Technical issues and game of the year considerations

Have games made your list that have had game crippling bugs or had poor optimization?

Two games I'm considering for my own list this year are Miasmata and The Walking Dead. Miasmata being made by 2 dudes, while most of it is technically impressive, it just won't run on my relatively powerful laptop. Runs fine on my gaming PC, but just riddled with crippling slow framerate on my laptop which can run most current gen games at a relatively high settings for the most part.

The Walking Dead on the other hand had the save game bug. Every time a new episode of TWD was released my save game became corrupted. And because I wanted to stay up to date, I played through the first chapter to the current episode each time. Miasmata's problem seems more excusable while TWD does not to me due to one didn't detract from my experience. Not being able to play that game between breaks at on my laptop isn't the same as being forced to replay a game that is all about narrative.

I'm going through my list and TWD which I really enjoyed might be cut due to this, what do you guys think?

If that's how you feel about the game then that's how it should be, it is your list and your decision. If you want to cut the game because of a bad experience you had with it, that makes sense to me.

I find that a completely fair reason to cut a game from your list, the most amazing game in the world doesn't deserve universal praise if it is technically broken.

If it detracts from the experience then sure id probably mark it down a few points, but the occasional bug is whatever. Which is basically what will happen with the walking dead, that game has been nothing but a bug fest for me. Characters disappearing, two different dialogue scenes happening simultaneously, it straight up taking away any control I had from the game, its been far buggier than Skyrim ever was for me.
Also I put every game of 2012 I played onto my list, and the Darkness 2 is bottom cause of how fucking dreadful the pc port was.

If TWD was more polished it would possibly be #1 on my list. Darksiders 2 had a bunch of issues (one in particular that meant I couldn't complete an area), so that might have been higher on my list otherwise.

Also, I haven't picked it up, but Miasmata seems great; the only thing stopping me from playing it is the fact that I'm awful with directions/map reading :(

I feel it should be buggy for everyone to take a star off, like Skyrim. I loved Skyrim but removed it from my GotY consideration because of the bugs on all platforms and the terrible bugs I personally experienced.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect a PC game to be optimized for a laptop system.

Telltale not fixing the bug and getting GOTY is troubling, especially considering it breaks the games core function.

@daedelus said:

I feel it should be buggy for everyone to take a star off, like Skyrim. I loved Skyrim but removed it from my GotY consideration because of the bugs on all platforms and the terrible bugs I personally experienced.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect a PC game to be optimized for a laptop system.

That's crazy, you rate your experience that you had with the game. PS3 version of Skyrim was a fucking mess but I never ran into an issue on the PS3, so because others had problems I have to take that into consideration?

Never experienced the bug

I played Skyrim on PS3 and it was my GOTY last year.

Bugs and glitches mean close to nothing to me when it comes to considering how good a game is. I mean sure, if it's something that actively prohibits you from progressing then it's probably going to hurt your impression of the game, but I find it very easy to ignore technical issues in favor of the general experience.

As someone who loves adventure games, I mean I love adventure games, Grim Fandango is my all time favorite game. Telltale continues to disappoint me with how unpolished their modern games are. Patrick stresses on the podcast, "Just play through the game and stick to your ending, don't try to replay it to get the outcome you wanted."

Too late, I had to play through that farm section 5 times at this point, and having to replay it only revealed the fourth wall to the story each time I had to replay it.

I would have taken 2d amiga graphics for TWD if they had safe games saves. It's the writing I cared about.

Gary did such a wonderful job with Molly in episode 4. Probably the most meaningful female character in a game I've played up to this point. It's so disappointing I had to replay through her section and see the curtain lifted.

Bah!

@xaLieNxGrEyx said:

Never experienced the bug

Same here. Played on PC, zero bugs. Sucks for the people who had their saves erased, though.

Did it ruin the experience for a large number of people over an extended period of time? Because that's the argument that ousted Mortal Kombat.

@adam1808 said:

Did it ruin the experience for a large number of people over an extended period of time? Because that's the argument that ousted Mortal Kombat.

To be fair I don't think MK had much chance if it had made it past that in the later stages but yeah, TWD's save problem is much more prevalent than most bugs and the save was an integral part of the game.

I don't think it should matter unless it ruined the game for you. XCom is a buggy ass game that was made really frustrating when the game decided it wanted to bug out. But it's still my game of the year because I had so much fun with it that no other game come close to matching it. Just makes me sad how much more fun it could have been if I had of had a bug free experience.

@thabigred said:

@adam1808 said:

Did it ruin the experience for a large number of people over an extended period of time? Because that's the argument that ousted Mortal Kombat.

To be fair I don't think MK had much chance if it had made it past that in the later stages but yeah, TWD's save problem is much more prevalent than most bugs and the save was an integral part of the game.

