The "Name your worst release" topic

[Neonin]

Oh, for those who mentioned Birth of the Federation...

I recently had a chance to play this again. The first time I owned it I was so bored, and it ran so slowly on my machine at the time, that I took it back. Needless to say my machine has improved considerably then, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

After about 200 turns your game slows down to hell and back. You can, however, work around this by saving your game, quitting, and loading back up again. Still, they never did figure out why it was doing it.

[Da_Imp]

Ahhh I've remembered an even earlier buggy game, released with a lack of features that were stated in the manual etc:

Outpost
...

Haha yeah that game was really hell to play. The concept was interesting though.

I think I can beat that one with an even older title, although I doubt many people would remember it...

"Utopia" anyone?

[Stormsong]

After about 200 turns your game slows down to hell and back. You can, however, work around this by saving your game, quitting, and loading back up again. Still, they never did figure out why it was doing it.

Another workaround, turn off the system names. Makes a huge difference at later stages of the game.


@Topic, Frontier: First Encounters - for the reasons previously mentioned

[kafiend]

As far as my comment about kittens earlier....
No animals were permanantly harmed in the course of the accident.... PC was never the same afterwards tho..random resets.

[Da_Imp]

I had a hdd with a broken pin, after pulling it out (to the nomal length) it worked really well. Untill i decided to unplug it and put the cable in the wrong way.... doh. Now it wont work with the pin pulled back out lol, lost 80gigs of space and games. ...

I had the same problem with my FreeBSD server. One of the drives in RAID config decided to hand me one of its pins while I was doing some maintenance. Went out, bought a soldering iron and some solder, got out a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass, stared at the damn thing for hours trying to get the solder in place.

Result: A fixed drive that works like a charm, and a headache

On Topic: Wasn't Civ III's release a bit bugged? I know they promised multiplayer in the original release but it eventually got implemented in an expansion afaik...

[Antilogic]

Civ 4 release has not been the best. Crash to desktop bugs coming here and there, multiplayer lobby a bit unstable, through online games themselves are fine. And some people haveing problems running the game despite being above rec req. Patch coming soon thou im told.

[Greyhawk1]

Not had any problems with my copy...so far.

Superb music too.

[Golden_Gonads]

Civ 4 release has not been the best. Crash to desktop bugs coming here and there, multiplayer lobby a bit unstable, through online games themselves are fine. And some people haveing problems running the game despite being above rec req. Patch coming soon thou im told.

No problems with it here, though thats because I play single player only. I do find that units move depressingly slowly though... Bah! I shall return unto the original... Ahhh... No I won't. Dratted modern computers without floppy drives.... And lazy people (Me) who can't be bothered to install them.....

[Jericho]

Project Snowblind. No bugs, just sheer utter rubish. Ebay servers ground to a halt with people trying (unsuccesfully) to sell them.

Someone here didn't like Jedi Knight? That is probably the best game ever released (PC version). Not a single bug in that game. Never needed patching (I think the patches were for better multiplayer). The most atmospheric game released. The music was just awesome. Even the Full Motion Video (Or 'Cut scenes' as they are called these days) were very good. Second game I ever bought on CD i think (First was Day of the Tenticle of course).

Anyone played Megatraveller? Great game on the Atari ST. PC version had a bug where you couldn't refuel your ship. Great, so you travel to 1 planet and are stranded.

A lot of people had problems with HL2 (Not me, Yippee!!!). I agree with the comment that it could have been a bit longer. That last level was a bit lame, although I did like the idea of the super-grav-gun as your only weapon. I wanted more of the intense combat of the prison/mental home.

Everyone raves about ravenholm, I agree it was good and creepy, and those evil black headcrabs are a nightmare. But that level is more of a chore for me then fun. I do enjoy the circular saw blades obviously.

[DurAlvar]

A lot of people had problems with HL2 (Not me, Yippee!!!).

Much as the single player was a little short, I'd say the only real problem with Half-Life 2 wasnt actually in the game itself, but rather from steam... cant see how they expected those crummy steam servers to support one of the biggest first-day sellers ever without a whole lot of downtime.

[Jericho]

I realise I'm upsetting lots of people here: Never had a problem with steam. Always downloads fine, never hangs or crashes.

I admit that people HAVING to download via steam even if they had bought the game in the shop was bloody stupid. I have no problem with them HAVING to register online, it was written on the game box afterall. But HAVING to update that first time was not acceptable.

I didn't experince any downtime or server problems on day of release. I had preloaded the majority of the game already of course.

