12 Big-Budget Video Games That Launched Completely Broken

Patching games to playable standard post-release is becoming a disturbing trend.

Remember when games didn't require online connections and patches every couple of months to make sure characters' heads didn't suddenly shoot off their shoulders in the middle of a conversation? Sure older games were vastly smaller, and the likes of in-game physics engines that could handle thousands of calculations at once were just pipe dreams, but the general mentality surrounding the actual release of a title was that it would be of optimum quality before the consumer got their hands on it. Now though developers are free to release their games in various states of development, reconciling potentially game-breaking bugs to the 'To-do' pile post-release, as customers ranging from rabid fans to newcomers have varyingly terrible experiences attempting to play what's in front of them. Even reviews for big-budget titles regularly note that they hope a 'patch will be incoming', or a developer will release a statement alongside the release of their game stating a 'launch-day patch' is available to fix crippling bugs. The amount of developers who will actually sit on their games until they're polished to a mirror sheen are very rare - Naughty Dog is one of only a few that springs to mind - whereas studios like EA have actually developed a reputation for releasing broken games on every launch. It's a crying shame when the most devoted fans and consumers who snap up titles on launch day are the ones getting screwed out of the very experience they've put sizeable amounts of cash down on, and it's something we need to start keeping more of an eye on going forward.
 
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Gaming Editor
Gaming Editor

WhatCulture's Head of Gaming.