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Imagine the scenario:
You've crawled 40 yards through thick undergrowth, flanked by your rifleman and your sniper, and are settled into position overlooking an enemy encampment. You radio ahead to your 3-man support team, giving them waypoints to the ridge opposite your position, and wait for a tense few minutes as they manoevre into position.
The ambush is all set, so you snipe a couple of unwary outpost guards and give the signal for both teams to raid the encampment. You charge forward, fully-automatic machinegun fire ripping apart the enemy from 100 feet away before they can entrench into defensive positions.
Your radar shows one enemy left in the area, so you move in, slowly, machine-gun poised for the inevitable kill. You cautiously step around the side of a tent, and there is your target, lying prone and facing away from you, expecting death to approach from the other side of the crates behind which he is lying.
You sneak up behind him, anticipating the bloodrush that will come with his death. You point the machine-gun at his back, and snarl with the adrenaline boost you get as you empty your entire clip of .30 calibre bullets into his body.
And he calmly turns around whilst you're reloading another clip, and shoots you dead with two shots from his pistol. Welcome to the 'did they actually playtest this game?' world of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon.
There are a few other glaring glitches, like on the first level where you have to capture a bad guy hiding in a cave. Easy enough, just kill everyone and capture him, surely? Not quite, because, believe it or not, neutralise all of the enemy of level 1, and that ends the level automatically. The bad guy is still in his cave plotting to take over the world whilst you and your team are whisked away in a helicopter at the end of the 'successful' mission. The only way you can do it properly is to leave at least one enemy soldier alive, capture the bad guy in the caves, then exit the caves and shoot the enemy soldier you left behind on your way in.
Now, call me picky but... isn't this an unfinished game? Haven't they released it just a little too early? Should we be satisfied that companies can, and do, get away with producing products like this, packaging them in a PS2 box with a manual and calling them 35 quid's worth of complete game?
This isn't the only example. How many people can truly say that they are happy with The Getaway? When I play it, which is rarely, I'm thinking that perhaps they could have used another 6 months to tweak little things like the ability to aim at someone to shoot them without having to turn around a few times, the ability to cross a road AND look to see what's coming first instead of having to look in 4 directions first then step out and get hit by a bus anyway, the ability simply to walk through a door without having to walk through it again a few seconds later, or the ability to cause an explosion without the framerate dropping by 50%.
Surely a fundamental requirement of any product is that it 'works'? I mean, would you be happy with a new car that only started 9 times out of 10? Or a camcorder that had a mind of its own when it came to zooming?
Games are great because they provide a challenge, they're something to beat, they're immersive, they entertain. But there's a crop of titles out there, and more are arriving every week, that contain niggly things that detract from the gaming experience. When I first heard about a patch being made available for one of the XBox games to correct certain 'issues', it just hammered home the thought that perhaps, afterall, Nintendo's "we ain't gonna release squat until we've seen it work" quality control system has an awful lot going for it.
Yes, I know games are complicated beasts. But we're not talking Windows NT code here. If a game is so big that developers can't account for everything that goes on inside the code, then they shouldn't make them so big. There is no excuse for not testing every available outcome in the logical paths of a game's code. If there's too many, rip the surplus out until you're sure the initial phases work, then add the new sections in one at a time, and test them.
Gone are the days when you could buy a PS2 game thinking you were getting the finished article. I blame the publishers for putting too much pressure on the developers to meet deadlines, I blame the pirates for forcing developers to churn out mindless racers, shooters, football sims and the like just to try and produce a bit of cashflow to spend on developing real games. I blame the gaming press for selling out and giving these games rave reviews in return for what must have been considerable backhanders. I blame me for getting picky in my old age.
I remember about 20 years ago getting an unfinished buggy game was the norm. That was because they were usually programmed by a 14-year old kid in his bedroom. 'Quality Assurance' wasn't a term used alot in those days, and the art of debugging was in its infancy.
But I'm not prepared to sit back and watch the market get flooded with sub-standard games masquerading as Top Ten chart contenders. And neither should you. If you see a bad one, tell EVERYONE about it, if enough people do this then the industry will realise that they're not going to get away with it.
