Bonfires Down
Member
Along with all the great games of the generation, we also have the launch disasters. Some of them have since been fixed, some less so. Some were saturated with bugs and performance issues, others suffer from broken promises or greedy marketing, and some are filled with microtransactions. Whatever the case is, go ahead and vote for what you think are the worst launch disasters of the generation.
I'll be keeping an eye on the comments in case there are more games that need to be added. A few of the games, e.g Mortal Kombat, RDR2 and Witcher I thought weren't quite bad enough to make the poll but they might be added back in if people want it.
Anthem
Assassin’s Creed: Unity
Atlas
Batman: Arkham Knight (PC)
Battlefield 4
Battlefield V
Cyberpunk 2077
DayZ
Deadly Premonition 2
Fallout 76
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
Horizon Zero Dawn (PC)
Just Cause 3
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Mortal Kombat 11
NBA 2K20
No Man’s Sky
Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC)
Star Citizen
Star Wars: Battlefront 2
Street Fighter V
The Witcher 3
Warcraft III: Reforged
WWE 2K20
I'll be keeping an eye on the comments in case there are more games that need to be added. A few of the games, e.g Mortal Kombat, RDR2 and Witcher I thought weren't quite bad enough to make the poll but they might be added back in if people want it.
Anthem
If you ask anyone that played Anthem if the combat is any good, odds are they will tell you yes. The Javelin suits looked awesome, and flying around the battlefield killing baddies was a joy. Then, as soon as they utter their last word about combat, their soft, smiling eyes will turn dark and angry. They’ll start rattling off all of the things they found wrong with the game. The servers were unstable. Multiplayer was iffy at best. The loot grind was horrible and you had to exit the open world to install any new gear you found.
Gamespace
Assassin’s Creed: Unity
The fact that the game would struggle in the frame rate department was hinted at by Ubisoft’s decision to cap the Xbox One and PS4 versions at 30 frames per second, and by the absurdly high PC requirements. Logically, PC users have been complaining about frame rates, but the sad truth is that Assassin’s Creed Unity just does not run particularly well on consoles either. The PS4 version of the game can’t even manage 20 frames during certain stretches of the game, according to Kotaku.
What about the graphical glitches? These range from characters falling through the ground, being stuck in mid-air, to single body parts like heads disappearing. The game appears to have serious pop-in issues, with certain buildings not appearing at all until the protagonist Arno is right in front of them. The game also appears to crash with alarming regularity, according to Steam reviews.
Newatlas
Atlas
When the game finally released to players willing to fork over the $24.99, they were left with disappointment. Player customization was limited,though you could make random body parts larger to look like a haemonculus. Glitches and bugs were everywhere, with monsters phasing out of the environment or being impossible to kill.
With glitches, poor company communication and one of the most disappointing launches since No Man's Sky , it's no wonder that this is the community's impression. The pirate-adventure was in the Steam top 10 charts for the first few days, but has now disappeared from the chart. Steam reviews are overwhelmingly negative, with players shouting about how they fell for the hype.
Newsweek
Batman: Arkham Knight (PC)
Those who game on PC certainly had reasons to be disappointed when they played the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight. Not only was the game full of glitches and suffered from issues like poor frame rates and constant crashes that rendered the PC version of the game unplayable for many. This is all the more puzzling considering that the console versions were rock-solid, and perhaps their only flaw was that using the Batmobile in the game wasn’t that much fun.
Lakebit
Battlefield 4
The launch issues for DICE's multiplayer shooter Battlefield 4 were many and varied, from disconnection errors, random crashes and freezes, severe rubber-banding, and troublesome netcode malfunctions that caused bullets to appear to hit one spot but actually land somewhere else. There was even one sniper rifle silencer that, ironically, muted the sound on the entire server.
As weeks passed and patches were released, still more bugs appeared, including one where projectiles would bounce off downed-but-not-dead players, sometimes striking the person who had fired the missile. These issues continued long into the game's release, and DICE finally had to resort to deploying new, more powerful servers to tame the latency problems plaguing 64-player matches, and even offered a week-long double XP event in an attempt to atone for their sins.
