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'Fooled Me Once": Past Games That Were Broken & The *RED FLAGS* We Were Too Blind To See.

What were some games that where broken either at launch or at its entire release. We're there any red flags that we were to blind to see at the time?
 

Husky

THE Prey 2 fanatic
Assassin's Creed Unity is among the more obvious picks. I think it's pretty noteworthy for how wonderfully they fixed that game up though, today it's one of my favorite entries in the series, and it's probably the most polished since the Ezio trilogy.

Remember Batman: Arkham Knight? Or um, its PC release, forgot the console bros had an alright launch. It's a-okay now, though I played it on a 970, which was the one card it didn't seem to have major issues with at launch. Was actually able to max it out pretty easily, and the Gameworks effects at max had an FPS impact of literally zero, shockingly.
Arkham Origins retained a couple game-breaking bugs, didn't it? Ones that most players wouldn't ever encounter though. I do remember my cape regularly bugging out while gliding, I can live with that.

Fallout: New Vegas had a really buggy launch, looks like one of the buggiest releases I've ever seen, right from the opening shot it goes nuts. Today we remember it as one of the best immersive RPGs ever made. I kinda figure Cyberpunk 2077's gonna have a similar experience, and in time we'll move past its messy opening. If it's never fixed to meet AAA standards, then I think like most eurojank, its place in gaming will be defined by a passionate fanbase, rather than by the majority that it doesn't appeal to.

I bet Crowbcat has some nice reminders of the messy launches we forgot. But for the most part, I think we move past the launch disasters pretty easily, so long as the game gets fixed.

I don't really know what red flags to look out for, other than ambitious projects obviously having more holes to plug. Sometimes I get a gut feeling from a gameplay trailer, but I dunno what exactly to pin that on.

edit: Overkill's The Walking Dead! Hah. That game never looked like it had a chance, it just never looked satisfying. Little to no zombie gore, and I really don't think traps make for great zombie gameplay in those sorts of campaigns.

No Man's Sky... wasn't even broken, it was an entirely different game from what we were promised :lollipop_angry_face:
Some saw through the outlandish promises. Alas. Not I.
 
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EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Games today have all kinds of issues patches keep them alive, Socom, Fallout and HALO MCC are all good examples of being broken than repaired.
 

eot

Banned
Not sure if anyone knows the game, but X3:Reunion was broken as fuck at launch.
I was pretty pissed off about it, because it was during a time when I still had to beg my parents to buy games, and I ended up with an unplayable mess. Will never buy from that company again.
 

thuGG_pl

Member
I certainly remember Morrowind crashing regularly back in the day. Looking at it today it was really ridiculous, but I loved the game still. First game the opening just left me in awe.
 
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HDM

Member
My most recent "red flag" was Anthem. I didn't know much about the game before the launch, just saw the E3 demo, I thought it looked cool.
And then i've tried the beta WE. I played this shit all week-end. Day fucking one bro.

And then... There was this tweet from Mike Gamble, one (the ?) of the director of the game about the PS4 version of the game.

"We did work on that too. Smoothed to 30 instead of letting it bounce around"

201219033931914299.png


YOU WAT ?

There was articles about this on eurogamer : https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-anthem-demo-performance-analysis
"but if your choice is between 20-30fps at 1800p, or 35-50fps to 1080p, it's a no-brainer - the game just works better at a higher frame-rate"

So instead of trying to go to 60 fps, the motherf*ckers cut the legs of the game and "voilà !". I said to myself, if they do the same for the rest, it's not gonna be alright, let's wait.

You all know the rest of the story, and i've saved 70 Euros because of this tweet.
 

Ps5ProFoSho

Member
Starhawk- loved warhawk hated starhawk but it might just have been me.

Maddenen ps3-ps4 cross gen was the worst but there's been plenty of bad maddens

Homefront: revolution was really disappointing because I think the first one was really good

Narcos: Rise of the cartels. A game that could have been really awesome but instead turned out being how you feel when they make a terrible movie out of a great game but the other way around
 
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Kuranghi

Member
Assassin's Creed Unity is among the more obvious picks. I think it's pretty noteworthy for how wonderfully they fixed that game up though, today it's one of my favorite entries in the series, and it's probably the most polished since the Ezio trilogy.

