Let’s face it, sometimes stuff happens and everything that can go wrong for a video game launch does. But, that doesn’t mean they still suck! Here are eight games that got a lot better with a little TLC.
Diablo III
“Error 37”
For anyone who’s played Diablo 3, this message is as unwelcome as the BSOD that plagued Windows ME. Though, Blizzard isn’t as sluggish as some other publishers with updates and fixes so these issues were largely resolved, another came up that can kill any online game, content. Once you beat the game, there wasn’t much in the way of replaying it. The only reason most played it after a month or so was farming for items they could sell on the auction house. The AH at launch allowed for both real money and virtual money exchanges for goods. As you can imagine, this led to quite a bit of exploits and gold farming.
Thankfully, Blizzard hates cheaters as much as any online player and eventually removed the auction house, understanding that it just wasn’t a good idea for Diablo 3. They also added new stack of difficulty levels for players to test their skills and gear in with prestige levels that allowed one to continue leveling their characters far beyond the hard-level cap.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
While most games launch going upward, Halo: The Master Chief Collection seemed to be pointed downward before being released. With server issues that made online play almost impossible for most players to even play a game touted for its multiplayer gaming.
While most of those issues have been fixed, there are still a few ongoing issues with its matchmaking leading one of their community managers to come out and admit as much:
“There are a lot of legitimate issues and while it’s unfortunate that some people have been driven to such extreme measures of expressing their dissatisfaction it doesn’t mean the game isn’t without its problems,” said 343 Community Manager Brian Jarrard.
Microsoft is hush hush with sales figures about the title. But with a combined 60 million units sold between the collective Halo games available in this title, the amount of copies sold could be a hefty amount of concurrent players, even if only the most hardcore Halo players are still playing it.
Here’s hoping for their sakes Microsoft continues to support the title.
Assassin’s Creed Unity
Assassin’s Creed has typically been free of most launch day issues. The servers are usually working and the gameplay is what one expects when playing an Assassin’s Creed title. Unity, however, seemed to make up for the lack of serious bugs in previous titles with a vengeance. From framerate issues, server sync issues that allow players to loot objects (especially from crates) to the more hilarious texture issues that made portions of a characters body simply disappear.
Ubisoft did try to fix the issues, and they offered free DLC to make up for the frustrating issues that the players experienced. However, it came with a price. If you accepted the DLC, you agreed not to sue them in court!
Like Paula Abdul, Ubisoft enjoys taking one step forward and two steps back…
Rainbow Six: Siege
The Rainbow Six franchise was always one of my favorite FPS franchises. The “cop and robber” feel to them always felt as though the missions you were on were to get rid of a bad guy. Tactical combat was always more intricate and involving than just a “run and gun” type of game, such as Call of Duty. That is, when you can start it.
One of the issues that haunted the launch and, to this day, is still an issue, is a bug that prevents the game from even launching properly. If you’re one of the lucky few that can get in, the multi-player servers aren’t much better with frequent disconnects, high lag and confusion when matching you up in the game you’re trying to join.
Since the time of its release and now, fans of the game have received free DLC and much better connections for their multi-player games. At least you get free goods for the trouble.
Battlefield 4
A game as synonymous with large area combat as it is with some random guy running in the cover shot, Battlefield 4 wasn’t without its share of issues at launch. Imagine ducking for cover and some weak bullet still hitting you through the wall or trying to play, only finding out they are forced into spectator mode. The amount of issues grew so large that fans actually filed a class action lawsuit against EA for the shoddy way the game was launched.
Since release, EA and DICE have released numerous patches that have fixed almost all of the issues, bringing down the bug list to a respectable level of random actions at random times.
It was a lesson learned for EA with the amount of bad publicity for a game that could have done so well had they not cut corners in development.
Final Fantasy XIV
If there’s one thing that will kill off an MMO, it’s a shoddy launch. In fact, only MMORPG title was able to survive a terrible launch and that was World of Warcraft.
The launch of Final Fantasy XIV was one of those bad launches. Players reported unfinished content all over the game, showing it was released prematurely, something that’s always going to go against the grain of the attitudes of players.
It was such a bad start to the game, with so much work still needing to be done to finish it, Square-Enix simply worked on a new version and released Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn instead. I suppose that’s one way of fixing the issues.
Dark Souls II
Dark Souls II, sequel to the game that broke more controllers that I’m sure Sony and Microsoft made a killing in controller sales through the games’ peak popularity, was expected to have a much better launch on the PC than the original did. The port for the original was.. well.. bad. It was so bad, in fact, that it relied on a fan based fix to actually allow the game to run properly. The fact that a PC game was launched on the platform without basic keyboard and mouse support is like a console game without a controller.
Thankfully, the devs for Dark Souls rather enjoy their fans and want to do good by them and have fixed much of what affected the second Dark Souls game while ensuring that people were only upset at being killed by the enemy, not some glitch.
Batman: Arkham Knight
The third installment of the Batman: Arkham developed by Rocksteady Games was so buggy and far from ready that Warner Brothers actually pulled it from store shelves until it could be fixed. What’s even worse is they actually knew the bugs existed and still launched it anyway.
It was one of the worst examples of the “release now, patch later” mentality that publishers seem to get with bigger budget games. It took a few months before fans saw any stability fixes in their game and it would take even longer for the PR damage begin to be fixed.
But, eventually they fixed the issues and optimized the game to run much smoother on the recommended hardware and now the game is rather fun to play!
Do you know of other games that deserve a second chance? Please comment below and let us know!
