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Game breaking bugs and developers that just don't care

C

civilstrife

Member
I recently acquired Beyond Good and Evil for PC and lo and behold: there's a bug halfway through the game that totally impedes any further progress. An enemy is supposed to drop a key. He doesn't.

This is not just some random affair, but a well known and extremely common bug, for which the community had to release their own unofficial patch. As much as I love the game and respect ubisoft, this is just pathetic.

Anyway, feel free to use this thread to vent about stupid devlopers that don't test their stupid games or don't care enough to fix them.
 
The biggest bug in that game (BG&E PC) was the complete lack of joypad support. That alone was reason enough for me to stop playing after the first couple of minutes. How can you port a game from console to PC and don't support an effing joypad?
 
In the first Enter the Matrix, the sentinels visually disappeared from my screen in the last level. Still managed to beat it by holding down the fire button, but still lame.

Advent Rising was chock full of bugs. Falling through levels, scripted events not occuring, spawning in the geometry when you load a game, camera staying locked on to enemies after you've destroyed them. What a mess of a game.

Also, didn't EA leave a bug in Burnout Revenge in which after you've earned 100%, any time you try replay something you're forced to sit through the credits? There is no way the testers could have missed something as obvious as that.
 
i ran into an interesting bug in pgr3 online today... basically, after the race was finished and the ai took over controlling everyones car, the game failed to go to the end race stats and conclude the race. after about 2-3 minutes of everyone wondering what the fuck was going on and being completely unable to skip back to the lobby i finally had to use the guide to return all the way out to the dash :(
 
The only Advent issues I've seen were some scripted events not working (nothing a quick restart would fix, since Advent is awesome and I loved playing it again), and the lock-on issue, which I easily remedied, thus making it not much a problem to me at all and you just need a reason to nitpick on awesome Advent Rising is awesome

In the first Enter the Matrix, the sentinels visually disappeared from my screen in the last level. Still managed to beat it by holding down the fire button, but still lame.
Click to expand...

Or...the entire Ghosts chase level period? Talk about unplayable
 
Also throw KOTOR and Morrowind up there

What a coding nightmare, glitchy, buggy...oh dear

Let's not try and make the same mistake there twice, guys, alright?
 
I had exactly one problem with a scripted event not triggering in Advent Rising. And it was fixed by restarting that section which took me about one minute.

The rest of the game was pretty bugfree. Maybe I was lucky, but bugs or not, AR is a good game. Too bad we'll never see how the trilogy ends :(
 
civilstrife said:
I recently acquired Beyond Good and Evil for PC and lo and behold: there's a bug halfway through the game that totally impedes any further progress. An enemy is supposed to drop a key. He doesn't.

This is not just some random affair, but a well known and extremely common bug, for which the community had to release their own unofficial patch. As much as I love the game and respect ubisoft, this is just pathetic.

Anyway, feel free to use this thread to vent about stupid devlopers that don't test their stupid games or don't care enough to fix them.
Click to expand...

Welcome to PC gaming, enjoy your staying.

NOT.
 
johnjohnson said:
I had exactly one problem with a scripted event not triggering in Advent Rising. And it was fixed by restarting that section which took me about one minute.

The rest of the game was pretty bugfree. Maybe I was lucky, but bugs or not, AR is a good game. Too bad we'll never see how the trilogy ends :(
Click to expand...

Like I said, they just need a reason to nitpick and bash awesome Advent Rising is awesome which is.
 
Don't get me wrong. I don't think advent rising is the abomination most people do. I think it had huge potential but the lack of polish is what killed the experience for me.
Maybe I was just unlucky, but every time I tried to play advent rising there was something wrong with it.

The very first level, the voices very extremely low and the music was really loud and I couldn't even fix it with audio settings.

Then an NPC that follows you got stuck on rubble.

The lock on mechanism would always lock on to shit while I was trying to run away and swing the camera around.

There was a spot where enmies were supposed to blow open a door on the ship but it didnt happen.

I had another instance where an elevator was supposed to come down but it didnt.

There were turrets you had to shoot and it would lock the camera after you destroyed them.

The absolute killer was that the game never felt like it was running above 20 fps.
 
I experienced pretty much everything winter mentioned above, plus the fact that the vehicle physics were so shitty that mostly what ended up happening was my car/tank/whatever bouncing around upside-down.

Advent Rising sucks.

So the fact that it's buggy isn't as big an issue. What really gets me is when a good game, a really otherwise solid one, has a bunch of crappy bugs in it: like Prince of Persia Two Thrones. It freezes! The sound cuts out! Sigh.
 
