PC letdowns of 2008 |
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| BY Emmanuel Petti Dec. 26th, 2008 | More on: |
It’s that time of year, the time where everyone proclaims the year’s best of everything that is. I bet everyone is feeling pretty good during this holiday season, so I wanted to take some time to rain on the parade a bit by taking a look back at 2008 and revisit some of the major disappointments gamers had to deal with in the PC gaming world, starting with the long-awaited StarCraft II.
StarCraft II as three separate titles
Usually, BlizzCon is full of wonder and behold for the many fans of Blizzard and their titles, and StarCraft is no exception. For over ten years now, we’ve been waiting for the inevitable sequel to the near-perfect RTS. Needless to say that when Blizzard announced that Starcraft II would be broken up into three separate games released at different intervals at this year’s BlizzCon, fans where horrified. We can’t help but wonder if this had anything to do with Activision’s influence and their vocal position on “exploiting” IP’s like illegal under-aged prostitution rings, or if Blizzard simply saw some merit behind this philosophy of pacing the experience. Whatever the actual reasoning, this came to us as a major disappointment.
December 26th, 2008
at 12:17 pm
Eh, I purchased both AoC and Warhammer at release. AoC wasn’t interesting enough to get past the initial month but I played Warhammer for 2 subscribed months. My specs are clearly above the recommended yet the game still needs some serious optimizations, total lag in keep RvR and some other issues.
If I could add a game to this list, it would probably be the Mass Effect port, for now. Though well optimized in terms of performance, it lacks in stability. It seems most nVidia card users who want or have to keep their drivers updated are unable to do so to prevent the game from freezing and making the user force restart. If one has updated drivers, the game freezes in various intervals from every 10 minutes to every few hours, sometimes rendering the game inoperable due to an error that is apparently the fault of the Unreal 3 engine. Bioware’s only advice seems to be to not update drivers, well then, how are people supposed to the play some of the newly released titles? Mass Effect is well optimized for the PC which can’t be said about most PC ports today, but it’s driver compatibility issues make it playable for only a few minutes, only having to restart your computer after.
December 26th, 2008
at 1:17 pm
Spore has many more problems than those stated.
It is not innovative in the slightest and only mixes other genres together poorly. the space stage is painfull to play too.
The creator is the best feature by miles.
December 26th, 2008
at 1:53 pm
Mass Effect is a big one too, though personally I was able to resolve all the issues that came up and got it to run with out freezing. I actually had a different driver issue with my Realtek integrated sound card. Once I got past that, the game held up and redeemed istelf.
The innovation I was referring to in Spore comes from the creator aspect. Its the only game thus far to pull off true procedural based creation. The concept itself is innovative as well, esp in a world where creationism is still very dominate. The potential was there, it just wasn’t pushed to the limit.
December 26th, 2008
at 2:17 pm
Maybe the original Witcher, with all the glitching. The game is amazing but glitches are sad.
December 26th, 2008
at 5:53 pm
“Mass Effect is a big one too, though personally I was able to resolve all the issues that came up and got it to run with out freezing. I actually had a different driver issue with my Realtek integrated sound card. Once I got past that, the game held up and redeemed istelf.”
So you view Mass Effect as a PC let down because you had computer problems? And once you fixed them the game ran fine? that… doesnt make sense.
December 26th, 2008
at 6:31 pm
I don’t personally, but as a writer I tend to write from the community’s perspective as much as I can. I think the general consensus is that the port of Mass Effect to the PC wasn’t a great one between the many video card and audio driver issues causing the game to be unplayable by many. The game itself is brilliant and technical issues alone didn’t warrant it being on this list. I was simply supporting Vidal’s comment as well as providing my own viewpoint.
December 26th, 2008
at 7:07 pm
My PC letdown of 2008 was when I bought a new laptop, then bought Team Fortress 2 only to find out that my laptop can’t run it at higher than 25 fps. =(
December 26th, 2008
at 8:16 pm
having a good idea really wont cut it when it is executed sooo poorly.
The levels all ended up looking bad though so even though the tech was there it just did not do anything interesting
It was my biggest pc disappointment
December 26th, 2008
at 9:13 pm
I waited months and months for Grand Theft Auto 4 to release on PC. At first I got so excited for the game that I rented it on the PS3 and after an hour or so in, I decided I would rather hold out and wait for the PC version. Rockstar missed the November 18th release date, and pushed it to December 9th. Okay, I thought — more time for them to work out the kinks. When it finally released, the game was horribly ported. Most players are having lag and stuttering issues and the ones who brag that they don’t have problems are probably the ones who pirated it. Biggest letdown of 2008 for me…
December 28th, 2008
at 9:00 am
Hey whats with the multi-page article.
Its really annoying and not good.
Reminds me of those American big newspaper website articles which are spread unnecessarily over multiple pages.
1 article = 1 page
December 28th, 2008
at 9:09 pm
AoC had great PvP? I played for two months post-launch and PvP was broken and nonexistant. You couldn’t land hits on other players if they strafe danced, and healers were overpowered.
Now I’ve been playing Warhammer for the last month and I’m really impressed. PvP isn’t “slow motion” at all, it’s hectic and satisfying, particularly at Tier 2 on Mourkain Temple, or Tier 3 on Tor Anroc. Can you judge PvP by playing your level 1 character once on a Tier 1 map? That must be what you did. I’m not a PvE connosieur, but I’m happy with the questing I’ve done. The main improvement Warhammer brings to MMOs is that you get equivalent experience for PvPing as you do for anything else in the game.
Overall I guess I get the impression you didn’t play either of these MMOs more than a few hours before writing their obituaries. Shameful.
December 29th, 2008
at 8:55 am
If you want to debate about why Warhammer shouldn’t be on this list, or why AoC did or didn’t have good PvP, feel free to start a discussion on our community board. I’ll be glad to share my experiences in both games with you in great detail.
December 29th, 2008
at 11:43 pm
Seems like your contradicting yourself, you criticize AoC and WAR for rushing their games out to soon and then turn around and criticize Battlefield Heroes for taking it’s time.
December 30th, 2008
at 12:04 am
And I’d like to add STALKER: Clear Sky as another big let down, since the Shadow of Chernobyl was almost legendary PC(!) only game.
December 30th, 2008
at 8:14 am
To Imp: Remember that this is a list of disappointments, and like I said in the article, while we’re disappointed that it got delayed, we’re glad they’re not rushing it out the door. I’d hardly call that criticizing, I’m just disappointed that I have to wait a bit longer to play it.