Xbox 360 Game News, Reviews, and Columns - XboxFocus

Patch me, I'm New

by Chris Holmes August 30th 2008 12:39 PM CDT1 Comments

Patch me, I’m new

This 360 has brought us some  wonderful features, but has also brought us a fair amount of annoyance. Patching is one of them.

Patching can be good, as adding new features to games helps eliminate any issues with the them. Did we need patching last generation? No. Back then, games only had one shot to be perfect, and had to be thoroughly tested to make sure they were fit for the general public

Now though? Games are rushed, with developers being pushed to breaking point to meet tight deadlines by constrictive publishers who are insensitive to a game’s needs. This results in some glaringly obvious bugs and glitches; which shouldn't be in games marketed as "perfected".


It has gotten to the stage where you expect to find something wrong with every single game, but us gamers seemingly accept it and take it because we’re living in an age of imperfection and paranoia. In essence, the perfect game can’t possibly exist in this vortex of unfinished tosh. We need to stand up and tell developers that this is not good enough. A game should be finished up to the level where the most obvious bugs are fixed and thoroughly tested.

A recent example of a title coming complete with some seriously game-destroying bugs is Castle Crashers, which not only features a broken Xbox Live mechanic, but also has freezing and saving issues. My main character was left without half of his weapons and animal orbs after one session, and when I finally completed the game with my secondary character, I didn’t get the achievement and unlockables for it. I defended a lot of issues with the game in my review, but with the ability of hindsight I would’ve let it burn.

I respect The Behemoth for taking their sweettime in developing the game, but after three years, you would think these things would come up during a play session. Microsoft doesn’t get off easily either, after having the game in testing and certification for three months. One can only imagine how they tested it when these glaring omissions are left present in the final build. The Behemoth has came out and said that a patch is in the works, but is this really good enough? We paid 1200 microsoft points for a product, and we should’ve had a close to flawless experience.

This is an awkward time for gamers, as we are given the marketing once-over with hype machines consisting of flashy trailers, bigmouth developers whoring themselves out, and general hyperbole and madness. All this creates a strong desire for us to purchase the final product as soon as we  can. When we do, we are given a rushed title that wasn’t tested and polished enough.


It seems this culture is really starting to eat into even the bigger studios. Rockstar’s GTAIV needed a patch for its multiplayer right after its releas. I really feel sorry for developers In all this, as they not only get whipped by publishers and fans to release a game on time, but then get it all over again to release a patch to fix their mistakes for rushing. This is complete chaos and the entire situation needs to be addressed.

If games want to be taken as a serious medium, we have to ensure that full, complete products make it to store shelves. You don’t see films and music being fixed over time outside of re-releases and director's cuts. Quality assurance needs to make a comeback, with titles being properly tested instead of a long-ass certification processes which seemingly does jack. We do not want betas or work in progress anymore, we just want our games back.