GCP – Episode 96 - 07/20
Interview with Frictional Games - 07/14
GCP – Episode 95 - 07/13
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Top 5 PC Games Ruined by BugsPosted November 24, 2009, Comments (38) |
Sure, we as PC gaming enthusiasts love and cherish our devoted platform. But that doesn’t mean it’s a perfect world out there. And if we don’t recognize the missteps, how can we appreciate the milestones? Case in point: buggy games that failed to be astounding simply because of the stink-ridden crap-o-licious coding. Thankfully, the worst of them are rare, but the threat is ever-present in the PC gaming kingdom. You let your guard down, they tag you out of nowhere. And if there’s one avenue where the consoles authentically nail us from time to time, it has to be in the court of reliability. And so, with great displeasure and chagrin, we now provide you with the top 5 buggiest PC games that could have been fantastic, had it not been for the laziness, negligence, and overall lack of programming polish. Enjoy.
Too bad there’s not a spell for
“Stop Magnus from pointlessly braining me.”
No doubt about it, Arcanum managed to kick some serious ass. Unfortunately, not all asses were kicked, and the amount of rear-ends left un-booted were directly proportional to the amount of sanity-crushing existence-questioning bugs that crawled through the game’s innards like maggots in road kill. To put it short: it coulda been a contenda. Instead, upon initial release, players found themselves suddenly missing crucial story-driven items from their inventories, numerous broken quests, ridiculously frequent and save-corrupting crashes, inaccessible treasure areas, and even friendly party-based NPCs that would suddenly attack your character for no specific reason (maybe they didn’t approve of your tunic choice?). And while many of these issues have since been rectified via a gigantic independent 3rd party patch, that’s simply an unacceptable solution to numerous potential game-ending problems. In the end, Troika still smashed together a great title, but they probably should have used some better glue between the seams. Because without the 3rd party mending kit, it might as well read as Arcanum: Of Bitter Frustrations and Desk-a-Puncha.
You know something’s amiss when battling skeletons
is potentially less risky then combining hay stacks.
It’s hard to fault a game that lets you collect hay off a barn floor, combine it together, form a makeshift bed, and then carry around the finished result as a portable cot to restore mana and health on the fly… unless by forming said improvised sleeping mat the game freezes, sends an ear-shattering noise through your brain like a lightning bolt, and then boots you to the desktop, a single tear falling from your eye in the aftermath. Yep, Divine Divinity employed some brilliant genre-bending maneuvers, but God help you if you ever accidentally accomplished quest actions ahead of time. The amount of freedom Larian Studios granted the player was impressive, but perhaps ill-thought out. For example, if you decided to savagely butcher both Yoram and Otho (always a tempting option), the game was rendered unbeatable, since no hints for Goemoe remained. Woops! The good news is that since the game’s launch, Divine Divinity has enjoyed a metric-ton’s worth of patches addressing the most heinous of the worst issues. The bad news: they had to release a metric-ton’s worth of patches just to make the game semi-playable. Woops!
“Shouldn’t we play-test this thing Carl?”
“Nah- it’s fine.”
With a name that somehow exceeds 10 syllables, what could possibly go wrong? Well, everything, apparently. Pool of Radiance, an RPG in the tradition of the Baldur’s Gate series, was one of the most anticipated PC games of 2001. And then, on the flip of a dime, it quickly became one of the most despised games of all time. Not sure why though; so what if uninstalling the game nuked your Windows system files? And yeah, constant 1 fps stuttering and bog-downs may have crippled all semblances of playability, and sure: often times the game was outright unresponsive immediately after booting, but these are the little nuances that make niche titles so special. Don’t people get it? Psh. Wusses. But in reality, this game was so horribly crippled, so unbelievably tarnished, that within a paltry week’s time a stupidly inflated patch was shoved through the gates like a battering ram to quell the rioting masses. But that’s like trying to diffuse an atom bomb with a thread and a needle after it’s already exploded. Sorry SSI, maybe next time you oughta, you know, TEST THE DAMN TITLE before releasing it into the wild. Brilliant!
