So, most of the season’s biggest games have landed on our hard drives by now, which means two things will follow in their wake:
1) A torrent of finely-detailed complaints about this, that and the other feature. With maybe the occasional compliment thrown in for good measure.
2) Patches!
There tends to be this weird two-sided coin for PC versions of big games – on the hand they often don’t receive quite as much spit’n'polish as the console versions, which is at least partly because there’s no Microsoft or Sony certification hoops to jump through. On the other, that lack of certification means fixing up minor holes can happen a lot more quickly. Case in point – in the last couple of days, two very recent biggies have already seen their first patches: Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2.
Let’s start with the former, because the details are dulldulldull:
Fixed occasional crashes when exiting the game or using Alt F4 to exit.
Fixed crashes when using Alt-Tab while binks or credits were playing.
The game now restarts properly after title updates finish installing.
Which is important stuff even if it’s not fun to talk about, and hopefully suggests Bethesda should be pretty on the ball about sorting out further bugs. Have you lot any particular requests? Oh – you can grab the 6.59Mb patch from here .
FC2’s sounds a bit more significant, sorting out a whole bunch of stuff in both single and multiplayer, as well as adding 5.1 sound support and a benchmark mode. There’s also a list of other issues currently being nosed at here. Full patch notes below, and again, what bugs/failings d’you reckon especially needs a fix sharpish?
Multiplayer
- Server’s IP address now displays in lobby, beside the match’s name (for direct IP join to work)
- Dedicated Server can now be launched in command line.
- Improved match start conditions. Ranked games can now also start if the player max is attained and everybody but the host is ready.
- Fixed a bug causing random crashes when joining a game.
- Ranked matches in progress will no longer display in the match list.
- Fixed players with same name by using identifiers instead of names.
- Fixed crash when creating a LAN game without a network cable.
- The diamond pool is now always validated after class upgrades, reset or rank up to avoid getting more diamonds than you are supposed to for your rank.
- When creating a dedicated server with PunkBuster enabled, then close it to create another but this time with PunkBuster disabled, PunkBuster will still be considered ON, on this new server.
- Fixed a problem where a player could get stuck (and couldn’t get killed) after pressing the interaction key while wounded and getting rescued by a teammate at the same time.
- Fixed players getting disconnected if they have too many user maps and try to enter the map rotation menu in a Player or Ranked match.
- Vehicles will now always respawn even if they are never used.
- Fixed users not being able to see a match if the host switched match mode after a rank.
- Fixed a glitch that could make a player invisible to another.
- Fixed incorrect check for negative values when adjusting diamond count.
- Fixed a problem where a player would render through objects if healing a wounded playing while being wounded at the same time.
- Fixed reload not being interrupted on the host when a client picks a weapon while reloading.
- Fixed Field Manuals not unlocking after game mode change.Singleplayer
- Fixed health not changing with the difficulty level.
- Keyboard controls remapping in single mode now carry into multiplayer mode.
-A buddy will no longer get stuck when healing him while player is receiving damage.
- Stats of favourite weapon are now properly reset between loaded save games.
- The mortar will no longer move the player through wall.
- Mission objectives markers are now show properly after loading a save game.General
- Fixed glider key remapping.
- Game will now minimize in order to show the website when clicking on ubi.com.
- Dolby 5.1 is now supported for most sound cards.
- Fixed a random crash that could happen when pressing ESC to cancel a Benchmark run.
- Added CPU Intensive benchmark test run.
- Fixed Jackal Tapes and Partner Tapes pages.Map editor
- Fixed crash in editor when deleting many objects in very rapid succession.
- Fixed crash in editor during parsing of the map headers.
Related Stories:
Far Cry 2 is like that by design, so it’s unlikely to ever change, and unless they release a full editor it’s unlikely that players will be able to fix it without a ridiculous amount of reverse-engineering.
And Fallout 3 is capped at 20? That’s amazing. I’m already level 6 (er, 7, maybe?) and the only part of the main story I’ve done is the bit in Megaton, although that’s partly because I have several points in the Fast Learner perk. With the way I play I’ll be maxed out before I even get to the real plot (assuming “follow dad, kthx” isn’t the real plot).
