New Lego Batman Game Called a PC Gaming Nightmare
▼ Summary
– The game *Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight* requires frame generation to hit 30 fps at minimum settings, which is an improper use of the technology.
– Frame generation introduces input lag, and at low base frame rates like 15-20 fps, it worsens latency and creates visual artifacts.
– The recommended GTX 960 GPU does not support DLSS frame generation, forcing reliance on slower, less accurate FSR or XeSS frame generation.
– Unlike other well-optimized 2025 PC games, this title’s poor performance targets a child audience, potentially putting it out of reach for many families.
– The author advises playing the game on consoles instead, as they currently do not use frame generation.
Ever since Nvidia debuted frame generation alongside the RTX 4080, I’ve feared the moment when a developer would treat it as a crutch rather than a luxury. For nearly four years, that line remained uncrossed. Now, it appears Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is about to bulldoze right over it.
Over the weekend, TT Games released the system requirements for its upcoming Unreal Engine 5 title. At first glance, the specs look reasonable. But a deeper read reveals a troubling catch: the company expects players to enable frame generation just to reach 30 fps on minimum settings. That is not how this technology is supposed to be used.
If this isn’t a mistake, it implies the minimum hardware will only manage 15 to 20 fps without frame gen. At that point, no amount of AI-generated frames can salvage the experience from being an unplayable mess.
Oh boy.
What Frame Generation Is Actually For
For those unfamiliar, it’s easy to view frame generation as a magic performance boost. To understand why relying on it for 30 fps is a problem, you need to grasp how it works.
Frame generation uses a machine learning model to create new frames from rendered frames and motion vector data. While the GPU generates these extra frames, the original rendered frame is held back briefly. Then, both the real and generated frames are paced out by your CPU or GPU. This process inherently introduces latency, or input lag. At high frame rates, the added delay is negligible, but both AMD and Nvidia recommend enabling this feature only when you’re already getting a decent frame rate,ideally 60 fps or above. At 15 fps, you’re already suffering from severe latency, and frame generation will only worsen it, even if the image appears smoother.
Moreover, at low frame rates, there isn’t enough data from rendered frames and motion vectors to accurately generate new frames. The lower your base frame rate, the more likely you’ll encounter artifacts and visual glitches.
It’s too early to confirm whether Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight will actually run this poorly without frame gen. But if it does, playing it will be a miserable experience unless you own a powerful enough PC to brute force decent performance.
Frame Gen on Old Hardware
What makes this even stranger is that TT Games lists an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 as the minimum GPU. That’s a modest, aging card. Yet the studio still recommends frame generation for it,even though DLSS frame gen doesn’t work on that old hardware.
For these older GPUs, TT Games relies on FSR or XeSS frame generation. These technologies work similarly to Nvidia’s, but because they lack dedicated AI cores, they’re slower and less accurate. That only compounds a bad performance situation.
Crimson Desert also leaned on FSR frame gen to boost performance on handhelds like the Steam Deck and Xbox Ally X. But that game aimed for 60 fps, not 30 fps. TT Games doesn’t even mention handhelds in the system requirements for Legacy of the Dark Knight, so it’s safe to assume this title won’t run well on portable systems. That’s a shame, because it’s exactly the kind of game you’d want to pull out on a train or a long flight.
A Bad Port in a Sea of Good Ones
What’s especially wild about these ridiculous PC requirements is that the best PC games of the year so far have been exceptionally well optimized. Crimson Desert, Resident Evil: Requiem, and Pragmata all run like a dream. None of them use Unreal Engine 5, but that only makes the latest Lego game stand out more for the wrong reasons.
What makes it worse is that Lego games are designed for kids. While some children may have parents with expensive rigs, these inflated system requirements likely place the game out of reach for many families.
Based on previews, Legacy of the Dark Knight looks very nice. It makes good use of what appears to be ray traced global illumination and reflections, and the cloth textures on the detective’s cape are excellent. But if all that visual fidelity comes at the cost of a playable frame rate, it’s not worth the trade-off,at least on PC.
If TT Games’ requirements are accurate, most people will be better off playing this game on consoles, where frame generation isn’t yet a standard feature. That said, the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Project Helix are expected to support the technology, so this likely won’t be the last time we see developers lean on frame gen to mask poor performance. I hope I’m wrong.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra.
(Source: IGN)
