Question Of The Week [February 3rf 2025]

Q: Should Reviews Cover Game Bugs?

A: I thought about this earlier today, as I saw some people talking about how a game scored so low when it originally came out and over time, the game fixed a lot of bugs and small issues to make it a "great" game. But initially, it was raked over the coals. Think a game like No Man's Sky, where it was just kinda a mess, but over the years, fixes and updates have made it amazing. No Man's Sky is a bit different, since it's more a Live Service/Multiplayer game that has gone nearly 10 years of constant updating. But let's shrink the scope down a bit...

I think that reviews (a topic we cover quite a bit here) should focus on reviewing the game as it is in its 1.0 retail release. If bugs prop up, that is something that should be talked about. However, I don't know if it should affect the overall score. I think most modern games are produced in a way that small bugs where an item doesn't pop up, or a character clips through a part of the environment should affect its total score. Scoring is another topic altogether, but let's stay on topic.

I see a lot of reviewers, or even people online focus so much on the small minor issues of a game, that it not only clouds their enjoyment, but taints their impressions of a game. Especially in a review. Those reviews that focus so heavily on a small or minor set of bugs really do a lot of damage to the overall presentation of games, and it feels like good games can be left in the dust because of a reviewer who can't look past a small minor inconvenience. A set of bugs that don't devolve the game into a mess where completion of progression is halted, are just going to happen (it's not preferable, but it's kinda just unavoidable for the most part, and again, I'm speaking to minor bugs).

If I was going to offer some kind of solution, maybe splitting the score into a "How good is the game?" and "Technically, how well does the game work?" parts of a review. A game could be a technical marvel, but if the gameplay sucks and the story is more boring than watching paint dry, I would say that game sucks. But if the gameplay and story are top notch, but the game is littered with bugs from bad camera angles and hit detection, does that game still "suck" the same?

I don't think it does. I can look past a lot of game issues (thanks to my nearly 40 years of playing games, and completing thousands of games over my life) So when I sit down and review a game.... should bugs be a factor in that game review? My answer is "To an extent". Major game breaking bugs and issues, like if the Game Save randomly gets deleted or if something prevents me from completing a quest, or even the game itself is absolutely worth being talked about, and should be reflected in the score. But minor small bugs that are cosmetic in nature that don't affect any gameplay or overall presentation, or bugs that are more of a mild inconvenience might not necessarily be a factor in the main score of the game.

Scores don't really even need to change perhaps, but separating the talking points into "Presentation" & "Technical" actually have a fair reason to exist when discussing a game as a whole in the review process.