Video Game News and Miscellany

Bowielee

Bowielee

Zero Esc said:
Now you get my point of view on Evolve skins.
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I never cared about the skins, I cared about the hunters and monsters.

There's also a world of difference between a game that charges full retail price and has a full story mode, a ton of characters, challenge modes, and a good online component, and a game that is essentially a 3 mode free to play game that charges full retail price.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

GasBandit said:
Half Life 2 is no longer the highest rated PC game of all time.

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And yet again, gamers prove that we're willing to accept absolutely everything and 5GB day-one patches, download servers that are down the first 2 days, and whatnot, are perfectly acceptable for "best game of all time".

I'm sure the game's good and all, but if we want that sort of thing to stay somewhat under control we should give some sort of signal. The "'I have good internet I don't care lol game is great 10/10" crowd just pushes any other consideration out, though.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

Bubble181 said:
And yet again, gamers prove that we're willing to accept absolutely everything and 5GB day-one patches, download servers that are down the first 2 days, and whatnot, are perfectly acceptable for "best game of all time".

I'm sure the game's good and all, but if we want that sort of thing to stay somewhat under control we should give some sort of signal. The "'I have good internet I don't care lol game is great 10/10" crowd just pushes any other consideration out, though.
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We've been accepting all of those things in MMOs for over a decade, that's nothing new.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

I'd also like to point out that short term launch problems shouldn't effect the historical image of a game... yes, it's annoying that you need to deal with Day 1 updates and download servers, but these do not diminish the quality of the product you are getting, they are simply obstacles between you and your game.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Yes, and I don't mind the score creeping up. A day one score of 98 despite half the fanbase not being able to play is ridiculous (all non-Steam buyers couldn't access the game until today or yesterday somewhere).

It's just...Bleg. Any new inconvenience or obnoxious thing introduced is a "problem" for a while, then just gets accepted and treated as not an issue, and the experience deteriorates further. Spore got horribly crushed for launch day issues. Diablo 3 or SimCity got seriously bad press over it and suffered for a while, before mostly recovering. GTA V, it isn't even seen as an issue anymore and anyone mentioning it "oh, it's just a bit of trouble on the first day". It's a rinse-and-repeat of Day one patch, Day one DLC, on-disc DLC, DRM, limited installs, always-online, licensing instead of buying... All issues that are now not considered worth mentioning anymore, but which have harmed the hobby and continue to plague gaming because developers and producers get the message 'nobody really cares'.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

SimCity is in general a horrible game that should never have been released, but that's not the point. I was talking about the specific problems of the first few days.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
The first couple weeks it came out, it was a flip of the coin whether I'd be able to play WOW on any given day or not.
 
Null

Null

A rocky launch to an incredible game is a momentary issue. A rocky launch to a shitty game is just another factor in the shitquation. So in neither case is it a major factor in the overall quality of the game. Yes, it would be great if every game worked exactly right every time out of the box. But that's never been the case, even when the hardware and software were a lot simpler.
 
Dei

Dei

Null said:
A rocky launch to an incredible game is a momentary issue. A rocky launch to a shitty game is just another factor in the shitquation. So in neither case is it a major factor in the overall quality of the game. Yes, it would be great if every game worked exactly right every time out of the box. But that's never been the case, even when the hardware and software were a lot simpler.
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Well, when you couldn't count on consoles to be hooked up to the internet 24/7, I'd say games were forced to work right every time right out of the box, or else you were screwed.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Dei said:
Well, when you couldn't count on consoles to be hooked up to the internet 24/7, I'd say games were forced to work right every time right out of the box, or else you were screwed.
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Blow in it! If that doesn't work, get some Q-tips and rubbing alcohol.
 
Null

Null

GasBandit said:
Blow in it! If that doesn't work, get some Q-tips and rubbing alcohol.
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"Oh, the notch holding the cartridge down in the NES broke? Just shove a folded newspaper in the slot to hold it down." Hell, I remember having to wedge something under certain cartridges on my C64 to make sure they stayed at the right angle while playing.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Dei said:
My friend's NES only worked if he had a game genie attached to the cartridge.
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Actually, having gone through 3 NES consoles and two game genies, I figured out that the game genie actually did physically damage the NES console and stopped using it.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

Mortal Kombat X is still recovering from a douche fueled review spree by people upset that they had to wait 7 hours later than they wanted to play the game. That and a couple of people who, and I mean this literally, are trying to play the game on a laptop and wonder why SOME of the stages have slowdown.

I can barely play WoW or Heroes of the Storm on my laptop, much less a current gen game like MKX.

There are a few computer configurations that there are apparently problems with, but it doesn't seem to be any more than the average launch. Every launch title has issues with some computers, particularly old ass ones that are running 1.5 GHZ processors.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

Frank said:
Hardly fair though, if Half-Life 2 was released in today's user review climate, it wouldn't do any better.
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I know, right. People are obviously forgetting what a clusterfuck that game's launch was. It was literally the first product ever on Steam, and there were so many problems getting it to work that those of us who got the game prior to launch were reimbursed with the entire Steam catalog to date (at the time it was just the HL based games on the source engine).
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

GTA V is not an MMO

That said, fine, everyone wants to again focus on one thing I said and not talk about the actual issue I brought up - we all just accept a bunch of crap now that would've raised a furor 10 years ago. Not only in games, either, but whatever.
 
Dei

Dei

I believe WoW was used because it came out 10 years ago, was a shit show at launch, and still went on to blow every other MMO out of the water, even to this day (at least numbers wise). So saying we wouldn't have stood for this crap 10 years ago probably isn't going back far enough. ;)
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

Bubble181 said:
GTA V is not an MMO

That said, fine, everyone wants to again focus on one thing I said and not talk about the actual issue I brought up - we all just accept a bunch of crap now that would've raised a furor 10 years ago. Not only in games, either, but whatever.
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I use MMO's as an example because it's still the same problem. Every time one releases or gets an expansion, it's generally a massive patch with an absurd amount of downtime/lag/issues in general. While it might not be a direct correlation, most AAA releases release in the same way. Massive patches and bug fixes withing days of release.

Personally, I'd rather see a game get fixed immediately after launch as opposed to massive bugs and issues being ignored completely (like Sonic Boom and Arkham Origins). Granted, it would be better to have a game ship bug-free, but with what a massive undertaking some of these ports (and games in general now) are I don't know that it's possible. 10 years ago a broken game would likely just remain broken, save for PC releases, as we were still on XBox and PS2 at the time, so that's not really a valid point compared to modern gaming.
 
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