GTA4 has a videoram bug, where it would show less amount of VRAM than you originally have. The fix was to put a .txt file in the game directory to specify the amount of VRAM available.
The newer Steam version, released in 2020 removes the support for the .txt file and the new fix is to use a different dinput8.dll

Anything with disc DRM is still an issue on windows 10.

The original farcry can have water shader bugs in ways that feel impossible to diagnose, but that was true of farcry back in the day as well.

A 2003 game Command and Conquer Zero Hour doesn't work in later windows but that is the latest I know of.

There are lot of little issues with workaround for various games. Spinter cell Chaos Theory has buggy shader model 3 but alt+tabbing will fix it. I had problems with vysync in serious sam II that I fixed by forcing vsync in the bios.

When playing Dungeon Seige 2 I had to run the game in windowed mode because full screen was broken. I couldn't find a fix.

The 2006 game GodFather required a "silent patch" otherwise the game would crash.

Halo 2 for the PC is a giant pain the ass to get working on any other OS other than Vista.

There are probably more... can't think of any. I think almost any game can be made to work, albeit sometimes with compromises. And most run fine especially if they have had a GoG release.

The original Splinter Cell has problems with shadows on any video card newer than a GeForce4 Ti.

Phil has a whole video series on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB9BTbtNyDw

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-01-02, 18:49:

The original Splinter Cell has problems with shadows on any video card newer than a GeForce4 Ti.

Phil has a whole video series on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB9BTbtNyDw

It was released in 2002, he needs games after 04

Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2021-01-02, 20:37:

It was released in 2002, he needs games after 04

The PC version came out in 2003 actually.

That said, I seem to have misinterpreted the title. I thought he wanted games that don't work correctly on hardware that came out after 2004.

Yes, I was looking for games released after 2004 that have issues on modern hardware and Windows 10.

Disc DRM is easier to circumvent or just buy a Steam/GOG release.

I'm aware of Halo 2, but that is a Vista game so should run fine on Windows 10.

So it's only the spot between 2004 and 2007 when games were released for Windows XP. I take everything after 2007 should run fine (except might be some small issues, like vram in GTA 4)

2004 is a pretty reasonable cut off. I would say most everything after 2002 would work, even. Directx 8.1 or later stuff doesn't have too many issues with the compatibility mode in windows 10, and GoG releases exist for a lot of them with various bug fixes (also the community patches ofc).

One more thing, OpenAL soft for EAX can bring back 3d positional audio to a lot of games, although some of them have had EAX patched out of them as is the case for KOTOR steam and GoG releases and others.

I happen to have a quadro GPU on my laptop, which still supports super sampling. If you can force a quadro driver for your GPU than super sampling is great. Unlike DSR, you don't run into nearly as many scaling issues with higher resolutions.

EDIT: Also, I believe the issues I had with halo 2 were DRM, not OS compatibility per se. I had to use a cracked exe which windows defender would flag repeatedly until I just gave up playing it. The remastered halo release on steam is my go to now, so no huge loss (although there are some problems with the remasters too).

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 can get a divide by zero error on ryzen cpus.