Some trends in the industry are good ones. Sometimes we see fair DLC practices, or we see a lot of indie games on the rise or even HD remasters on new consoles. None of those things can be deemed "objectively bad," because their value is subjective to the gamers considering them for purchase. It's safe to say that in this day and age, there are few 'bad' games that come out. There are games that are uninterested, unappealing and even boring, but a lot of them lack the glitches and technical issues prevalent in many a sold disc or cartridge of yesteryear. But there is one game that seemingly broke the mold and not only was released a large quantity of these problems but also escaped being lambasted critically and avoided selling poorly. This game is Battlefield 4.
As you may have expected, I'me once again removing the positivity hat to talk about a glaring issue I have and that's with the pedestal Battlefield 4 has put in place for itself despite being a fundamentally dysfunctional multiplayer game, particularly at launch. I do not feel the need to go too far into detail about its bland and generally uninteresting campaign mode either. What irks me about much of this mishap is just how poorly it was all reflected in the gaming press. Look no further than Metacritic. Not a single negative press review for any of the higher definition versions of the game.
While it's fine to like or even love a broken game, failing to acknowledge what is wrong with it in a press review is just downright misleading. Many of the higher scoring reviews for Battlefield 4 make little or no mention of the glitches in the multiplayer mode. Those that do bother to bring it up downplay the severity of the problem immensely.
*Machinima gave the PC version its highest, near-perfect score: Not a single mention of glitches or bugs. The lowest score was a 5/10 from a site called incGamers.com, ending the review with "Another day, another PC launch riddled with bugs and issues."
*Gametrailers gave the PS4 version its highest score. A 9.5/10. No mention of bugs or glitches there either. The lowest score was a 7/10 from Playstation Official Magazine UK, saying that the glitches were "not ruinous."
*IGN gave the Xbox One version of the game an 8.5/10 without a single mention of the technical issues. Incidentally, IGN Italy gave the game its lowest score of 7.9.
Do you see the correlation I am trying to present here? Despite being largely recognized as a broken and unfinished mess by gamers, the gaming press allowed this game to be released to the market without so much as an inch of effort to inform their readers of what was wrong with it. And as a result, most people gave into the hype and bought the game, hoping to define and justify their next generation system purchase.
Going back to Metacritic again, if you look at the user scores you will see how much lower they are. PC is at 5.9, PS4 is at 6.6 and Xbox One is at 6.4. Many of the higher scores were from reviewers who genuinely seemed to enjoy the Battlefield formula and were able to enjoy the game regardless of its technical problems. Many of the mixed and negative scores however were much more scathing.
My personal thoughts on the game were that it was something I wasn't hyped for to begin with and having played it I felt it was objectively broken. Not to be played ever again after my initially poor experience with the 'final' product. The single player was nonexistent and the multiplayer just would not work. It took forever to get into games that would not crash and the in-game glitches were especially prevalent. Hit boxes were broken and the game just did strange things that ultimately worked against most players, myself included. I would have thought that the Metacritic score would reflect how 'meh' I thought the game was, but to the contrary there is a lot of praise for it. While not all versions are liable to have the same problems, based on word of mouth, all three of the higher definition versions suffered from a lot of technical issues.
Here's the bottom line though: This is not an attempt to get people to hate on Battlefield 4, but rather to make people see how dishonest their gaming press is and to demand more polish from DICE and EA. The highest scorers for Battlefield 4 across any platform, were all huge mainstream names in gaming "journalism," and not a single one of them were honest about their reviews of Battlefield 4. Some gamers, while entitled to their viewpoints, have glistened Battlefield 4 as one of the best military shooters ever released. Having played only so much of Battlefield 4, versus my two hours with CoD: Ghosts (which is equally as bland but not nearly as broken), I can confidently say that this was not a good year for military shooters and that Battlefield 4, despite its next generation glory, pales in comparison to even the original Modern Warfare.
And the worst part is that seven months down the line DICE has failed MISERABLY to fix the problems in this game. Some of their patchwork has actually generated newer bugs with which people can exploit the game. Seven months. The game still has problems. This sets a very dangerous precedent that games a with a ton of hype can be released broken and unfinished. But ultimately, it will only continue so long as consumers buy the broken products, whether it be from EA or any other shady developer or publisher. Gamers really need to demand higher standards for their entertainment, because in my honest opinion, a high profile publisher like EA should not be releasing what can almost be described as a Beta for $60.
In the end, sometimes it's just better to not listen to the hype.
