What is the buggiest PC game you have ever played?

[Emuaust]

The Starship troopers game that was out a few years ago, yes Im aware there are "Bugs" in the game but its the most software buggiest game ive played, I think the longest stretch I got out of it was around 15 mins before crashing, utter shit.

[YoshiM]

Battlecruiser 3000AD is another I own (never have played), that apparantly has quite a development and buggy release history.

I remember that game. For what the developers wanted to do, the game was way ahead of its time. I can't recall the game's premise but the big to-do about it was the fact that you could control a gigantic Battlecruiser (which I think was complex in itself), hop out of that and fly a fighter/shuttle, land on any planet and then walk around on foot. It met with development issues and deadlines and was shipped in an extremely sad state (and an instruction book that rivaled the dictionary). I think now the game's rights have reverted to the original person that started the game and has been fixing it for years if memory serves.

[Push Upstairs]

I remember downloading and playing the "fixed" free version of Battlecruiser 3000. I didn't play it for serious sake, I remember taking shuttles and the giant ship onto a planet surface.

I gotta admit, it was really ambitious for the time....some might say it still is.

[SPAZ-12]

Anyone who has played [Big Rigs Racing] HAS to put it as the number one buggiest PC game ever.

*Raises hand

I'm not sure that I'd label it as the buggiest game ever though. After all, I'm sure that, say, their physics engine would work fine (if there was one)! Nothing beats going in reverse up a cliff at 1,000,000,000 mph in reverse, then coming to a stop instantly when letting off the gas.

[Flack]

If you've watched some of the Big Rigs Racing game, it's more than just the physics engine that's borked. For example at the beginning of the race you can back up over the finish line, drive forward, and win. I can't imagine anyone coming up with a buggier game that was actually sold than that one.

I played Quest For Glory 4 way back when and it crashed all the time. There were certain rooms that every time I entered, the game would just die. This was one of the first games I bought on CD-Rom and I had an early CD-Rom drive as well, and since I've not seen many people complain about it I assume I had either a faulty drive or disc.

[kedawa]

Frets on Fire has given me more trouble than any other game ever. I've tried it out several times, and the few times I've actually gotten it to start, it was unplayable because of glitches and slowdown.

[Berserker]

I played Quest For Glory 4 way back when and it crashed all the time. There were certain rooms that every time I entered, the game would just die. This was one of the first games I bought on CD-Rom and I had an early CD-Rom drive as well, and since I've not seen many people complain about it I assume I had either a faulty drive or disc.

It wasn't just you. I recall this game crashing on me a few times when I originally played it. Not to the point where it was unplayable, but it was definitely the most buggy Sierra game I've encountered. Also one of my favorites.

[Ed Oscuro]

Painkiller Overdose is the buggiest retail release I've played recently. It crashes consistently, especially if Firefox is using a bit of the 2GB of memory (the game doesn't require much).

The Battlefield series of games were notoriously buggy, but not so bad that people couldn't enjoy them. The basic stuff of shooting people tended to work when needed.

Lately, a lot of PC games that used to work no longer do. That's more the fault of changing targets for DirectX and graphics cards, as well as evolving PC hardware, breaking the older games. A fun example is the old Novalogic Delta Force games failing to run because a programmer made a dumb choice in streamlining a check for swap space.