WHERES SHONUFF???

I haven't had much of a problem with matchmaking or the glitches, but they seem to be more so ones that douchebags abuse to win. That being said, it's still unacceptable.

i figured epic didn't have testers after ut3 on the ps3 had severe problems. the one i encountered were mainly taken care of but they only patched it once and a good friend can't play it all after that patch but his problem has more to due with gamespy. AND after requesting gamespy to reset his profile they wouldn't. bs!

I think the future of gaming is going to see developers mailing do-it-yourself repair kits to customers whose consoles break down after two hours of play.

I'm glad you brought this up, Jim. I've been seriously disappointed with a countless number of games this past year, while some have been passable, others have been down right shameful. Whether it maybe the case with a large number of glitches, poor story, bad camera/gameplay, or an attempt to change up the gameplay that falls flat on its face.

While this game spawned some of the greatest games I've ever played, it's also created some of the worst, and most downright biggest disappointments in my gaming history. Were lucky to have such incredible games to have come out this past year to overshadow the much poorer games that most people can ignore while they're playing the better ones.

On a side note, it's strange. To this day, I have no desire to play Gears of War 2. I loved the first, but the more and more videos I watch of the sequel in an attempt to get me pumped to play it, it just makes me noticed how little it has changed.

@nukka

file shows no record of a citizen by that name

@Jim's article

I'm concerned about this over all issue. Pretty much every game I've played this year has a nasty bug in it that ruins the experience. I could list them . . . heh, maybe I I should blog it!

But I think its pretty unfortunate that with ever balooning production budgets on games, we're still managing to get really nasty bugs at release. I've experienced so many freezes on my 360. Its one of the reasons I've taken a break from Fallout 3, and why I haven't steam rolled through Saints Row 2.

Certainly not all bugs are gamebreakers. I think Fable II and Castle Crashers were amazing despite their bugs. And of course, movies release all the time with "glitches" in set flubs and continuity breaks.

But. as a QA man, I'd like to think that either QA can do much better in the industry as a whole, or that QA can play a larger role than it appears to in some cases.

Having taken software engineering courses as part of my computer science degree, i can say that its not all cutting corners and lack of testing. As software projects get larger and more ambitious, with more and more people working on them, and hardware gets more advanced, the difficulty in not creating and/or finding bugs becomes exponentially harder.

Youd be surprised at the fail rate of high budget software; its ridiculous. Meanwhile, assuming a project even comes to fruition, testing is whole new challenge. MS brought some well known tester guy in to look at their tests for XP, i think; he found that they were only looking at 1% of the code. Yeah, make jokes as you please :P.

Its come now to the point where the only way you could possibly find all the bugs, is to have several hundred thousand or even millions of testers, going over every minuscule aspect of the game. Yeah, thats right, you put it out there for everyone to play.

And thats were the bullshit comes in, that you are quite right to point out. We pay plenty of money for these games; we expect a good product. We should not be paying for a beta.

Devs like Bungie and Valve both made a good example last year, with Halo 3 and Tf2, and i hope more devs make an effort like this. If not for our sakes, for theirs, so they dont have crap like this ruining their good name.

@Tubatic

"But. as a QA man, I'd like to think that either QA can do much better in the industry as a whole, or that QA can play a larger role than it appears to in some cases."

Seconded. These kind of bugs were either not found or found and reported but decided to be not worth fixing. Either way, it's sloppy sloppy work and reeks of "gotta get it out on time". Makes me wonder if it's their QA that sucks, or if they just outsource their QA and thus have to compete for resources with every other project the outsource qa has.

Hahhahaha, that video was BRUTAL.

@Technophile

Don't even get me staaahted on my opinions on QA outsourcing. :)

@Ajaxander: As icarus pointed out, Infinity Ward and Bungie were able to release products with far fewer glitches/exploits because they did, in fact, release a beta of their respective games. Betas are exactly what you say they are, thousands or millions of testers essentially getting a chance to test your software.

