Poll: Games that were broken at release that became great games.

[bynacular]

This seems appropriate at the moment. I have played many games and lived through many bugs, as most of us certainly have. Unfortunately this can be a fairly broad definition of games nowadays, so let's narrow it down a bit. What games have you played that were broken at release (i.e. unable to start game or finish game, buggy drm, couldn't save, erased saves, many broken quests, frequent crashes, or basically any game you HAD TO put in the drawer and wait until a patch was released before you could finish) but was at least passably fixed and you ended up enjoying.

I'll start it off... Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Great game with game-breaking bugs, the game was made barely playable in a patch made just before Troika, the developer, went under.

 

[Sleekgiant]

Fallout 3 nuff said

 

[Instant K4rma]

Fallout 3 nuff said

Damn, ninja'd.

 

[icame]

Hmm i can't think of any games (other then the aforementioned Fallout 3) that was broken and then became good. Most companies release it and don't touch it after.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

well kotor 2 almost counts, the damn thing was SOMEWHAT fixed by modders in the restoration projects..

but for most people who have played it, they fucking adore it. (if you actually can get through the damn game that is..)

 

[Super Toast]

KotOR 2 springs to mind.

 

[oplinger]

STALKER: SoC.

The only game where the company actually tells you not to patch, it may cause more problems...

But after a couple patches (they streamlined everything, 1.0 was terrible compared to what it is now) it's a great game..and hardly crashes at all!

 

[Best of the 3]

See now, I actually wrote a little essay on Vampire MB, then I read your post and realised I was inija'd by the OP. Sleek has godt FO3 so no luck there. You already have the major ones. Maybe Fallout New Vegas, that is easily the most buggy game I have played as far as I can remember. But then again that's to recent to be called a great game just yet.

 

[phar]

Half Life 2

First big game to be released on steam and caused chaos trying to get into it for about a week.

 

[Ironman126]

Fallout 3 and Medieval: Total War (that's the first one). Those are the only ones i've played.

 

[Ironman126]

Half Life 2

First big game to be released on steam and caused chaos trying to get into it for about a week.

The game wasn't broken, the system to deploy it was. Once you got the game, it worked just fine.

 

[Blue_vision]

STALKER: SoC.

The only game where the company actually tells you not to patch, it may cause more problems...

But after a couple patches (they streamlined everything, 1.0 was terrible compared to what it is now) it's a great game..and hardly crashes at all!

Oh dear, yes. I don't really like the game myself, but when I got it I was mildly angry that I bought an unplayable game.

Now, I demand a high level of quality into any game I play. One of the reasons I haven't gotten New Vegas yet (thought not the only reason.)

 

[daedalus720]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. The guy who gave it to me gave me an extra disk that had all the appropriate patches on it. I was scared for weeks to install the thing, but I'm grateful I did. Best RPG ever. Except Deus Ex.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Sim City. So buggy, so successful.

 

[SimuLord]

Bethesda's entire body of work, just for starters.

Rome: Total War went from a very good but flawed game to the greatest of all time between 1.0 and 1.5.

Fallout 3 went from a second-tier "very good but not quite great" game to #3 on that same list in as much time as it took Bethesda to release Broken Steel and patch it.

Empire: Total War, while not in the same league, ended up much better than it was given credit for at release by the time they stomped the bugs. Campaign map AI still kept it from all-time greatness status, but the game was very good (I have it ranked 12th).

 

[The Night Shade]

Fallout 3 and New Vegas

 

[Wolfenbarg]

Kotor 2 for sure. I played it on the Xbox almost immediately after it came out, and was quite surprised by how buggy of a mess it was. The game constantly corrupted saves and at one point had a scripting problem so bad that even returning to an old save failed and I had to restart the game. Playing it on the PC post patch was much, much smoother. Fantastic game that really leaves you thinking and wondering and somehow managed to beat the first game in my mind, and that was a seemingly impossible feat by how much of a fanboy for it that I was.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

None of these were "broken" but they were more than a little...problematic.

Fallout 3
Neverwinter Nights 2
Oblivion

And, for my pick of broken but later excellent:

Sin.

For those who weren't around to care, Sin was an FPS made more than a decade ago by Ritual Entertainment (who now produces casual games under a different name). When it was first released, it was, in fact, not possible to complete the game without cheating. It was one of the first FPS games I'm aware of to take the location of damage into account when calculating the effect (i.e. one of the first games where a headshot meant anything). A episodic sequel was in the works and the first episode was released early in the lifecycle of Steam. It was decent enough but didn't do anything to stand out from the crowd and received a mediocre critical and commercial response. Shortly thereafter, they halted production on additional episodes and jumped on board the casual ship.

It stands apart in my mind not because Sin was, itself, a great game. Heavy Metal FAKK 2 was actually my favorite game by the developer. What set them apart was their web page, which was honestly hysterical to read. A highschool project at the time required me to present something "interesting" to the class so I decided it might be cool to see if I could get the guys at Ritual to sign my copy of the game. The response was more than I could have hoped for: they invited me to their Dallas studio for a quick tour so I could have it signed in person. I got to meet the LevelLord and even shook his hands. I'm sure most people on this board don't know why that might be special, even if they played the most notable game he worked on (Duke Nukem 3D). I was actually quite sad the day Ritual jumped to the casual ship.

 

[Sacman]

Most Bathesda games and 90% of MMO's typically...<.<