Category: Games

I am noticing a new trend in games and I really don’t like it. What I am talking about is publishers rushing developers to finish their product, and then releasing an un-finished or buggy game. The most obvious example is Tribes: Vengeance, but just about every game that has been released recently has been buggy. Take F.E.A.R. for example. From what I am hearing the game is extremely buggy, and a patch came out 1 day after release. Granted that isn’t as bad as Tribes: Vengeance. Entire features were left out of and were intended to be patched in later. There are actually buttons in the game that don’t work, because the patch that was supposed to enable them never came out.

Now I am not against patches, I am all for fixing the games. What I want is the games to spend more time in development and QA. Tons of people never patch their games. Either because they don’t know how, or they don’t have a fast internet connection to download the patches. Developers need to make sure the product they ship is playable and as bug free as possible out of the box.

After reading some of the quake 4 reviews from various review sites (gamespot, IGN, ect) I absolutely can not wait to get my hands on it. Why? Well it’s certainly not because of high scores, because quake 4 didn’t get amazing reviews, it got good ones though (around 8.0/10.0). So why then am I looking forward to it so much? Well, lets start with what the reviewers think is good. Generally they all feel that the single player experience is fun, as I expected. It is after all made by raven and they know good game play and story. Where quake 4 lost points was in its multiplayer aspect. One of the reviews basically said its “quake 3 with better graphics”. Well stop me if I am wrong, but isn’t that exactly the point? I am pretty sure the fan base wanted basically the same exact game with a major graphical upgrade. And if that is what they got, this game will be amazing and have a huge loyal fan base. The multiplayer is getting knocked a few points because it’s the same as quake 3? Last time I checked, quake 3 online was a ton of fun with game play easy to learn and difficult to master. Since when does good game play stop being good?

NwR 07: you should go get Ncaa Football 2006
NwR 07: game is amazing
LtNeutralX2: is it realistic football?
NwR 07: yea it’s pretty close
LtNeutralX2: if so then lame
LtNeutralX2: you only need one realistic football game. After that it’s all the same, only with different rosters.
LtNeutralX2: I bet my nfl 2k on dreamcast is like exactly the same game as that one, only with an outdated roster
NwR 07: not close
LtNeutralX2: I bet it is
LtNeutralX2: if it’s realistic football
LtNeutralX2: it’s not like the rules change
LtNeutralX2: and it’s not like they added melee attacks
LtNeutralX2: football is football

Yeah, I finished this two days ago but could not post because of the site update. Anyways…

This was a pretty good game. I like to think of it as kotor lite. The character building was not that deep, nor was the fighting. The awesome BioWare story and dialogue (and one of the best plot twists since kotor) is all here however. The whole setting and plot of the game is actually pretty cool too.

Yup, somehow I managed to find the time to beat a game. Its a pretty sweet game too. If only it wasn’t released in a beta state it would have gotten good reviews.