I'm back from my self-imposed hiatus.  If you must know, I had surgery so I wasn't in the mood to write much of anything.

Now back to the task at hand.....today boys and girls, we're going to talk about bugs...and no, I'm not referring to Bugs Bunny or Bugsy.  I'm talking about those little nasty things that occur in games that range from just being a little annoying to total game killers.

Join me in my latest rant after the jump....

Let's get this out of the way right now.  Every single game has bugs and all future games will have their fair share of them as well.  It's just the nature of the beast and it ultimately boils down to whether a bug really affects normal gameplay or if it's obscure enough to where the majority of gamers won't even notice until they read about it in a forum.  I've come to accept bugs, clipping issues, etc....in moderation.  What bothers me is when a bug is obvious and/or completely makes the game unplayable.

Who wants to spend $60 on a game and then get home to find out that you can play one full game but it'll freeze up on you everytime after that.  How does that happen? This isn't a PC that I'm playing it on where one of several configuration issues could be at play.  I expect my console games to at least, you know, work when I play them.  If one or more of the "features" is busted then it's not too big of a deal depending on what it was but when the core gameplay is broken then who cares if all of the other features work or not.  Imagine if EA pulled this with the next Madden....they put all of the features back into the 360 version but then you go to actually play a full game and it locks up every single time.  Imagine the backlash that EA would receive, yet 2K is barely causing a murmur amongst hardcore forum members at the moment.  Maybe it's because it is baseball which isn't nearly as popular as football games, who knows, but the point is that the company, no matter who it is, should be held responsible for putting a defective product on to store shelves.  It'd be like playing Oblivion and finding out that part of the main quest objectives locks up everytime that you complete it.  The worst part of all this is the company decides that they can just throw out little tidbits like "We are working on a solution and will release it in the near future".  It's nice of them to actually acknowledge that there is a problem but at the same time you have to ask, "could they be more vague?".  Are we talking by the end of the week? next week? next month?  Oh, and how about when you find what is causing the problem, you actually inform us, the consumer, of what was causing it so that we know for sure that you have actually found the cause.  It would go a long way to making us feel better about keeping the product so that you may fix it for us to enjoy. 

The other messed up part of all this is most retailers have a game return policy that pretty much reads like this, "If new game is opened and doesn't work, too bad, so sad...we'll exchange it for the same, equally defective game".  I should at least be able to swap it out for another game if it's a known bug in a game.  I'd even say that I would much rather have the old you can swap it one time for something else return policy then never at all.  Most of us make good choices when we go buy a game and rarely get burned but occasionally we hold out so much hope for a game only to be let down when we get it home.  Our mistake costs us $30 for trade-in (average)....$30 for the difference for a game to replace that game....and the $30 you just lost on the one you just traded in.  All in all, that's $90 you just spent on the game that you will now keep.  Who feels kinda raped?  I do.

This kind of situation is unacceptable.  Game companies and retailers should both agree that when something like this occurs that they will do everything in their power to make you, the consumer happy.  I should be able to call or email tech support and get this response:  "We apologize for any inconvenience that the glitch in our product has caused. We would like to reassure you that we are doing everything we can to fix the problem and are expecting to have a solution by the end of next week.  So if you are willing to be patient, we will have it fixed.  Otherwise, you may go to the store where you purchased the game and exchange for it something else."  I, myself, would have trouble getting too mad if I received an email like that.  Sadly, it's not that way and it seems to only get worse as tech support is out-sourced to people who don't have the slightest clue as to what they are talking about. 

I urge everyone who has a major game-crushing problem with a game to contact the company every way that know how to let them know how upset you are.  At the same time, I do ask that you do so as politely and professionally as you know how.  Going off on a teenage-like cussing rant is not going to accomplish a whole helluva lot and they won't even take it seriously.  Make your points clearly and calmly then maybe just maybe we can something done.