PC Gamer
Battlefield V
The most recent Battlefield game, 2018’s Battlefield V, didn’t have as bad a launch as Battlefield 4, but calling it a “successful” launch would be quite generous. While the game certainly looked impressive, it also suffered from a litany of graphical issues and UI bugs (some of which still persist to this day) which only exacerbated the soured feelings players already had over the thin amount of content (maps, weapons, customization options) it offered.
Major features that DICE had played up heavily in Battlefield V’s pre-release marketing like in-depth tank customization, the ‘Combined Arms’ co-op mode, and the ‘Firestorm’ battle royale mode were delayed beyond the initial launch. In most cases, such features didn’t end up arriving until several months after the game’s release.
Gamecrate
Cyberpunk 2077
By most accounts, the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077 plays reasonably well. It’s still buggy and prone to crashes, but none of those issues are backbreaking, and the Metacritic score reflects that. The PS4 and Xbox ports? Another story. Shortly after release last week, as players around the world finally got their hands on the hottest game of the year, the internet started to billow with angst about how disastrously the game performs on those base consoles. (The software fares better on the freshly released, and still very hard to find PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.) There are reports of disorienting drops in frame rate, muddy video resolutions, and most infamously, a deluge of bizarre glitches. Watch as a car drives right through a house with no collision detection, or as a character’s face resembles a shattered mosaic of unloaded textures. Gamers are falling through floors; they’re watching vehicles spawn out of thin air; NPCs are stuck to their dashboards. The community has learned to put up with an acceptable degree of jank in massive, open-world games, but Cyberpunk 2077 crossed the Rubicon.
Vulture
DayZ
DayZ is a complete and utter disaster on PS4. Not only is it profoundly outdated in 2019, it’s also technically inept. A horrendous frame rate brings the experience to a standstill on a worryingly consistent basis, while numerous bugs and glitches are a bewilderment. After taking five years to release, we can’t help but feel like this was an outright waste of everyone’s time.
Pushsquare
Deadly Premonition 2
– Loading times can be long
– Going into doors can cause stuttering
– Firing your gun can freeze the game for a split second
– Open world segments tend to run around 15 frames per second, sometimes lower
– Runs at 810p docked vs. 720p of the original game
– When you reload the game, you seem to get improved performance
– Not much better in portable mode
You can watch Digital Foundry’s full analysis below.
Nintendoeverything
Fallout 76
The Guardian called the game "a pointless walk in the post-apocalypse" featuring "half-baked conflict and witless quests to unearth the dead". According to Forbes, Fallout 76 was a "huge, rare, total miss" by Bethesda. Eurogamer described the game as a "bizarre, boring, broken mess", adding that, shortly after its launch, it should be considered as a "failed experiment". Business Insider described Fallout 76 as "a jumble of disparate video game elements set loose in an online world, held together by a string of pointless fetch quests and experience points". Newsweek said that moments of the enjoyment during their review were "outweighed by the near-constant performance issues and poorly executed game systems", adding that they were disappointed in the game despite being fans of the series.
Wikipedia
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
Microsoft's launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection was a disaster. The games were buggy. You couldn't contact friends. Joining a party was a colossal pain in the ass. Matchmaking within a party was a nightmare. Even the most ardent fans of the game, the ones only too happy to shell out 60 bucks to buy a collection of games they already own, were left wondering: "WTF?"
Matchmaking rarely, if ever, worked. If you did manage to get a match going, bugs and issues abounded, especially with post-game stat-tracking. (One was the notorious "1th place" victory awarded to everyone at the end of certain matches.)
The Halo and Halo 2 parts of the collection seemed to be ported from the games' PC releases, not the original Xbox versions, and they brought with them bugs that had only popped up on those PC ports. Even worse, the game's pre-release marketing promised tons of dedicated servers, for stable games and to prevent matchmaking abuse or cheating. But those servers seemed nearly nonexistent. With matches running on peer-to-peer networks, they were again vulnerable to the cheaters.
Wired
Horizon Zero Dawn (PC)
The major issues appear to be framerate and crash-related. Even very powerful machines can’t get the game to run at 60fps without drastically reducing graphics settings. Many gamers list constant crashing as a problem. Crashes seem to occur pretty much everywhere, from boss fights to simply going through menus. It’s a mess.
