How About Get It Right the First Time?

 I'm almost certain I've written things on this topic before but very recently I had a very bad experience with some game bugs so I'm going to talk about it again.  

So if you've been watching the stream you know I've been playing a game called Days Gone and while I have a lot of bile to spill about that game one of the things that really sticks out about it is the number of bugs, glitches and hiccups the game has.

I've had textures not loading in, glitching through geometry, audio bugging out, frame rate stutters when its trying to load the world, escort characters just forgetting what they are doing along with a few other things.  The worst however came during a story critical mission where I had to clear a camp of dudes and then rescue a guy behind a locked door.  What was SUPPOSED to happen is that you kill the dudes and then you use your boot knife to jimmy open the door and save the guy.  What was happening to me was I'd kill the dudes, go to the door and then the game would pop up a message saying "Clear the area of enemies to rescue the hostage".  What I think was happening was that the guy in the room who had the guy at gunpoint that you're supposed to kill last after entering was being recognized as an enemy in the previous area and because he was alive it wasn't allowing me to open the door.  The problem with this, is that if I didn't clear this mission, the story WOULD NOT PROGRESS, I was essentially locked out of finishing the game.

The fix came in the form of a 28 gigabyte patch that I had been putting off downloading because space on my PS4 was running rather low.  In a desperate attempt to not have my time wasted by this shitty game I downloaded the patch, reset the mission and THEN thankfully it worked and while I'm happy about that, I can't help be mad about why the fuck it just didn't work in the first place.

This is a pretty big problem with games nowadays where companies will hype a game up, get it out as soon as they can and then fix shit later which is probably one of the shittiest practices I can think of along side gouging money out of idiots with loot boxes.  When we got the ability to download patches and fixes for our games it was a GOOD thing initially because it allowed developers to fix something unforeseen or missed during development but now its being used as a crutch by shitty companies so they can get your money out of you as soon as possible and then MAYBE fix any easily missed issues down the line.

Now when I've moaned about this shit in the past there's always some half-brained bellend who likes to open his stupid halitosis mouth at me with the comment "But game development is really hard! there's always going to be bugs and glitches in software this complex". and you know what? to some degree they are correct.

What I'm not saying is that I expect every game to be perfect on release, they are complex beasts worked on by many people and a few bugs here and there are probably going to slip through the cracks when being play tested.  This is especially true for small indie teams putting out games as passion projects where they just don't have the time or budget for long, drawn out play tests and they just want to put their labor of love out into the world.  But I'm not talking about those guys, I'm talking about big developers like the gigantic sacks of shit who developed days gone or the gaggle of sad fucks that work at Bethesda putting out AAA, full price games that are so badly broken that they suck to play and in some cases can't even be finished.

Even in those games, especially big open world ones I'm willing to let some shit slide.  Things that don't happen often like path finding going wrong or the occasional fall through the floor I can just deal with but HOW THE FUCK did main-plot, progression critical mission bugging out get missed in the initial launch batch?  A full price AAA game, unbeatable at launch, embarrassing.

Like I said, games are complex and bugs are inevitable but if you're going to charge me $60-80 to play a new game on the latest hardware then you better make sure it at the very least fucking works from start to finish.  But if you're attitude is anything like the likes of Bethesda or SIE Bend Studio then I sincerely hope that you studio goes under and every sandwich you have from this day forward is a bit dry and always has slightly stale bread.

Giving Fallout 4 a Chance

I'm not a fan of modern Fallout, I'm just going to get that out there right now.  They aren't awful games by any stretch and I can definitely see the appeal but I'm one of these people who really enjoyed Fallout 1 and 2 so much that playing these modern ones in first person feels wrong to me.  I could explain in detail everything I hate about the new style but that would be an entire post on its own so I'll save that for later.

But Fallout 4 has been released to a great amount of praise and people seem to be having a good time with it.  Of course, my initial reaction was to roll my eyes and just brand it as another shit dumbing down of the Fallout series but after some thought I decided maybe I should give this game a chance.

OK, so maybe I've already seen a pretty excessive amount of bullshit regarding this game.  I've seen multiple gifs, pictures, videos and other stuff showcasing all sorts of bugs, glitches and other bullshit.  People let this slide because "the game is huge" or because "it's a Bethesda game" but this is a bunch of shit because if we had problems like this in any other title people would be OUTRAGED.  Other things that piss me off include dialogue trees that only contain 4 options (and no I don't give a fuck if you get special ones based on skills from time to time) and luck that affects "the recharge rate of critical hits" just to name a few.

But despite that I'm going to give in an honest go.  BUT FIRST I'm going to go back and I'm going to replay 1,2, Tactics, 3 and New Vegas before touching this game.  I'm going to do this for 2 reasons; first because it's been a long time since I played any of the classic ones and I want to make sure my knowledge of the Fallout universe is up to par when I start nitpicking story points and the second is the judge the series from a game play standpoint so I can say with complete confidence that it's been significantly dumbed down since the first game.  Oh also a price drop, because fuck paying full price for anything.

So I'm gonna kick back, jump into the post apocalyptic world of Fallout and make sure that I'm not just slagging off the latest entry because of my rose tinted nostalgia-goggles.  If my suspicions are correct I should be having a blast for at least 2 games worth of my time.  Here's to hoping that all my FO4 bitching is wrong and it ends up being amazing but I highly doubt it

Stop Releasing Broken Games!

This is something that has pissed me off to no end and has become more and more apparent with this generation and is probably only going to get worse.  My problem, if you can't tell from the title of this post is that there are too many games released this generation that are just full of fucking technical bugs on launch.

Here, take a look at this video

I'd imagine it's not like this now but this is how the damn thing was shipped, and it's not just Skyrim, you could full a fucking heavy goods vehicle with copies of all the games with big glaring technical bugs.

The thought processes of these companies must be "oh it's OK, we can just patch it out later", well it's NOT fucking OK you gigantic bags of arse, games should NOT ship like this.  What's sad is that years and years ago, this was never a problem.  Hell, even games as recent as the PS2 didn't have problems like this, so why has it suddenly become a thing this generation!?

What's sad is that with a new generation of consoles on its way, I only see the problem getting worse, not better.  Developers will keep shitting out untested, buggy games and we'll have to keep waiting for fucking patches. 

I understand that nobody is perfect, and the guys putting all the code together and testing their software might miss something, but right now it's just stupid how glaringly bad some games are made.  I'm using Skyrim in this case, but the worst offender off the top of my head (not counting Silent Hill collection since it's remake) is The Last Remnant on 360.   Good LORD, that frame rate was so bad in that game is was basically unplayable, I had to buy the PC version, and I'm glad I did because that game is awesome.

So, just because you can patch a game later, doesn't give you an excuse to be lazy and devs need to make sure their shit is tight as possible before they go charging me £40 and up for that crap.