It's not all doom and gloom, amongst the pap there are still quality games out there. To assist you in finding the good ones I would advise the following for now:
1) Look on the back of the game box
2) Look for the words "Red Storm Entertainment" or "Team Soho"
3) If those words appear, don't buy it.
You've crawled 40 yards through thick undergrowth, flanked by your rifleman and your sniper, and are settled into position overlooking an enemy encampment. You radio ahead to your 3-man support team, giving them waypoints to the ridge opposite your position, and wait for a tense few minutes as they manoevre into position.
The ambush is all set, so you snipe a couple of unwary outpost guards and give the signal for both teams to raid the encampment. You charge forward, fully-automatic machinegun fire ripping apart the enemy from 100 feet away before they can entrench into defensive positions.
Your radar shows one enemy left in the area, so you move in, slowly, machine-gun poised for the inevitable kill. You cautiously step around the side of a tent, and there is your target, lying prone and facing away from you, expecting death to approach from the other side of the crates behind which he is lying.
You sneak up behind him, anticipating the bloodrush that will come with his death. You point the machine-gun at his back, and snarl with the adrenaline boost you get as you empty your entire clip of .30 calibre bullets into his body.
And he calmly turns around whilst you're reloading another clip, and shoots you dead with two shots from his pistol. Welcome to the 'did they actually playtest this game?' world of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon.
There are a few other glaring glitches, like on the first level where you have to capture a bad guy hiding in a cave. Easy enough, just kill everyone and capture him, surely? Not quite, because, believe it or not, neutralise all of the enemy of level 1, and that ends the level automatically. The bad guy is still in his cave plotting to take over the world whilst you and your team are whisked away in a helicopter at the end of the 'successful' mission. The only way you can do it properly is to leave at least one enemy soldier alive, capture the bad guy in the caves, then exit the caves and shoot the enemy soldier you left behind on your way in.
Now, call me picky but... isn't this an unfinished game? Haven't they released it just a little too early? Should we be satisfied that companies can, and do, get away with producing products like this, packaging them in a PS2 box with a manual and calling them 35 quid's worth of complete game?
This isn't the only example. How many people can truly say that they are happy with The Getaway? When I play it, which is rarely, I'm thinking that perhaps they could have used another 6 months to tweak little things like the ability to aim at someone to shoot them without having to turn around a few times, the ability to cross a road AND look to see what's coming first instead of having to look in 4 directions first then step out and get hit by a bus anyway, the ability simply to walk through a door without having to walk through it again a few seconds later, or the ability to cause an explosion without the framerate dropping by 50%.
Surely a fundamental requirement of any product is that it 'works'? I mean, would you be happy with a new car that only started 9 times out of 10? Or a camcorder that had a mind of its own when it came to zooming?
Games are great because they provide a challenge, they're something to beat, they're immersive, they entertain. But there's a crop of titles out there, and more are arriving every week, that contain niggly things that detract from the gaming experience. When I first heard about a patch being made available for one of the XBox games to correct certain 'issues', it just hammered home the thought that perhaps, afterall, Nintendo's "we ain't gonna release squat until we've seen it work" quality control system has an awful lot going for it.
Yes, I know games are complicated beasts. But we're not talking Windows NT code here. If a game is so big that developers can't account for everything that goes on inside the code, then they shouldn't make them so big. There is no excuse for not testing every available outcome in the logical paths of a game's code. If there's too many, rip the surplus out until you're sure the initial phases work, then add the new sections in one at a time, and test them.
Gone are the days when you could buy a PS2 game thinking you were getting the finished article. I blame the publishers for putting too much pressure on the developers to meet deadlines, I blame the pirates for forcing developers to churn out mindless racers, shooters, football sims and the like just to try and produce a bit of cashflow to spend on developing real games. I blame the gaming press for selling out and giving these games rave reviews in return for what must have been considerable backhanders. I blame me for getting picky in my old age.
