Games that got substantially better after launch, talk some about those you experienced.
Scene. Earlier this week.
Slightly delayed "Monster Energy Supercross" for the PS4 review coming along, final images to grab.
"update 1.04 downloading"
Oh well
*checks changelog of fixes and changes*
*looks at list of often considerable gripes noted with game in the notebook*
They match.
...
What was set to be a fairly positive review (if you like racing motocross then you were in for a treat to begin with) now has the potential to be more than that still.
Time to replay some sections then.
For many years with non PC games being on a Read Only medium and the devices being without networks or other means to issue updates then the game at launch was the game for all time, give or take the efforts of ROM hackers, the rarely seen ambitious localisation team and the occasional remake/remaster. Even on the PC most updates were limited to big crashes and typos.
Long have I wanted to see what would happen if games adopted the "rolling release" model a lot of open source software uses. That has not happened outside of a few mobile phone games (Angry Birds being a nice case study), and of course the few standalone open source games that exist.
Instead we have got some similar effects by way of general updates, "early access", some aspects of crowdfunding and in some cases the likes of game of the year editions.
At the same time I was blissfully unaware of Battlefield 4's launch issues and only came to the game not the longest before Battlefield 1 released. I wander in and find a very solid game as these things go, even more so when all the DLC went free. At the same time I did play some Battlefield 1 and found myself drawn back to 4 as it felt like a better game.
I saw Ubisoft's The Division at launch and joined the crowd in dismissing it. I then saw it being replayed a few months back and while it was still short of E3 promises* the resulting game was surprisingly playable.
I hear also that No Man's Sky, something of a poster child for over ambitious and overhyped games, eventually ended up rather better than the state it launched in.
*I don't like being misled by such things but I am generally happy enough to play/review the thing in front of me.
More recently we have seen games variously ruined by paid progression mechanics and lootboxes, when the latter was subsequently "fixed" for a few titles it became apparent it was anything but. Might then there be some hope for some of said games to eventually end up good?
If I review games to help people find things to play then I have to consider these sorts of radical changes. While I would certainly like games to come out fully formed, and will certainly note launch shortcomings, if the game gets fixed like that then it would be complaining about things that are not there for most of the would be players.
If you are reading this then you find yourself reading another GBAtemp's series on game mechanics, concepts within games and similar such things. In previous editions we discussed cancelled games and shuttered devs, and story canon in games.
like a 250 dollar kit back when DDR4 was Intel only