Remember Batman: Arkham Knight? Or um, its PC release, forgot the console bros had an alright launch. It's a-okay now, though I played it on a 970, which was the one card it didn't seem to have major issues with at launch. Was actually able to max it out pretty easily, and the Gameworks effects at max had an FPS impact of literally zero, shockingly.

Arkham Origins
retained a couple game-breaking bugs, didn't it? Ones that most players wouldn't ever encounter though. I do remember my cape regularly bugging out while gliding, I can live with that.

Fallout: New Vegas had a really buggy launch, looks like one of the buggiest releases I've ever seen, right from the opening shot it goes nuts. Today we remember it as one of the best immersive RPGs ever made. I kinda figure Cyberpunk 2077's gonna have a similar experience, and in time we'll move past its messy opening. If it's never fixed to meet AAA standards, then I think like most eurojank, its place in gaming will be defined by a passionate fanbase, rather than by the majority that it doesn't appeal to.

I bet Crowbcat has some nice reminders of the messy launches we forgot. But for the most part, I think we move past the launch disasters pretty easily, so long as the game gets fixed.

I don't really know what red flags to look out for, other than ambitious projects obviously having more holes to plug. Sometimes I get a gut feeling from a gameplay trailer, but I dunno what exactly to pin that on.

edit: Overkill's The Walking Dead! Hah. That game never looked like it had a chance, it just never looked satisfying. Little to no zombie gore, and I really don't think traps make for great zombie gameplay in those sorts of campaigns.

No Man's Sky... wasn't even broken, it was an entirely different game from what we were promised :lollipop_angry_face:
Some saw through the outlandish promises. Alas. Not I.

I take it this is at 1080p + 60hz on the 970? The problem is that the game requires a brute force of GPU power to not incur frame drops due to whatever UE3 is doing in the background in this game when you are gliding or driving the batmobile. So even though it seems like you could do a higher res on the 970, it will drop frames regardless of GPU usage.

I have seen DF Richards video on trying to run it 4K60 locked on a 2080 ti and even thats not enough to stop all frame drops. He estimates you need about double the GPU power it seems like you do to lock it down to 60. I have just started another run and locked it to 30 at 4K because its not possible to run at native 4K on a GTX 1080 and keep anywhere near 60, even when on foot even though GPU usage is not maxed out, its the same as the 2080ti when driving the batmobile.

Even at 4K30, when I'm using about 60% of my GPU or less at all times it still has stutters caused by something the engine is doing. So I do see why people would say its broken in 2020, when you see you have loads of GPU usage left over and try to run it at 1440p+ and maintain 60fps. I don't think thats necessarily Rocksteady/the PC port people's fault though, its just UE3 open world games where you can travel fast past tons of extremely detail assets.

I'd pay £60 quid for a UE4 port of the game that fixes these problems, I love it so much. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter devs released their game in UE4 and it fixed all loading camera panning stutters I had on the exact same PC setup so I think it would help AK a lot.
 

bender

What time is it?
I gave my buddy an old iPad for his kids and he bought me a copy of Just Cause 3 (PS4) because he knew how much I loved Just Cause 2. The performance of that game was atrocious (performance aside, it was terrible too). I'm having a bad go of gifted games I guess.

I did purchase Deadly Premonition 2 but haven't played it yet but by all accounts, it's a mess in terms of performance. Unity!
 

Husky

THE Prey 2 fanatic
I take it this is at 1080p + 60hz on the 970? The problem is that the game requires a brute force of GPU power to not incur frame drops due to whatever UE3 is doing in the background in this game when you are gliding or driving the batmobile. So even though it seems like you could do a higher res on the 970, it will drop frames regardless of GPU usage.

