THE WAITING GAME

"* Improve login process to allow a higher volume of successful connections
* Increase online stability across all multiplayer functionality
* Improve performance and stability of Friends List and Friend Invites
* Address issues related to file corruption
* Enable Club and MyTDULife functionality
* Enable Co-Op races
* Enable weather while offline
* Address an issue where players can get a Lancia which has no car data (the patch should prevent this from occurring in the future, and restore players who are currently affected by the issue)"

A rather unconventional way to start a blog I know but I wanted to begin this rant by listing the possible fixes that the up and coming patch for Test Drive Unlimited 2 should get whenever the powers that be can be bothered to release it for the X Box 360. It is worth noting that in no way is the above list a comprehensive collection of the known issues with Test Drive Unlimited 2.

I have highlighted the top few for a reason as I think that these more than any other should have been tested and fixed prior to the games release. Why? Because the core of TDU2 is it's online functionality. However this appears to be where TDU2 has the most issues - there are others I hasten to add which are not attributable to it's online shortcomings but I will come to them in good time.

I cannot remember a game launching with so many core issues still outstanding upon it's release. What's more, here we are nearly two weeks after and still key components are not working. Clearly my initial thought that the problems might be server based were way short of the mark. What is very apparent is that TDU2 was released into the market place incomplete. In plainer language, the developers have not finished programming the game yet.

Now I went on at length to rail against this attitude in my previous blog 'Please Stand By' which I composed on the day the game was released, but when I typed that I had little idea of the magnitude of the problems with the game or that nearly two weeks later I would still be sat with what is essentially a broken game that I paid £39.99 for.

It's just not good enough. How is it that game developers and publishers are being allowed to get away with this?

Well, if looking at the TDU2 forums is anything to go by, they get away with it because sadly there seems to be a sizable number of gamers out there who seem content to put up with this treatment and seem to act as though playing games is some sort of privilege as opposed to a right considering they have paid for it.

Here in the UK we have a law which clearly states that any sold product must be fit for purpose when purchased. In the case of Test Drive Unlimited 2 this is clearly not the case. The back of box clearly indicates that Co-Op online gaming is a feature yet as you can see from the list provided by Eden Games at the top of this page, it is not working. In fact there appears to be a large chunk of this game that is not functioning either correctly or not at all. Why is it OK to sell this then? And more's to the point, why are people seemingly happy to put up with it?

If the online issues were not enough, I have had instances where my car has literally fallen through the road, had AI cars materialize out of nowhere and drops in frame rates which at this point in the 360's life should not be occurring.

I know I have ranted about this before, but it really gets under my skin and again it shows an apathy that most people have when it comes to getting shafted by companies when you have paid a considerable amount of money for their products. I am not sitting in any kind of judgment here because I have been guilty of the same. Just sitting down and thinking about makes me wonder why gamers seem to have this infinite amount of patience when it comes to waiting for things to get sorted out.

I also wanted to make a special mention to EA as well. Nearly all their major releases have problems online. Battlefield, FIFA and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (whose much heralded Autolog which formed the main body of it's online functionality was still on the blink the last time I played it). These are to name but a few. Even games like the Call of Duty franchise have had major issues with cheats and hackers online. This is something I would have been more understanding with playing on the PC which is an open system, but certainly not the supposed closed system of the X Box 360. Every so often Microsoft may swing the ban hammer on the cheats, but the damage is already done and the enjoyment has been lost.

With a greater focus being made on the online element of games these days, often at the expense of a comprehensive single player campaign, it is alarming that so many titles are released with this element broken.

I am not moaning for the sake of it, but I really wish that more people would start giving these developers and publishers a hard time and make them aware that gamers are not going to put up with this crap anymore. There is nothing unreasonable about expecting a game to do what it says on the box when we buy it. It is totally unreasonable for the developers and publishers to expect us the paying public to play the waiting game whilst they fix issues that should have been fixed prior to the games release.