Forbes
Just Cause 3
An early analysis of the the Xbox One version from NX Gamer claims that playing the game for more than hour leads to loading times of over 15 minutes, with the frame rate dropping to as low as 17FPS. NX Gamer also experienced multiple crashes—which is a particularly big problem for a console game—and other problems which could only be resolved by a full system reboot.
As we noted in our review of JC3, the PC version of the game suffers from multiple problems, even on relatively good hardware (a GTX 770). This included regular freezing, audio desyncing from video, random disconnects from Square Enix's servers, and the entire ocean disappearing. The later appears to be a common problem for PC users, with multiple Reddit threads commenting on disappearing water, as well as glitchy mountain ranges.
Arstechnica
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Back in March 2017, some Mass Effect fans were shocked when a Bioware general manager said that Mass Effect Andromeda would be “softcore space porn”. This did not turn out to be the case in the end, although many players found the romances were not so great in the final game due to the plethora of glitches and bugs Mass Effect Andromeda shipped with. Worse of all were the wonky facial animations, which made conversations in the game look comical at times.
This also had some of the worst writing in a Bioware game to date, making the proceedings feel like a cheap space soap opera at time. But it’s clear that the crashes and performance issues at launch left many disgruntled, as this was a game that simply was not ready for release. Bioware made amends in the coming months with a series of patches which even added new romance options for protagonist Ryder, even though it’s clear that Andromeda’s poor launch may have sadly damaged Mass Effect’s reputation for some time to come.
Lakebit
Mortal Kombat 11
However, it's not all roses and intestines, due to MK 11's adherence a miserly and convoluted grind/unlock system. This mechanic, summarised, involves multiple forms of in-game currency, a randomised Krypt, unbelievably unfair Towers of Time battles, a rotational in-game store, countless filler items and, of course, microtransactions.
As it stands, it can take hours to grind "Konsumables" (think of them as effects, such as armour or damage boosts), which you currently need to beat the more ungodly Towers of Time. Beating those towers earns you Koins, Hearts and Souls, which you have to save up in order to open Krypt chests, which are both expensive and randomised. So, that's hours of grinding - not playing - grinding, in order to possibly get some items that might be for your favourite characters. These includes staple basics such as win poses, mid-match taunts and character intros.
Destructoid
NBA 2K20
Everything feels like a money grab in 2K. Regulars have learned to live with it in a way early Internet users hesitantly accepted the outbreak of advertising but that doesn’t mean it can pass without comment. From the Wheel of Fortune prize wheels to the myTeam slot machines, the presence of gambling is so insidious across pretty much every mode you begin to wonder if it’s an in-joke you’re not party to. And yet even when you think it’s reached its most ostentatious, the story literally tries to sell you a product (a personalised water bottle) for *real* cash in the *real* world, via a video game. This is dangerous territory and particularly dangerous for a game with an age rating of 3.
Metro
No Man’s Sky
It would be an understatement to say that No Man’s Sky was one of 2016’s most highly-anticipated games, but ended up having one of the worst launches ever for a high-profile video game. And those eagerly awaiting No Man’s Sky might have been worried just a few days before launch, as developer Hello Games announced a big day one patch which made many changes to the game. The final game was as buggy and crash-prone as you can imagine though, while the lack of promised features left many angry at developer Hello Games for failing to deliver.
This is because while No Man’s Sky promised an entire universe to travel through and literally millions of planets to explore, these all ended up being very similar and the experience began feeling samey after a few hours of play. Plus, cataloguing alien species and collecting minerals wasn’t so interesting as No Man’s Sky did not have the full-fledged trading and economy many were expecting. And the spaceship and first-person combat were not as exciting or large scale as promised either. This was an infamously bad video game launch then, and one that day one buyers of No Man Sky will have a hard time forgetting despite the substantial patches the game has received to date.
