Borderlands 3 and Control running poorly exposes a problem that was always there...

Games running poorly.

In this day and age where we have standards (1080p/720 p and 30/60fps) and analysis, they "stick out" but honestly how many AAA games run at a level significantly below what we deem as good or acceptable? What's more, it's a problem that dates from at least the N64 era. Digital Foundry and many other channels have some nice retro analysis of older games that got praise back in the day but by today's standards would be considered unplayable.

Let's start this with what is most often considered the best game of all time and probably has the highest scores on average of any game; The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time on the N64.

Ocarina of Time ran at a staggering 20fps in NTSC regions and reportedly at 17FPS in PAL regions!

Goldeneye, again another critically acclaimed shooter targeted 30fps but mostly ran between 15-30 fps. It seldom achieved its target in busy sections.

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Perfect Dark suffered even worse with frame rates dropping to the single digits in multiplayer mode.

Fast forward the gen after.

God of War 2 on PS2 which aimed for 60fps which is what we want from a fast-paced action game rarely achieved its target but at least it was far from unplayable. Just rather undesirable and pretty jittery. Mostly hanged onto the low to mid 40's during fights. Dipped to the low 30's on occasions.

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Half Lifeon the Dreamcast was nightmare fuel. Uncapped to 60 but you'd be stuck in the teens a lot of the time.

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Metal Gear Solid 3 on PS2 looked for 30fps. Even during cutscenes it dropped to the low 20's frequently and even to the teens.

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GTA San Andreas which I believe is the best selling game on PS2 again completely missed the 30fps mostly hanging around the low to mid 20's.

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Morrowind on the original Xbox was something else. Could run anywhere from 60 to 15fps. Was absolutely awful in interior sections and during combat. Often dropping to the low 20's or high tens.

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Enough gen 6 for now. Let's go to gen 7.

God of War 3 fell short of its 60fps target by A LOT. More so than its predecessor. Almost never reached 60fps and it wasn't rare to play in the mid to high 30's during combat.

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Metal Gear Solid 4? Yeah pretty awful as well. Go onto battlefields to see 20fps.

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Ninja Gaiden 2 on Xbox 360 was pretty decent overall but did suffer drops to the 30's at times despite targeting 60.

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One thing to keep in mind is that prior to the 8th gen, games ran at much lower resolutions than native TV res and in the case of the Xbox 360/PS3 which were marketed as HD consoles, a lot of games ran below 720p. Things have been getting better however and I fully expect next gen consoles to deliver 4K/30fps at the very least on most if not all AAA games.

Lesson learn, don't buy anything from Gearbox until everything is clear and okay to buy. Never buy their games day one and why buy Borderlands 3 when Borderlands 2 is still freaking amazing and still active?

Since I'm waiting for Steam GOTY Edition, I have no (experienced) opinion. I'll be curious how the Steam version performance will be, with expected patches and all that later. I'm not supporting that nasty man Randy Pitchord all because he wants to be EGS bitch.

I damn near got it because I had a blast playing co-op with the first two but instead I got MHW on sale and have been pleased so far. I'll wait for the GOTY as well or at least until it's fixed. Even on PC it has issues.

@Juub1990: I should have mention this, Borderlands 3 has Denuvo, it's why the PC version is a mess. To be an Epic timely exclusive, I was really surprise Gearbox went this very far having Denuvo.

To be honest I can get past technical problems if the game is good. Game breaking bugs or frequent crashes excluded. It does nothing for me to play a game at a bazillion FPS if I don't enjoy its core elements.

@Juub1990: And? Those games are still all amazing, frame rate issues or not.

What has your answer got to do with the thread?

Hope not, I hate those blurry upscaling techniques.

MGS2 on the ps2 was capped at 60 fps, with drops to low 40s during action sequences if I remember correctly, your link is an analysis of MGS3, not 2. But I agree with you, performance is too poor in many console games.

Maybe they needed more of that magic console optimization!

Snap you're right. Corrected the title. Thanks.

Don't worry next generation will fix that... Haven't you guys heard?... 3GHz+ 8 Core Zen 2 with a 60CU 1700MHz Navi card with Ray Tracing and 24GB GDDR6 with a 2TB NVME, no more load times and no more dynamic resolution.

These console gamer's are called peasants for a reason.

Haha yup.

I'm trying to figure out what the point of this thread is.....