I haven't encountered it, but someone on another forum linked to something from http://www.square-enix.co.jp/ff4a/info.html that talks about a save-erasing bug present in the Japanese and US versions of FF4 Advance:

We've been able to confirm the following issue with FFIV for the GBA, released December 15th. The issue and resolution are described below. Our apologies to our customers for any trouble this may have caused. Conditions for appearance of the issue: If you satisfy the following four conditions the game will freeze and there is a very small chance of the saved data being cleared. 1) You have between 1 and 4 party members 2) You've just selected Item on the Menu screen. 3) Using the formation command (don't know what its called in the US version off the top of my head, you know, the one where you can swap people around), you move a party member to an empty space 4) You again select the Item command. Resolution for the issue: Don't satisfy the above four conditions. Alternatively, after using the formation command (as described in #3) either immediately save or view the monster bestiary before using the item screen, or exit out of the menu system before using the item screen. If you do any of these the problem will not happen to you. We promise to be more careful in the future, sorry, if you have any questions, yadda yadda.
Click to expand...
 
Usually, it's a kind of bug that pops up at the end of the development cycle and there's still too much stuff to take care of.

it's the creative team's decision or the Producer's.
 
Only gonna get worse this gen as costs rise games get bigger and more complex and pubs rush titles out the door. Back in the day I was totally against patching but if devs are gonna release buggy games regardless then I expect patches, especially when the bugs are so crippling.
 
Wafflecopter said:
Pirates Of The Caribbean FTW. Looked pretty good....but the responses of the bugs still scare me away to this day.
Click to expand...

How that made it through Microsoft's standards testing is beyond me. Pirates was more bug than game.
 
KOTOR 2 on PC was buggy as hell, at least for me.

SO many graphical glitches, screens going black etc...

Nightmare.
 
Wafflecopter said:
I can think of.....zero PC games I own that have a game breaking bug. Nice generalization there ;)
Click to expand...

It still doesn't change the fact that it's more common on the PC platform.

Grim Fandango had a tendancy to freeze whenever a cutscene was going to be played.
Besides what counts as a game breaking bug? One that stops you from completing the game or one that makes the whole game playing experience really annoying/unbarable(soundglitches throughout the whole game etc.)?
 
bigrigs_3.jpg


/.thread
 
I was lucky enough not to come across this, but i heard that in prince of persia: warrior within there was a bug near the end that would cause your game to freeze and would not allow you to finish the game. It was one of the reasons that prince of persia: warriro withing was so disliked.
 
In PSP X-Men Legends 2, all my superheroes were stuck inside a big ass machine when the character I switched to was walking very close to it. I sold the game the day after :lol
 
civilstrife said:
I recently acquired Beyond Good and Evil for PC and lo and behold: there's a bug halfway through the game that totally impedes any further progress. An enemy is supposed to drop a key. He doesn't.

This is not just some random affair, but a well known and extremely common bug, for which the community had to release their own unofficial patch. As much as I love the game and respect ubisoft, this is just pathetic.

Anyway, feel free to use this thread to vent about stupid devlopers that don't test their stupid games or don't care enough to fix them.
Click to expand...

I ran into the same thing with BG&E....annoying...but it was nice to see the community create a fix that worked perfectly. Thats the thing with PC gaming....more bugs (generally) but also a lot easier to fix them. Particularly with stuff like Morrowind, there are some game breaking ones that you can fix on pc by just opening up the console and typing a few lines. On xbox, you're just SCREWED.
 
ISSUE DESCRIPTION
Hello,

I bought the Monopoly/Boggle/Yahtzee/Battleship Collection for the Nintendo
DS. However, the software code is not callibrated correctly so I cannot
pick tiles with any accuracy in the Monopoly and Yahtzee games. Of course
with a touch screen this sort of interaction NEEDS to be precise. I was
wondering if perhaps you corrected this in a later version of the game that
I did not purchase? This is not a problem w/ my Nintendo as it works fine
with other games I have. My DS is callibrated correctly. Thank you in
advance for your response.

Thank you
Reply:
US-SE-Tech6
<Tech6@atari.com>to me
More options Jan 4 (3 days ago)
I have played this myself here on two different DS systems with no problems.
As this is not a known issue there will likely be no updates to the game to
correct whatever it is you are experiencing.

I can only refer you to have the system serviced or to replace the product
at the point of sale for a different box.

CharlesD.
Tech6@Atari.com
____________

GAfers: My hardware is fine for every OTHER game. Maybe my DS reacts bad to shovelware.
 
Call of Cthulu and Morrowind for Xbox both had a shitload, though Cthulu's were more dangerous. There were several times on the boat where the game would NOT let you save (particularly during the attack). Like you'd save in a certain place, die, load the save and the game would crash instantly. Without a backup you were completely screwed. Even with one it was extremely annoying having to go through that entire fucking "boat attack" sequence every time you reloaded that level.

Morrowind's freezes I eventually got used to-- just save alot.
 
If I remember correctly, I think there was a way to freeze NBA JAM on Sega Genesis. I was using it whenever I was losing :D .
 
jett said:
Ubishit. Fuck 'em. I hope EA buys them out and detroys them.
Click to expand...

