I'm not one of those "hurr durr i'm a GAMER GYRRRL so BACK OFF." because thats just annoying. I don't identify myself as a "girl gamer" just "a gamer." To give you an idea, I played Uncharted 2 for around 7 hours straight. I'm a trophy hunter, & I have really particular tastes in games. I *HATE* with a passion (as was addressed in my first blog entry) motion controlled games. No, development community, contrary to popular belief I do not want to get off my ass and play a game. I would much rather sit on the couch and eat potato chips while smashing buttons and killin' zombies. ;] I also do NOT enjoy rock band-style games. I don't have the coordination to play the drums, I don't really enjoy being a guitar hero, so I'll usually just sing (POORLY, and I usually apologize in advance if i'm sober) Speaking of being sober in conjunction with Rock Band, I generally need one or two or seventeen drinks to even have it suggested to me. Matthew will say "LETS PLAY ROCK BAND" if we are all bored, and generally I'll just say no thank you.. but, if you put some drinks into my system, I will jam all night.
Its not a game I would just pick up and play -- its really not that fun. But this isn't a blog about what I like in a game.. its a blog about what really pisses me off -- GLITCHES.
read on after the break :] disclaimer: THAR BE FOUL LANGUAGE AHEAD.
yeah. thats my face when my game glitches. Seriously. followed by me going "okay, well i'm done with that game." It happens constantly. Why? I guess developers are just too lazy to have Quality Assurance and just assume that the gaming community has no problem being their own personal QA. Despite the face that WE shell out the $60.00-ish bucks to pick up the hot new release of the "SUPER RAD AWESOME GAME" somehow, we are expected to play the role of the QA, and it PISSES ME OFF.
Daniel picked up Fable 3 on Tuesday -- literally the day it was released. Daniel & Matthew have been playing now for roughly 2 days (well, technically 3 since it is after midnight lol) and during the course of Matthew playing the game tonight, Jasper -- the butler who gives you advice & tells you whats happening in your house and shit -- suddenly stopped talking. Well, I got online to see what the deal was and if there was a fix for it, maybe it was just our game that stopped working.. Needless to say, I found countless forum posts, yahooanswers, gamespot, you name it, posts saying "Jasper stopped talking WTF" or something to that effect.. followed with posts from mods (at the Lionhead forums anyway) with mods saying "report the problem to Lionhead so they can come out with a patch" -- I felt relieved that it wasn't just us that experienced the problem, followed by annoyance, which rapidly turned into anger. Matthew and I had a 15 minute conversation about how we are suddenly expected to be Quality Assurance for these games and ow "day one software patches" are seriously pissing us off.
Which now leads me to this blog. I haven't had a rant blog in quite a while. I don't particularly like ranting on the internet, it just seems pointless, but I know there has to be someone out there that is just as frustrated as I am. Why am I putting money out for a game that is fucked up!? Some people reported that they weren't even able to progress in the story because Jasper glitched too early and they were unable to interact with him.. The suggestion from the mod? "Restart your game, because you aren't that far anyway." WHAT. That isn't the answer I was looking for, try again. It isn't fair for the player to have to restart our game, just because quality assurance at Lionhead apparently sucks. How long was the game in development? How many times did (more than one person) play through the game? How is it possible that nobody noticed the glitch and now almost everyone is experiencing the glitch?
I'm not here to do your QA work for you. Especially when I'M the one that is BUYING the game. "OH but MINDY, developers don't know about these things until after the release" "Mindy, why don't you just wait a few months until they have all the bugs worked out?" This is bullshit. They must know about the bugs before the game is released. they are happening to almost everyone. To answer the second common excuse -- if a game is so hyped, why wouldn't i want it on release day? If Resident Evil 6 was coming out tomorrow, guess who would be at Game Stop tomorrow to buy it? ME. I love the Resident Evil series. If I enjoy a game series, why shouldn't I be able to safely purchase the game and make at LEAST one play through without any game breaking glitches (That's right fallout 3, i'm looking at you.) Heres an idea, developers, instead of releasing a half-assed game, why don't YOU wait the extra two months and put the game through beta testing. seriously.
I understand that every game has glitches, but some of them are inexcusable. Let me take a personal example. Upon the release of Fable 2 Daniel went out and purchased not only the game, but a fucking xbox 360. Thats right. he wanted to play Fable 2 because he loved the original Fable (and yes, it was a fun game) enough to BUY A 360. Did he complete one play through of the game? No. Why? The game fucking glitched. Apparently some of his wives divorced him, or ran away, and when he would enter the town they lived in, he would have to endure the same cutscenes over and over again & not be able to continue the storyline within said town. It wouldn't have been a big deal, except Daniel is always evil & had like, a wife in every town that he seriously neglected. (lol) I had a game going at that time, but after his game glitched, I stopped playing. I don't want to worry about my game glitching & having wasted 30+ hours of play time.. Also, I think I had a husband in every town, and I neglected them as well.. well.. them and my children.. YES i played through as an evil character, no i'm not embarrassed about it. Its hilarious & fun.
