When compared to today’s console games, the 20 year old ones might look like crap, but they have a few aces up their sleeve (such as quality and playability). Still, I’m not here to start rambling about modern games with no soul or challenge. I’m here to ramble on modern games not working, introducing the modern players to such joys as freezing, requiring constant updates and bugs.

Granted, these have been issues PC-gamers – myself included – are used to, hardware incompabilities, crashes, flawed code and such. Consoles used to be carefree – never heard of anyone not completing, like, Super Mario Bros because the game kept exiting to title screen every time you picked up a mushroom. That just didn’t happen on consoles.

That Disc Sure Is Dirty

That was then. Nowadays console games are almost as bad as their computer counterparts. Here’s a few games I remember seeing crashing recently, much to my delight.

• Lost Odyssey (XBOX 360)

  Constant read errors on scene changes. Sometimes not fatal (like music not loading on battle, but game returns normal after the battle ends), but often the game claims the disc is dirty or otherwise faulty. Usually the game can be resumed right away by just launching it again. No need to even open the tray and clean the (supposedly) dirty disc.

  Sometimes it hangs up the entire console, forcing a system reset. Especially common on the 4th disc. Shame, as the game itself was rather good. Fortunately I managed to complete it despite the errors, probably because they seemed completely random.

• Samurai Warriors 2 (XBOX 360)

  Occasional disc read errors that crash the game. Sometimes unable to load the music track, but that did not affect gameplay itself. I also stumbled on a bizarre bug on one of the campaigns, where scripted event failed to occur where it should. As a result I was unable to advance, which was awfully nice.

• Ninety-Nine Nights (XBOX 360)

  Notorious for disc read errors, web filled with similar stories. Despite of scratch free, clean disc, successful loading seems to depend on the position of the moon and weather conditions.

  I liked the game, but trying to get it run properly proved to be an added challenge I couldn’t completely solve.

• Xenosaga 2 (PS2)

  Classic freezing issues. Not too often, but enough for me to remember them. Nothing compared to the titles above, though, and did not get in the way of completing the game.

• Twilight Princess (WII)

  The initial US version had a bug which made it impossible to advance in the game on certain situation. This was fixed on later shipments and did not affect the European version, but still.

To Proceed You Must…

Internet-features brought game consoles even closer to PC gaming by adding the fun of updating to the mix. Current generation of consoles does this well, and as a bonus, they make sure if there’s an update, you won’t miss it.
Force-feeding patches is an idea that probably looked good on paper, but really sucks in real life. I own all three major consoles and use them online. As a reward, I get to download something almost every time I turn one of them on. If it’s not a system update, then it’s an update to the game I intended to play. If I’m really lucky, it’s both.

I recently decided to download the demo of Super Stardust on PS3. After the initial download I thought everything was set. My wishes and reality did not match, as I was told that I need to update the game before I can play it. Hilarious, isn’t it? Here I’m required to update the game I downloaded a minute ago. Just because it was too difficult to include the patch to the initial download?

Even better is that I don’t even get to choose if I want to update or not. I’m not able to play it UNLESS I update!

It’s Not the Outcome, It’s the Means

Why not give the players a choice? Let the user update later if he or she wished unless it’s absolutely necessary. Little transparency wouldn’t hurt either, tell what the update does and fixes as well. I’m tired of buying a game only to be faced with mandatory download of sometimes a couple hundred megabytes.
Add a slow update installing process to the mix and you start with a really positive attitude towards the software. Okay, I could probably yank the network cable from the console to prevent this, but when the entire system is designed to be online, it’s really handy to switch between online and offline constantly.

Software’s a tricky thing, sometimes the finalized product turns out to have issues that need fixing. That’s what patches are for. I’m not totally against them, sometimes games even get new features, but I just wonder how often they are a result of developers being cheap on the testing phase. I also think that the current-gen consoles’ way of handling the update process is far from ideal.

Let’s hope it changes as the systems mature. I’d like the idea of trying a new game right away instead of applying an update. If the released version is not in a playable state, it’s been published too soon. The concept of quick play is sure going down the drain.