You know there's a real issue when even Halo - the grandaddy of the modern era of online gaming - can't even launch to a butter-smooth experience. It wasn't just the Master Chief Collection though, everything from Driveclub to GTA: Online has been hampered by a litany of crippling bugs, making the very act of gaming near impossible. Even Assassin's Creed: Unity with all its single player faults had an initial bug where it ran slightly smoother if you disabled online access, as Ubisoft's naff distribution service Uplay wasn't shaking hands when needed. From everything that launched this year, almost all titles require some online functionality or component, and for that to not be available right off the bat is, quite frankly, inexcusable. Only Destiny and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare managed to keep themselves together under the pressure, and that's without delving into the more in-depth complaints about the former. It's truly been a shambles of a year that should've been the one to cement the notion of a symbiotically-linked online network of resources to your living room, but instead the vast majority of 2014 resembled last year's Sim City nightmare, albeit blown up onto a far bigger, buggier scale. You can debate until you're blue in the face about the moral complexities of micro-transactions and early access, but if the as-advertised 'finished' product you're putting cash down on is broken, it's genuinely and wholeheartedly inexcusable. You wouldn't buy a car with a wheel missing, knowing it was coming later down the line, and the bottom line is if functionality is not there, the product is not finished, and should not be shipped. What annoying regularities do you want to see the gaming industry improve upon next year? Let us know in the comments!