[DurAlvar]

I didn't experince any downtime or server problems on day of release. I had preloaded the majority of the game already of course.

Really? Lucky, most of the people I've talked to who bought it then had major issues. Having said that, I dodged the whole problem by waiting 6 months and buying it for half the original price when the load on the steam servers was somewhat lessened...

[Jams79]

How can anyone say KOTOR was bad? it was some of Bethesda's best work. KOTOR2 was almost looking better till you realised there was a big hole where the end of the plot should have been, that one left me feeling all empty and violated.

Edit: Edited out some obvious factual errors

[Righteous]

lets just add the next game from that guys....

Jade Empire

not for beeing bad.... no!
FOR NOT BEEING AVAILABLE FOR PC!!!!

[Deleted User]

THE only time I have ever felt like I'd been robbed was
'Frontier First Encounters'

IO

[Jericho]

(small voice) I loved that game

[mute71]

Daggerfall, is one game not mentioned. Couldn't stand to play it. Loved the randomly crafted dungeons with no exit. Always dreaded to enter, not knowing if you ever saw the sun again.

Have played it later. Love the serie.

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Another game mentioned, Pool of radiance II... a favorite of mine.
Haven't noticed any bugs in the release available now. Although hard core fans don't approve of it. Good game though.

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The release of First Encounter, o so disapointing. Wanted more. Now knowing what they left out makes me little sad. Really, really love the universe and the fact that planet was... yes. Planet. (One thing egosoft. Forget the graphics, forget the story... make me frontier planets! :) )
Edit: The opening in Frontier: First Encounter is one of my all time high. Even if the game was full of bugs, the opening made me wanna play it.

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Only game returned due to its unplayable state: BattleCruiser. (The first one). Take2 was the publisher. Smiled when i read somewhere that egosoft should have used them instead of deep silver. As they are good. They weren't at all at that time. (Released a lot of bad game... oh, shudder, can't still really believe in a quality take2 release... Ripper... ieak).

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Also remeber alot of earlier game as F15, F19 and some Testdrive games. What we accepted. Geez. Wonder if todays younger generation even would want to play the games i played.

The problem you went through to play a game in dos.
I know i'm still a little tilted in my head since then. I still do think that 15-20 fps i very acceptable framerates. :-)

Edit: Removed some lines that could be offensive.

[Da_Imp]

Aaah yes, the testdrive series. How I adored Testdrive 3 with its free-roaming... Not a lot of driving games who adopted that... After that the series went downhill... (Has fond memories of the Pinifarina)

As for Jade Empire... It runs perfectly well on my X-box

[X-Warrior B AS]

Anyone played Megatraveller? Great game on the Atari ST. PC version had a bug where you couldn't refuel your ship. Great, so you travel to 1 planet and are stranded.

I have it, and I beat it once... never had any problems refueling. But it came in a cheap 3-games package (along with Elite Plus and Wing Commander ), so might be an updated version.

[mute71]

Testdrive 3. Ah. Memories. Calling that a racing game by todays standard :). I remebered being floating around on somehting that looked like road, running thrue somehting that was great looking atmospheric polygon landscape. Windshield wipers, headlights. Exciting "racing". Wonder if we would call the gameplay bugged today? (But it was, very enjoyable)

And a note about manuals that coincide with the actual game. Anyone played Battlecruiser (the original take 2 release) will remember the... missing manual. Or the pamplet of something resembling a draft of one. NOTHING was implemented in that game. Smart severed the ties with take2 afterwards (if i remember correctly).

Someone mentioned Boiling Point. I agree it is/was buggy. Oh, but i do like it. Waiting for my new computer to try it out once more. (I'm sure it will still be bugged and no patch, ever, will fix that game. But its still my favorite release of a rpg/fps hybrid this year!)

Falcon 4. :) I wanted to play that game so much i upgraded my ram to a woping 64 MB! I was still flying rectangles. The game was in such terrible shape as it was not really playable till a year afterward (1.08us). Today its re-released as Falcon 4: Allied Forces!

Anybody remeber Eurofighter 2000. Great game. The dynamic gameplay was so dynamic at release day that you didn't have to do anything to win the war. You always wone. The game wasn't really fixed until Super Ef2000. Some years later. (with a great addon called tactcom included).

I think my history of gameing still make me forgive publishers to release buggy games.

Wonder if im a sadomascohist gamingwize... :)

Calling X3 the shoodiest, baddest release ever?