That’s the one I thought of when I saw the thread title. I don’t remember any thief-specific bugs, but then I didn’t play much as a thief… I suspect you’re wrong about being locked into the thiefly method of getting things done, though. The games were very good about allowing you to solve the puzzles by any method, as long as you had the skills/stats for it (though you’d generally get more points by doing it the way appropriate for your class).
Quest for Glory 3 was pretty buggy too, though not showstoppingly that I recall. Those were some damn good games, but it sure wasn’t because of the programming quality.
Less *Howard the Duck *and more “WORST YOUTUBE VID EVAR!!@”, for sure. Its existence would never have been known if not for the GameSpot review that immortalized it.
That it was actually sold as a retail product (rather than withering away on some Ukranian’s hard drive) is what beggars belief—even budget titles tend to have *some *semblance of gameplay. *Big Rigs *has no gameplay; there is no race. Your opponents never leave the starting line. As an entertainment experience, it would be like paying $15 for a movie ticket only to watch a few seconds of illegible credits scroll sideways across the screen followed by a few frame shudders and then a splash of melted celluloid from the hot projector bulb. Lights go up; thanks for coming, folks!
As someone said above Age of Conan was awful at release.
Not a bug, but NWN2: Storm of Zehir’s SecuROM pretty much axed that game for me. The game was choppy on my laptop, but the SecuROM dicked up my DVD rom so badly I can’t even use it for anything but that game. I’ve tried to uninstall SecuROM several times, but the drive is still essentially useless. At this point the only way I can think of fixing it is to wipe the hard drvive and reinstall the OS. Which then means I’d have to reinstall everything else. So that game is on my “Advise friends not to buy” list.
Going back a decade **Civilization Call to Power **was pretty bad.
Anybody ever play DungeonKeeper? The game where you are the bad guys and try to kill off and torture all the good guys? I loved the female demon that was the one that cracked the whip =)
The thing is, if there weren’t a 50% chance that the game would crash at the end of a mission, and if the gameplay weren’t basically broken, it would have been considered a terrific game. The missions were complex and varied, the worlds had a uniquely twisted feel to them, and the cutscenes (this is from the FMV era of computer gaming) had one of the most interesting casts I’ve ever seen in a computer game: Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Brian Blessed, Jürgen Prochnow and, as the player, a young Clive Owen!
There were several bugs in QfG4 that were NOT fixed, not even when the game was re-released as part of a QfG compilation. I know because that’s the version of the game I have. There were a number of things that would make it crash; sometimes it was possible to avoid these actions, sometimes not. There were a couple of places where some necessary action would sometimes lead to a crash, making it impossible to proceed. The compilation actually included saved game files that would allow you to skip one common bug, although doing this meant you couldn’t import your character from one of the previous games. There’s another bug that can occur right at the end of the game, preventing you from beating the final villain. Very frustrating.
I have played through the game (which, aside from the bugs, is really great) with all the different character classes and never encountered a problem that a thief could not solve. I may have had to use skills associated with another class though, I can’t remember. There is a bug that keeps the thief from obtaining a certain item at a certain time, but you should be able to go back on a different night and get it then.
Pools of Radiance was already mentioned but I’d like to add I couldn’t even install the game. It would flatly refuse to acknowledge your ability to install on any drive but C:. My C: drive was full. Some people posted a work around that involved you editing your registry and that worked. Also the company later released a patch that would allow you to install the damn thing on another drive (but it would still check your C: drive for size limits and STILL refuse to install if C: didn’t have enough space) by the time I actually got the thing installed I didn’t want to play it anymore. I uninstalled it and never touched it again. What a waste.
For constancy I give credit to the X series. First game I got X2 The Threat on release was a buggy mass of mistakes. Things like mobile mining were on the box but not in the actual game. You never knew where the next crash was coming form or what next would go screwy for no reason. Later the game company patched it and added a bunch of nice stuff to the game. So far every other in the series has been the same (X3: The Reunion, X3: Terran Conflict) buggy beyond words on release. Patched and tons of extra content over time. Almost makes up for it.
/Hijack/. I signed up for a free trial of WWII:Online and thought that it was the internet version of a practical joke.
One year later and I’m still playing it. Sometimes obsessively.
Most of your criticisms are valid. The mediocre graphics are explainable due to the vast size of the game world and the ballistics modeling. Add in the fact that several hundred people may be battling over the same city and thats a lotta calculations going on. More addons would be nice, but that’s not likely to happen save for the occasional addition of new vehicles. Suprisingly, the player base doesn’t seem too concerned about the lack of new stuff.
I graduated to WWII:Online from the Battlefied series, and it is very much an acquired taste. What sold me was the ability to take part in large scale battles with clear winners and losers. In BF I could score 30 kills and not remember a one of them. In WWII I may score only 3-4 kills in a night, but they are both memorable and satisfying. Not to mention that that I may have scored them in a Sherman, or a Spitfire, or manning a Bofors AA. A campaign can go for months and I’ve definitely had an impact on some of them, whether it’s by capping a spawn point, or blowing up a forward base.
It’s more of a strategy game than an FPS, but it’s worth giving the free trial a chance if you’re bored with the stuff you’re playing now.
I stopped playing BF2 because I got tired of the choke points on every map being occupied by 13 year old Koreans flinging an endless stream of grenades.
A quick look on Wikipedia shows that there was a DOS version of Dungeon Keeper, but getting Dosbox to emulate a 100Mhx 486DX2 takes a fairly strong computer. On the other hand, it says that the Windows version still works on XP, at least. The article on DKII, on the other hand, includes no extra information, other than it requires Windows.
As for the OP: Superman 64 is the only one I can remember playing. I believe there were bugs that made the controls stop working. As the game itself was awful, I didn’t play it much. But considering that one very basic bug, I’d assume that there were probably a lot more.
The computer civs would reach a point where they stopped working after awhile. No developed lands, no unit construction, no nothing! I don’t know for sure what caused the bug, but I suspect it was the fucked-up technology tree, where you could get advanced techs without researching any of the prerequisites. Once the computer civs got a tech this, they tried building the advanced unit/building, but it was hopelessly expensive, bogging down the entire civ to the point where it would just stall, doing nothing for hundreds of turns. It was extremely rare for a civ to make it to the genetic age without stalling out like this, and I never once saw a diamond age computer civ.
Outpost by Sierra On-line is up there. Great concept and the game seems to play just fine in the beginning. However, something like half the ideas mentioned in the online help simply don’t exist in the game. It had a number of other bugs as well.
I don’t know if it is/was just my computer, but I could never get Wing Commander IV to run.
Wow. I am so going to go do this. But, A dozen games, Chronos? I always wanted to just sit down and play 1000 rounds of Scorch, but, well, I think my patience ended around round 8. But yeah, I guess the game did not escape bug free. I knew about using the fuel tank (The mountain climbing) glitch, but, that was the only one I ever knew about.
What I liked about Scorch, is that you could edit the “Talk Files”, so that your own messages could appear above the tanks.
But, I like Scorch. You can verify that with my following Youtube video. (Again, my Ideas suffer from my implementation. On Second thought, probably better to watch this one with out sound.)
I recently bought “American Billiards” for my Vista box. Barely got through one game with it. I must have repressed most of it, but the graphics didn’t render correctly, or were simply not there. Virtual pool, this is not
But, perhaps you guys have seen the Commercial for gamefly? About never buying a bad game again? All of the gamers in the commercial go ape shit after buying a crap game. Yeah, I was pretty much there. I’ve found just as good [bad] games at the Dollar store. (Then again, I also found Civ. II at the dollar store. So, go figure).