I remember about 20 years ago getting an unfinished buggy game was the norm. That was because they were usually programmed by a 14-year old kid in his bedroom. 'Quality Assurance' wasn't a term used alot in those days, and the art of debugging was in its infancy.
But I'm not prepared to sit back and watch the market get flooded with sub-standard games masquerading as Top Ten chart contenders. And neither should you. If you see a bad one, tell EVERYONE about it, if enough people do this then the industry will realise that they're not going to get away with it.
It's not all doom and gloom, amongst the pap there are still quality games out there. To assist you in finding the good ones I would advise the following for now:
1) Look on the back of the game box
2) Look for the words "Red Storm Entertainment" or "Team Soho"
3) If those words appear, don't buy it.
Imagine the scenario:
You've crawled 40 yards through thick undergrowth, flanked by your rifleman and your sniper, and are settled into position overlooking an enemy encampment. You radio ahead to your 3-man support team, giving them waypoints to the ridge opposite your position, and wait for a tense few minutes as they manoevre into position.
The ambush is all set, so you snipe a couple of unwary outpost guards and give the signal for both teams to raid the encampment. You charge forward, fully-automatic machinegun fire ripping apart the enemy from 100 feet away before they can entrench into defensive positions.
Your radar shows one enemy left in the area, so you move in, slowly, machine-gun poised for the inevitable kill. You cautiously step around the side of a tent, and there is your target, lying prone and facing away from you, expecting death to approach from the other side of the crates behind which he is lying.
You sneak up behind him, anticipating the bloodrush that will come with his death. You point the machine-gun at his back, and snarl with the adrenaline boost you get as you empty your entire clip of .30 calibre bullets into his body.
And he calmly turns around whilst you're reloading another clip, and shoots you dead with two shots from his pistol. Welcome to the 'did they actually playtest this game?' world of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon.
There are a few other glaring glitches, like on the first level where you have to capture a bad guy hiding in a cave. Easy enough, just kill everyone and capture him, surely? Not quite, because, believe it or not, neutralise all of the enemy of level 1, and that ends the level automatically. The bad guy is still in his cave plotting to take over the world whilst you and your team are whisked away in a helicopter at the end of the 'successful' mission. The only way you can do it properly is to leave at least one enemy soldier alive, capture the bad guy in the caves, then exit the caves and shoot the enemy soldier you left behind on your way in.
Now, call me picky but... isn't this an unfinished game? Haven't they released it just a little too early? Should we be satisfied that companies can, and do, get away with producing products like this, packaging them in a PS2 box with a manual and calling them 35 quid's worth of complete game?
This isn't the only example. How many people can truly say that they are happy with The Getaway? When I play it, which is rarely, I'm thinking that perhaps they could have used another 6 months to tweak little things like the ability to aim at someone to shoot them without having to turn around a few times, the ability to cross a road AND look to see what's coming first instead of having to look in 4 directions first then step out and get hit by a bus anyway, the ability simply to walk through a door without having to walk through it again a few seconds later, or the ability to cause an explosion without the framerate dropping by 50%.
Surely a fundamental requirement of any product is that it 'works'? I mean, would you be happy with a new car that only started 9 times out of 10? Or a camcorder that had a mind of its own when it came to zooming?
Games are great because they provide a challenge, they're something to beat, they're immersive, they entertain. But there's a crop of titles out there, and more are arriving every week, that contain niggly things that detract from the gaming experience. When I first heard about a patch being made available for one of the XBox games to correct certain 'issues', it just hammered home the thought that perhaps, afterall, Nintendo's "we ain't gonna release squat until we've seen it work" quality control system has an awful lot going for it.
Yes, I know games are complicated beasts. But we're not talking Windows NT code here. If a game is so big that developers can't account for everything that goes on inside the code, then they shouldn't make them so big. There is no excuse for not testing every available outcome in the logical paths of a game's code. If there's too many, rip the surplus out until you're sure the initial phases work, then add the new sections in one at a time, and test them.
