Games That Feel Like They Weren't Playtested?

[Moonface]

I've recently been playing Uncharted 1 again on PS4 to finish getting all the trophies for it. I currently have one left:

Charted! - Brutal Difficulty
Finish the game on Brutal difficulty without changing the difficulty.

I am currently on Chapter 9, and it has taken me roughly 7+ hours to get there. Why? Because Bluepoint (they worked on this port) apparently think that Brutal = death in one hit, maybe two if you get lucky. The AI also get incredible accuracy too, so the instant you dare pop out from cover to even attempt to shoot anything with a pulse, you're probably going to take a hit (most likely fatal) before the reticle UI even appears on screen for you to aim with. There are also some chapters that feature zero cover at all, instead shoving you onto a vehicle with infinite ammo to let you spam your way to victory based purely on the luck that no enemy decides to pop a shot off the instant they spawn on screen and kill you.

There is absolutely no way this was playtested by a single person working on this port. I just refuse to believe it. I already felt like Crushing difficulty in Uncharted games was riddled with instances of just pushing sliders and not bothering to check the result in all the scenarios of the game, but this takes it to an entirely new level. I have actively resorted to cheesing segments and even attempted to glitch out of bounds at one point to try skipping an entire fight, because it feels pointless to try and play the game "fairly and by the rules" when player skill goes entirely out the window in favour of RNG luck that you kill an enemy in the one moment their AI decides to stare at you and not to shoot.

So what games have you played that feel like they were not playtested by the developers? I don't necessarily mean janky broken things like Cyberpunk and the like, but just game design that wasn't built around a positive playable experience or has noticeable problems that bring it all crashing down.

[Karo]

So two games in particular come to mind when this topic appears.

1. Pokemon Red/Blue

If speedrunner and hackers haven't shown how broken these games are. I don't know what will

2. Skyrim

I remember playing it on the OG console it was released on and it crashing every few hours and it got me thinking did anyone playtest this for more than an hour?

For me when I think of playtest I tend to think about finding bugs and fixes. While I feel like horribly deadly modes tend to be on purpose, but I could be wrong. XD

[ShiraNoMai]

Skyrim was definitely just a case of performance on specific consoles. I'm not sure any native playtesting on PC would have ever anticipated some of the shit that broke when it came on things like the PS3.

Yeah those first Pokemon games were so riddled with oversights. I'm sure it was playtested but there were definitely softlock-type situations and things they didn't expect a normal player to achieve (Wow you can hit level 100? Sure we'll keep letting you get EXP!). All things that were of course fixed in the next releases (Gold/Silver/Crystal).

Speaking of games from that era, there were LOADS pre-Gen 5 consoles that were just absolutely NOT playtested, and intentionally so. Games like Disney's Aladdin and The Lion King were made with "hey we you should keep renting this game!" in mind, so they were frustratingly impossible to play through, especially before one rental period was up. Luckily I owned these games so I didn't have to make my mom do that, but they were still games I never beat.

[Moonface]

So two games in particular come to mind when this topic appears.

1. Pokemon Red/Blue

If speedrunner and hackers haven't shown how broken these games are. I don't know what will

Yeah those first Pokemon games were so riddled with oversights. I'm sure it was playtested but there were definitely softlock-type situations and things they didn't expect a normal player to achieve (Wow you can hit level 100? Sure we'll keep letting you get EXP!). All things that were of course fixed in the next releases (Gold/Silver/Crystal).

To be fair, were the things being found expected to be discovered by casual/regular players? The majority of games have exploits and glitches found for speedrunning, but I wouldn't say that equates to a game not being properly playtested in instances related to that. For what Shira is saying, I wouldn't even call whatever happens past level 100 to be a lack of playtesting if the developers just never expected any player to reach that level. It's similar to how Pac-Man bugs out past Level 256, but it isn't really the fault of poor playtesting because it just wasn't expected for someone to reach that level in the game.

Speaking of games from that era, there were LOADS pre-Gen 5 consoles that were just absolutely NOT playtested, and intentionally so. Games like Disney's Aladdin and The Lion King were made with "hey we you should keep renting this game!" in mind, so they were frustratingly impossible to play through, especially before one rental period was up. Luckily I owned these games so I didn't have to make my mom do that, but they were still games I never beat.

Yeah, I recall the developers of Rayman outright admitted they never playtested the game, which is why it has such a high difficulty. I don't think it was for the intention of rentals though; I think they just felt it wasn't necessary to even do it.


Also, in the end I used a bug to enable cheats on Uncharted's Brutal difficulty so that I could stand a chance at finishing it, and did so yesterday. I have to say that if nothing else in the game proves it wasn't tested, then the final boss fight absolutely does. There's a QTE right before the third phase, and if you succeed at the QTE you are put into an animation that removes all control from you. During this animation, enemies will spawn in and begin shooting you, and you can actually die before the end of the QTE success animation. Dying puts you back to before the QTE, and it took me almost ten minutes to pass it without taking fatal damage before regaining control and getting into cover. I thought I was doing something wrong somehow but Googling it basically confirmed that the whole section is bullshit, and everyone who has experienced it doesn't view it any other way.

