Thursday 25 February 2010

Broken Game?

Players across multiple regions are reporting technical issues with their copies of Heavy Rain, with word of out-of-sync audio, full-on freezes, and unloadable auto-saves filling the official forums, giving players an ironic taste of the depression the game explores.

Despite having to download a rather substantial patch on launch day, or perhaps because of it, players in North America and Europe are experiencing glitches with Heavy Rain.

Some users are experiencing more severe issues. Reports of the game locking up at various points are common, and an issue with auto-saves not loading and players having to go back hours in the game to find a working restart point.

Players on the U.S. PlayStation forums have been very vocal about their complaints, particularly in one topic simply titled "Problems with Heavy Rain!".

9 comments:

  1. even the demo crapped out on me with a black screen of dhoom and the sound of my amp screaming a nasty static hissing.

    this happened in the crime scene section, have refused to play it since.

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  2. ...*sighs......claws at ps3*...

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  3. "Heavy Downpoor" indeed.

    You also missed the game’s Soundtrack downloadable content not being ready for another week & all those that redeemed their HMV-Exclusive Special Edition voucher code then had to contact Sony themselves if they purchased from a high street branch of HMV, wait for e-mail contact from HMV if they ordered online, or stumbled around the Official EU PlayStation Forums themselves to find a link to the Australasian PlayStation web site to request a new code before the Official EU PlayStation Blog caught up with events of the last 24 hours.

    The Dynamic Theme downloadable content included in the Special Edition has been available on the US PlayStation Store from 22 December 2009 (for USD 2.99) & the European Store from 21 January 2010 (for GBP 1.59); so some eager fans will have bought the same theme twice over!

    Also, HMV managed to despatch the 'standard' edition to some customers who had pre-ordered the Special Edition over a month in advance & now they have sold out of the version originally ordered.

    Still, at least the mainstream review critics didn't find any issues like this. Makes you wonder if they do in fact play the games they review.

    BFN,

    fp.

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  4. Picked up my copy yesterday as a birthday pressie to myself. Couldn't be bothered to download the update (they take stupid amounts of time on my connection for some reason and I just wanted to get started), but I've played for around 4 hours so far and hit no problems at all.

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  5. I noticed the out-of-sync audio/character mouth movements in the Playable Demo (especially when Lauren Winters was talking to Scott Shelby) but it does indicate to me that some of the problems may have been introduced during the first patch to the game.

    The trouble with testing software in any environment where a user is at liberty to add or remote their own files, other game patches, and have concurrently installed data is that there are so many variables & permutations (with not only software, but also hardware) to consider that it makes it a very demanding process. One can only feasibly test a limited set of boundary value/equivalence partition conditions due to a deadline for delivery, and it is not surprising that the Quality Assurance process misses a few (hopefully isolated) cases.

    The public are forgiving if they are treated like the most important part of the revenue chain by not being fobbed-off with arse-covering "communications" (or no press release at all) to explain the faults that have been uncovered.

    To be fair to Sony (as software publishers to the “Heavy Rain” title), they are usually very prompt in releasing patches if a wide-spread issue is discovered (for example, the 24-hour turn-around to resolve issues in System Software release 2.40 in July 2008 with a subsequent release of firmware 2.41 a week later), but maintaining a good communication channel in times of trouble should be essential to not alienate the consumer-base.

    The first step, though, is to acknowledge problems exist. Sony (and, Microsoft, if we are honest) seem to always be on the defensive end of justifying their actions (or lack thereof) with criticism from certain consumers that feel that they have been personally targeted by the organisations responsible for the games that are not performing as they expect (or, indeed, are not receiving the service in the products they have paid for). If individuals returned games that underperform, or are not “fit for purpose” as is seen in other retail areas, then software publishers & developers would realise that the public need to be treated with respect when issues arise with their products’ reliability.

    We should see an official statement forthcoming in the next day or so, but until then, if you have stopped playing try to avoid YouTube.com video comments if you do not wish to learn who the identify of The Origami Killer.

    BFN,

    fp.

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  6. "...who the identify of The Origami Killer."
    should read
    "...the identity of The Origami Killer."

    See - we all make mistakes! Admitting to them is easy! :)

    BFN,

    fp.

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  7. i think we all know who the Origami Killer is anyway....


    JOHNSKETCH!

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  8. *hides in his overly large and suspicious overcoat*

    NUH-UH!!!!

    ReplyDelete