When the frame rate is so bad, it makes you ill

Maybe skip Lichdom: Battlemage on consoles

I hadn’t really heard of Lichdom: Battlemage until our recent post about its new PlayStation 4 and Xbox One ports — they’re $49.99 a piece, or bizarrely enough you could just get the PC version for $1.99 in a bundle — and now here it is in the news again for all the wrong reasons.

Digital Foundry has a video laying out the console versions, and Lichdom is such a technical mess (“one of the worst performing console games we’ve ever tested”) that I struggled to watch it. After six minutes, I’m dizzy, and I can’t imagine how folks who actually play the game will feel.

Amusingly, the Xbox One version manages to achieve full 1080p in CryEngine 3, but at a cost: “There is never a moment when the screen isn’t splitting in half.”

In the end, Lichdom itself looks like decent fun as a spell-flinging first-person action-RPG, and I probably would have never known that without hearing about these disastrous ports. Shame.