Home

 › 

Articles

 › 

Assassin’s Creed Unity Proves Ubisoft Has Failed

Assassin’s Creed Unity Proves Ubisoft Has Failed

Assassin’s Creed: Unity is in the news these days, and not for good reasons. The game released with a number of bugs, ranging from graphical quirks to outright freezes. Portions of character’s bodies disappear out of nowhere, other characters get stuck in walls, heck even the menu screen is treacherous, sometimes leading to random freezes. Assassin’s Creed Unity was Ubisoft’s biggest release this year, and they are already working on patches to fix these numerous bugs, and we have just sorta accepted that. But should we? Should games be coming out that are so buggy and should we be supporting those games?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that games should be perfect at release. No game was ever perfect at release. We are still finding bugs and glitches in many of our classic favorites from generations past. The ability to patch games post launch has been a boon to the gaming industry, allowing developers to fix bugs that otherwise would have simply lasted forever, making game releases more solid and lasting for at least the generation that they are in.

But, some would say that this has also made game developers become a bit more lax in their pre-release bug testing. Either that, or games have just become sufficiently complicated that releasing without a host of bugs is unavoidable. However, neither of these scenarios is really acceptable, and here’s why.

If games like Assassin’s Creed: Unity came out in the PS2 era or prior, we probably wouldn’t have been OK with them. There would be no way to patch the game post release, and so whatever bugs were inside the game we would just have to deal with. Considering some of these bugs simply freeze the game, we would probably give it a poor rating just for that. Some of the buggiest games were called unplayable and given near 0 ratings by critics of the past, yet these days we give higher ratings with the thought that these bugs will be fixed down the line.

But down the line isn’t always the best way to go about things. Think about this in the context of gaming history. When you sit down and play Super Mario Bros. 3 , the game is the same as when it released to store shelves. However, patch support for current games will only extend as far as their publishers want it to. 30 years from now when Ubisoft has moved on to the PlayStation 7, no server is going to be hosting the patches for Assassin’s Creed: Unity . Thus, any new gamers who wanted to get a taste of what gaming was like in our current generation will have to contend with the bugs Assassin’s Creed: Unity had at launch. Even though a patch may make It an incredibly solid action game in our generation, it’s mark on history will be left as a buggy unplayable game.

Assassin’s Creed Unity Proves Ubisoft Has Failed

And I don’t think this is OK. I think we are giving up history for the now. I think we are saying “sure this game will be great for this generation” but we are condemning these games to never be timeless classics.

What do you think? Should games be less buggy? Let us know in the comments.

To top