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Most Aggravating Frame Rate / Best Slideshow

All the graphical polish and texture quality in the world can't save a game with a broken frame rate. Bad frame rates mar the look of the game, but the truly bad ones also manage to interfere with the gameplay. You would think that in this day and age we wouldn't be faced with the same problems we were dealing with back when the Saturn and PlayStation came out, but choppy frame rates are still a menace. Will developers ever solve the mystery? Will hardware ever get powerful enough that we won't need to give this award out again? Keep your fingers crossed.

Advent Rising

Developer: GlyphX Games
Platform: Xbox
ESRB: Teen
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Advent Rising is a game plagued by a noticeably horrendous frame rate. In terms of frames-per-second, the game drops down into single-digits more often than we'd care to remember.

Half-Life 2

Developer: Valve Software
Platform: Xbox
ESRB: Mature
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The Xbox version of Half-Life 2 takes a step back from its PC counterpart with a generally weak frame rate that gets noticeably worse when the activity gets intense.

Quake 4

Developer: Raven Software
Platform: Xbox 360
ESRB: Mature
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The frame rate affects everything from the visuals to the gameplay, slowing the whole thing down in some of its worst moments.

Shadow of the Colossus

Developer: SCE Japan Studio
Platform: PlayStation 2
ESRB: Teen
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The frame rate is erratic; usually smooth when nothing is on the screen, but hitches whenever the colossi get involved, which is, unfortunately, the time that it's most detrimental to the game.

True Crime: New York City

Developer: Exakt
Platforms: Xbox, PlayStation 2, PC
ESRB: Mature
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The frame rate is one of the worst things about this already poor game, chugging throughout the entire game, and making no exception for aspect of the gameplay. Whether you're driving or on foot, there's one crime you can count on, this game's terrible frame rate.

And the winner is... Quake 4
Platform: Xbox 360
ESRB: Mature

On the PC, Quake 4 was a great-looking game. The Doom 3 engine was already a strong starting point, and Quake 4 took that engine in some interesting new directions while still sticking with the things that the engine does best--realistic lighting and shadowing, for example. The Xbox 360 version of Quake 4, however, doesn't look so hot. While it manages to capture most of the lighting effects and general feel of the game, it also turns into a slideshow whenever you're in a large area, whenever enemies attack...or really just whenever it feels like it. It's easily the most crippling frame rate problem in 2005. In some spots, the game chugs so badly that you can hear the rate of fire slowing down, right along with everything else. This goes beyond dropped frames and crosses over into some very ugly territory.