Bad product testing...

Graham

Hello :-)
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Ok this takes the cake.

At work we have been playing a bunch of crime games for research.
So far they are all pretty terrible.

The latest is CSI: Dark Motives. This game has five mini-episodes in one.

When we got onto episode 2, we discovered something curious...
All text in the conversation trees' was in French!

There was a mistake in the installer. Clearly the guys who got the gold master didn't test the installed game past the first episode, as the installer would always install the French language packs for episodes 2,3,4 and 5! This *stupid* bug made the game close to unplayable.


To make it worse, it took us nearly an hour to find the patch. Somewhat typical ubisoft support I guess :-/
(It also doesn't help that episode 1 was frustrating to the point of making me feel physically upset)
 
the CSI game was very well presented and voice acted, had passable plots and the like. However the mechanics just aren't there. They are investigation games where you need to find every single clue - and often times the game logic breaks because you miss something early on. It can get spectacularly frustrating. To make matters worse your 'lab helper' is utterly useless, you know exactly what you want to be done, yet until you figure out some fancy UI trickery you can't get him to do it.

We have also recently gone through a couple of law and order games. The plots are a bit hit and miss, but the depth is much better. It's more a traditional adventure/mystery game - it's harder to get stuck, as you don't need to find everything. (although avoid the first couple of games in the series, they are horrible). Their presentation just isn't up there though, in fact, it's simply terrible in places. Some of the mechanics for research are also highly frustrating - getting a warrant, for example, is painful. You need to submit evidence, yet you often have multiple items representing the same evidence - and the game doesn't give you a hint as to what is the right one to use (it tries to, but the system is broken). Also the games can have an utterly moronic 'skill' system, which you must choose before starting, and are not properly explained.

Overall they are not memorable games, unless you count the frustration.

I've also gone through the new Sherlock Holmes demo, which is (sadly) laughably bad in places. The fact they mistake New Zealand Maori and Australian Aboriginal was pretty good indication the resources just weren't there when they made it.
 
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Remember playing Deja Vu on my old Amiga back in the 80s. Now that was a detective game!

Didn't understand what was going on - I died all the time - but DAMN. It was cool!

Wish I could try it again now, nevermind the crappy graphics..

Peacve.
 
Ah yes Ubi the company that famously released a game that didnt work at all (well not under 9x anyway + yes it was supported)

i can image the beta testers conversation
"you know this game really looks like the windows desktop"
 
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