look really sharp with all bells and whistles maxed, and it plays great at high frame rates. Lots of neat settings to tweak and seemed to scale quite well. Those games looked a little rough on consoles, but the image quality is so clean on PC.

Another big one is Destiny 2. That game demands to be played at 60+ frames per second. Looks great and plays even better. Every click and action feels crunchy and good.

Monster Hunter: World also looks stunning on PC. Apart from higher frame rates making the game play better, it has an official high-resolution texture pack.

 

[VanWinkle]

Forza Horizon 3 at 60+ fps is glorious (and I think I was able to get in the neighborhood of 1080p 120fps on my 1660ti).

But yeah, any game that is 30fps on the console you played it on, you'll almost certainly be able to play at at least 60fps, if not more, with your hardware (at 1080p).

 

[Chettlar]

Destiny 2 has a really great PC port.

Another vote for Forza Horizon 3. PC will remain the only way to get it to 60 fps unfortunately. It looks like they won't be giving it a 60 fps patch on series x :(. So you'll have to seriously tweak settings to get it to that locked 60. Best place to test is in the city area, where a lot of the major drops are. Dropping draw distance can help. AA as well. It can take a while because you'll have a steady framerate and then it'll just drop. It sucks, but once you find out settings that work, it's awesome. The game just was not well designed for 60 fps, but thankfully any mid-to-high end PC nowadays can do it. So it's not a good port, but it is a much better experience. And the loading times! Having it on an SSD, even just a SATA drive, changes so much. It is agonizingly slow to enter the auto show on console.

More recently all of Microsoft's first party stuff has had a lot of effort on the PC ports. Gears 4 and 5 have tons of options. Although Gears 4, despite being lauded as being well optimized, really seems to struggle with low video memory. My 770 could not resolve textures at all. I straight up just couldn't play it. 1060 6GB it's totally fine at 1440p with some AA. (too bad I don't like gears 4 at all and still haven't quite finished it)

Metro Exodus looks so different and so much better with RT.

Death Stranding at 60 is really nice too. It doesn't exactly "need" it but man it's easier on the eyes, which is a treat for such a beautiful game.

Final Fantasy XV is another one that does a ton with custom graphics options. Lots of extra features really only on PC, like some cool fur stuff iirc. And it's cross save and cross achievements with the Xbox One version if you get it on the windows store. Too bad it's not cross buy, although it is on gamepass for both.

 

[Lithium Flower]

Yakuza Kiwami 2

The requirements from 0 and Kiwami to Kiwami 2 are massive due to the engine change but playing through the game with max settings at 60+ fps is incredible. It's a shame that 6 still hasn't found its way to PC because what a dip in quality going from that to an unstable 30 with constant screen tearing on the base PS4.

 

[Temtastic Muns]

Some great choices here! I'm definitely going to sign up for Game Pass, since I'd love to check out these versions of the Yakuzas, the Gears of Wars, Killer Instinct, and Dishonored 2.

I'm not the biggest fan of Arkham Knight or Final Fantasy XV, but I'd be willing to give them another shot just because of the positivity on the port work. (I'm still not convinced that higher performance will make the former a better game, but we'll see. :P)

I'm so late getting onboard with Witcher 3. I think I was always put off by its harsh performance on consoles, but now I don't have an excuse anymore.

Sekiro passed me by at initial release, but it does look like it plays even more splendidly at 60fps. Glad I waited!

Thanks for the PCGamingWiki link too! Will be sure to peruse thoroughly.

 

[Chettlar]

I'm not the biggest fan of Arkham Knight or Final Fantasy XV, but I'd be willing to give them another shot just because of the positivity on the port work. (I'm still not convinced that higher performance will make the former a better game, but we'll see. :P)

Click to shrink...

Final Fantasy already looks great, but it just feels so much nicer at high framerate. It's a treat for the eyes. It's still not the most interesting gameplay wise. You can really only play for the story/music.

And yes Sekiro is very very good at higher framerate. And if you want, there is a very easy mod to install that allows you to widen the FoV. I found just bumping it up once was really nice, although I had to do it each time I played.