Total War: Rome II. The best games killed by bugs and glitches

If you ask a fan of the Total War series about the worst installment thereof, there's a good chance they'll sayTotal War: Rome II. This game debuted in 2013 and immediately faced a real uphill battle, having a hard time living up to its noble herritige. While the game as a whole didn't fare badly, the technical condition proved a massive liability, preventing it from getting off to a strong start.

In addition to the standard infancy issues (all of the AI, interface, and script bugs), Total War: Rome II was infamously plagued by terrible optimization. Although I don't know if the term "abysmal" reflects the extent of the flaws that fans had to deal with as they rushed to play this game on launch day. It performed poorly, froze, dropped frames both during battkes and on the world map. Additionally, the longer we played, the more often we were kicked to the desktop. This didn't go unaddressed and players massively downrated the game on Steam, forcing Creative Assembly to speak out on the issue and subsequently fix the bugs. To this day, Total War: Rome II is remembered as the glitchiest game in the series.

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Batman: Arkham Knight (PC)

Before Cyberpunk 2077, there was the PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight. The console version of the game was winning awards left and right, and fans of Batman on PS4 and Xbox One were wailing in delight. What were PC gamers doing? Cursing the developer, mostly, for releasing one of the worst ports for computers in history.

Batman: Arkham Knight on PC turned out to be such a bad port that despite initial attempts to downplay the issue and cajole the players, Rocksteady studio and Warner Bros. Interactive eventually had to yield and admit to releasing a flop. The result was the removal of the PC version from sale and the promise to re-release it when it would have met the quality standards. When we look at these problems from the perspective of Cyberpunk 2077, they seem trivial. The game had completely screwed up optimization, constantly quit to desktop on Windows 7, and the alleged remedy for some of the inconveniences was to buy more RAM, as Warner recommended at least 12 gigs. The game was eventually improved, though it is still far from perfect. Well, the 2015 flop of the year goes to them.

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Battlefield 4

The Battlefield series is one of my favorites when it comes to playing online with friends. At the same time, it's also excellent specimen for pointing out annoying bugs and glitches. Battlefield 3 on consoles was notorious for disappearing sounds, something the studio couldn't fix for years. And when this bug also appeared in the release version of Battlefield 4, weary gamers laughed with a dose of mania. Initially, however, no one knew that this was just a prelude to the real attractions offered by part four.

When BF4 hit the market, virtually nothing worked in the game. Overloaded servers wouldn't let anyone in, and when someone did manage to connect, they watched a slideshow of players teleporting away, gigantic lags, and data desynchronizing with Electronic Arts' servers. In creating the game, DICE messed up the network code even more than before. It came to such absurdities that a person firing a gun with a silencer on muted the sound throughout the server – why? Why the hell would I know?

The last straw, however, were self-deleting game saves. The first reports about this emerged shortly after the release and intensified as weeks passed. Players who wanted to complete the campaign would launch the game only to see a message about a corrupted save, which of course resulted in losing all progress. The glitch was eliminated a few months after the release, although the issue returned from time to time.

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Driveclub

Driveclub is a story in some ways similar to Battlefield, the previous game. After a bumpy start that scarred the game for years, eventually the production of the now defunct Evolution Studios was appreciated by the community. I'm not the only person who thinks Driveclub is the best racing game available on PS4. If someone wasn't convinced by the release content, the subsequent support, which included over a dozen reasonably priced DLCs with cars and new professions, did its job.

Before that could happen, however, the developers went to hell and back. Driveclub was announced at the PlayStation Meeting in 2013, telling the audience that the title would be a PS4 launch title. However, the closer we got to the debut of Sony's console, the quieter the production became. Eventually, the release was postponed due to massive network code issues. Simply put – online didn't work. The studio scrambled to rewrite it. After several months, it was announced that Driveclub would be released in October 2014, less than a year after its originally planned release. The story didn't end there, however.

When the game debuted... the servers couldn't handle it, and the fully online game was virtually unplayable. This was eventually mended, but it delayed the release date for the free version for another few months. By then, the game had already been considered a flop, and Sony spent the next few months trying to clear its tarnished reputation. It was partially successful, though the game was never a commercial success.

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