Mortal Kombat X
When NetherRealm Studios released Mortal Kombat X last year, many were incredibly excited to be able to play the brutal, bloody fighter in all its glory on their PCs. What they didn’t expect however, was that the messy game was going to have such a messy launch. Crashes, saved data loss, graphical slowdowns, you name it and MKX had it. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely NetherRealm’s fault as much of the reason why the game suffered so many issues was due to how Steam pre-downloaded the game’s files onto the machine. In many cases, the game was able to pre-download the standard 3GB, but failed to download subsequent files and often found itself missing crucial elements which forced it to close down. And despite fairly positive reviews on Steam, the game was met with thousands of incredibly negative comments and an overload of unhappy fans.
This isn’t to say NetherRealm wasn’t to blame for some of the games issues though. The online mode for MKX on PC struggled to match players into fights and had serious lag issues when it did. That is assuming the matches continued and didn’t completely disconnect players right before they were about to win and pull off Cassie Cage’s awesome Selfie fatality. Many of the game’s issues have been fixed since then, however the game still struggles with some glaring flaws which may or may not have led to the decision to initially skip over a PC release for the recent Mortal Kombat XL.
SimCity
Server stability issues aren’t uncommon in the slightest for PC releases and in many cases, these problems tend to get sorted out fairly soon after a game’s launch. SimCity was the exception to this rule in just about every way, shape, and form. EA, the game’s developer, received a lot of negative feedback about the game requiring an always online internet connection and that it lacked any form of offline single-player. SimCity forced players to be logged into Origin to be able to play it and when the servers came online March 6, 2013, no one was safe from the server crashes and network outages it was plagued with.
The issues were so bad that some players were unable to even log into the game until weeks after its initial release. Amazon had even received such intense levels of negative comments about the game that it was temporarily removed from the marketplace. The game has since added an offline single-player mode option and has gotten numerous updates to increase server stability and prevent disconnects and loss of saved data. No matter how much better SimCity gets however, it seems as though the game will always carry a black spot as being one of the single worst game server launches of all time.
BioShock: The Collection
When a game is remastered, players tend to hold onto hope that the product created will exceed the original and rightfully so. But it seems as though BioShock: The Collection didn’t get the memo on that one. People have been eagerly awaiting remasters for the BioShock series for a long while now and when the collection was officially announced, the populace couldn’t have been happier. Unfortunately, the PC crowd’s enthusiasm quickly diminished when they realized the games ended up being more demasters than remasters.
It looks as though none of the original games’ bugs have been fixed and some of the worst ones can still completely break the game. Those looking for expanded graphical options were sorely disappointed as well as the remasters seem to have even less preference options than the originals, being limited to just things like resolution and anti-aliasing. Many players are noting that the sound for the game is also as bad, if not completely worse than the originals. On top of everything, frame rate problems rear their ugly heads and can even cause crashing in serious cases. As it stands now, 2K, the developer, hasn’t spoken out about the game’s issues. However, the BioShock series is so loved that if 2K doesn’t get on it, some superhero fan will undoubtedly swoop in and save the day with an incredible game-fixing mod.
No Man’s Sky
No Man’s Sky was, without a doubt, one of the most anticipated games of 2016 and many players were anxious to get the game on their PC and really push the limits of the promised 18 quintillion planet universe. Unfortunately, it seems 18 quintillion planets was about one—or 10 quintillion—planets too big, as the game suffered tremendous problems across the board. No Man’s Sky’s messy release was completely foreshadowed by PC-only delay followed immediately by the phrase “we’re still here working on it,” from the head of Hello Games, Sean Murray.
No Man’s Sky endured problems ranging anywhere from frame rate drops to screen-tearing to full on crashes at startup. Players also couldn’t safely alt-tab the game, as they risked the chance of not being able to bring it back up without force closing and reopening it. Hello Games was very fast to respond to the issues and worked to get fixes out as quickly as they could, however for a game so anticipated to have so many issues really left many fans devastated, especially because it was related to the game’s performance. It does seem as though many of the issues have since been resolved and updates have allowed players to explore the vast universe with far less trouble.
Batman: Arkham Knight
It’s difficult to talk about horrible PC game launches without discussing public enemy number one: Batman: Arkham Knight. When Arkham Knight released late last year, the game was given some heavy praise for the console version and some serious repulsion for the PC. The game suffered just about every performance issue in the book: frame rate stutters, full on crashes, FPS drops, and much, much more. Even on the highest end PCs, the game was noted to have frame rate slowdowns to as low as 10 FPS whilst performing standard actions like gliding through the city or riding in the Batmobile. AMD and Nvidia released full new device drivers specifically to help optimize the game, but even so, many of the existing problems continued to persist.
The consumer negativity surrounding Arkham Knight was so poor that Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment had to completely suspend sales for the game while they worked on improving the game’s performance and also offered refunds to those who purchased it. The game was made available again around the end of October, however due to complaints of persistent performance problems, Warner Bros. continued the refund program until the end of 2015 (regardless of when the game was purchased).
The game’s developer, Rocksteady, has since been working on the game’s lingering issues, however it still continues to reside in a subpar state. It is incredibly rare for a game’s sales to be completely suspended, but in the case of Arkham Knight, it was very much warranted. And at least Warner Bros. had the decency to refund those unhappy with the game, though I’m sure many of them would have preferred a game that worked.
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