Rant: Glitchy DLC Is Not for Me
It’s that time again, and I bring good news! I’ll get back to the appointed task of webcomic reviews soon. No, I still don’t have the notes for future articles which are sitting on my deceased computer. But I have been assembling NEW notes during the past month and reading new(-to-me) webcomics. I’m happy to say I’m tearing through Aaron Williams’ stellar but recently-halted Backward Compatible (it’s hosted on the sinking ship CrispyGamer.com, so its future is uncertain). I’m also a year and a half’s worth of archives away from having caught up on Ryan Sohmer’s and Lar DeSouza’s Least I Could Do.
So, yeah. Webcomic reviews later. Video game downloadable content reviews now!
Rants about imperfect video games are nothing new to me. Nowadays, in this era of patches, you’re not buying a complete game anymore when you shell out your $65 or so at the cash register. You’re buying the IDEA of a complete game, the POTENTIAL that all the glitches, bugs, and other oversights will someday be fixed by the development team and render the game as playable as it should have been the moment you bought the disc or download.
Sadly, this is all too often not the case. There are far too many instances where developers seem to think, “Well, we’ve made enough money on that title now; we don’t have to fix it anymore. Let’s start on the sequel!”….Which definitely pushes my rage buttons that gamers are doling out big bucks for flawed products. Let’s take a look at a specific title, the incredibly fun, but irritatingly flawed Borderlands.
The game overall is a work of genius. Fun weapons and shields, and there are ways to modify them and make them even more fun. Unique enemies (ever want to shoot psychopathic axe-wielding midgets? Well, now you can!) Humourous dialogue and so many geek references (everything from Bruce Campbell to Joss Whedon’s Firefly) that you know the makers don’t see a lot of sunlight, and you’re extremely grateful for this. Games that are heavy on the FPS aspects don’t usually catch my attention, but I’ve spent far too many hours seeing this game in action that I should have spent working!
Vanilla Borderlands actually runs as it should–most of the time. The downloadable content, however, is another story, and one that continues to light up fan forums.
“The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned”
Nice mustache! I didn’t know you could grow them OUTSIDE the surgical mask like that. Unlike his twin brother(?) Dr. Zed, Dr. Ned is definitely a man of mystery….
I love zombies. Do you love zombies? I also love shooting them in funny settings, where you’re given quests with names like “Brains” and its follow-up quests “Braaains”, “Braaaaains”, “Braaaaaaaaaaaains”, and “Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains” (can you guess what you’re collecting?) I also love parody quests like “Here We Go Again” in which you discover the planet Pandora’s versions of Scooby-Doo’s Shaggy and Scooby…Harry and Skaggy–Skags being the vicious alien dogs of Pandora with rather suggestively-shaped maws. Zoiks!
What I DON’T love are glitches, particularly glitches that never get fixed. If I buy your DLC, developers, I expect it to WORK, and if it doesn’t, you’re supposed to make good on it!
In this Zombie Island DLC, you find and repair a vending machine belonging to the weapons manufacturer Jakobs, where presumably you stand a good chance of buying hard-to-get weapons. Fans cheered this move–a unique vending machine that could help you score some of those rare and powerful weapons we’ve all heard so much about! This was much-needed because most items and their stats are randomly generated. You’re never guaranteed to find a butt-kickin’ gun in normal gameplay, so having a high-end weapons vendor that you can visit any time was a big relief.
….Except that the Jakobs machine stops working if you “turn in” the repair mission for your reward or leave the area for any reason. Once you turn in the quest or return to the machine from another area, it’s once again defunct, and you’re left with those crappy weak guns the enemies always seem to want to drop when they die. The Zombie Island DLC has been out since fall 2009. It’s now winter 2010. WHERE’S OUR BUGFIX, GEARBOX SOFTWARE?! We paid for a fully-functional add-on, not one that’s hobbled in one of its major selling points!
“Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot”
So many people bottle up their emotions, it’s nice to see someone who wears her heart on her…uhhhh…never mind.
This one seems like more of an extremely stupid oversight than an outright glitch. In the Mad Moxxi DLC, you fight arena matches against enemies and bosses from the game. There are different levels of challenges, and the greater challenges are twenty rounds long. This doesn’t seem so bad, until you realize that there five “waves” per round in which you battle multiple enemies during each wave, and a different boss every fifth wave.
How long does it take to complete twenty rounds, totaling one hundred waves? If you weren’t lucky enough to find very powerful weapons and shields during normal gameplay, you can realistically spend your entire day in the arena. My housemate took six and a half hours to get from round one to round ten, only halfway done. And this wouldn’t be that bad–a nice long challenge would be FUN, if you could put it down and pick it back up whenever you wanted.
….Except, the developers didn’t include any way to save your game during or between rounds. If your system crashes and needs a restart, or you decide to quit and come back, you have to start all over again. At round one of twenty. Apparently, Gearbox didn’t realize that most people have to work for a living and don’t have unlimited amounts of time to spend trying to complete arena challenges. And let me tell you, those challenges get really, really old after a few hours, knowing you can’t quit without losing all your progress. And here I thought games were supposed to be FUN! Silly me.
So, how about it, game developers? Here’s a little tip from the gamers of the world: we don’t want to pay for faulty, rushed products. We’d rather wait for a thoroughly playtested and bugfixed product that works from the get-go. If you’re going to take our money, at least make sure we get what we paid for.
Thank you, and good night.
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