These last few days, we’ve encountered literal dozens of reverse-engineered, decompiled games being ported from PlayStation to PC without the need to emulate them. These projects vary from each other in scope and performance, but some are genuinely incredible to witness and show just how endangered AAA publishers are in the wake of AI-coding evolution.
The latest and, to me, most interesting project is the God of War 3 PC port, which can now support up to 240 fps on AMD hardware. By using Vulkan to translate the PS4’s graphical instructions and replacing its system libraries, the game does not require an emulator to play and uses the PC’s own CPU to crunch the numbers and, well, run the game.
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The project is fully open-source and does not allow pirates to get their hands on it. You need your own dump of the God of War 3 copy, meaning you must legally own it and rip its files to be able to use this software. Some will definitely circumvent that, but it’s good that the software is putting this out there as a disclaimer.
Anywho, as the project’s creator, FelipePrado0, explains, the game can be played from start to finish and supports 240 fps at 1080p and also supports FSR. On average, they managed to get 144 fps average on an RX 6700XT and a Ryzen 5 5600X, but could eke out a lot more when FSR was turned on. It’s FSR 1, so the quality of the image is probably horrendous and not worth the trouble.
Since it uses Vulkan as its API, this project, and others of its kind, will probably run the best and be most stable on AMD’s hardware. AMD is superbly optimized for Vulkan and makes Sony’s hardware architectures anyway, but I’m sure the more powerful Nvidia cards will have no issue holding this project up.
What I found quite interesting is that this is a fork of the Bloodborne on PC project, meaning that the chase for a native port of FromSoftware’s gothic soulslike inadvertently led to the community porting so many other Sony exclusives. I mean, why not, when Sony doesn’t want to?
Either way, I’m looking forward to trying this one out as I’ve always wondered how GoW 3 (my favorite in the series) would play on MnK. Controllers are fun and all, but if you haven’t played a character action game using MnK, I really think you’re missing out.
