And it’s that time of the year. Before publishing our Top 10 Most Optimized PC Games of 2024, we’ve decided to share our list for the worst optimized PC games. These are the games that disappointed us with their optimization on PC.

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 some games. 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 2024. Oh, and we won’t include any Early Access games.

Lastly, this list is in random order. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at them.

Until Dawn Remake

Man, the remake of Until Dawn in Unreal Engine 5 was such a huge disappointment. Until Dawn Remake still has a lot of tech issues on PC. If you have a high-end PC system, you can brute force your way through most of them. However, if you take a closer look at it, you will see how broken this game is. There are stability issues. The game may crash and corrupt your saves. And both Ray Tracing and Virtual Shadow Maps are still not working.

STALKER 2

There is no doubt that STALKER 2 is a great looking game. However, it came out in a beta state and it suffered from a lot of optimization issues. And although GSC GameWorld has released some patches, none of them have improved its performance. None of them have addressed the traversal stutters. None of them have made the CPU-heavy scenes run better. And, there are still various visual glitches.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a huge letdown. Powered by RE Engine, DD2 was a mess when it came out. And now, after seven months, it still suffers from major CPU optimization issues. Seriously, I don’t get why this game is so heavy in towns. And how about those awful NPCs that can literally pop right in front of you? Say what you want about Starfield, but at least its towns are richer with more NPCs that have daily routines (without bringing to their knees high-end CPUs). And right now, I’m really worried about every other open-world Capcom game that will be using this engine.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake is another UE5 Remake that failed to impress me. Although the devs used Lumen, I don’t really see the benefits of it. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake could have easily been made with UE4. Not only that but the PC controls felt awful. And then we have the traversal stutters. Those stutters were not as bad as those in Silent Hill 2 Remake, but overall, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons was worse than SH2R. And, speaking of traversal stutters.

Games with traversal stutters

I’ve decided to include all the triple-A games that have traversal stutters in this category. So, if you hate games that can stutter on PC, you should avoid the following ones. Some of them have fewer traversal stutters than others. Still, those with trained eyes will immediately spot them. So, which PC games suffered from traversal stutters in 2024? Well, those were STALKER 2, Frostpunk, Until Dawn Remake, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake, Black Myth: Wukong, Alone in the Dark, Infinity Nikki, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, and Outcast – A New Beginning. The games with the worst stutters, though, were Silent Hill 2 Remake and SAND LAND.

SAND LAND, in particular, will stutter like crazy in the first few hours due to the lack of a shader pre-compilation process. Not only that but its post-launch support was awful. We only got two small patches, and none of them addressed the shader compilation stutters. As for Bloober Team, it is lucky SH2R was an amazing game because when you get to the apartments, there are A LOT of traversal stutters. It’s a shame really.

And there you have it. Those were the worst optimized PC games of 2024. Stay tuned now for our Top 10 Most Optimized PC Games of 2024 list!