I have seen DF Richards video on trying to run it 4K60 locked on a 2080 ti and even thats not enough to stop all frame drops. He estimates you need about double the GPU power it seems like you do to lock it down to 60. I have just started another run and locked it to 30 at 4K because its not possible to run at native 4K on a GTX 1080 and keep anywhere near 60, even when on foot even though GPU usage is not maxed out, its the same as the 2080ti when driving the batmobile.

Even at 4K30, when I'm using about 60% of my GPU or less at all times it still has stutters caused by something the engine is doing. So I do see why people would say its broken in 2020, when you see you have loads of GPU usage left over and try to run it at 1440p+ and maintain 60fps. I don't think thats necessarily Rocksteady/the PC port people's fault though, its just UE3 open world games where you can travel fast past tons of extremely detail assets.

I'd pay £60 quid for a UE4 port of the game that fixes these problems, I love it so much. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter devs released their game in UE4 and it fixed all loading camera panning stutters I had on the exact same PC setup so I think it would help AK a lot.
4K I would not expect to do, heh. Haven't got a 4K monitor though. And actually, I think I did have AA down one notch (plus bullshit like chromatic aberration and motion blur disabled).
I'm fairly certain that game had some peculiar performance advantage on the 970 at launch though. I don't know how much that would've been retained post-patch, but it may be why the game was so buttery smooth for me (well, with AA down one).
 
Final Fantasy XIV. I played early access alpha and just knew the game they actually released couldn't possibly resemble the broken mess they gave us for alpha.

I was wrong.
 

AJUMP23

Member
In twilight princess there was a glitch that rendered the game unplayable. My little brother got it. It was in the sky temple I believe. In order to Bolger it fixed you had to send your system into Nintendo. My little bro never got to beat that game.

in MGSV there was one mission that if you did it with Quiet the story would not advance. My older brother can’t get internet where he lives so he never got that patch. And I think that is where his game ended for him.
 

clem84

Gold Member
Plenty of good examples have been mentioned already. Halo MCC really stood out for me because it took a long time for them to finally get around to fixing it.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
Final Fantasy XV is probably the most recent example of a game, for me anyway, where I felt duped and frustrated with Square Enix. I love Final Fantasy, and I love Final Fantasy XV, but at launch it was a complete dumpster fire and seriously made me question both the franchise and Square Enix, which I at the time held very dear.

Final Fantasy XV launched incomplete, with missing gameplay features, missing cut scenes and story beats, characters and scenarios. The E3 trailer they dropped showing the siege of Insomnia, with Leviathan going insane, wrecking the city, was completely omitted from the final game. As a result the story was a incoherent mess, which is ironic considering a franchise who used to be revered for its magical stories.

It baffles me to this day that Square Enix could do this to their number one franchise and it was this game that broke the camels back regarding my decision to not purchase games day 1.

Fortunately SE patched the game, inserting its missing features and story sequences, resulting in a proper re-release with the Royal Edition, but it was to late. Despite the game turning out really good, lots of day 1 buyers were left in the dust with a horrible first impression, which pretty much destroyed the games reputation.

Square Enix seems to have learned from this debacle and FF 16 looks very good at the moment, with a seemingly smooth development going forward, but I'm not gonna be there day 1 as I've been with the others. I'm waiting patiently until I'm confident that the game is not broken or incomplete.
 

drotahorror

Member
My most recent "red flag" was Anthem. I didn't know much about the game before the launch, just saw the E3 demo, I thought it looked cool.
And then i've tried the beta WE. I played this shit all week-end. Day fucking one bro.

And then... There was this tweet from Mike Gamble, one (the ?) of the director of the game about the PS4 version of the game.

"We did work on that too. Smoothed to 30 instead of letting it bounce around"

201219033931914299.png


YOU WAT ?

There was articles about this on eurogamer : https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-anthem-demo-performance-analysis
"but if your choice is between 20-30fps at 1800p, or 35-50fps to 1080p, it's a no-brainer - the game just works better at a higher frame-rate"

So instead of trying to go to 60 fps, the motherf*ckers cut the legs of the game and "voilà !". I said to myself, if they do the same for the rest, it's not gonna be alright, let's wait.