Now if only Bethesda could release a patch for the crashes that happen during the game…
I think the level cap feels too low because of the way the game is balanced. If you do a lot of the MQ before exploring you level very quickly. If you just explore and do SQs you level very slowly. Personally, i’m over 50 hours into the game and have barely touched the MQ. As a result i’m still only on level 18 but thanks to bobbleheads and skill books i’ve all my major stats maxed plus another couple bumped to the 70s. None under 25! So for me the game’s system feels perfect and the cap far from restrictive.
I think Beth must’ve made the choice to do it like this to tone down scaling. It means that if you decide to pursue the MQ to the exclusion of the rest of the world you’ll still be at the right power for the task and they can make the world less artificially responsive to your level. It’s a different way of tackling the problem and I have to say i prefer it as it allows the quick fix gamers to play but is less punishing towards the long play guys in accomodating them.
Wait, our HP was supposed to increase in Far Cry? ROFL.
Ok, back to Fall Out: GAME OF THE YEAR. Yes, I loved Goo too, but I’m having a difficult time remembering when I was so utterly engrossed in the vast minutia of a game. It will make you scared, thrilled, and wanting a tetanus shot all at the same time.
This patch is B.S. though, just a reach-around for Microsoft to keep their sticker on the box. There are some user crafted patches out already for some quest bugs, but a really decent engine patch is a *must* for a second run-through.
So, no fix for the extremely twitchy monocular, the watch controls not remapping, the hard drive bloating quick save, the completely broken audio levels/panning etc etc. And those are only the technical issues that need addressing, I could write a few thousand words on everything that’s wrong (and right) with the game mechanics. They can start by patching out malaria entirely.
As for Fallout 3, you better hope Bethesda are on the ball, a quick glance at the thousands of bugs fixed in the unofficial community patch for Oblivion was enough for me to hold off buying F3 until I hear more about the quality. At launch I had to use the official mod tools to fix at least eight Oblivion quests in one playthrough of that, but no mod tools this time…
The landscape in FO3 is utterly wonderful, creeping from cover to cover, scoping things with the sniper rifle, moving on, exploring, capping slavers. All that god stuff. Best atmosphere in-game ever (better than S.t.a.l.k.e.r.). And there’s apparently some plot and dungeons NPCs and RPG stuff tacked on as well.
The lack of proper darkness does take away some atmosphere. Beth’s vision of night is like a winter’s day in Aberdeen.
Re: Far Cry 2
It’s not really shit, but I was massively disappointed. The freedom of the game is an illusion, its gunfights aren’t exciting, the AI is poor, the speech terrible (why does it sound like it’s being played at 1.5x speed?) and some of the design decisions are questionable at best and utterly moronic at worst. Such a shame.
But Fallout 3 is awesome! Definitely my personal GOTY. And re: level cap, DO NOT take the fast levelling perk. You will hit level 20 unless you just go straight into the MQ and skip all side missions. Don’t make the levelling any faster that it needs to be.
Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 (and to a lesser extent, Spore) are among a new generation – Games that get glowing reviews, and are widely praised everywhere but the internet.
But oh boy, the moment you get online, they’re suddenly the worst things ever made.
I, for one, am glad the developers seem to be abandoning the Angry Nerd demographic. More trouble than they’re worth.
Far Cry needs a lean function.
Where is this Fallout 3 hate? Even the codex isn’t entirely united in hating it and there’s a lot of praise for it 9as a game rather than a fallout game) at NMA.
Yeah – my impression is that FO3 is actually getting an impressively favourable user response.
KG
Generally favourable, perhaps, but there’s still a large ‘Oblivion was the WORST GAME EVER MADE and this is it all over again!’ crowd. I have a feeling a lot of them are keeping their heads down, as they’re definitely the minority this time though.
There’s still forums where you can be practically lynched for saying you preferred Oblivion to Morrowind. Oblivion may have been the more popular, but once the angry people start shouting, it doesn’t seem that way.
