Unfinished Games vs Bad Games

[bangtango]

Have you ever noticed that when someone gives a poor review of a game in a magazine, on a web site or even in a forum, they often dismiss it as unfinished or rushed even if they have no basis to make that claim on?

I was wondering what the rest of you think of those type of statements. I bring this up for a few reasons. The way I see it, some programmers or designers are good and some are bad. The same as it is with singers, baseball players or even landscapers. There are people who are at the top of their profession and others who take up space because there is a need or demand for their work, whether it is "good" or not.

It just seems like some people, whether they are informed or not, spend too much time dreaming up theories as to why (Insert Game Title) is a poor game. I understand that there are indeed games which are rushed to the market or released unfinished, but I wouldn't think the number as great as some gamers or reviewers might suggest.

Just because a game is lousy, do you think it is always fair to label it unfinished or rushed, especially if it isn't? I see those two words thrown around far too often. At some point, you'd think reviewers might see some of these "bad" games for what they really are:

Crappy programming, crappy design, crappy company, but not "rushed" or "unfinished." The programmers had a suitable amount of time to work on it and they thought it was complete when it went to release. End of story.

I'm not talking about any game in particular, just putting down some thoughts on a trend I keep noticing in magazines and some message boards (nothing I saw posted here, mind you).

Excuse any spelling or grammar errors. I need to send this and log off. I'll edit any major messes later :D

[bangtango]

Have you ever noticed that when someone gives a poor review of a game in a magazine, on a web site or even in a forum, they often dismiss it as unfinished or rushed even if they have no basis to make that claim on?

I was wondering what the rest of you think of those type of statements. I bring this up for a few reasons. The way I see it, some programmers or designers are good and some are bad. The same as it is with singers, baseball players or even landscapers. There are people who are at the top of their profession and others who take up space because there is a need or demand for their work, whether it is "good" or not.

It just seems like some people, whether they are informed or not, spend too much time dreaming up theories as to why (Insert Game Title) is a poor game. I understand that there are indeed games which are rushed to the market or released unfinished, but I wouldn't think the number as great as some gamers or reviewers might suggest.

Just because a game is lousy, do you think it is always fair to label it unfinished or rushed, especially if it isn't? I see those two words thrown around far too often. At some point, you'd think reviewers might see some of these "bad" games for what they really are:

Crappy programming, crappy design, crappy company, but not "rushed" or "unfinished." The programmers had a suitable amount of time to work on it and they thought it was complete when it went to release. End of story.

I'm not talking about any game in particular, just putting down some thoughts on a trend I keep noticing in magazines and some message boards (nothing I saw posted here, mind you).

Excuse any spelling or grammar errors. I need to send this and log off. I'll edit any major messes later :D

[j_factor]

"Unfinished" to me is when the game clearly needed a few more rounds of playtesting, or if it seems like there's areas/features missing, or if the visuals/audio seem like they have less to them than intended. Enter the Matrix was unfinished. The Dreamcast port of Virtua Fighter 3tb was unfinished.

I don't think this is a designation that I've seen thrown about all that much.

[j_factor]

"Unfinished" to me is when the game clearly needed a few more rounds of playtesting, or if it seems like there's areas/features missing, or if the visuals/audio seem like they have less to them than intended. Enter the Matrix was unfinished. The Dreamcast port of Virtua Fighter 3tb was unfinished.

I don't think this is a designation that I've seen thrown about all that much.

[exit]

Martian Gothic was unfinished, they had to leave out an entire character because of a deadline. They also could have tweaked a few things in the PSX version, but again they had a limited ammount of time.

It's still a great game for a budget title tho.

[exit]

Martian Gothic was unfinished, they had to leave out an entire character because of a deadline. They also could have tweaked a few things in the PSX version, but again they had a limited ammount of time.

It's still a great game for a budget title tho.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Most PC games -are- unfinished.

They get finished with patches. This is happening with console titles too... didn't the 360 have some games that had to be patched after release to fix bugs?