If only our protagonist’s weapon was a
can of Raid, he might actually stand a chance.
More astonishing than the needlessly incomprehensible acronym of a moniker is just how damned artificially difficult this game could be. Unfortunately for the player, in keeping with historical and scientific accuracy, only the bugs survived the Russian nuclear meltdown. And boooooy did they. Perhaps in keeping with the context of the plot’s continuity, the bugs actually mutated and increased after the first patch. That’s right: “fixing” the game outright added screw ups rather than vaporizing them. One of the more powerfully mind-boggling glitches involved an instance where the blast-door to the main trader (the only guy that could progress the story, naturally) would inexplicably close, blocking all access. Only way to fix it was to hope to hell it was cracked open enough to toss a grenade just right (this could take hours), relying on the resulting explosion to jar the iron slab back open. Yeah, comrade, that’s WAY more intuitive than making the door reply to the goddamned “use” button. And the code gremlins didn’t stop there. Audio errors, quests that completed themselves without any user interaction, inescapable holes and rooms, this game had everything… everything except a revolver in the game box to shoot yourself with. A.w.e.s.o.m.e.!
Nudge that lamp post and you’re a goner.
By an Alabama mile, nothing even comes close to this one. SkyNET, one of Bethesda’s earliest forays into poignant masochism, is perhaps the most bipolar PC game ever made. Or kind of made… the whole “finished” nuance is actually tough to prove here. See, on one hand, SkyNET perfectly adapted every awesome detail from the Terminator lore, putting you smack dab into the best part of the series: the future war. But on the other hand, it killed you for no reason. And often. So often in fact, that the quick-save key became more utilized than the forward key. Most of the adventure consisted of “Step. Save. Step. Save. Strafe. Save. St… SHIT! Reload.” Jumped on the wrong nook? Dead. Fell 2 inches off a single step? Dead. Lightly brushed your shoulder on a piece of overhanging debris? Dead. And sometimes, even by avoiding all obstacles altogether (not easy, since the game was freakin’ littered with ‘em), you’d get “Mission failed, soldier!” for absolutely nothing. Yep. Nothing. You’d just die. Just because. Best part? This was all before patches and internet were widely available. Under most circumstances, you were stuck with the stock gameplay. The real tragedy here is that underneath all that psychotically homicidal digital mess is a game that could have rocked even to this day. Just don’t touch any rocks, or else you’re dead. “Game tossed in the garbage disposal, soldier!”
Yes, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is buggy but that still doesn’t stop it from being one of the most amazing games of all time. Actually, with all the mods and fan made patches now I’ve had few issues on my second playthrough.
I’m actually still a big fan of STALKER as well, but godDAMN that game could glitch. If it was bug-free at launch it would have been my GotY, hands down.
Arcanum was almost totally bug-free last time I played through it with the fan patches, but yeah, on release it was pretty bad.
Let’s not forget Daggerfall, in which to this day you can fall through the floor into nothingness, or render the main quest un-completable if you don’t take precautions.
And then there’s Fallout, which still has bugs even *after* applying all the fan patches.
And Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, which in addition to having a noticeably unfinished endgame had many bugs on release, partly due to the pre-release Source engine used. Most gameplay bugs have been fixed with fan patches in this title as well.
Those are most of the great games I’ve played that are or were crippled by bugs. Interesting that many of them are RPGs.
What’s funny is, half of this list and yours were all made by Troika. A shame they had such design talent that stretched beyond their technical (or anyone’s technical?) means.
Oh, and I forgot Battlecruiser 3000AD, probably one of the most famous PC bugfests. Not many people would agree with me in thinking that it and its successors were great though, I’d wager.
I’m regretting not making it a list of 10. It was damned hard to pick just 5 games. Which is kinda sad, when you really think about it. And yeah- Daggerfall was a disaster, that would have been in the top 5 had Skynet not existed.
I don’t remember either Stalker or Arcanum being THAT broken, of course I’m pretty sure I instantly installed all the patches I could find for both.