See Far Cry 2, with the DRM-rage crew saying that their protests have been a great success… and the game flying straight to #1 in the charts. There’s always this lovely divide between reality and the internet echo chamber.
Haven’t noticed much FO3 hate, unusually for a big game it’s getting almost universal praise. The few negative comments I’ve seen have been shot down quickly, and the complaints are odd (”It’s too difficult!” Stop playing it like an FPS then).
That’s an oversimplification. I bought Far Cry 2, hence have contributed to the sales statistics. Yet I do think it’s a terribly mediocre game. Does that make me an angry internet nerd?
What’s more, it’s not that surprising that people who play games a lot, and like to talk about games on the internet, might have higher standards than the casual gamer (in lack of a better word, and I don’t mean that condescending at all) who just picks up FC2 after he’s seen a TV ad. That’s not exactly something specific to gaming.
My impression is that it somehow annoys you that people don’t like FC2 and Spore, so you make a sweeping blow.
What happens when you don’t like a game, if I may ask? Do you stay silent?
My only frustration with FO3 is the fact that it occasionally and randomly crashes- i’ve had a couple of play sessions with no crash, then some with consistent crashing every few minutes or so. I keep reading about the ffdshow thing, might try that.
However, it was running ok for the last couple of days, and then I installed the patch (had no choice really, if I’d said no it would sign me out of shitbox Games for Windows Live, thus disabling access to my saves) and I had 10 CTDs in 25 minutes. Surely a patch is supposed to make the game better, not worse? ;)
So yeah, really enjoying both of these titles except for that. And the confusion as to why Bethesda signed FO3 to Windows live, when they’re using Steam to sell it digitally. What use is Live for this game? Only for the achievements, apparently. So why not do it in game, like Mass Effect? a minor bitch, to be honest, but i would rather not have Windows Live on my system as it is a sizable crock of shit…
Perseverance is winning through though-the more times I try to get past the crashes, the more the game gives in and runs ok :D
unclelou: If I don’t like a game, I either don’t buy it, or if I HAVE bought it, I sell it on (ebay, Playtrade, Amazon etc) and don’t waste further time or effort on it. I may make a comment or two at a later date about how it didn’t appeal to me, but I’d much rather spend time playing that stuff I DO like than complaining about the stuff I don’t.
I mean, maybe I’m just weird, but I’d rather talk about things I like.
To be frank, yes, I think that is a bit weird. Or at least it is a bit weird to expect this in a dicussion forum. Not much reason to even visit one if all you want people to do is nod in agreement about things they like.
Besides, I am often finding well argued posts an invaluable resource when deciding which games I buy, positive ones as well as negative ones.
As far as Fallout 3 is concerned, I am getting a mostly very positive vibe form various forums. I think the game is great, but I also think it must be allowed to discuss the things that could have been better.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_bugs – list of bugs found in Fallout 3. Looks like even Xbox 360 and PS3 suffer from crashes and showstoppers.
“Certifications” for console titles is not all it seems to be. One glaring example is Castle Crashers for Xbox live. The most important feature, multiplayer, was (still is?) horribly unstable.
Am I missing something, or is there no other way to change weapons in Fallout 3 than to go back and forth to the Pipboy?
I’m quite enjoying Fallout 3, especially after installing a few choice mods (orginal FO music FTW!), but it’s no classic. The combat is pretty clunky, it’s a bit easy (I’m playing on hard and have a ridculous amount of ammo, stimpacks etc) and the writing and voice work, while certainly a step up from the usual Bethesda drivel, is cringingly bad and desperate to please at times. That all said it’s great to wander around the wasteland in FP and, as much as it shames me to say it, I am enjoying the ridiculous gore! My girlfriend is also a big Fallout fan but so far the FPS nature of it has scared her off!
I don’t know if I’m alone on this but does wandering around these decimated city scapes at night remind any others of a somewhat forgotten classic that came Bethesda studios many year ago?