My step dad LOVES Fallout 3. Unfortunately, when he enters Megaton his entire game freezes and the 360 needs to be restarted. We have the same game on the ps3, and it is just as glitchy. I don't fault the console, i fault the developers. Matthew said: "Mindy, Bethesda is a good development company -- they create really good story lines" Their story lines are great; however, if i can't even get through the game one fucking time, what good is it to me? They could have the most enriching, well developed story line ever imaginable & I would never know because we can't enter areas without crashing & are now completely unable to finish said enriching, well developed story.
MW2? Don't make me snicker. Infinity Ward, did you even attempt the online play of the game before releasing it? LOL GUYS -- i figured out about 30 million cheats to let me get rocket launchers and bullshit. it takes the fun out of the game when you can cheat to win. You want to put in easter eggs? fine. But test your games and make sure nobody can suddenly turn invisible, or camp under a glitched as fuck rock and kill everyone for hours on end. And to the people that do glitch to win? You obviously aren't that talented at games. If you were, why the need to glitch and win? Afraid of competition? :[ makes me sad.
Now.. I fully understand that all games have glitches. Even Diddy's Kong Quest had a game ending glitch -- i forget how to do it, but it would render your game unplayable.. Glitchy things are nothing new, and nothing is perfect. Some glitches are far worse than others. For example, one of my absolute favorite games that I could play over and over again is Uncharted 2. I LOVE that game. Does it have glitches? Yes. At one point in the game -- the chapter with the train & having to destroy the heliocopter? yeah, that clusterfuck? -- I ducked for cover behind a truck.. unfortunately the game got all buggy and somehow i ended up inside the truck & couldn't get out.. same thing happened in the swamp when I ran up a tree. (wat.) I restarted the chapter and it was fine (the CHAPTER, not the GAME.) and there is some sort of unlimited ammo glitch to allow unlimited ammo in crushing mode, even if you haven't played through the game on crushing. Did I do the unlimited ammo cheat? no. because A. its a pretty lame cheat and B. its a pain in the ass.. to get it, its only for one gun & you have to redo the cheat at every checkpoint. no, i don't know from experience, I saw it on a website about trophies (yes, i am a trophy whore, i have no shame & a platinum in RE5.)
But lets see how a developing company does it right: MAG. thats right MAG. are there glitches in MAG? Yes. from experience? Matthew and Daniel said they have both witnessed the "crawling at 3 times the speed" glitch.. which is annoying, but stoppable. How much testing did Zipper do on MAG? Well, I know the release was moved back because of the testing & reports.. so let me try and remember. There was the initial QA testing, followed by a small group of private testing, followed by a larger "invite only" gamer testing, followed by the open public beta. Was the open beta buggy? certainly. Was the game bugged as fuck when we bought it the day it came out? Negative. Have their been patches to correct any problems? they fixed one glitch, I think, allowing people to glitch into houses or something to that effect. -- I don't play MAG that often, FPS are okay, but MAG is sometimes just too much for me lol ;]~
I appreciate developers wanting feedback from gamers, I really do. I really like the fact that I can contact Lionhead and say "hey, my game glitched you may want to look into that." What I don't appreciate is having to do QA for these companies when I am not being paid for that -- IN FACT i just paid THEIR COMPANY to tell me a game.
Okay. I think my ranting is over. Lets review: I know and understand that pretty much every game has some kind of glitch in it.. but some glitches are far worse than others. (its like a 7 deadly sins kind of thing -- lying VS murder.. either I glitch into a truck or i have wasted 40+ hours on a game and cannot complete the story due to a glitch.) People who cheat by abusing glitches? LAME. play through the game the right way, otherwise you are an inferior gamer. period. sorry. :[ Developers, please get your act together.. Games are progressively getting worse. No, I will not be playing Fallout: New Vegas, because I've heard its just as buggy as FO3 and fuck that. not wasting my time.
That being said, the gaming community is the only community that is expected to deal with half assed jobs. We pay 60.00 for a rushed, incomplete game & then wait for patch after patch to fix the problem. Its unfair. If I went to Best Buy tomorrow and purchased a TV that only showed picture in black and white -- despite it being HDMI -- my television would be replaced. TRUE STORY: I bought a computer from Best Buy 2 years ago. I had the computer for approximately 2 weeks and then it wouldn't work anymore. I returned the computer to Best Buy, and they replaced it with a brand new computer. Apparently, the hard drive was fried (all I had time to do -- i was working full time -- was install itunes and upload my music. that was all that had been done to the computer.) I received a faulty product and it was replaced with something better. Now my desktop runs like a champ & i couldn't be happier with it. Why? because QA made sure all of those computers were working properly. Are there glitches in some things? OF COURSE. there is always the one bad one, but my problem comes from the fact that apparently every copy of fable 3 or fallout 3 or MW2 or WHATEVER is a "bad one." (okay, not every one, but you get my point.. the bad ones shouldn't outweigh the good ones.)
OKAY my rant is over. and damn it was long winded. i apologize, but i'm just angry. hopefully it made some kind of sense lol
XOXOXOXO
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