Lakebit
Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC)
At present, those experiencing problems largely fall into two camps. Those who are having the Rockstar Games Launcher itself crash when attempting to launch the game and those who have the game crash at the load-up screen. For those who are actually able to access the game, however, they also are reporting a number of issues including permanent loading screens and graphical/audio glitches.
eTeknix
Star Citizen
“Chaotic” is how the work environment at Cloud Imperium Games was described, and that chaos seems to come, in large part, from co-founder Chris Roberts. The designer, according to the report, apparently micro-manages and gets hyper-focused on minor details of the game, resulting in a, thus far, seven-year project that seems to have no end in sight. Roberts raised $288 million from crowdfunding, making it the biggest crowdfunded project of all time (not including cryptocurrency funding), but there is still no clear release for “Star Citizen” a planned online multiplayer space game that was originally meant to release in 2014. “Squadron 42,” a companion, single-player game to “Star Citizen” is also still in development.
Variety
Star Wars: Battlefront 2
On November 12, 2017, a Reddit user complained that although they spent US$80 to purchase the Deluxe Edition of the game, Darth Vader remained inaccessible for play, and the use of this character required a large amount of in-game credits. Players estimated that it would take 40 hours of gameplay to accumulate enough credits to unlock a single hero. In response to the community's backlash, EA's Community Team defended the controversial changes by saying their intent to make users earn credits to unlock heroes was to give users "a sense of pride and accomplishment" after unlocking a hero. This led to many Reddit users becoming frustrated at the response, which generated 667,821 down-votes, making it the most down-voted comment in the site's history. In 2019, the comment was inducted into the Guinness World Records. In response to the community's outrage, EA lowered the cost of credits to unlock heroes by 75%. However, the credits rewarded for completing the campaign were also reduced.
…
the head of Dutch Gambling commission announced a start of their own investigation of Battlefront II and the issue in general, and asked parents "to keep an eye at the games their children play". Chris Lee, a member of the Hawaii House of Representatives, called Star Wars: Battlefront II "an online casino designed to trap little kids" and announced his intention to ban such practices in the state of Hawaii. Another representative compared playing Battlefront II to smoking cigarettes, saying: "We didn't allow Joe Camel to encourage your kids to smoke cigarettes, and we shouldn't allow Star Wars to encourage your kids to gamble."
Wikipedia
Street Fighter V
The game was praised for its graphics and gameplay, but was criticized for its lack of single-player content, characters, and unstable online performance at launch. Players of the game complained of similar issues (as well as others such as a lack of controller support) with 54% of the reviews on Steam being negative. Capcom's Yoshinori Ono issued an apology to fans for the host of server issues. On May 12, Capcom CEO Kenzo Tsujimoto admitted that Street Fighter V had a "lack of content" and that it "needed more polish". In November 2016, Ono said "we all know that we didn’t put out a complete product, in a way that is a learning experience"
Wikipedia
The Witcher 3
The first thing you need to know, if you’re a current Witcher 3 owner or if you’re thinking about buying the game, is that Witcher 3 problems still exist. CD Project Red’s forums are filled with complaints about bugs and they include missing Merchant icons on the map, music that doesn’t stop playing, problems with Roach the horse, quest bugs of all shapes and sizes, animation bugs, problems with Meditation and replenishing bombs, and more. Some people claim that these bugs are making the game unplayable.
Gottabemobile
Warcraft III: Reforged
Player response was overwhelmingly negative. On release, the game was review-bombed by users on Metacritic, reaching a low score of 0.5/10 a few days after release based on over 14,000 reviews, making it the lowest-ranked game on the site by user score before being surpassed by Madden NFL 21. Many criticized the remaster for its absence of features promised by Blizzard at launch, technical issues, changes to the original game's user interface among other gameplay features, and graphical changes which some felt had either not been improved enough or looked worse. Blizzard was also criticized for their decision that, due to it sharing Reforged's client, all existing copies of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos were required to update to a newer version, which meant that many of the gameplay changes to Reforged were now mandatory in the original. Additionally, there were complaints towards Blizzard's announcement that they would claim ownership over all user-created content in Reforged.
Wikipedia
WWE 2K20
Few expect sports games to launch with such incredible bugs, but WWE 2K20 defied all expectations by being one of the most unplayable games of 2019. The problems were so bad, some reported the game to be almost unplayable, making it somewhat of a punchline among the gaming community. Developer Visual Concepts has experience in the genre already, so it likely was not entirely their fault why the game turned out the way it did.
Thegamer
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