Dear Shadowrun Returns: Fuck Off

The BBQ Pit
1

Yes, I know this is technically a Game Room topic. But I’m really pissed.

Months ago, I bought Shadowrun Returns as I really, really wanted to play it (this isn’t rocket science here). Yes, it’s a pretty good game alright and was well-received all around. There’s only one small, tiny problem.

IT DOESN’T WORK!

The list of bugs is incredibly depressing, to the point where one really doubts the good sense of the developers given the sheer number and variety of game killing bugs, let alone the various broken systems and a few bad design decisions. The developers, of course, did what all professional game developers do when these things happen: take the money and give a giant middle finger to their paying customers.

Sure, the motherfucking assholes at Harebrained Schemes managed to muster a patch or two… which added a pile of new bugs while doing nothing to fix most of the issues. Not that it stopped them from starting work on a goddamn expansion pack. Note that their major response to a bug report is as follows: (1) Oh, that broke your game? Well don’t do that. (2) Oh, we broke the game? Oh well, just be patient. I’m sure we’ll get to it one of these months.

So let me give you goddamned filth-spewing shitfaced bitches a lesson in software development. First off, you don’t use technology you don’t fucking understand. And it’s damn clear you have no idea how to use Unity. Fun fact, I have several Unity Engine games. But the only one which complete fucked up in this manner is Shadowrun Returns. And the reason is probably that you didn’t fucking test it, since your plan was to get your hands on it, stuff it into your game, and release a major engine update without any testing. And I know you didn’t fucking test it because people reported major bugs that you still haven’t fixed. So no, I don’t accept that you’re “too small” to properly test your software because you had every warning. The only thing too small was your good sense.

In short, fuck you, you thieving jerkasses. Don’t buy anything these people make, because they’re lazy motherfuckers who should be boiled alive in their own feces. I’ll count the money I paid a wise investment to you know you care jack-fucking-squat about your customers, so I’ll never make this mistake again.

2

I’ve played it. Didn’t notice any bugs, game-killing or otherwise. The clunkiness of the editor is my only gripe with the game.

3

So… should I get it?

4

Huh.

My copy on the iPad works ok, a little clunky sometimes but it’s pushing the limits of what an iPad 2 can do.

5

I played it, and also failed to notice any serious bugs in the campaign. I guess I got lucky. The gameplay was a bit clunky, though. I never bothered trying to figure out the editor or to go looking for player-made stuff, as it wasn’t readily apparent how to do so, and the game never quite captured my interest enough to want more.

I was mostly disappointed that, despite the things the game does well (in an old-school, retro kinda way), it felt very shallow for a modern game. Definitely didn’t live up to the hype, IMO.

6

I played it, it worked but was somewhat clunky.

In my opinion the game is a huge let down. If you have played Shadowrun on the Sega Genesis or SNES, you will be disappointed when playing this game.

The skill tree system is linear and boring, the division of classes is pointless, hacking in game was boring, and it isn’t sandbox. The game is designed to make it look like you have choices and have to think, but in reality anyone could smash through with persistence. Shit game.

They did you a favor by not having you waste time on it.

7

Which bugs, specifically? What happens and what, if any, error messages are you seeing? Maybe there’s something we can help you with.

With which we can help you. I hate when I do that.

8

That may be. I am and was a huge Shadowrun fan, so got very excited about this game. Even if it wasn’t that good, I was happy just to have a Shadowrun product again. That’s got me into gaming in the first place. And a lot of people reportedly did enjoy the campaign, plus there’s custom user-made content. So I figured this was a good bet.

While I appreciate the offer, I’ve roamed every message board which might have some answers or contains a description of my problem and sifted through months of forum posts. I’ve tried everything from replacing .dll files to deleting supposedly-corrupt fonts to editing various options and setting compatibility modes and everything in between. Harebrained Schemes doesn’t care enough to do more than offer weasel words. I also noticed that every supposed “fix” for the issue involves blaming some obscure aspect of the user’s system and shrugging. While that’s possible, it’s more likely that some internal program bug exists and that it may occasionally go away on its own. Then, people trying to various actions all report that some random thing they did “fixed” the problem.

The most irritating thing is that I can’t even leave negative feedback on STEAM, on the grounds that I haven’t played it long enough.

9

That I can help you with: leave the game running overnight (assuming it’s the “hours played” counter that needs to be run up.)

10

On the off chance it doesn’t crash on startup, I’ve never gotten past the start menu. So far, with all of my troubleshooting Steam recognizes… two minutes of play time. I need five, which take a lot of restarting. At this point, it’s just not worth it. I just needed to vent.

(I have no idea how STEAM actually calculates play time. I’ve seen it be spot-on for some games and massively inaccurate for others.)

11

Do you have to get past the start menu? What happens if you just sort of leave the start menu up?

12

I’ve had a Steam game do this to me before (though not this particular game). Have you tried verifying the integrity of the game cache? That’s what worked for me.

13

To be fair, that’s just the stock campaign. Neverwinter Nights 2 was just the same : a marginally decent RPG system, with a horribly cliché repetitive POS of a main scenario. But first of all, they batted it out the ballpark with the expansions, and of course since the editor was packed with the game plenty of user-made stuff came after it.

That being said, I will agree that I wasn’t really impressed with the gameplay itself. The game’s balance is way out of whack (be a shaman gunner. Rock everything to pieces while your summon rocks the pieces themselves.) and the tactical combat was anything but.
Still, I mean, it’s Shadowrun. One of the greatest RPG settings there is. That’s gotta count for sum’in’.

14

It dies.

Yes. Yes, I have. I’ve tried enough troubleshooting steps to choke a donkey. In fact, I’ve spent equal time trying to fix this thing as the entire campaign would have taken. Hence why I’m so pissed. There’s a multi-layered aspect to the pissedness: myself for wasting time after money, Harebrained Schemes for making a pile of crapware, whoever wrote a pile of shit into Unity3D.

No more. Not worth it.

Breathe, Bandit. Let’s go to the next thread and complain about bad drivers. Count to 10.

15

This kinda feels like I’m picking at someone else’s scab, but have you checked your drivers are up to date?

16

Count me in with the crowd saying that I never experienced any bugs with the game.

17

I suppose I’m just echoing here, but I had the same experience as everyone else in the thread: there were absolutely no bugs preventing me from fully experiencing this utterly disappointing game.

18

I didn’t experience bugs until I tried some user-generated content, and that was not too exciting a scenario. But I know the frustration of being one a handful of lucky slobs a game decided not to work for, so generally speaking I empathize.

19

Another player who never had the slightest problem. You may just have some weird combination of hard/soft ware that screws the game up for you. I picked up Serious Sam 3 in a recent Steam Sale. Not an especially buggy game by all accounts. It doesn’t work on my PC, crashes almost immediately. Patched, re-installed, updated, nothing. Still crashes. Eventually I just shrugged my shoulders, it’s still in my library. Next time I replace my old PC it’ll probably work fine. I bet if you were to get a new PC, Shadowrun would probably work fine.

Note, I am not suggesting you actually do this. My point is sometimes a game just won’t run on your particular hardware/software and no amount of developer patching will fix the 1 in a million combination on your machine. It sucks, but if you spend any amount of time as a PC gamer you’ll have to accept this will occasionally happen over the years.

20

Yes.

Bullshit. Occasional problems may come up, but I’ve seen multiple reports of the same bug. Both HBS and Unity3D are aware of it… they just haven’t bothered to fix it.