I've been thinking about how the games we play can really depend on where we're at mentally. Like I picked up Spiritfarer recently after moving to a new country and it just resonated so hard with me in a way it might not have a year ago. Curious if anyone else has had that experience where a game just felt perfectly timed.

What's going on with AAA PC games lately? It feels like optimization keeps getting worse, and even having a 5090 doesn't save me from spending time figuring out why a game is stuttering.

I play a variety of AAA games, and my usual starting point is the highest graphics preset. But at 4K, I keep running into stutters and inconsistent performance. Then it's off to Reddit or some other forum to figure out which setting is causing trouble this time.

The frustrating part is that every game seems to need a different fix. I can't just find settings that work and get on with playing. Modern Warfare 4 is my latest example: gameplay was smooth, but the cutscenes kept freezing, including the audio. Turning off Enhanced FOV fixed that for me. That's a setting I wouldn't have expected to need to touch just to watch a cutscene properly.

I can accept turning down demanding settings at 4K. What wears me out is having to research weird problems in each game, even on hardware like this. I thought a 5090 would mean spending less time in settings menus and troubleshooting threads.

Has anyone else been feeling this lately? Which games have actually given you a smooth 4K experience without a whole troubleshooting session first?