james2025a

So I was playing a little Just Cause 4 this week and I remember how appalled I was with this day one buy when it first came out. Such high expectations to only be met by a half produced game. Fast forward a few months and the game had been redeemed to a large extent due to updates and patches.

No Mans Sky was another game that many were disappointed with on initial release (personally I loved it from day one and it was exactly what I expected it to be), but fast forward a year or two and the team behind it has kept working to improve the game and give the players an continually growing experience. And at no extra cost, although many might balk at that saying that they simply got the game they were led to believe they were getting in the first place.

So just wondered what gamed people might think have redeemed themselves over time.

fujishig

This would have to be a fairly recent phenomenon, at least for console games, since you couldn't really patch games significantly until fairly recently.

But No Man's Sky is an amazing story to me... I have no idea how they were able to make enough money post launch to support all the work they did but even though I blasted it when it first came out (mostly due to that one developer's hyperbole which he had to know was false), they made right by it.

SF V is another one that launched without a story mode and they patched that in later, along with the updates.

Noonan

IMO these aren't "redemption" stories. It's devs putting out incomplete products knowingly and letting us pay & wait however long it takes (if ever) for them to make it right.

Koby

^^^ This is exactly it imo.

Because they can just "patch" later, they rush half-assed versions out the door, then get praised when patches bring the game up to what it should've been on release day.

fujishig

I do think No Man's Sky is an exception. It failed to meet the lofty expectations that the developers themselves hyped, but it was a full fledged game. They didn't add stuff via paid content, they added a ton of content, even beyond the original scope, for free. I think that deserves some praise.

Another one is Diablo 3. It launched to lackluster reviews, but not because they rushed it out incomplete. Instead, they took feedback and continually tweaked the game.

davidh777

Koby

Obviously to every rule there are exceptions. Devs willing to go the extra mile after release all for free is certainly praise-worthy.
Not sure that's something we could honestly say without some sort of official word, but it's likely often a mix of both.

Apparently the issues fans are having with Pokemon is stuff that can't be tweaked because of "deadlines" to be hit.

milo bloom

PokemonGo was pretty lackluster at first (after the initial thrill wore off), but over the past couple years they've added tons of updates (Team Rocket is now in the game). And all the updates are free, there's things you can buy with real money, but you can have a full experience without spending a penny in the game.

I'd have to confirm with my wife, but I believe Final Fantasy 14 was quite behated when it first launched. The devs went back and redid a major chunk of the game, and now it's still going strong.


I wish Cuphead would redeem itself. I was so excited to play in that world, but it's so brutal my old man reflex simply can't keep up. I'd gladly play a "super easy for babies" mode if it meant I got to experience the amazing world they created.

Boba Fett

Battlefront II. After the loot box fiasco and EA dropping it, I expected the game to die a slow, quiet death. Instead it got a three-mission free epilogue and has had regular, major multiplayer updates that has nearly doubled the content at launch, all for free.

mattysemo247

^ I think that goes for EA as a whole. They continue to work on Anthem and Battlefield 5. As long as they continue to offer free updates, hopefully it keeps the players coming back.

Drexl

Not sure if this counts, but the port of Virtua Fighter for the Saturn sucked to the point where Sega redid the game as a "remix" edition and sent it for free to registered owners of the console.

milo bloom

/\ I don’t remember that, was that widely known?

Drexl

I think it was covered by the gaming magazines at the time, that Sega knew they had screwed up and wanted to make up for it. But being an early Saturn game, it didn't affect a huge number of people.

TheBigDave

Every Battlefield game. They're always full of bugs, badly unbalanced, and the servers can't handle the loads. The game is much better after about six months. They're still trying to fix Battlefield 5.

Michael Corvin

Wouldn't Destiny be THE example of this? The original game wasn't broken it just wasn't fun. Didn't they revamp the whole thing? I bailed not long after launch.

starseed1981

Battlefield 4 and Assassins Creed Unity were both completely broken at launch. After one year Unity was great. After two years (haha) Battlefield 4 was great. A recent example is Days Gone. Pre-patch it's bascially unplayable. No wonder the reviewers shit all over it. After the initial patches it got pretty good imho.

OldBoy

Batman: Arkham Asylum...I gave it up for one reason on another. Got it when came out or when first got 360. Think it was one of first games. Got frustrated. Put it down. Picked it up years later, addicted, finished, got all riddler ? marks, all weapons, etc. Came to love it.

fujishig

Did the developers improve on it during that time and change something that attracted you to it, or did you just give it more of a chance later?

Rob V

I think, deep down, you already know the answer to that question

Michael Corvin

OldBoy

nope. just decided to give another chance and it clicked.

mattysemo247

Soooo what does that have to do with the topic?

OldBoy

Oh, ok. Technically we’re talking. My bad.

TheKing

Destiny and D2 have been more an evolution than anything else. Bungie's deal with Activision forced them into deadlines they had trouble hitting, internal strife (and possibly Activision meddling) led to wholesale changes and reboots of the games late in the development cycles, leading to sloppy, unfinished launches for both games. The DLCs redeemed both, but not without losing a lot of the fan base.

With Bungie on their own now, and D2 becoming free to play, we'll see what happens going forward.