Broken games you've sank too many hours into

Dufflecoat Fanny

I've a good few over the years including

• The Guild 2 plus dlcs. utterly broken but great fun
• Player Manger 2. old football manager game on a few platforms that had a save killing bug
• Total War Shogun 2. another save bug that won't let you progress

Ill think of more later im sure

pixelburp

I mean, I saw the title and immediately thought of Bethesda's Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. Total dice roll as to what might soft or hard break the game, alongside the hundreds of glitches. They're easy targets but they're all well earned.

Otherwise? Spent much of the 00s playing all sorts of eurojank games, more often than not broken in various subtle ways.

magicbastarder

The second deus ex game had a bug where you'd get to a point that a tram arrives and it's a transition point to the next stage of the game. But the tram wouldn't arrive.

Dufflecoat Fanny

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119186968#Comment_119186968

Haha frustration simulator

Dufflecoat Fanny

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119186892#Comment_119186892

God yes morrowind I couldn't finish it over the crashes

pixelburp

There used to be a tonne of random ww2 games in the 00s, half of them horribly broken from what I recall. stuff like Hidden and Dangerous 2, a hard game made harder by its constant glitchiness.

TheValeyard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119191095#Comment_119191095

That was a great game though.

Remember one game breaking glitch alright. You'd to escape two panzer tanks after some mission in a camp or factory. Problem was, all the Nazi troops were invisible but could still shoot you. So, made escape impossible.

TheValeyard

Like Pixel said earlier. Bugsfests like the Fallout and Elder Scroll series. Still really enjoyable. And have replayed Skyrim only just recently. Getting an urge to restart Fallout 4 from start with graphic mods and with all DLC.

If memory serves me right Fallout New Vegas was really buggy at the start, but I still count it in my top10 games of all time.

Starsiege Tribes was a mess but still sank many hours into it

Homelander

Fallout New Vegas at launch, or possibly Battlefield 4 at launch. Both spectacular games that were so unfathomably broken at launch in the worst way possible - constant crashes, game-breaking glitches, etc.

BF4 I persisted and eventually it got better, New Vegas I had to quit outright and come back a few months later.

pixelburp

Battlefield 4? Oof that reminds me that the very first game in the series, Battlefield 1942, was neigh-on unplayable until what I want to say was the 1.04 patch. The network code was absolute garbage until a particular patch, at which point the game's LAN / multiplayer potential really took off. There were still lots of problems with the actual Shooter part IIRC, it was a floaty & imprecise beast.

iamstop

There is a mobile/tablet game called Godus. It had a lot of promise but it was never finished.

Kintarō Hattori

Toy Soldiers. I've sunk a lot of time into that and enjoyed it no end but there's plenty of cases where you can't finish a level as an enemy is somewhere on the map but you can't see them, so can't kill them. Extremely frustrating.

horgan_p

Civilisation 4. crash to desktop due to a memory error very deep into the game.

Happens with all the expansions too.

Dufflecoat Fanny

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119233672#Comment_119233672

I reinstalled it last week and I completely forgot about the late game bugs... Might not bother with it again

Gaholiz

Total War Shogun 2 is certainly a very addictive game, I sat in it for a long time.

Dufflecoat Fanny

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119927731#Comment_119927731

My saves always get stuck on a turn and can't advance around mid game

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119927731#Comment_119927731

It's pretty good. Best AI in a Total War as well. Puts the latest historical titles to shame.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119928696#Comment_119928696

Never had that. The AI does derp out with its navy and you've to wait until it burns its movement points.

jobrien874ie

Tarkov, the amount of issues that game has is off the charts

L1011

I ended up in a dead end in one of the Discworld point and click (the second, I think) games, where if you hadn't got some item from a place you couldn't go back to; you were stuck and couldn't progress. Had to nuke save and go back to the start I think three times to get past it.

Overheal

space engineers

star citizen

kerbal space program

And a lot of other games... but heck, why do I feel like a lot of these hours are the thing running in the background lol

Almost 1000 hours in Satisfactory and I haven't TOUCHED nuclear.

polysteamtoken

An anime third person game based on dolls you can dress up. Based on gambling basically a gatcha machine you use for $1 per spin and you get something after 20-30 spins. I spent too much on that plus the game and bad glitches people could get b hind walls and shoot at you can you couldn't shoot back at them.

Potatoeman

Vampire the masquerade: Bloodlines. The released version had a bug at the halfway point that crashed the game. You couldn’t get past it. This was before most people had internet so you had to go somewhere that had it, look up the issue then download the patch onto a usb (if you had one) take it home and hope for the best. This was a lot of steps for most people. Still one of my all time favourite games though.

Related to this but not a bug. Half Life 2 was one of the first games to have online only activation. So you could buy it in a shop but you had to have an internet connection to activate it. So you had to cart your whole PC to a friends house to activate it.

_CreeD_

X4 Foundations recently.

Egosoft have basically been making and upgrading the same game for decades, a space-combat and trading sandbox with some stellar emergent gameplay. Similar to Elders Scrolls et-al they're always a bit janky and buggy but also have great modding support that can over time plug a lot of annoyances,. They also have a fairly steep learning curve if you want to be involved in the economy meaningfully, which I usually only dip a toe into and mainly play for the pew-pew. I loved X2 and X3 Reunion and have had X4 in the library since release but only started it a few weeks back as I already learned my lessons on letting them bake for a few years :). This one is far more focused on the larger galaxy and your economy with an ever present genocidal thread from the main antagonists that you end up having to try and control at the same time. I put in 30 hours, another 5-10 on youtube and forums learning the new systems, threw on some good QoL mods and just gave up in frustration. It was still pretty buggy, the AI was flakey and so much busy work. Also it took a minute to save and reload, which is painful when you are trying to learn a system and get it so wrong it sets you back hours and need to just reload to save time. They released the latest expansion and 6.0 update a week later with some decent improvements (including a much shorter save/load) so I went back again out of love for the entire series. It finally gelled after another 10-15 hours and now I'm hooked back in and loving the much better emergent gameplay (every new-start sets out a new 'seed' that will majorly define how different races devlope and expand) but christ I am tired of games that take longer than most would to complete before they are actually fun.

X5?....will buy day-1 :)

ozmo

All the Skrim games - I really liked them - but but you spend your time leveling up - getting the optimal kit - only to become so powerful that even though the games never end - you just run out of challenges.

Boo!

https://youtu.be/zhz6JFOx9jQ?t=24