The need to complete

[KwaggaDan]

Recently I purchased Splinter Cell Double Agent. The game has been out forever, I know, and yet I never had the money or the time or the game was out of stock. But nevertheless I finally got myself a copy. Then I got to the first mission where the game bombs as soon as I try an equip a 'sticky shocker,' so off I went trolling the mirror sites to find the patch I needed. And I found it. Woooo!

But then the game got to another mission where I had to hide under a table, except my character magically transcends space and time and phases through the table, getting spotted. Also I had to record an NPC, except he seemed to know I was there and refused to say anything until the timer ran out. It was so much fun I nearly through the disc out my window.

This brings me to the crux of my argument. What is up with the half-completed games that we have purchased recently. You never see a movie stop halfway through because of an error. Yet, it's so difficult to stay in the mindset when you have to restart the game every 10 seconds (especially when you can't skip the game developer intros). I remember Bioshock 2 having similar problems up to the point where my game guy warned me that "running Windows and expecting it to work may cause a crash."

Isn't this what Beta is for, or are the games so pathetic in Beta that this is the best they can do?

 

[Legion]

Laziness and the hope to get a game out as quick as possible, in order to get massive sales off of the pre-release hype I'd say were the main reasons for why this occurs.

 

[Outright Villainy]

Well sometimes bugs only come about under really rare conditions, the kind that doesn't crop up in a dvd (films by their nature are pretty linear.) Hell, team fortress has had around a hundred patches, and there's still bugs cropping up. Some bugs just tend to be more serious than others. My guess is as games become more and more complex, finding and fixing the bugs becomes a much greater time consuming process. Fallout 3 was huge, and was ridiculously buggy.

 

[KwaggaDan]

I understand that, especially when the game comes out, for there to be one or two bugs. But what breaks my heart is the older versions, which were just as linear, never suffered from these severe bugs.

Besides Fallout 3 had issues, but you could work your way around them. Constantly being spotted in the same area, and having no way to progress is like reading a book that switches to Farsi at a random point.

 

[imaloony]

Usually, I complete games through to the end. Hell, I completed Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Although the story was a driving point there) AND Prince of Persia, which is saying something.

The only games I can think of that I've owned or barrowed and never finished are Spiderman 3 (Not only bad, but stupidly difficulty), The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (I didn't like it, although I've gotten back into it recently and it looks more promising now, let's see if I can get through it.), The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (I'm currently stuck towards the end, I'll get around to using a walkthrough soon...) and maybe a few assorted Gameboy games.

 

[Vivace-Vivian]

Ugh Dragonage. I put it down and man it's going to be hard to go back. Usually I don't stop unless I didn't really like it in the first place in which case, why pick it up again?

 

[Moonmover]

@imaloony and Vivace-Vivan: Read the opening post, fools!

 

[manythings]

Well the title is misleading in that way but if the explanatory post is more than 5 lines long people usually don't bother reading it.

OT: Road to Victory is the most glitchinest game I have ever heard of (I didn't play it personally) and this was ?60 on the xbox 360. I was told it was a horror landscape (WW2 FPS) enemies would run at you through walls, there would be holes in the ground that just had a texture layer, several stages were a few ugly, easy and simultaneously frustrating minutes long. This is the epitomy of the "shit-out" game.

 

[KwaggaDan]

Yeah, you have a point. But I guess one of the reasons someone wouldn't complete a game is because it's buggy, so I still win?

And if there's going to a be a 'glitchiest games ever" honorable mention should go out to Prince of Persia Warrior Within (ironically by the same Developer as Splinter Cell). I had to get another copy to finish it, due to the random glitches...