Stalker: Clear Sky? Now THAT game was broken. I was a huge fan of the first, but absolutely couldn’t play the second one due to a plethora of game stopping bugs.
Stalker never crashed one time on my outdated crap hardware but when i finaly updated to something that could run the game properly it crashed every five minutes or so… pissed me off so bad…
Far cry was pretty much ruined thanks to bugs in the final 1.4 patch that allowed the ai to see for miles and shoot through walls….
Vampire: The Masquerades not being on this list makes it seriously questionable. That game was nigh-unplayable when it was released, and yet after being patched it turns out it was an amazing game, with one of the greatest stories and some brilliant gameplay options. Go get yourself a new list, and put this game on it.
Agreed. Vampire: The Masquerades was pretty heinous. But I guess I felt bad for already nailing Troika to the wall with Arcanum. If this was a top 10, Vampire would have been #7, right below Daggerfall.
Heh, yeah, you could make a case for every one of Troika’s games being on this list.
Arcanum was horrible when it was first released. The GOTY edition fixed the big stuff, and the fan patch made it even more amazing. Recently a widescreen patch came out for it allowing pretty much any resolution you want(even those weird netbook ones).
I lost my Stalker saves, so I never beat it. It just started playing through it again.
Skynet sounds liek a game that would make me punch my monitor.
I just got DivDiv per your recommendation Chris. I’ll patch it up and give it a play through over Thanksgiving.
Haha- “DivDiv.” Best abbreviation ever. But post-patches, it really is amazing. However, be warned: even WITH the patches Keenan still encountered the ear-piercing sound bug. Arggggg.
I’ll try to avoid making beds of hay… I hate bugs that hurt my ears.
KotOR 2 is one as well, not sure if it is top 5. The bugs/rushed feel of the game somewhat ruined the ending, but I still felt the game was great.
I think I got kotor2 about 2 weeks after release, and it was perfectly playable. I think I rememebr one or two monor bugs, but it did feel rushed. Still, it was no where near as bad as some of the other games listed.
Did not mean to send that first one anonymously. I experienced a pretty major bug, I could not play it with sound on my first playthrough, and I all the work-arounds I attempted failed. And yet, I still loved the game (but it was soooooooooooooooooo much better with that classic Star Wars sound than with no sound at all)
Which was probably not a bug, but a compatibility error on my end, but I digress.
Hmm. I don’t remember KotOR 2 being reported as that buggy; but than again, I never played it, just going off the news when it was released.
well i’ve never even heard of any of hese anyways
You’ve never heard of STALKER or Divine Divinity? Dang dude.
NOw that you mention it, i’ve heard of stalker chernobly or what ever, but it didn’t ring a bell cause i never played it
Funny, Through my 1.5 play-throughs of stalker, I had an almost bug free experience.
Also, now I want to try SKYnet.
What about hellgate london ? o.o or demigod ?
Yeah but Hellgate London was more of just a general fucking catastrophe game-wise. The bugs were there, no doubt, but really- they weren’t nearly as bad that of STALKER or Pool of Radiance. But yes, I hated me some Hellgate. Grrr.
Demigod isn’t buggy in the same sense that would make it … “buggy”. It’s buggy in that the multiplayer was freaking horrible.
That’d be the extent of what Chris would say, had he chosen Demigod.
Don’t forget Dungeon Lords. If I remember right it was fairly highly anticipated, then it released pretty much less than half finished.
What is the deal with RPGs having so many bugs? I guess it is because they have so much content and so many side quests that are not integral to the plot.
Yeah, I’ve heard horror stories about Dungeon Lords. Didn’t the CE fix a lot of the major issues?
Well, I was so damn angry when the first patch of stalker arrived… After playing about 40% of the game. So I replayed it -.- but the game’s awesome anyway.
I miss ArmA2 on the list
this game could be soooo awesome if there wouldnt be more glitches than monsters in serious sam =)
ARMA II? Hmmmm. I really didn’t think that game was plagued by anything except a soul-crushing control scheme and hilariously terrible stitched together voice-acting.
Operation Flashpoint still remains my most favorite buggy game ever.
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.