Gone are the days when you could buy a PS2 game thinking you were getting the finished article. I blame the publishers for putting too much pressure on the developers to meet deadlines, I blame the pirates for forcing developers to churn out mindless racers, shooters, football sims and the like just to try and produce a bit of cashflow to spend on developing real games. I blame the gaming press for selling out and giving these games rave reviews in return for what must have been considerable backhanders. I blame me for getting picky in my old age.
I remember about 20 years ago getting an unfinished buggy game was the norm. That was because they were usually programmed by a 14-year old kid in his bedroom. 'Quality Assurance' wasn't a term used alot in those days, and the art of debugging was in its infancy.
But I'm not prepared to sit back and watch the market get flooded with sub-standard games masquerading as Top Ten chart contenders. And neither should you. If you see a bad one, tell EVERYONE about it, if enough people do this then the industry will realise that they're not going to get away with it.
It's not all doom and gloom, amongst the pap there are still quality games out there. To assist you in finding the good ones I would advise the following for now:
1) Look on the back of the game box
2) Look for the words "Red Storm Entertainment" or "Team Soho"
3) If those words appear, don't buy it.
You've crawled 40 yards through thick undergrowth, flanked by your rifleman and your sniper, and are settled into position overlooking an enemy encampment. You radio ahead to your 3-man support team, giving them waypoints to the ridge opposite your position, and wait for a tense few minutes as they manoevre into position.
The ambush is all set, so you snipe a couple of unwary outpost guards and give the signal for both teams to raid the encampment. You charge forward, fully-automatic machinegun fire ripping apart the enemy from 100 feet away before they can entrench into defensive positions.
Your radar shows one enemy left in the area, so you move in, slowly, machine-gun poised for the inevitable kill. You cautiously step around the side of a tent, and there is your target, lying prone and facing away from you, expecting death to approach from the other side of the crates behind which he is lying.
You sneak up behind him, anticipating the bloodrush that will come with his death. You point the machine-gun at his back, and snarl with the adrenaline boost you get as you empty your entire clip of .30 calibre bullets into his body.
And he calmly turns around whilst you're reloading another clip, and shoots you dead with two shots from his pistol. Welcome to the 'did they actually playtest this game?' world of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon.
There are a few other glaring glitches, like on the first level where you have to capture a bad guy hiding in a cave. Easy enough, just kill everyone and capture him, surely? Not quite, because, believe it or not, neutralise all of the enemy of level 1, and that ends the level automatically. The bad guy is still in his cave plotting to take over the world whilst you and your team are whisked away in a helicopter at the end of the 'successful' mission. The only way you can do it properly is to leave at least one enemy soldier alive, capture the bad guy in the caves, then exit the caves and shoot the enemy soldier you left behind on your way in.
Now, call me picky but... isn't this an unfinished game? Haven't they released it just a little too early? Should we be satisfied that companies can, and do, get away with producing products like this, packaging them in a PS2 box with a manual and calling them 35 quid's worth of complete game?
This isn't the only example. How many people can truly say that they are happy with The Getaway? When I play it, which is rarely, I'm thinking that perhaps they could have used another 6 months to tweak little things like the ability to aim at someone to shoot them without having to turn around a few times, the ability to cross a road AND look to see what's coming first instead of having to look in 4 directions first then step out and get hit by a bus anyway, the ability simply to walk through a door without having to walk through it again a few seconds later, or the ability to cause an explosion without the framerate dropping by 50%.
Surely a fundamental requirement of any product is that it 'works'? I mean, would you be happy with a new car that only started 9 times out of 10? Or a camcorder that had a mind of its own when it came to zooming?
Games are great because they provide a challenge, they're something to beat, they're immersive, they entertain. But there's a crop of titles out there, and more are arriving every week, that contain niggly things that detract from the gaming experience. When I first heard about a patch being made available for one of the XBox games to correct certain 'issues', it just hammered home the thought that perhaps, afterall, Nintendo's "we ain't gonna release squat until we've seen it work" quality control system has an awful lot going for it.
