How many times have you been burned buying a crap game!

Well, if everyone adhered to your proposal, no one would buy a fresh product in the week of its release. Then, no consumer reports would be written and no one would know wether the game was any good. So no one would buy it, because everyone would wait for the player reviews, which wouldn't be coming.

It is always the first adopters, the "colonizers" that pay the prize for a bad product. In return, they have it earlier and can brag or establish a foothold in the community.

There are certain games from certain companies, one should refrain from buying immediately, I agree on that. And I also agree, that we should use our market power more wisely. But realistically, this ain't going to happen because there is not coordination amongst the consumers. This, again, sometimes is a good thing, because then a good product will become known not due to a principally erroneous human decision but by the aggregated decision of all market participants.

I know some people that are downloading games first, then try them, then possibly buy them. I do not advocate piracy, but since demo versions are not enough to test a game thoroughly, this is a way of handling things I can understand.

Thankfully, GC is a great game and the company is doing a great job. Especially Brad and his AI keep on impressing me. Keep on the good work and congratulations.

Been doing this for years. I would say that 90% of the time, I end up deleting the game from computer and never playing it again after the first 10mins or so of play. There is so much hype around games these days that it is hard to distinguish the crap from the legit games that are released.



Agreed.

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse -- but here is another review by a person that just bought empire earth 3 from another major company---All I'm trying to do is make everyone aware of the trend that major game companies seem to be following---by the way the reviews I see for empire earth 3 are horrible!

Dragnofice9888
Did the developers stop and think "Wow, this game sucks!" - And then release it anyway for the money?

Posted Nov 14, 2007 3:30 am PT

If you like bad games.
If you like boring games.
If you like games that have worse graphics than Diablo 1.
If you like games that were overly simplified so you don't have to have any complexity.
If you like laggy, buggy, lame games.

You'll love EE3.

This game... made me gasp. I started it up... Installed it. I was so "Woo" This is gonna be good, right? I mean.. Come on. I loved EE1.
But nope. I even tried to play into it a little thinking, come on, this can't be ALL that's available to me. Lol! Then I saw the light. This game was simplified.

Let me say this again.
A Game about ADVANCING your civilization.
Training an army.
Building defenses.
Controlling Territory
Waging epic battles
Resource control
World Domination
---------------------------- Was simplified to the crappiest RTS ever made.

I'm sorry, Sierra published this?
If I was whomever was in charge of saying "Hey, go ahead and release it"
It'd have been "Wow, format and restart this game's production."

At one point, did the developers stop and say.... Wow... This game is horrible! And, did they even test it? and notice how BAD it was?

Lol.. So the game came out, and the patch came out.

The patch gave me more glitches than it solved. Units were "warping" as they ran... I'm running a core2duo, 2gb ddr2 800, radeon x1950 pro.

I didn't have what you'd call.. "Lag" But, I have what you'd call
"Ugly Graphics, And Graphical Glitches When On Max"
I had to turn every detail to "LOW" to solve the warping.

...But I got frame rate lag on LOW. Lol?

So... In short. Don't buy this game. Don't ever play it. Flip Sierra, and the developers the bird.

Sierra, I'll really think twice about buying a game that you publish, if this is the quality you demand in contracts.

Yea I learned that lesson a long time ago.

@Empire Earth III. None of the sites have reviewed it yet, not even Gamespot and it's been released for about eight days now. Whats going on?!

While the problem with bad games getting good reviews is very old and also often depends on the players taste there's definitely a new and bad trend in the game industry: Rushed and bugged games!

The problem with those is that there's often a good and solid gameplay core which gets ruined by serious bugs and interface and balancing flaws. Although those problems are not exactly new, the intensity of the problems is new. It's probably a direct result of the complexity of the games today, but the state of some games at the release is almost shocking those days.

NWN2 was a desaster at the release with endless game breaking bugs and lots of completely obvious interface problems. But without the bugs and improved interface the game isn't that bad. Earth2160 had great potential but it was released at least one year too early. Spellforce 2 installed a copy protection which slowed my entire system down and made another game unplayable for whatever reasons. The new expansion removes the original copy protection but breaks the original campaign (It's still unfixed).
I'm glad that I was never a fan of the Gothic games since Gothic III is said to have broken a new record if it comes to bugs. Someone even called the early NWN 2 a perfect and bugless game compared to Gothic III. And to please the community they've stopped the support for the game and pretty much let all players down. Thank god I never bought that game.

As a consequence to the new trend, I don't buy new games anymore. I wait at least half a year or more. The best time is the release of an expansion. It shows that the game was usually a success and is even fleshed out with the new content of the expansion. Let's face it, most games which are more complex (gameplay-wise) than a simple shooter are pretty much in beta state until the first expansion arrives.
(An exception was Dominions 3 since it's pretty much a stand alone expansion.)

Because of this reason I like exansions most because they (usually) improve already good games. In addition the graphics of many older games are still great or you now have for the first time the right hardware to play it smoothly.

The good news is that the whole issue of incomplete games tends to happen only to PC games - very rarely will you see an incredibly buggy and literally broken console game (though they do indeed exsist - 'Coded Arms: Contagion' is a good example).

The game must suck then. It's almost a given now that a if a game does not have a review up the same day it is released or within a day or two, it sucks and is going to receive a bad score. I haven't bought ST Legacy yet because of the bad reviews. I think it's $20 now though, so it may be worthy of picking up for that price.

Engineering a good code takes vision, intelligence, almost mystical powers.