Doesn't matter how many people it affected. It shouldn't be considered unless it happened to you personally. I will be interested to see how it works out on the Bombcast as it happened to Brad but I don't recall it affecting anyone else.

Skyrim got off despite being broken more often than not, on any platform. Now the world is yours if you're a buggy mess.

XCOM versus Walking Dead. WE DIDN'T LISTEN!

I don't think so. Then again, my list isn't going to be a top 10, so that might screw things up.

The Walking Dead was the most incredibly broken piece of shit ever for me. Continues to be so far as I know. I had the save bug pretty much every time I loaded the fucker up. I had the failure to start error for about 4 months out of the 5 or 6 they were putting out episodes. Camera cuts were clumsy, textures awful. No game pissed me off more for technical issues than that game, not even Bulletstorm, which was pretty fucked on PC to start off with.

I barely got through the first two episodes just because of technical issues. And no refunds of course, despite being sold a completely broken product.

On top of that, they weren't all that great.

@Brodehouse said:

Skyrim got off despite being broken more often than not, on any platform. Now the world is yours if you're a buggy mess. XCOM versus Walking Dead. WE DIDN'T LISTEN!

Skyrim wasn't broken, but it did have bugs. Some of them were game breaking, but to be expected. You could still enjoy the hell out of that game without experiencing any game breaking bugs. I had one, and it wasn't that game breaking, and was patched and fixed pretty quickly. Otherwise, the game was pretty low on bugs for me, even on my shitty PC. I never knew many people who actually had game breaking issues beyond the PS3 version. If a quest is broken, you do another one until that one is patched. Easy. At least the game ran.

@thabigred said:

As someone who loves adventure games, I mean I love adventure games, Grim Fandango is my all time favorite game. Telltale continues to disappoint me with how unpolished their modern games are. Patrick stresses on the podcast, "Just play through the game and stick to your ending, don't try to replay it to get the outcome you wanted."

Too late, I had to play through that farm section 5 times at this point, and having to replay it only revealed the fourth wall to the story each time I had to replay it.

I would have taken 2d amiga graphics for TWD if they had safe games saves. It's the writing I cared about.

Gary did such a wonderful job with Molly in episode 4. Probably the most meaningful female character in a game I've played up to this point. It's so disappointing I had to replay through her section and see the curtain lifted.

Bah!

That sucks, and it's a shame some people have to go through the game like this. I had the save game bug right near the end of ch. 5 and was super bummed about it. i moved some save files around and ended up getting my save back...somehow. i still don't know how i lucked out, but I did get to finish the story. It's a great experience, but I cannot blame you for being as disillusioned as you are by the technical BS.

@thabigred said:

Every time a new episode of TWD was released my save game became corrupted. And because I wanted to stay up to date, I played through the first chapter to the current episode each time.

That sounds like the game is straight up broken.

@Nightriff said:

If that's how you feel about the game then that's how it should be, it is your list and your decision. If you want to cut the game because of a bad experience you had with it, that makes sense to me.

@Brodehouse said:

@MordeaniisChaos

"At least the game ran."

Sounds like Game of the Year to me!

Well to be fair you said on any platform which just isnt the case.

@Hailinel said:

@MordeaniisChaos Skyrim on PS3 is a piece of shit that took months to patch to an even half-decent state and is still broken to the extent that they can't release all of the DLC for it. That game is fucked.

Yes. On PS3. The other versions played fine. Not amazing, but fine. And now, they work pretty damn well. PC version in particular is pretty damn awesome. It's fucked on the PS3, but that's why the PS3 exists as a seperate platform. It's a pretty simple matter of "the 360 and PC versions of Skyrim are worthy of GOTY, PS3 version not so much."

@Brodehouse said:

@MordeaniisChaos "At least the game ran." Sounds like Game of the Year to me!

The game was no where near broken, like I said. Way to take one little bit and use it to your advantage duder? Skyrim had one platform it was broken on. TWD wipes progress regardless of platform, and the PC version has it's own widespread game breaking bug that totally prevents the thing even starting. So an awesome game that's great on two of three platforms vs a game that is broken on all platforms? Hrmmm... Yeahh.....

Also, Skyrim is a hell of a lot more of a game, and just generally better than the real time movie with customized cast that TWD is.

But even with me not liking it, the idea that Skyrim is more broken than TWD is a bit silly.

This is one of the reasons why I picked Journey as my GOTY and why The Walking Dead was number 2 (among other reasons). Journey has everything. But more importantly it doesn't have technical issues. In fact it has some of the coolest technical features of the year with the really cool multiplayer and the sand/snow-tech.