@spd From Russia
FO3 is NOT Stalker with VATS. Why? It’s Oblivion with guns in many ways, and one of the “worst” is that whereas Stalker has A-Life – which genuinely makes the zone feel less static than the average open world, Clear Sky’s swamps have been a different experience every time I’ve played them – FO3 has AI that never seem to go anywhere significant. The FO3 world is orientated around you, not ITSELF.
“especially after installing a few choice mods (orginal FO music FTW!”
I was just thinking that’s what it really needed! I don’t really like the soundtrack in FO3 at all, but overall i’m enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would (being an evil angry fallout 1/2 loving bastard). It certainly makes up for the disappointment of Far Cry 2 to a large extent.
“Am I missing something, or is there no other way to change weapons in Fallout 3 than to go back and forth to the Pipboy?”
When you’re in the weapons screen of the pipboy you can hold down a number (on your keyboard) and a menu thing’ll pop up on the right so you can hotkey that weapon. It’s balatantly set up for a controller but it’s one of the few times the game screams CONSOLE PORT at you so i’ll forgive it.
gulag: You are missing something. In fact, here’s a shortlist of things easily missed:
Your Pipboy has a flashlight function. Hold Tab to turn it on.
You can holster your weapons by holding Reload – you run faster when they’re holstered.
You can assign 8 hotkeys. In any of your inventory screens, hold 1-8 and click the item you want to assign. This can include weapons, drugs, food – anything usable.
F1-F3 are hotkeys to the three primary Pipboy panels.
Anything else anyone can think of?
I think the online feedback I’ve seen for Fallout 3 has been remarkably reasoned, especially given the contraversey it was gathering before release. Feedback is generally positive, but tempered by a few reasoned and valid criticisms which people seem more disappointed in than angry about.
I was initially a bit wary about FO3, having not particularly enjoyed Oblivion. However the discussion in the RPS chat rooms actually got me looking forward to the game more, and I’ve been enjoying it so far. The game obviously has some of Oblivion’s genes in it, and occasionally I feel brief tinges of the things I didn’t like about that game, but ultimately they don’t last. I’m playing on normal difficulty, and find that the game is balanced almost perfectly for me. On several occasions I have found myself outgunned, and survived by the skin of my teeth, left crouched in some dark corner, out of ammo and low on food waiting until that super mutant heads back to his post. I’ll then come across a party of raiders and gun half of them down before they even open fire.
Unfortunately I do suffer for freezes and CTDs, but they aren’t regular enough to make the game entirely unplayable, and seem to be reduced by closing down background tasks.
@ Dominic White: That’ll teach me not to read manuals. I didn’t know any of that…. That’s one less frustration with the combat system then!
Wasn’t 5.1 sound supported? That is strange… I’ve been playing with surround sound(sometimes confusing cars that drove behind me in the physical world with those in the game world) as far as I know…
James G, i am playing it in hard, and for me it’s easy, or at least more than Fallout 1/2 in normal. :/
Fallout 3 is not Stalker with VATS, because Stalker was an excellent shooter and Fallout 3 isn’t.
I found the quickest solution to VATS slowdown after the new patch is a simple Alt-Tab to desktop and back again. Seems to fix the problem and probably shows that it’s something which can be solved permanently with another patch from Bethesda.
I’m quite enjoying FC2, but yeah, I have had to downgrade my expectations a bit. Perhaps setting the respawn rate for guard posts to, say 12 in game hours. Then you could go through, clear out a route to a mission and have a safe route back, but still some more challenge next time you head that way. The randomly spawning dudes in boats and cars just gives you something to shoot at though :)
The only bug I’ve had (I’m using the FOV hack from here) has been the game flicking to window2ed mode every so often, which was a problem until I remembered all I had to do was press Alt-Enter….(facepalm)
As for the good, it’s very pretty, and shooting people is fun. Sometimes that’s all you need from a game.
Maybe you should be able to bribe guard posts with cold ones, as shown in the intro?
Actually, the thing where everyone you drive past gets out and shoots at you can be quite useful if you’re on foot looking for a car. Saves you having to stick up drivers, GTA-style.
“Anything else anyone can think of?”