(Just to note, I played both Battlefield 4 and CoD: Ghosts on my friend's Xbox One).
And now the positivity hat comes back. Hope you enjoyed the read. Please tell me what you think below. :)
We were expecting problems with mod support, but there are a lot of other issues.
This is why you get the GOG version on gog you can select the version of the game to download.
On pc fallout 4 fallout new vegas and skyrim are all broken on steam because they all got the same "next gen" update.
Skyrim dec 2023
https://www.pcgamer.com/sky...
Can not find new vegas but anyone that modded it knows the script extender there was also broken
Not accidental, they want modders to stop modding their older games to force them to mod Shitfield.
There doing the same on starfield with a mods store and blocking mods
There goal is like blizzard and what they did with fallout 76 you make mods they can sell and you become a slave.
On skyrim they have "trusted" mod devs now basically a badge that lets your mod on the store you get a crumb of the sale when someone buys it.
lol to the disagrees, the last Skyrim update broke mods too. They've been trying to kill mods to monetize them in creation club for years, it's not a stretch that they purposely put out patches just to break free mods.
Over 14 GBs and doesn't change much at all? What? Taking up that much drive space for a pathetic 'remastering' is shameful.
Par for Bethesda.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
Eventually they’ll realize the value is with the employee not the company. Buying an IP means nothing if the people who contributed are let go. They’ll get it one day.
A voice actor from The Coalition's third-person shooter series, Gears of War, has hinted at a new game announcement coming in June.
Unfortunately gaming journalism is not really reporting news. It is a controlled environment. Sure there are some stories that are real news, but almost every preview is like a house staging. Things can be covered up and disguised. And if those journalists ever want to get a story by that company again they better be kind and not burn any bridges. Gaming journalism is entertainment and advertising. Note that I am not saying everyone is grouped in but that when your sole provider of the news are the developers and publishers themselves it would be stupid to take the experience they presented to you by flying you in, nice hotel, good food, and say their game blows. It isn't right but unforttuneatly it is happening.
It's ultra bad when broken and unfinished games win GOTY i.e. Skyrim.
I totally agree with you on this. Last year was plagued with broken, unplayable, and buggy releases. Total War: Rome II, Aliens: Colonial Marines, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, Ride to Hell Retribution, Sim City, Day One Garry's Incident, and (of course) Battlefield 4. All of these games had numerous problems upon their release. Any one of them that had a day one patch still had numerous problems.
This was actually an issue I brought up last year, too. I did so when Total War: Rome II came out. I posted Angry Joe's review of it, but there were some gamers in the comments who disagreed and asserted that the game is fine the way it was and that patches would fix it right up. While developers patching a game post-release is all good and well, that still doesn't excuse a broken or barely playable release. The score a game gets on day one is the score it deserves given its current playable, graphical, and presentation status (and yes, personal opinions and tastes affect it as well). Does that mean that everyone who reviews it will adhere to that? No. But no amount of DLC, patches, or expansion packs should alter the day one score either.
The integrity of reviewers these days is minimal. Most go for perks and rewards from publishers and public relations. They give high scores to broken games. The Game Media Awards is a joke. The Video Game Awards (VGAs or VGX) is a joke. IGN, Kotaku, and Game Informer (sometimes) are jokes. Their content is lacking as is their ability to inform gamers about games that have very real gameplay and graphical problems. Then gamers who buy these games defend their purchase from others who have evidence showing how buggy or even broken the game is and why it deserves below average or failing review scores.
*Sigh* I can go on a rant about this, but I think I will stop here. Great blog, dude.
We've had a long generation of bad games. Publishers just release games first and actually test them later, if even that. Actually, they wait for the gamers to complain about the glitches before they begin taking their programming code more seriously. QA for video games is almost non-existent anymore. We've always had games with glitches even on NES, but nowadays things are so out of control you'd be lucky if a patch would fix at least one of the many major glitches in a video game.
At the company I work for we are required to inspect every single line of code for errors and fix them accordingly. QA and integrity of the software we write is very important to our business. Why isn't the video game industry doing the same? Why do these game companies the size of EA neglect much of the game's programming code and still call it "gold" for release to the masses at full retail price? Because they just want to rake in lots of money ASAP.
Skyrim made me angry when you get to the point where you choose sides and you just couldn't execute the mission. Had to wait until February when the patch came out to continue the story. There's no excuse for that kind of stuff. I feel it will continue to get worse with new consoles so I'm hesitant to buy into this new generation. I'm content with last Gen.