I had problems just getting the walking dead to run. Took me a few days just to get it to start. I think for a game to get GOTY it needs to be more stable than what the walking dead was.

It seems I wasn't alone with having problems. I wonder if the bombers will approach this issue in deliberations....

XCOM can get bent, too many bugs.

@Nightriff said:

If that's how you feel about the game then that's how it should be, it is your list and your decision. If you want to cut the game because of a bad experience you had with it, that makes sense to me.

Exactly. If that happened to me with The Walking Dead it may not make my list. Thankfully I has minimal bugs.

I had TWD bug happen twice. But i just started the newest episode, and luckily randomly generated the choices I made.

@thabigred said:

I'm going through my list and TWD which I really enjoyed might be cut due to this, what do you guys think?

It is pretty simple really. If some aspect of a game (bug, glitch, or actual design decision etc) detracts enough from your experience that it makes something not enjoyable for you or heavily lowers how much you do enjoy it then.... Yeah, it should definitely matter on how high it ranks on a GOTY list. That would me like me over looking all the massive amount of bugs Fallout New Vegas had and including it in my top 10 when it came out instead of only giving it the honorable mention, which is what I did do. If they couldn't be bothered to fix the bug then it is only right you judge a product based on that bug being a part of it.

I encountered the walking dead save bug between epsiodes 3 and 4. However It doesn't delete the saves, it just gets confused about them. It was a pretty simple fix* to get the game to recognize my old saves so I never lost any progress.

That's not to defend Telltale, a saving issue is the absolute worst way a game can fail. But considering how easy it was to fix it didn't bother me enough to move it in my GOTY list.

*(Probably only applies to the PC version)

Bugs aside I think as a piece it's worthwhile enough to still make my GoTY list because it's pushing the envelope (unlike a lot of other titles). Albeit so far the saved game issue hasn't been addressed one hopes that Telltale are going to do fix it soon, especially given they're releasing a retail version of the game. I'm ambivalent about condemning it over technical issues that are outside of the game experience itself (so to speak) and may well be resolved by years end.

The reason to cut a game from your list is because you don't especially want it there. There doesn't have to be a "reason" or "issue" to cut a game from your list at all. I'm currently cutting Tokyo Jungle because I just don't like it quite as well as the other games on my list, even if when I talk about it I go into wild adulations.

The same would go for Spec Ops: The Line, or Hatoful Boyfriend. I'm not cutting them because of some grievous flaw; one of the games I'm considering for Game of the Year has several flaws! But they just aren't as important to me as the games that have made the list.

If we're talking about an argument trying to determine the "best" game of the year, then The Walking Dead's technical issues are a serious problem that should be addressed in any conversation about the game. I'll be engaging in such a conversation in a couple weeks as well.

I've never had a problem with XCOM in my many hours with it. Game of the Year.

My list is based on what games I had the most fun with. If it was filled with bugs but I had the most fun playing it then it is GOTY.  The bugs in Walking Dead sucked more then enough fun to push it out of my personal top 3.

@Village_Guy said:

I find that a completely fair reason to cut a game from your list, the most amazing game in the world doesn't deserve universal praise if it is technically broken.

Unless its Skyrim. Then its ok.

@PulledaBrad said:

@Village_Guy said:

I find that a completely fair reason to cut a game from your list, the most amazing game in the world doesn't deserve universal praise if it is technically broken.

Unless its Skyrim. Then its ok.

Im sure Skyrim wasnt broken for the people praising it. GOTY decision should be based on YOUR experience with game not random internet dudes. Why should I dislike a game more because Joe Blow lost his save? That is ridiculous.

@laserbolts said:

@PulledaBrad said:

@Village_Guy said:

I find that a completely fair reason to cut a game from your list, the most amazing game in the world doesn't deserve universal praise if it is technically broken.

Unless its Skyrim. Then its ok.

Im sure Skyrim wasnt broken for the people praising it. GOTY decision should be based on YOUR experience with game not random internet dudes. Why should I dislike a game more because Joe Blow lost his save? That is ridiculous.

Just because it didn't happen to you personally dosent mean its not fucked. Lotsa outlets were talking about how broken it was on release (an still is, if the PS3 has anything to say about it). And players, too, were bitching. Its a perfectly reasonable point to say that the games enthusiast press can laud a game and ignore major problems with it come awards time and ho asinine that can be. Far from ridiculous, sir.

@PulledaBrad: then we will agree to disagree when it comes to what someone should consider when deciding on GOTY. No problem with that.

The Walking Dead Episode 1 is a bummer. From plot holes to an important choice that is terribly handled, from bad camera to bad character movement. This will probably end up hurting my overall feeling for the series.

@laserbolts: Fair enough. We keeps it classy up in here (most of the time, that is).