Yes, I know games are complicated beasts. But we're not talking Windows NT code here. If a game is so big that developers can't account for everything that goes on inside the code, then they shouldn't make them so big. There is no excuse for not testing every available outcome in the logical paths of a game's code. If there's too many, rip the surplus out until you're sure the initial phases work, then add the new sections in one at a time, and test them.
Gone are the days when you could buy a PS2 game thinking you were getting the finished article. I blame the publishers for putting too much pressure on the developers to meet deadlines, I blame the pirates for forcing developers to churn out mindless racers, shooters, football sims and the like just to try and produce a bit of cashflow to spend on developing real games. I blame the gaming press for selling out and giving these games rave reviews in return for what must have been considerable backhanders. I blame me for getting picky in my old age.
I remember about 20 years ago getting an unfinished buggy game was the norm. That was because they were usually programmed by a 14-year old kid in his bedroom. 'Quality Assurance' wasn't a term used alot in those days, and the art of debugging was in its infancy.
But I'm not prepared to sit back and watch the market get flooded with sub-standard games masquerading as Top Ten chart contenders. And neither should you. If you see a bad one, tell EVERYONE about it, if enough people do this then the industry will realise that they're not going to get away with it.
It's not all doom and gloom, amongst the pap there are still quality games out there. To assist you in finding the good ones I would advise the following for now:
1) Look on the back of the game box
2) Look for the words "Red Storm Entertainment" or "Team Soho"
3) If those words appear, don't buy it.
Take deep breath. Now hold it until everything goes foggy. There, isn't that better?
I know exactly what you mean.
A week ago me and my brother were playing Hunter: The Reckoning on the Xbox and we get up to a certain boss which, incidentally, was high on imposible to kill. Regardless of whether you had the most powerful weapon in the game or not, a rocket launcher to the head did next to no damage whilst he takes away half your energy with each hit. Then you sit there looking at the 'Game Over' screen and think "Don't people get paid to make sure a game works smoothly" i.e. it isn't imposible to finish. It does make me wonder sometimes.
There should actually be an independent gaming panel of people that play newly developed games. If they're buggy, they get sent back to be patched, if they're good they get sent out and if they're crap, then the CD's get smashed into tiny fragments and used for glitter.
A week ago me and my brother were playing Hunter: The Reckoning on the Xbox and we get up to a certain boss which, incidentally, was high on imposible to kill. Regardless of whether you had the most powerful weapon in the game or not, a rocket launcher to the head did next to no damage whilst he takes away half your energy with each hit. Then you sit there looking at the 'Game Over' screen and think "Don't people get paid to make sure a game works smoothly" i.e. it isn't imposible to finish. It does make me wonder sometimes.
There should actually be an independent gaming panel of people that play newly developed games. If they're buggy, they get sent back to be patched, if they're good they get sent out and if they're crap, then the CD's get smashed into tiny fragments and used for glitter.
Heh, I remember that bit on the first level, I ran in, killed everyone, realised he was dead, went back to thecopter and started mission.. *turns PS2 OFF* I went and played Eternal Darkness instead.
Good post, but the problem is most people don't understand or care - thats why there are few replys to this post.
The computer industry has been like this for years. The product needs a patch the day it is released, etc. Until now, I would say the console market has been much better. But with the XBox, things are changing. It does/will have the ability to download a game patch from the net using broadband - tough luck if you can't get broadband where you live! The fact that XBox can even do this, will push Sony and Nintendo into the arena. With the PS2 online pack, you will probaly have the same ability. As for PS3 and XBox2, expect more pc like operating software with much mmore online focus. This will mean it will be more easy for developers to release "poor" software.
The computer industry has been like this for years. The product needs a patch the day it is released, etc. Until now, I would say the console market has been much better. But with the XBox, things are changing. It does/will have the ability to download a game patch from the net using broadband - tough luck if you can't get broadband where you live! The fact that XBox can even do this, will push Sony and Nintendo into the arena. With the PS2 online pack, you will probaly have the same ability. As for PS3 and XBox2, expect more pc like operating software with much mmore online focus. This will mean it will be more easy for developers to release "poor" software.