There is no need to open up the entire game to an entire community in order to perform some major load testing and QA testing, which they flat out didn't do.

In order to keep the game a secret they went ahead and released the multiplayer in beta form and now we're buying an unfinished product with glitches. Something tells me a month long beta would have done this game wonders.

It's still no reason to post things (not you) like "so-called testers." Calling into question the professionalism of the people making the game, specifically the guys who can't do anything about the bugs, is low-class.

Okay, I doubt the invisible glitch would have ever been found by epic. I imagine that Epic tests their games the way a normal user would do, not flip a lag switch in the middle of a match.

While most of this shit is Epic's fault the lag isn't 100% them...

Really what the fuck do people expect? Live is a shit service. You're paying to host your own games via listen servers. Of course it's going to lag like crazy.

I don't know why retards still put up with paying for that shit.

Iron Dragon: For sure, Live is ridiculous. Paying for my internet twice? Awesome. Microtransactions for EVERYTHING? Awesome. But what's the alternative? I own both a 360 and a PS3, and when possible I buy a game for the PS3 to avoid the M$ wallet raid. But PSN is hardly the pinnacle of excellence, and I'd rather suffer the stupid fleesing than miss out on a great game. /sigh

"But what's the alternative?"

PC gaming... So yeah I expect better from MS.

Live would be acceptable if it was free. It's not free however. Steam, Xfire, Gamespy, etc are all free. Why the fuck does it cost MS $50 a year per user? What are they doing that's so special? Aside from screwing over their customers with a "Because we can" tax.

"Live would be acceptable if it was free. It's not free however. Steam, Xfire, Gamespy, etc are all free. Why the fuck does it cost MS $50 a year per user? What are they doing that's so special? Aside from screwing over their customers with a "Because we can" tax."

For some reason Xbox players love handing MS money for a service that should be free. Ok yeah yeah, the Netflix service has be pay-to-use, but the multiplayer? Hell no.

Someone is going to post a reply stating all kinds of features for the reason why. Sorry, they should be free. Just like the PC, PSN, and Wii.

@Miketava: Beware of the achievement eating glitch. Make sure you always quit from the main menu, or you run the risk of all achievement progress and story progress being wiped. When you loose 20,000/100,000 kills for the seriously 2.0 achievement, it will piss you off.

Single campaign playthrough was good times, for it's Michael Bay-ness fun. But I never got around really enjoying multi because of the slow match making system. Some bugs if/when happens occasionally is OK. But these are obviously bugs that are somewhat easy to recreate. And that would piss the shit out of me if it was used against me in multi.

Also, I can't believe they didn't use the following line in the video "LOOK AT ALL THAT JUICE!"

online gaming sucks most times these days.....

Do us all a favour, when GoW3 comes out, only buy used copies of it or better yet, rent it. just like i did for fable 2. no way in hell these lying bastards are ending up with my cash (directly).
Game like fallout and CoD FOUR, do way more than there share to earn my cash.

fair play if the matchmaking was fine then i would possibly have forgiven it but waiting 20 mins to connect to a match which might be ram out with gliching ass holes. no that not good one bit

Reaprar at 12/31/2008 07:14

Someone is going to post a reply stating all kinds of features for the reason why. Sorry, they should be free. Just like the PC, PSN, and Wii.

If PSN and the Wii's online 'service' is what free netplay is, I will happily continue to give Microsoft my money.



for the Wii i agree it sucks ... but the PSN is more then ok for a free service ... i suggest you get a better internet provider instead of giving your $$$ to M$ ... cause i see no difference between PSN and XBL when i play online

It is absolutely inexcusable that a company raking in millions of dollars from the sale of games can get away with releasing such a shoddy product.

Games like Gears of War 2, Fallout 3 and even Valve's Source-based games (Left 4 Dead PC) have all featured either bugs present in previous versions or piled even more on top. If it wasn't for dribbling morons apologising for these fuck ups and the culture of getting reviews out as soon as possible, publishers might think twice about putting a half-finished, buggy, exploit-ridden game on store shelves.