You all know the rest of the story, and i've saved 70 Euros because of this tweet.

Frames bouncing around at 35-50 sucks dick.
 

drotahorror

Member
Wolcen was pretty broken at launch. Arpg ala Diablo , where your characters got deleted , stash disappeared regularly, unable to even play the game if you bought a certain upgrade during the end game that took about a week to fix. I had over 50 hours clocked in steam and got a refund. That's how busted it was.
 

AmuroChan

Member
ME: Andromeda - There were plenty of red flags leading up to the launch, from poor character animations to just simple questions surrounding what the gameplay loop is like.

Anthem - They just kept emphasizing how cool it is to fly around like Iron Man, which to be fair, is very cool. The rest of the game though, not so much.

Fallout 4 - Fallout 3 was incredible, but when it came to Fallout 4, it was as if time stopped for Bethesda and they made Fallout 4 with tools from 2008. The game was not graphically impressive at all, it was full of jank, and it didn't really bring anything new to the table.
 
Final Fantasy XIV 1.0. Horrendous inventory/interface lag... it was so bad that people created macros to change gear. That lag persisted through combat. Lots of mechanics not working properly, so helping your low level friend through a dungeon was actually counter productive for both of you. Unfinished classes with copy pasted move sets/animations. Unfinished/copy pasted maps.

There was a lot more, but this is the most egregious shit I remember. This game was relaunched for a reason.

I don't really remember any red flags, though.
 

anothertech

Member
MCC the thread.

And I just wanted to play the campaigns from beginning to end.

From broken saves to missing respawn points holy shit that was a clusterfuck. I barely got through the first and half of the second before calling it quits.

And I didn't even bother with the shit storm that was multiplayer.

Now I just read the bug reports on the official forums for the FIXED version, tip my head back and laugh (as a slow tear falls to the floor...)
 
Not sure if anyone knows the game, but X3:Reunion was broken as fuck at launch.
I was pretty pissed off about it, because it was during a time when I still had to beg my parents to buy games, and I ended up with an unplayable mess. Will never buy from that company again.
I made a thread about this series a week or two ago and didn't receive one response.

Seems like it's a series nobody gives a shit about yet they've made almost around a dozen games.
 
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SpartanN92

Banned
In August 2014 I got to play Master Chief Collection at a 343 community event and that game was CLEARLY broken. The build would crash in between every match and they’d have to hard reset every Xbox unit to play it again. They hand waived it off when I asked about it and said it was just a Dev Kit bug on an old build of the game.

Uh huh...
 

Agent X

Member
crPSjlw.jpg



The NTSC version of Impossible Mission for the Atari 7800 truly lives up to its name. Due to an unfortunate bug, it is not possible to complete the game.

The PAL version does not have this bug.

Thanks to ROM hackers in the modern era, you can now also obtain a "fixed" NTSC version of the game that can be played to completion.
 

Outlier

Member
From this point on I will no longer trust any company that shows promo CGI-engine cinematics, shortly before release. Also when reviewers are heavily restricted from showing anything non-spoiler or refused specific versions of games.

These are ALL red flags.
 

Camreezie

Member
Bioware , Bethesda and 2K games. Halo master chief collection was a massive piece of shit for a long time too. Two worlds was the most broken game I've ever seen
 
Remember when there were no patches to games...PS2 and before. Your game had to be perfect from the get go. Its crazy how things changed where developers nowadays knowingly are making a game that they will build upon over time. Literally, back in the day if anything was wrong with your game, thast it..it will be forever condemned and forgotten. They would never allow themselves to release something that isnt 99.9% finished and tested.
 
The last time i was fooled by a game on launch was Gears 3. It hasn't happened since 🤷‍♂️

If people couldn't see that Cyberpunk was going to be broken on launch, and bought it anyway, then you'll not only never learn, you'll never have the capacity to learn.
 
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