Just look at the recent hype around "Crysis". Promising product from what i've seen and heard about everywhere in the gaming communities.
BUT, is it that good of a software?

Only time can answer the question. Once players have ran out of steam from playing hundreds of looping attempt at something they truly believe is great stuff. Cuz, that's what THEY want from their games, though.

Remember, Warcraft. No-no, the simplest of the serie. The first turn-based, Great music, excellent concept. Fantastic artwork. It had it all. ***For the Hard-Core-Strategy-Gamers out there***.
Then, Blizzard went balistic with its "World of" RPG (almost exclusively that type, btw)... abandonning the RTS fanbase. Fantasy ala simulated FPS with sooooo much fireworks and thunderbolts, it blinds even if you're wearing sun-shaes, three coats of UV protection, an helmet and four gaskets. Skin raising guaranteed.
Still Warcraft? Not to me, it isn't.

One of the great lesson to learn by big gaming production houses is amazingly simple; Know your market, aim at specific targets, develop FOR it.

That's what i liked most about GC (again, the first concept -- a long time ago, in...). The developpers sticked to their guns and fired on all barrels for GC2 and beyond.

Mind, you, i'm a Sci-Fi core fanatic. While others may prefer Sims's likes, burn tires on asphalt and/or, shoot a top-down invader saucer with a left-to-right fully upgradable tiny ship.
Deceptively simple, a game sucks if the quality (expected and presumed, also) doesn't match the stashed cash. Thief or angel, pick your features.

I'll never, ever, forever, encourage anyone who proves to be slack on my entertainment pass-time for some if not much more invaluable Ca$h. What's installed on my Drives is worth every single byte it takes up. Gimme the best or i'll go somewhere else - fast and solid rocket boosting myself away from dangers, bugs and hackers. And from any corporations who don't care about anything else than their budget figures and investors port-folios.

Welcome to the jungle, the monster is right behind this tree. Run. Fly. Laser gun at the ready.

A game means FUN.

- Zyxpsilon.

It is ashame most games aren't like movies where u get all the info of everyone behind the scene. If you guys noticed though the amount of PC games has pretty much went downhill tenfold over the last 7 years. Any computer store barely has any PC games compared to any game console on the shelfs. PC game designers need to step it up before they become a thing of the past.

You guys at Metaverse here are awesome. You guys are the only ones that can stand with Blizzard. Sony needs to leave PC gaming alone especially EQ, EQ2 and others. Thats the problem with games. We buy the next crap title in hopes its finally the masterpiece of that style of game.

I love Galciv2 so far the past year.I play it pretty casual mainly on patch days of everquest as a change of game type.

Finding the best first shooter, real time strat, turn based strat, arcade smash, space game, ground battle game, and Sim type. If I had my way I would still be playing a old game that was a pretty awesome space craft style shooter but it was for dos LOL

The game must suck then. It's almost a given now that a if a game does not have a review up the same day it is released or within a day or two, it sucks and is going to receive a bad score.

Can all of you believe I just searched the net and their still is no review on Empire Earth 3----I'm starting to wonder if all these game review sites---gamespot--gamespy etc. can be trusted for honest reviews of a game!!!!

I have an XBOX 360, so I buy the magazines and get Demos. Star Trek Legacy came in one. I would have bought it if I didn't play the demo first.

I won't buy a game unless I play the demo or read some players reviews first(present company the exception ) . I will sometimes pick up a bargain title if it looks interesting. If I get a few hours out of it, I don't mind spending the Ten bucks(Still more time than a DVD provides usually). I'm usually able to wait on a game a while anyways. DA and TA are the only games that I've actually preordered in my life. Any other company and game I'd most likely see it for $20 in 6 months and get it then.



I often will go and check the main review sites after actually playing a game, just to see how closely I agree with them. After a while you kind of learn which ones are more trustworthy to give a review you do agree with.

I agree about Star Trek: Legacy. It's one of the worst console to PC ports I've ever had the misfortune to try to play. Bethsoft is not good about cleaning up after itself; there are hundreds of unfixed bugs still in Morrowind.

As for Vista, I cannot recommend it to anyone until the later of SP2 and an additional year have passed. Better to get a full price copy of Windows XP SP2 and install that, especially for gaming needs.

I have noticed this trend as well. And it sucks because I like being "in the loop" on whats hot and whats not, but I get burned by a lot of bad games costing me $$$ they did not deserve... I have noticed myself get a lot more concious about what games I purchase, I am also starting to get a feel for if a game is going to be good or if its just hyped up good too. Things to look for are track record of the company, how much comunication they have with the fan base, state of betas, how long betas are etc. For example, I knew hellgate london would not be good on release by the fact that the beta ended 1 week before release or so. Other factors that gave me this conclusion was that I couldnt be sure of the company as it had no good track record. Thirdly fan based suggestions of change where not implemented during beta as far as I could tell. (some where probably but not stuff I cared about myself.) So i put 2 and 2 together and made an educated guess on how well it would be on release.

What worried me is the need to dumb down everything. Settlers 3, Sim City Societies, Empire Earth 3. All dumbed down to the point of being amazing shallow.

But its not just games, I see dumbing down going on in most media, as if they don't dare lose any customers who might not be smart enough and/or too lazy to take on the slightest intellectual challenge.

Good example, as a kid I went to the London Planetarium, it was amazing and you sat there watching the presentation and you did learn something. I then revisited recently with my younger brother and in the ten years that passed they have dumbed down the presentation to nothing more then music with a beat, and few lights and cartoon characters.

Perhaps I like GC2 so much because it actually has a learning curve.