[Kitsune Sniper]

Most PC games -are- unfinished.

They get finished with patches. This is happening with console titles too... didn't the 360 have some games that had to be patched after release to fix bugs?

[Sothy]

Heroes of the Lance for nes needs a patch..... I dont think its coming but...

[Sothy]

Heroes of the Lance for nes needs a patch..... I dont think its coming but...

[Moo Cow]

Heroes of the Lance for nes needs a patch..... I dont think its coming but...

My thoughts exactly.

[Moo Cow]

Heroes of the Lance for nes needs a patch..... I dont think its coming but...

My thoughts exactly.

[Kid Ice]

That's a problem with VG journalism in general...writers are so anxious to name drop and demonstrate how "in" they are, they forget the game will be consumed by regular people. Examples: "Boy, this game has come a long way since I saw it at the Take Two booth at E3 last year". "The game is missing a lot of stuff from the Japanese version". "The game was shown at TGS two months ago so it's obviously a rush job"

I remember a review of Tenchu in EGM that said "This game reminds me a lot of Metal Gear Solid." Before MGS was released. So cool! :roll:

[Kid Ice]

That's a problem with VG journalism in general...writers are so anxious to name drop and demonstrate how "in" they are, they forget the game will be consumed by regular people. Examples: "Boy, this game has come a long way since I saw it at the Take Two booth at E3 last year". "The game is missing a lot of stuff from the Japanese version". "The game was shown at TGS two months ago so it's obviously a rush job"

I remember a review of Tenchu in EGM that said "This game reminds me a lot of Metal Gear Solid." Before MGS was released. So cool! :roll:

[Slimedog]

Heroes of the Lance for nes needs a patch..... I dont think its coming but...

My thoughts exactly.

Actually, I would say Heroes of the Lance is a classic example of a bad, not unfinished game. What kind of patch would have made that game fun? Even with faster movement and better controls, the premise of the game was fundamentally flawed. It was pretty much doomed from the beginning.

[o2william]

It's a fine distinction. If the reviewer says the game IS unfinished, then he's stating something as fact, which he should not do unless he can back it up. If he can quote the project leader saying something like, "Management mandated unreasonable deadlines that forced us to ship before we had time to do proper QA," then it's safe to call the game unfinished. If he can't back it up, then the reviewer should not say a game is unfinished.

But if he says the game FEELS unfinished then that's perfectly OK. "Feels unfinished" is subjective; it connotes exactly what j_factor said: the game seems like it needed more testing or seems like it is lacking features. Maybe it's not; maybe it was playtested to death and it has every feature the developers wanted, but it doesn't seem that way in the reviewer's opinion.

Calling a game "rushed" isn't quite the same. No software developer has EVER been involved in a project where they weren't being rushed by somebody. :) So it's reasonably true to say every game was rushed. I suspect that when most reviewers call a game "rushed," they're referring to how it feels, not what it is. It feels slipshod, it feels buggy, etc. -- the kinds of things a reviewer is supposed to say. But if the reviewer is saying, "This game was rushed to market and therefore DID NOT ship according to spec," that's a factual claim that has to be supported somehow.

A lot of it depends on the wording of the review. If the reviewer seems to be making a factual claim when he's really stating an opinion, or if it's not clear what he means at all, then it's a bad review.

[tholly]

It's a fine distinction. If the reviewer says the game IS unfinished, then he's stating something as fact, which he should not do unless he can back it up. If he can quote the project leader saying something like, "Management mandated unreasonable deadlines that forced us to ship before we had time to do proper QA," then it's safe to call the game unfinished. If he can't back it up, then the reviewer should not say a game is unfinished.

But if he says the game FEELS unfinished then that's perfectly OK. "Feels unfinished" is subjective; it connotes exactly what j_factor said: the game seems like it needed more testing or seems like it is lacking features. Maybe it's not; maybe it was playtested to death and it has every feature the developers wanted, but it doesn't seem that way in the reviewer's opinion.

