Like I’m not one of THOSE. I know higher = better with framerates.
BUT. I’m also old. And depending on when you ask me, I’ll name The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask as my favourite game of all time.
The original release of that game ran at a glorious twenty frames per second. No, not thirty. No, not even twenty-four like cinema. Twenty. And sometimes it’d choke on those too!
… And yet. It never felt bad to play. Sure, it’s better at 30FPS on the 3DS remake. Or at 60FPS in the fanmade recomp port. But the 20FPS original is still absolutely playable.
Yet like.
I was playing Fallout 4, right? And when I got to Boston it started lagging in places, because, well, it’s Fallout 4. It always lags in places. The lag felt awful, like it really messed with the gamefeel. But checking the FPS counter it was at… 45.
And I’m like – Why does THIS game, at forty-five frames a second, FEEL so much more stuttery and choked up than ye olde video games felt at twenty?
It depends on what you’re running, but often if the frame rate is rock solid and consistent it helps it feel a lot less stuttery. Fallout games are not known for their stability and well functioning unfortunately.
For comparison, deltarune came out a few days ago, that’s locked to 30 fps. Sure it’s not a full 3D game or anything, but there’s a lot of complex motion in the battles and it’s not an issue at all. Compared to something like bloodborne or the recent Zeldas, even after getting used to the frame rate they feel awful because they’re stuttering all the damn time.