Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising

[Zak33]

Now, I only play PC games, and to a greater or lesser extent, I expect glitchs, woes and patches.. because I have PC. Sometimes I hate it.. but mainly I just get on with it.

But I always thought that people played on Consoles because there weren't any issues, no hangups, errors or compatibility. I thought that was why people got a 360 or a PS3... because everything ran, straight out of the box?

Are we saying, generally, that the console games are not being playtested properly, in the same way as PC games often arrive full of errors?

[noTHINGface]

Aint it more to do with the fact that there are a million + 1 different PC configs and the PC is such an open platform (h/w and s/w) that you'll never catch all defects under all configurations?

I own and maintain a gaming PC because I want the best fidelity I can obtain cos I'm a miserable old bastard...

<this is savagely off topic I guess?>

[Zak33]

Aint it more to do with the fact that there are a million + 1 different PC configs and the PC is such an open platform (h/w and s/w) that you'll never catch all defects under all configurations?

Yeah... I'm asking about CONSOLE GAMES...this one particularly.. cos it seems it's glitched in places, and that can only be bad play testing, NOT hardware config.

[Knoxville]

I think there is a certain level of lazyness and has been since developers gained the ability to patch console games. Dragon Rising is one of the perfect examples of a good game rushed to meet a release date because Codemasters knew they could just patch it in a week or two. Every game's going to have a glitch or two but Dragon Rising felt like it just hadn't ever found it's way to the QA department which was a great shame as it had a lot of potential. It's not just Dragon Rising though, Forza 3, one of Microsofts biggest hitters this christmas was released with more than it's fair share of glitches, most of which were quickly patched but they cost more than a few gamers their career save game, even the all conquering Modern Warfare 2 made me sit and wait for a patch to install last night and the game had been out all of half an hour at the time...

It's great that developers now have the ability to patch console games and resolve issues that QA didn't catch but I think a lot of developers feel that as a result they can now spend less time testing for bugs and get by on a "sell it now, patch it so it's playable later" mentality

[0iD]

I'm actually enjoying this game (on the PC), probably because of it's very close resemblance to GRAW2. Co-op on the pc is where it comes alive though.

I'd never play an FPS on a console, just can't get to grips with it using a controller.

[chuckskull]

Got to say the "we can always patch it later" mentality seems to be pretty pervasive in the games industry nowadays, regardless of format.

Sadly I think it's here to stay. Our own dumb fault. Despite all the internet scorn for it, we keep handing them our money.

Simple reason. It's much easier to finish developing something once you have an army of testers who are willing to pay you £40 each for the privilege of reporting the bugs in your software and the only damage to you is a couple of days of people whining on the internet, quickly forgotten as soon as the patch lands.

Not to mention it's very hard to get a refund on software. If you turn up at gamestation with the game you bought a couple of days ago saying you cant get past level 3 because of a bug, you'll just get a blank stare from the greasy man behind the counter.

If there's no way the customer can really get their money back, then why spend money making sure the products perfect? You can just wait to see if anyone complains. Then apologise and fix it when it's convenient for you(if you're worried about PR) or just ignore the problem and move onto the sequel which the same fervent mass of people swearing they'll boycott you forever will go out and buy without hesitation.

They keep shovelling it, we keep lapping it up and asking for more.

[pleo2005]

I really like this game, it is quite similar to Ghost Recon in many ways