[Maniakkid25]

Bluepoint (they worked on this port) apparently think that Brutal = death in one hit, maybe two if you get lucky. The AI also get incredible accuracy too, so the instant you dare pop out from cover to even attempt to shoot anything with a pulse, you're probably going to take a hit (most likely fatal) before the reticle UI even appears on screen for you to aim with. There are also some chapters that feature zero cover at all, instead shoving you onto a vehicle with infinite ammo to let you spam your way to victory based purely on the luck that no enemy decides to pop a shot off the instant they spawn on screen and kill you.

As someone who has played and beaten RE5 and Titanfall 2 on their highest difficulties, the only thing that comes to mind is this:



Operation Darkness. There is no goddamn way that game was playtested before it was shipped. The way the game pulls the same cheap tricks and forces restarts repeatedly is just beyond frustration.

[Kyng]

Civilization: Beyond Earth.

On release, it was reasonably stable; however, players quickly worked out that the trade routes were grossly overpowered, to the point where the number of trade routes your colony had was pretty much the only thing that mattered. Furthermore, a lot of the World Wonders were very underpowered - and some didn't even work at all. Over the next few months, several patches came out (to nerf the power of trade routes, and improve the Wonders), and the situation gradually improved.

However, when the Rising Tide expansion came out the following year... it added a bunch of features that just didn't work properly. For example, it added aquatic cities... but there was no way to connect them to your trade network. And speaking of trade... they buffed the trade routes, to the point where, once again, the entire game revolved around them.

Sadly, the game's player base had dropped right off by this point - and there were no more patches to balance everything. So much potential wasted in this game .

[Moonface]

As someone who has played and beaten RE5 and Titanfall 2 on their highest difficulties, the only thing that comes to mind is this:



Operation Darkness. There is no goddamn way that game was playtested before it was shipped. The way the game pulls the same cheap tricks and forces restarts repeatedly is just beyond frustration.

Man, I forgot all about the pain of RE5 on Professional mode. Although to be fair to it, it's fine in co-op if I recall correctly; it's playing with the useless AI partner that makes it suck because of the near instant death and they lack self preservation skills.

I don't think I played Titanfall 2 on the highest difficulty. What does that entail?

@Kyng: Wow. I guess that's a case for why games with a focus for online play should do beta testing to check for things like that. I'm trying to think of any other games that didn't check things properly and tanked their player base as a result of it.

[Kyng]

@Kyng: Wow. I guess that's a case for why games with a focus for online play should do beta testing to check for things like that. I'm trying to think of any other games that didn't check things properly and tanked their player base as a result of it.

Indeed. Perhaps they thought they could cut corners, since the game was heavily based on Civilization V (which, by then, already had four years' worth of testing and patching under its belt) - but, apparently not!

[Maniakkid25]

I don't think I played Titanfall 2 on the highest difficulty. What does that entail?

Extremely defensive play. The enemies can take you out in a three round burst, and they don't play games when it comes to trying to kill you. Use cover, hide, and take potshots. You will die if you play aggressively. And the Titan fights? WHOO BOY! You're in for a rough ride!

[Nightingale]

That new "Balan Wonderland" game honestly looks and feels as if the developers weren't talking to each other - all separate parts look amazing, yet they don't fit together.

[Moonface]

I don't think I played Titanfall 2 on the highest difficulty. What does that entail?

Extremely defensive play. The enemies can take you out in a three round burst, and they don't play games when it comes to trying to kill you. Use cover, hide, and take potshots. You will die if you play aggressively. And the Titan fights? WHOO BOY! You're in for a rough ride!

Oof, sounds just slightly (like, 1%) more forgiving than Uncharted's Brutal difficult, since that kills you in 1-2 shots, but it may depend on the speed that a three round burst has because if one burst can guarantee a kill if the first bullet of the three makes contact since that means you probably aren't avoiding the next two bullets following in the slipstream, then it's probably on par. I can't recall how many shots can hit you at once in a single moment from one enemy, assuming you're moving at the time of damage (since a standing target is obviously taking every shot).

I guess there wasn't a trophy or anything attached to that difficulty since I definitely would've tried it had there been some incentive to do it. Unless there always was and I just never noticed or just didn't get around to it and then forgot about it.

That new "Balan Wonderland" game honestly looks and feels as if the developers weren't talking to each other - all separate parts look amazing, yet they don't fit together.

Not an example of not playtesting an entire game, but your comment reminds me of Uncharted 3. Separately the various locales and set pieces are great, but as an overall narrative it just feels messy and more like the story was built around joining set pieces together, rather than making set pieces to fit into an already established story.
Although, I will say Naughty Dog definitely did not playtest their game properly when it came to the multiplayer. There are so many prompts attached to the triangle button that it becomes stupidly difficult to do the action you want when two elements that rely on that button overlap. It's also exacerbated by certain actions taking priority, but in no sense. For example, if a player goes down in co-op, triangle is used to revive them. If any enemy throws a grenade at you, it can be thrown back with a well-timed triangle press. If a grenade is near the downed player, you will always prioritize reviving your teammate instead of dealing with the grenade, which results in two outcomes: 1) you abandon your teammate and watch them die to a grenade or 2) you don't realise what the priority is set for and try to throw the grenade back, but instead try to revive your teammate, causing them to die outright from the grenade and you to go into a downed state, or an instant death state if your teammate was the only other person alive.