Calling a game "rushed" isn't quite the same. No software developer has EVER been involved in a project where they weren't being rushed by somebody. :) So it's reasonably true to say every game was rushed. I suspect that when most reviewers call a game "rushed," they're referring to how it feels, not what it is. It feels slipshod, it feels buggy, etc. -- the kinds of things a reviewer is supposed to say. But if the reviewer is saying, "This game was rushed to market and therefore DID NOT ship according to spec," that's a factual claim that has to be supported somehow.

A lot of it depends on the wording of the review. If the reviewer seems to be making a factual claim when he's really stating an opinion, or if it's not clear what he means at all, then it's a bad review.


Your post seems to be rushed and unfinished.

Just kidding with you, but what you have to say is absolutely right. Wording is everything and a lot of problems develop when people do not know how to speak (type) properly.

[bangtango]

If he can't back it up, then the reviewer should not say a game is unfinished.

If the reviewer is saying, "This game was rushed to market and therefore DID NOT ship according to spec," that's a factual claim that has to be supported somehow.

A lot of it depends on the wording of the review. If the reviewer seems to be making a factual claim when he's really stating an opinion, or if it's not clear what he means at all, then it's a bad review.

My sentiments exactly, which is what made me post the topic. Why do people always assume bad games are unfinished or rushed? You never hear the same said about average or mediocre games.

With a game being rushed, I can see your point in that every game is rushed (to some degree) or at least has a deadline. I suppose it depends on the circumstances, since some games clearly are compromised.

One might be games based on movies or tv shows. When Ocean was making Jurassic Park games in the early 1990's, the head honcho may have walked in one day and said, "Shit, we got 2-3 months to make a game for Jurassic Park before it comes to the theater or video (depending on when the game came out). Get on it!"

You also may run into a scenario where Sega, Nintendo, Atari, Sony or whoever demands to have a certain title done before launching a system. That has happened quite often. Virtua Fighter on the Saturn, for example. Aside from that, you have the usual business of game companies wanting certain titles ready for release in time for the holidays. For the most part, though, I would assume programmers have a reasonable amount of time to get a project done.

[SirDrexl]

Well, we know E.T. was rushed.

I think the terms get tossed around more when there are certain release windows that were likely to have to have been met, like the holidays, at a console's launch, or when a movie is released. I remember in a review for Banjo Tooie it was said that the game's poor frame rate could have been due to Rare not having enough time to optimize the code before the game had to be released before Christmas.

I think the terms get used because reviewers really want to believe that game designers don't set out to make something bad, like in The Producers. They assume there must be a reason why the game turned out how it did.

[calthaer]

Sometimes it's quite obvious - the most blatant example I can think of is when EA bought Origin and then forced all future Ultima games to come out in one year. Suddenly you have Ultima VIII, which has almost NONE of the rich depth and content that was a hallmark of the other games in the series. Obviously Richard Garriott isn't a bad designer - the former games in the series prove it. It's the marketing suits at the top who are trying to dictate game design that ruined those games.

And let's face it - everyone thinks Miyamoto is a genius, and he surely has talent, but there's also another reason his track record is flawless with nary a blemish. That reason is Nintendo's deep pockets. They can ALWAYS afford him as much time as he wants to polish his game to perfection, and they always do. That's why we don't have the next Zelda game yet. Lots of time to finish something and the money to keep perfecting & playtesting it has a lot to do with it. True, there are probably some game designers who would never turn out a quality product, but there are also probably a lot (like Garriott) who just don't have that luxury all the time, and sometimes their games suffer as a result - and that's by no means a poor reflection on their abilities.

[Jorpho]

With a game being rushed, I can see your point in that every game is rushed (to some degree) or at least has a deadline. I suppose it depends on the circumstances, since some games clearly are compromised.

One might be games based on movies or tv shows. When Ocean was making Jurassic Park games in the early 1990's, the head honcho may have walked in one day and said, "Shit, we got 2-3 months to make a game for Jurassic Park before it comes to the theater or video (depending on when the game came out). Get on it!"

