The Year of the Broken Games

So yeah I'll just cut to the chase, this year has been a year filled with some broken ass games. Wether they were persistent online only games or launch titles, a bunch of games fell flat this year due to bugs and server issues. So what games dissipointed you guys the most? For me GTA5 Online really really bummed me out. That game looked like it had potential to be fun and still it remained unplayable for me a month past launch. BF4 also comes to mind. Despite all the bugs and server issues it still remains my shooter of choice past the system launches but still...that game still has some serious issues.

SimCity is the other big one

Simcity was easily the most broken, I never went back to it after the first 2 weeks after loosing every single fucking city I built to server side corruption.

What I want to know is: why - with development costs rising as much as they are and causing all the games to have microtransactions, day one DLC and other nickel and diming horseshit - are more and more games broken-ass crap? I'm with Jeff on this one: Fuck video games!

With Luigi in charge, everything is bound to fall apart.

@flappy said:

Man, he was busy. Had ghosts to bust.

@donutfever:

Too soon, man. Too soon.

I didn't love Simcity, but the online issues did not figure into it.

The free apology copy of Dead Space 3 was excellent though. Its probably a terrible game in solo (or from a horror prospective), but the co-op and screwing around with weird custom guns is great.

The bug in Pokemon X & Y where if you save near a taxi your save file is corrupted. To be totally honest that is the only really large bug I dealt with this year.

The Year of EA's Broken ass games. I feel bad for the devs.

Last of Us had a save bug that caused me to lose a couple of hours of progress, but I was completely aware of it (so I was asking for it) and it got fixed pretty quickly (and I didnt mind replaying those first few hours). That's the only broken game thing that affected me this year.

Also, I didnt play any EA games or GTA online...

Consoles, too. All three launches had major problems. A lot of bad decisions happening on the executive side. Money people trying to squeeze the industry with the idea that established name recognition is enough to foist pure broken trash on the market and still profit. If this continues, a second crash isn't out of the question. The 80's crash was a result of market saturation of junk games. It can happen again. I think maybe that might be a good thing. Shake everything up, get some new companies fighting for market control.

In the case of Battlefield and GTAV Online, it comes down to skimping on proper QA and bug fixing in the name of making a release date. Battlefield 4 in particular was slated to be a launch title. EA wanted that game to compete head to head with Call of Duty for PS4/Xbox One dollars. GTAV Online is more baffling, in that it's GTA; Rockstar could delay the game as much as they want and no one would be concerned because it's just Rockstar being Rockstar. Instead, they released the game with a barely functional online component with a broken cloud.

And speaking of clouds...

SimCity was just a poorly designed game, top to bottom. They built everything around the cloud requirement and forced multiplayer, sacrificing city size and other elements in the process. The dev team seemingly chose to ignore what it is about SimCity people actually enjoy. The weird traffic behavior and other glitches were just shit icing on a crap cake.

hey, keep pre-ordering games. I'm sure that will fix it.

Duh, if we give them more money then they will able to pay to fix all the bugs!

Maybe these things that you mention are part of the reason. These games are usually big games that have multiple systems interacting with each other that all have to be planned, developed, implemented, and working in unison within a specific time frame that is usually much shorter then desired. As a software developer some of these games ambitions sound like a complete nightmare to make happen in the time the companies give.

I don't get why everyone was so shocked at GTAO. Rockstar repeatedly said before they launched that they fully expected the launch to be a bumpy one. I don't think there is any amount of preparedness that would have made them ready for literally millions of people pounding on their servers all at once.

If you own battlefield 4 buy premium that'll fix it.

I wouldn't classify "constant risk at losing your online game save data" a bumpy experience.

Diablo 3, Steel Battalion, Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Fez, The Walking Dead.

Oh, wait, you said THIS year. Yeah there's been broken games this year too.

I must just get really lucky when I play games because I rarely run into bugs and/or glitches

Isn't every year broken games year?

The number 1 and 2 spot of last years goty both had major issues (save loading issue for the walking dead, various crashes, bugs, and generally odd behavior in x-com).

Also Steel Battalion was released last year.

Launch games are always broken so those don't count, last year was the true year of broken and/or shitty games.

It's this year's Gaming Trend That Needs To Stop, or whatever that category is called.

I dunno, I don't think this year is that much worse than all the other years, even if there have been significant problems with a few games. Not that it's an excuse, but I think a lot of the technical problems with this year's games have come from the fact that games are increasingly trying to do more complex online stuff and that can go very wrong very easily.

@TheHT The Chiggity Check Yourself Before you Riggity Wreck yourself award

TW: Rome II, that @$%^ was broken as hell at launch.

Fail

Fail 2

Fail 3

"Early Access" for worst trend, taking bets now.

The year of the apology

What about NBA 2k14 that was patched to be always online after release?

I don't play online games. I've been highly pleasured.

Yeah, I don't think this year was as bad as last and I think next year won't be so bad because new consoles are now out. But yeah, games are getting more bigger and shit are bound to break at some point unfortunately.

I just played Saints Row 4, it froze 3 times and I ran into a bug where I could not get pass a boss battle until I found a workaround in the internet. It has been out for months and a big bug has not been fix yet which piss me of sightly.

I don't feel like this year has been that bad as far as broken games go. X Rebirth, Sim City, GTA O, and Battlefield 4 were all broken, but I didn't play any of those. I did play GTA V but I didn't have a ton of interest in GTA O.

'Course, I spent a lot of the year playing PS2 and 3DS games. Those tend to work when you get them.

Out of the ones I have experienced recently:

• Batman Origins has a lot of weird geometry and texture bugs and events not triggering, even in the main campaign.
• FIFA 14 has game freezes, screens that locked and several other stability issues.
• Battlefield 4 has serious problems to remember my profile information. I think I have leveled up from 6 to 7 three times by now.

Those are 3 games in a row being fundamentally broken.

I think its because of the next generation. With most of those games being scheduled for re-release as launch titles, its like they moved the best of the development team to the newer toys and let the older generation to be handled by interns.

I only just happened to see the giant goalkeeper glitch, it may have been patched now, but it's hilarious.

@vaddixbell said:

@hermes said:

Out of the ones I have experienced recently:

• Batman Origins has a lot of weird geometry and texture bugs and events not triggering, even in the main campaign.
• FIFA 14 has game freezes, screens that locked and several other stability issues.
• Battlefield 4 has serious problems to remember my profile information. I think I have leveled up from 6 to 7 three times by now.

Those are 3 games in a row being fundamentally broken.

I think its because of the next generation. With most of those games being scheduled for re-release as launch titles, its like they moved the best of the development team to the newer toys and let the older generation to be handled by interns.

I only just happened to see the giant goalkeeper glitch, it may have been patched now, but it's hilarious.

Man I wish soccer was really like that. I suppose it probably is in Silent Hill.

Don't forget Batman Arkham Origins, it got patched out on PC. What happened to consoles

It was more the minor bugs that bothered me in Origins. Irritating little things like being stunlocked in combat encounters, stealth takedowns refusing to activate unless Batman was on perfectly level ground and the fact that you often needed to hammer the grapple button 50 times before he would decide to swing to another gargoyle.

Rome 2 is also another game that was bugged to hell on release (and, in my opinion, is still a pretty poor TW game eight patches later).

@flipperdesert: While I think that's objectively the right answer it's mostly an indy thing, and one dares not criticize those paragons of industry and righteousness; just like the founding fathers were saints and small businesses are the saviors of America.