6. Fallout: New Vegas
I love the Fallout series. Ever since playing the first Fallout on my PC at quite a young age, I was hooked on its post-apocalyptic world and all it had to offer me. The adult themes, the Mad Max-style dialogue and gun slinging, and the ability to make detailed individuals were all very new. Nowadays, such things are very common place, and each new game tries upping the ante on its opponents, which is clearly a good thing for us gamers. I sunk over 100 hours into Fallout 3, so I thought the latest incarnation would have me equally excited. Sadly not. I was bought it for Christmas the year it came out and I haven't spent over 20 hours on it, due to a generally lackluster feel and huge series of bugs I encountered very early on. The high amount of bugs and gaming issues were part of many reviews at the time of launch, and the fact reviewers still encouraged people to buy the game shows how much tolerance we as gamers now have for problems within games. However, surely as a product, if it's broken or not 100%, it shouldn't be offered? If I bought a car which I was told was in perfect condition, then after 20 miles I found various faults, I'd be within my rights to return it. This mentality apparently doesn't exist within the world of gaming. Characters appear to float 1-2 metres above the ground like levitating oracles, and a few perform that trick from The Exorcist, of turning their heads in unnatural positions while talking/walking. There are several major issues, with the textures of the landscape vanishing around you at certain angles, and some buildings disappearing from view if you nudge the camera a little. I've also landed "stuck" between a rock and a hard place, which can be common in MMO's, but a quick command of /stuck tends to free you, yet in a single player RPG this shouldn't be an issue. New Vegas could have done with an extended 2-3 month Beta testing phase to iron out all these issues, and it wouldn't have done the franchise any harm by ensuring the game was fully fixed upon release. Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, it seems that sometimes, developers feel they are in a strong enough position to throw out a 95% finished game and fix the remainder in the first few months after a game's release. In my opinion, this is simply not good enough, but only we, the gamer, can change this mentality.