And I hope you get banned for saying such a horrendous thing.

That said..

20266484.JPG


BOY was this game buggy. It sometimes took me close to 5 minutes to talk to someone who was right in front of me. And yes, it's Ubisoft...
 
MomoPufflet said:
Call of Cthulu and Morrowind for Xbox both had a shitload, though Cthulu's were more dangerous. There were several times on the boat where the game would NOT let you save (particularly during the attack). Like you'd save in a certain place, die, load the save and the game would crash instantly. Without a backup you were completely screwed. Even with one it was extremely annoying having to go through that entire fucking "boat attack" sequence every time you reloaded that level.

Morrowind's freezes I eventually got used to-- just save alot.
Click to expand...

Bethesda is notorious for bugs. They never did fix the crash to desktop bug that so many encounter in morrowind for pc (i think it was related to sb live sound cards). I really hope they get their shit together for Oblivion.
 
The PC version of Dead to Rights had a bug that prevented you from completing the mandatory tutorial sequence at the beginning of the game.

Edit: Until the patch, of course.
 
It's not game-breaking, but the random pauses in FF4 Advance annoy me after a while. It feels like the game thread just sleeps sometimes while in battle for no reason.

Additionally, what's up with the bad d-pad sensitivity? Navigating menus is a pain.

The lag when using an item in the status screen is also annoying. Why pause half a second before applying my damn potion? Yar!

(This is all on a DS mind you).


Random: Selecting a character/costume in DoA4 Online. You need to tap directions/buttons as quickly as possible so it doesn't register multiple presses.
 
Pimpbaa said:
Bethesda is notorious for bugs. They never did fix the crash to desktop bug that so many encounter in morrowind for pc (i think it was related to sb live sound cards). I really hope they get their shit together for Oblivion.
Click to expand...

I can't play Morrowind for PC anymore because of that-- not until I reformat anyway, which I'm not even sure would fix it :|
 
PP:WW had tons where you might rewind time, and a certain character may disappear or cut scene will never trigger. I saw this once when I was running from that dude that kept chasing you. Rewound time and he disappeared and I couldn't progress.

Morrowind was unplayable after awhile for xbox. Would crash within 5 minutes of playtime. And the worst thing is that the bugs didn't show up until you were far into the game, wasting hours and hours of playtime. Not looking forward to Oblivion.

Soul Calibur 3 and Xbox 360 save game glitches are the worst though. Nothing like unlocking a bunch of shit, only to have your save game deleted or corrupted down the road. Can't think of anything else that would just make you say fuck it and shelve a game for life.
 
op_ivy said:
i ran into an interesting bug in pgr3 online today... basically, after the race was finished and the ai took over controlling everyones car, the game failed to go to the end race stats and conclude the race. after about 2-3 minutes of everyone wondering what the fuck was going on and being completely unable to skip back to the lobby i finally had to use the guide to return all the way out to the dash :(
Click to expand...
I also ran into a bug in PGR3. This one seems to happen almost everytime too. I am about head into the final few corners and one of those 'Online Bots' fishtails me out and I can not win a race.
 
Worst bug I've ever encountered was in Soul Reaver 2. If you scared away some bird (which was really a "projection" some evil dude was using to watch you) and then saved the game you could not go any further and would have to start the entire game over. I never bothered playing the game again, and after suffering through the bug fest of DX2 (which would have sucked if it had zero bugs) I don't buy anything published by Eidos anymore.
 
I pretty much gave up on PC gaming after it seemed every game I bought had some bug and I'd think maybe I'm just doing it wrong and then go to the game's forums and 75% of the threads would be people with the same issue. After a while I was like screw it and just stuck with console games.

One bug that got me recently was on Rebelstar Tactics where you destroy some things and progress but it never registers that you destroyed it and the stage just goes on forever. Lame.
 
Pretty much any game from Ubi Soft, I love their games but they release some of the buggiest games in the business.
 
You know, sometimes I wonder why nobody's tried to (or atleast I've never heard of it) sue software companies for releasing games with bugs so severe that they can hinder you from completing the game at all.

I can understand that there is going to be the the odd bug or two undetected through testing that'll cause funny things to happen or even crash your system. But obvious stuff that hinders you from completing the game?
 
Eric_S said:
You know, sometimes I wonder why nobody's tried to (or atleast I've never heard of it) sue software companies for releasing games with bugs so severe that they can hinder you from completing the game at all.

I can understand that there is going to be the the odd bug or two undetected through testing that'll cause funny things to happen or even crash your system. But obvious stuff that hinders you from completing the game?
Click to expand...

I dunno about suing. But reviewers really need to start getting harsher on reviewing games with bugs. I want to see a possible 9 or higher game knocked down to a 7 or something, just to send a message to developers that this is unacceptable.
 
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