This week, RFN returns to the classic format... and it's super effective!
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/rfn/28599
This week's show starts with Great Big New Business. Greg got an early copy of Mario Kart 7 and has a lot to tell us before the American release (same day as this episode drops). James gets another chance to describe his Zelda experience, which launches us into a super-sized group discussion of the game now that all four of us have played quite a lot of it. Jonny was traveling most of the week, and that means he played a lot more Super Mario 3D Land. Jon wraps up this half of the show with a sneak peek at Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Then, we make an epic return to Listener Mail with your much-appreciated kudos and questions about a killer app for the Wii U launch, disappointment with Zelda's graphics, the effect of bug-testing on game prices, and smudges/scratches on the 3DS screen. We absolutely love getting your ideas and questions, so please keep sending them!
This was one of our most heated and fun episodes to record, so hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as we did!
I don't allow advocating for Ubisoft properties.
What to hear something funny? I bought Skyrim day one, and guess what? There's a bug preventing me from finishing the main quest. I've spent about 60 hours in the game, and I'm not doing the whole thing over again just to fix the bug!!!! Ugh, I want to finish the main quest, but I can't! This pisses me off! I'm with James on this one!
I don't think it's coincidental that Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim are two of the most notoriously buggy releases out there, and they come from the same publisher (Zenimax).
Somebody really needs to re-examine their QA practices.
I don't think it's coincidental that Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim are two of the most notoriously buggy releases out there, and they come from the same publisher (Zenimax).
Somebody really needs to re-examine their QA practices.
I don't think it's coincidental that Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim are two of the most notoriously buggy releases out there, and they come from the same publisher (Zenimax).
Somebody really needs to re-examine their QA practices.
The thing is, having worked in QA, I can tell you vaguely that if the public finds an issue, it's extremely likely that a QA tester found it as well and it was waived by Dev (either for being too risky to fix, or because Dev simply couldn't devote the time to it in favor of other things).
ejamer - Just saying ... what percentage of folks do you think have experienced those game-breaking bugs? less than 10? less than 5?
Neal - When it comes to Madden, couldn't that be one of the few times when paid DLC makes sense? In other words, what if instead of selling you a full-priced game that is essentially a roster update, they sold $5 or $10 roster updates every year? They could wait to release a full game until the technology or programming could allow them to make something truly new.
I think 5 or 10 bucks from every Madden fan would still make them a boatload of money if they didn't have to pay hardly any production costs.
KDR - As Jonny said, any game can have bugs. Even small-budget games. Again, the time when people are justified in being upset is when a company that has the resources chooses not to use them for silly reasons like: "eh, we can do it later, let's go have a beer" or "the foolish execs would rather it be out by Week X than work well" or whatever other lame scenario you can imagine.
Nintendo have fixed bugs before by releasing new versions at retail. ...
I'll play devil's advocate here for a second and argue that the fact that Nintendo doesn't iterate Mario Kart annually could actually give more reason to be upset at the lack of changes. If Nintendo follows the pattern they've established, this is the only Mario Kart we're going to get on the 3DS, so any shortcomings with it won't be addressed until a new hardware platform, if at all. I'm not saying it's justifiable to have lower expectations for annualized franchises, but the fact is if they don't do what they should they can always fix it next year.
However, when Nintendo allegedly spends 5 years creating a new Zelda title, that's 5 years of us building up excitement that Nintendo might finally do something substantially new with the series (especially when Nintendo tries to push that with interviews about how it's going to be so new and different).
A little late to the party on this discussion, but regarding the scratches on the 3D screen due to the design flaw, I had this issue as well. I finally called Nintendo up and they were more than happy to repair it under warranty. On top of that, the repair comes with a year extension on the warranty from the date of repair, so now my 3DS warranty is good through next November. Excellent.