The little triangles on the compass (not the quest markers, but the small ones): the empty ones point to locations nearby you haven’t discoverd yet, the filled ones to locations you have visited before.
I sure hope Bethsoft is working on another patch…
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_bugs
good to hear about the fallout patch, far crys on the other hand, but then again i havent played it for a week way too reptitive as everyone knows and overated
Just wondering if anyone else is already using fome of the FO3 mods? I installed one interface patch (I forget which) before I even played the game, which generaly acted to increase the number of lines of text on display at any one time. (By increasing the size of the text areas, rather than reducing the size of the text)
Fallout 3 is a bit of a mess QA-wise, which the growing FAQ with fixes at Something Awful can attest to.
Add to that the recurring complaints, cries for crash relief and what not.
I’m sure Alec agrees that the game lacks some polish.
Sort of really late, but on the topic of the Tenpenny Tower ‘good karma’ result, I quite liked how it turned out, however much I hated the zombies for doing that. It reminded me of the often unexpected, and punishing consequences that existed in the original two.
On the level cap: Why would anyone need to be any higher than level 20? By that point, you’re practically invincible (unless, of course, you run into Deathclaws).
Also: I’ve crashed something like once, after fast traveling, and fell through the floor once, but outside of that the game has been fine for me.
@matte_k, when you install FO3, you can opt to ignore installing windows Live. However, if you unfortunately already had it for a previous title, it will latch on.
FO3 tricks not mentioned: Operating the Radio or the Light will significantly decrease your sneak success. Blood packs can be converted into 20 HP boosts via “Blood Ties” quest.
Companions can be set to essential in console so that they do not die in a messy fire-fight, simply remain unconscious.
You can have 2 companions depending on your Karma and their preferences. Die hard explorers should stop leveling your main skills at 95 ish, you will get books to fill in the rest while aids and apparel can compensate in the mean time.
One change I didn’t like was in the tagging of skills; in the original two games, tagging a skill meant that you got a two percent improvement to that skill whenever you spent a point on it.
In Fallout 3, tagging a skill is basically just a one-off 15% boost.
@DigitalSignalX: Yeah, unfortunately it latched on to a previous install of Viva Pinata and set it up from that. I did have a game running before that, got as far as exiting the vault then it crashed, and when it restarted it made me set up the GfWL link, which then wiped my previous saves. :( Ta for the tip though, didn’t realise it was optional!
After watching my brother play some Fallout 3 and noticing the encounters seemed awfully easy considering the Fallout heritage, I bumped my savegame up to Hard and haven’t looked back — while all it does is hand enemy HP a coefficient, Raiders don’t die in two-three 10mm Pistol shots either, and critical strikes become way more important.
I’ve been having a blast with Fallout 3 so far.
And it sure isn’t a “short game”. Heck, I’ve played about 25 hours now and I’m still not even near Rivet City. Just so much to do that I just don’t get closer! And I finished Mass Effect in that time.
There’s always something to do. The VATS system is great fun. Lots of conversations to be had. A great radio system (never knew I’d actaully like those old oldies…). And it looks great.
My major frustration would be the Metro system. Heck, they give you a mini, unreadable metro map. Give us a big one!
Im waiting a couple of months for any new release til they get the main patches out.
According to Bethesda staff, this patch was released early and with few actual fixes due to a request by Microsoft; I guess the CTD on exit messed up Live or something. Further patches are inevitable.
It seems I am the poor bastard that have finished the game in record time :-(
Maybe is because I like small firearms, and the game as plenty of that. But I am biased to love my small firearms :-)
Oh.. and why o why the reload key is the key to holster the weapon? It don’t make sense to me.
I’ve just patched Fallout3 and lost my saved game, is this just me?
Its a real bugger, havent got too far (entered the train station looking for Ian West) as I am trying t make lvl 70 before WotLK but it is still a real pain in the arse
No,wait. It was just me. It seems running off the desktop short cut led to a game with no saves but running from steam was aok. phew.
Joypad button consolidation… Tap to reload, hold to holster.