ImPissed
05-31-2005, 12:19 PM
I can remember the days of early PC gaming... games like Wizardry 1 and Ultima 2 & 3 where the biggest 'bugs' were the floppy disks that were bad out of the box.
Then there was the early release of King's Quest 1, where no answer, even the correct answer, was correct for the name riddle... which according to cheaters of the time, was rumplestiltskin backwards.
Speaking of King's Quest, I remember the fun and the joy of plunking down 200 dollars to buy a 16 MHz 'expansion board' replacement for my CPU so that I could get the hard-coded timing to work properly as I sneaked my character into the giant's house in King's Quest IV... a sequence that wouldn't work right with a slower clock-speed CPU... even though my CPU met system requirements before the upgrade...
I remember the pain and anguish I went through with text parsers not parsing my text and I couldnt rezrov the **** ornate dagger in Enchanter.
And forget Ultima IX. I remember the exquisitly painful extacy of getting halfway through Ultima VII The Black Gate only to see Lord British's castle de-rezzing before my very eyes... a game who's playtime was considerably longer simply because my 80386/16 MHz computer ran the game at the pace of a slide show.
Dungeon Lords has joined the ranks with its spectacularly unfinished release, but with a presentation that screams quality if the developers had a bit longer to cook it.
I've played DL for about 2 hours now and have experienced for myself a few bugs, a few crashes, and a host of missing features happily discussed in the game's own manual.
Yes, DL takes the whole 'rushed release' to a level of its own.
If I were a better person, or perhaps just not so **** addicted to CRPGs I'd be mad as **** and adamant about not taking it anymore.
Sadly, I'm a CRPG ****... doomed to purchase and play buggie rushed releases.
But take notice Dreamcatchers of the world... with the mainstreaming of PC & Video gaming, I am a dying breed. As I'm sure you know better than I do that I am not your primary demographic anymore... yes the 'niched gaming daze' are over.
Your marketplace is now those who buy computers that need to work out of the box, like turning on a blender. Likewise these users expect their software to work without a second thought, like turning on your TV set and walla, the latest episode of American Idol is playing on channel 13 or whatever channel that show is on.
My sympathy goes out to the developers... I can see the loving tender care games like DL are crafted with. I continue to be perplexed by publishers that take on CRPG titles knowing they have longer development cycles, higher costs, and smaller sales demographic.
I watched in horror as EA systematically dismantled the ultima series and the Lands of Lore series. I hate to see yet another promising title such as DL get squashed right out of the gate simply because of a poor match between developer and publisher.
Then there was the early release of King's Quest 1, where no answer, even the correct answer, was correct for the name riddle... which according to cheaters of the time, was rumplestiltskin backwards.
Speaking of King's Quest, I remember the fun and the joy of plunking down 200 dollars to buy a 16 MHz 'expansion board' replacement for my CPU so that I could get the hard-coded timing to work properly as I sneaked my character into the giant's house in King's Quest IV... a sequence that wouldn't work right with a slower clock-speed CPU... even though my CPU met system requirements before the upgrade...
I remember the pain and anguish I went through with text parsers not parsing my text and I couldnt rezrov the **** ornate dagger in Enchanter.
And forget Ultima IX. I remember the exquisitly painful extacy of getting halfway through Ultima VII The Black Gate only to see Lord British's castle de-rezzing before my very eyes... a game who's playtime was considerably longer simply because my 80386/16 MHz computer ran the game at the pace of a slide show.
Dungeon Lords has joined the ranks with its spectacularly unfinished release, but with a presentation that screams quality if the developers had a bit longer to cook it.
I've played DL for about 2 hours now and have experienced for myself a few bugs, a few crashes, and a host of missing features happily discussed in the game's own manual.
Yes, DL takes the whole 'rushed release' to a level of its own.
If I were a better person, or perhaps just not so **** addicted to CRPGs I'd be mad as **** and adamant about not taking it anymore.
Sadly, I'm a CRPG ****... doomed to purchase and play buggie rushed releases.
But take notice Dreamcatchers of the world... with the mainstreaming of PC & Video gaming, I am a dying breed. As I'm sure you know better than I do that I am not your primary demographic anymore... yes the 'niched gaming daze' are over.
Your marketplace is now those who buy computers that need to work out of the box, like turning on a blender. Likewise these users expect their software to work without a second thought, like turning on your TV set and walla, the latest episode of American Idol is playing on channel 13 or whatever channel that show is on.
My sympathy goes out to the developers... I can see the loving tender care games like DL are crafted with. I continue to be perplexed by publishers that take on CRPG titles knowing they have longer development cycles, higher costs, and smaller sales demographic.
I watched in horror as EA systematically dismantled the ultima series and the Lands of Lore series. I hate to see yet another promising title such as DL get squashed right out of the gate simply because of a poor match between developer and publisher.