Remember the stink about the Pirates of the Carribean game? I'm told there are patches available for the PC version that make it much more playable.

Might it be said that the term "unfinished" is an adequate term to sum up one's sentiments about a feature so blatantly and obviously flawed that it seems anyone could easily see a means of improving it after a moment's examination?

[Aussie2B]

Honestly, I can't really picture any developer sitting there just twiddling his or her thumbs saying "Well, that's all we're going to do with this; now we can just kick back, relax, and wait for the release date". While there surely are programmers that can't cut it, I think there comes a point when the code or design is so flawed that there's no being subjective about it (unlike with say, singers or such) - they KNOW the game has problems. Maybe they lack the knowledge or skill to fix them or maybe they simply don't have enough time even if it does seem like it should be plenty of time to the outside world (and part of that problem could be that they're not talented enough to use their time well).

[Aussie2B]

Edit: Double post

[Daltone]

Battlecruiser 3000AD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD) was blantantly unfinished when it was released. You'd have thougth that after a mere seven years of development that it'd have at least been slightly good.

[Blitzwing256]

castlevania sotn was very much unfinished when it was released, but it still ended up being an awesome game

and a good excuse to release the more finished saturn version a year or so later ;-)

[j_factor]

Sonic 2 was certainly unfinished, but people seem to think it turned out okay.

[Jorpho]

Sonic 2 was certainly unfinished, but people seem to think it turned out okay.

Do you have a particular basis for that statement other than the existence of the beta versions?

[bangtango]

Sonic 2 was certainly unfinished, but people seem to think it turned out okay.

Do you have a particular basis for that statement other than the existence of the beta versions?

See, this is the very reason I started this thread. This idea of just throwing around the term "unfinished" like a frisbee drives me crazy.

Now they have me doing the same thing with some games that I recently played!

-"Friday the 13th" for the NES: Unfinished?
-"Home Alone" for Super NES: Unfinished?
-"Urban Champion" for NES: Unfinished?
-"Vigilante" for Sega Master System: Unfinished?
-"Spec Ops" for Playstation: Unfinished?
-"Crueball" for Sega Genesis: Unfinished?
-'WWF Wrestlemania" for NES: Unfinished?
-"Zelda II: The Adventure of Link": Unfinished? (well, people beat the game to death for being a side-scroller)
-"Black Bass" for NES: Unfinished? (gee, maybe because the fish were an ugly dark green and didn't look like real fish?)
-"Night Trap" for Sega CD: Unfinished?
-"Bad Dudes" in the arcade: Unfinished? (hey, if console games are sometimes "unfinished", why not arcade games?)
-"Space Channel 5" for Sega Dreamcast: Unfinished?


That's more than enough examples. I don't even like using sarcasm :D See how easy it is to fall into that trap, though, and call everything unfinished? I hope nobody took that list seriously.

[jdc]

Like artists and musicians, some developers are more talented than others.

I had read on more than one occassion that Rare was privy to game development secrets that no other developer received, back in the N64 days, which may or may not explain why their games were two cuts above everyone elses. Might be true, might not.

I'm sure that there are developers that can be persuaded to rush a game or two in order to meet a launch or holiday deadline. What really sucks is when the public pays good money for these "efforts".

[j_factor]

Sonic 2 was certainly unfinished, but people seem to think it turned out okay.

Do you have a particular basis for that statement other than the existence of the beta versions?

There were 4 additional zones intended for the game that were left out of the end product. I remember someone from STI stating in an interview that this was due to time constraints. Obviously, these 4 zones (and hence, the game) were not finished, else they'd be in it.

Long before the beta was known to the wild world of the internet, it was immediately apparent that Sonic 2 was unfinished to some extent, based on it containing a tune in a sound test that never appears in the game. Obviously that tune was intended for something that wasn't finished, n'est-ce pas?

[Jorpho]

Unused tunes in a sound test hardly seem to be sufficient basis for calling a game unfinished. Right now the only example I can think of is Kirby's Dream Land 2, which I cannot imagine anyone calling unfinished.

