Spray and Pray
Michael Scott
Ever since a kid in my elementary school showed me Fire Emblem on the Gameboy Advance all those years ago, I've been a fan of the turn-based strategy genre. It's like chess, only infinitely more detailed.
Those archers are always getting stabbed in the face!
So when I found out that an old-school TBS game was getting remade for the Xbox 360 I was hyped. XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its expansion Enemy Within are arguably the best strategy games on the console, and maybe some of the best of this generation. But there was a problem.
OH NO! Say it ain't so!
Like most video games, XCOM had its fair share of bugs. (Okay well, more than it's "fair share") Some were innocuous, like enemies clipping through the environment or taking cover in the wrong direction, but some were more serious.
First of all was the fact that the enemies would often fire through walls. And I don't mean they'd barrage the side of a building until you could see daylight through, I mean their lasers would pass through the wall leaving it intact but still striking my soldiers. Game loops, where the enemy would sit still during their turn, not doing anything also happened. Other bugs like the occasional soft crash or even rarer hard crash also existed, so frequent saving was a must.
So why do you care? Why does anyone? Because XCOM 2, I discovered, was built on the engine of the original. Sure the graphics are improved, there are more aliens and the UI is slightly updated, but those same ol' bugs are still creepin' and crawlin'.
Bug from XCOM
Bug from XCOM 2.... look familiar?
On top of being shot through walls, the Viper alien can do a tongue lasso move and pull my soldiers close for a paralyzing strangle attack. Really annoying when solid objects don't protect you.
Oh and those soft crashes are back with a vengeance. Now that the Xbox One can detect a soft crash automatically, I no longer have to manually reset the game, but it still means I lost game data often.
A new bug that I encountered was tied to one of the DLC boss characters. In The Alien Hunters DLC, 3 boss enemies with large health pools and special abilities were introduced. Defeating these enemies grants the player access to specialized armor sets unavailable in the base game. Cool stuff. But the 3rd of the 3 boss aliens was so buggy that I almost quit playing the game.
Look at this big baby.
The "King Archon" would appear randomly on missions, so I had to launch the mission to see if he was there as he would not show up in the briefings. He was hard to kill, and did high amounts of damage to my soldiers. But the worst of it was his tendency to soft crash the game. And this wasn't a "sometimes yes, sometimes no" thing. Every time he was on the level the game would crash.
It actually made me much more afraid of him than I otherwise would've been.
"Did I save recently?"
"Can I kill him before he bugs out?"
Eventually I did triumph over the beast, but the soft crashes and milder bugs continued. The fact of the matter is XCOM 2 is far buggier than its predecessor ever was, and that's saying something. I really can't believe these crashes haven't been addressed, it's truly disturbing.
Disturbing because, this game was released a full year after the PC version. Meaning they had over a year to get the kinks worked out and ready for console release. And by the way, bugs on a PC game are par for the course. There are so many system types, graphics cards, and processor configurations, that making a game that is bug free on all of them would require more time than humanly possible.
But for a console? There's only one configuration. Just one.
I don't claim to know anything specifically about programming or debugging, but I do know that as a player, and as a fan of XCOM in general. This really bums me out. I haven't finished the game because It keeps crashing. Over and over. Keep in mind, this is also a 2K game. Not some rinky-dink 1 person studio. 2K is huge.
Cut to Mass Effect: Andromeda. I get stuck at a sub-boss, some Undying Mind looking mother fucker. But not nearly as handsome. The game starts crawling and slows down to the point where my character can't even move. And now he's dead.
Crap.
Look at this sexy devil. Bungie knows how to treat a lady.
There ain't nothin' wrong with a texture bug now and then or a little bit of clipping. Hell, even in the most polished games theses things happen, games are very complex. But this is ridiculous. Bugs that prevent players from finishing a game, that they paid $60 for, SHOULD NEVER EXIST. It's shameful and completely unprofessional.