Year of the Unfinished Game: A Rambling

So, I'm sitting in the mathematics and computer technology building of my small public university in south-central Pennsylvania. My pre-calc final has been delayed because of bad weather. (I am a first semester sophomore.) So I have some time to kill. Anyways, for the last couple of years Giant Bomb has had a category in the GOTY podcasts for worst trend. I would argue that for 2014 that trend has been companies shipping unfinished games.

The obvious offender is Ubisoft but they are not alone in this practice. I would argue that for as much fun as I have had with Titanfall, it feels like a bare bones package. Even Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame mentions this in his review. EA released a buggy and broken version of Battlefield 4 that is still completely busted for some users. In fact, Far Cry 4, one of my favorite games this year, is completely broken for some people. Patrick mentioned that on PC its been unplayable for him. I was having issues of my own with Far Cry 4 performance up until yesterday with the release of patch 1.5.0.

And don't even get me started on Watch Dogs.

Also, with the big budget games focusing on making the games look "next gen" it seems like the gameplay experience is taking a back seat to fancy art and effects. I would argue that Infamous: Second Son is a step backwards from Infamous 2. It feels like a small game in scope (IMO). Assassin's Creed Unity is another example of removing features, rather than adding new ones. Like Alex Navarro said, the game feels like Assassin's Creed 3, but buggier. Also, think about the bare bones offering that Destiny turned out to be.

I don't doubt that these issues will be ironed out in the coming years as companies master their new tech and find ways to make asset creation and programming less laborious, but man this year was rough for big budget games. Yet I am hopeful.

The stand outs for me this year are indie games, Alien: Isolation, and Nintendo. Nintendo games just seem to work out of the box. Which is sadly kind of amazing in this day and age. Now, there may be reasons for that. Nintendo games are largely iterative and the tech is not as powerful as ps4 and xbox one, so they seem to focus on stunning art as opposed to photo-realism, and it seems to be paying off. (In all fairness, the games that Ubisoft make are also pretty iterative) Nintendo has been killing it this year, and if it wasn't for the big dumb controller, I would buy a WiiU instead of borrowing my friend's. I didn't play a ton of indies this year but Shovel Knight, Transistor and Divinity all worked without any issues for me. (I know some people had trouble with Transistor, sorry), and shovel knight and Divinity specifically provided hours and days of enjoyment. Lastly Alien was probably the game that surprised me the most. I found the cat and mouse mechanics to be completely absorbing if not particularly terrifying. The game ran well, had minimal technical issues (I had loading screen freezes a few times) and looked nice.

I honestly would trade in fancier graphics for games that actually offer new and rich gameplay experiences, and I wish corporations realized that.

And I think CD Projeckt Red are doing the right thing by delaying The Witcher 3. I would rather wait through a series of delays than struggle to enjoy an unfinished product.

Rambling over. Feel free to comment.

I would give the most unfinished game of the year to Halo MCC, I had no problems with Far Cry 4 on the one and before far cry I beat AC rogue so have yet to really dig into unity did not want to play two AC games back to back so I can't give my opinion on unity. as for Halo I can't even play the online which is why I bought the game. hopefully it's fixed by 2015 I have three months with no games I want to get so I am hoping Halo will give me a game to play.

I agree that Halo MCC is probably the most egregious. I bought an xbox one almost solely to play halo with my buddies. But I can't even do that. Needless to say I'm not happy.

Yeah, worst trend has to be unfinished games. It's pretty obvious that what Jeff said is true: This all stems from companies being caught by surprise by how well these consoles are selling. We got a lot of remakes because they were caught off guard, and now we're getting broken messes because they didn't have enough in the pipeline to push games until they were polished. I'm hoping that next year will see a return to sanity.

Unfinished games have been super disappointing this year indeed. Pre-ordering is definitely a practice I'm not going to indulge in anymore. I'm optimistic that next year will be better. After all, we're only one year out from the launch of the new generation which historically is pretty abysmal. I was looking at the 360's first 12 months, and the only games that really caught my eye was Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Gears of War.