I'm also quite sure that there are a lot of games which are initialy planned to have features that do not make it into the final product. I think the real question is how well the final product stands without them.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, I suppose everybody has to make this appear like rocket science. If the game has a generally high level of quality but with inexplicable deficiencies here and there, that's a clue the game might have been rushed.

Naturally, some games aren't unfinished, but flawed - say the endgame is idiotic - and this might have carried over from the very beginning of the project, when the team leads plotted the course of the development's history over the next year to two years.

Developers eventually have to "let go" their releases, even if they don't have a set ship date from the beginning (a rare event), warts and all. In a sense, most all games are "unfinished" as few games end up living up to the designer's original intention.

If anthing this term illustrates the difference not between a reviewer's and a developer's viewpoint (they're actually quite close in goals), but the inevitable end result of developing on a schedule.

I think it's pretty foolish to say that you can't ever spot rushed games, even if there is no definitive criteria for determining if a game is "rushed."


If [the reviewer] can quote the project leader saying something like, "Management mandated unreasonable deadlines that forced us to ship before we had time to do proper QA," then it's safe to call the game unfinished.
It's also safe to say that the project leader in question will be found shot dead outside their apartment shortly after making such a statement. Fired, at the very least, like our friend the PS3 artist.

And to answer Jorpho, I can think of a few other titles with unused tracks in the sound test, especially in arcade games. That's definitely not a good criterion.

[Ackman]

Super Double Dragon was unfinshed :( but still a great a game....

But it could have been awesome and I think the Technos must have been going bank at the time.
They trashed the story boards and the last level is very unsatisfying and when you think of how awesome the presentation of..... double dragon 2 nes was. Chopped the whole story, took out characters that were in the instuction manual.

Meh and then tradewest went and messed around with the US version, bleh.

[Aussie2B]

Unused music is more often a sign that they decided the tune wasn't needed, wanted, or fitting for the game.

You know, it is possibly for developers to WANT to cut something from a game. Maybe as gamers we think more is better so as long as something isn't poor quality we think it should stay in the game. Look at the Japanese in-store demo of Chrono Trigger; that prototype version of the game contained a lot of stuff that the final version did not. However, it was simply the developers' choice to remove the content, not an issue of the game being unfinished or rushed. For further proof and to get back into the unused songs issue, you just have to check the Chrono Trigger original soundtrack. There are two tracks on it that weren't in the game, and the composer Mitsuda himself was interviewed regarding those songs. He was a little sad that they weren't included in the game because they were very good songs (BUT I believe they're still on the cart; there's just no sound test to access them by normal means), but he explained how one was intended for a dungeon in the prehistoric era. The developers decided that the dungeon wasn't ultimately important to the plot or flow of the game and the era already had enough dungeons (in balance with the other eras), so it was cut. They didn't need the song for anything else, so that was that. Since it would take extra effort to remove it from the cart, why bother?

[bangtango]

Saying a game is unfinished because some unused levels are floating around is NUTS.

Unused/lost levels from Super Mario 3 (NES) are supposedly found with an easy internet search and have been covered in magazines. Does that mean the game was unfinished?

Keep in mind one key thing with some of these games, like Sonic 2 and Mario 3, which have unused or lost levels that didn't appear in the final copy.

Those games never had save features on their original systems AND they were being marketed for kids. You had to finish the original versions of those games in one sitting and one day, without turning off your system.

Without using warp zones or Game Genies, playing either of those all the way through and beating them takes a long time. Those games were big enough the way they turned out.

Reality: Those types of games ARE finished.

Using that logic of a game being unfinished because a bunch of levels weren't used is shaky.

When "Jaws" (Spielberg) came out on dvd, there was 60-70 minutes of deleted scenes/footage packed on that you could watch. So was the movie unfinished?

Or how about someone, say Tom Petty, reissuing an album (whether a hit album or flop) years later with bonus tracks including 2-3 cuts that never made it on the original. So the album was unfinished then?

[alec]

Thrill Kill is unfinished