I'm actually torn when I see "complaint" threads. Parts of me agrees with both sides.
On the one hand, it is true that games are a victim of our ever-rising expectations. In the past, we just accepted unrealistic or missing features as the inherent limitation of computer gaming, and what you bought was what you got, no patch. I admit, I'm getting spoiled. And I do believe that, when all is said and done, SH4 will be patched and modded to be an unbelievably great game.
On the other hand, I am getting very tired of the pattern where publishers rush devs to ship a product that really isn't quite there yet, and rely on buyers to beta test it and modders to bring it up to its full potential. This is NOT unique to Ubisoft or to SH4. In fact, it is becoming SOP. If you looked at a forum for Medieval 2: Total War about 6 months ago, you would have seen EXACTLY the same complaint threads flowing from a nearly identical situation. Personally, I put off buying SH4 until the 1.2 patch came out, and I'm glad I did. Right now, I'm playing off and on, but I'm really waiting for 1.3 to get serious. But I am tired of downloading fixes to this and that, and being a pawn in this entire process. As I've said before in other posts, I am willing to pay $100 (a 100% premium) for a game that works right out of the box, and I'm curious to see if a publisher will ever take me up on this.
One of the frustrating aspects of SH4, in particular, is how many features that worked well in SH3 got screwed up in SH4. Granted, often this is minor, but it does kind of make you want to bang your head and ask "HOW? WHY?" But there are also many great improvements that make it hard to go back to SH3, which is why I hope someone will ultimately mod the SH4 engine to run a German sub campaign.
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