In fairness, I haven’t played it (ergo why this is not an Ethical Gamer post — that’s only for games I’ve actually played). I don’t know how prevalent these bugs are. But from all accounts, the physics engine in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 is a complete mess. Never mind the graphical aesthetic, which is like if you took a photograph and tried to cell shade it, then make all the objects more pointy so they’d work in a last-gen rendering engine — I can get over a weird set of graphical choices and a blocky art direction and even, horror upon horrors, a frame rate under 60fps. What I can’t forgive, though, is a giant price tag on a triple-A release from a venerated game franchise like Tony Hawk that looks, well, like this. I mean, just look at this nonsense.
Also strangely, the game shipped with 4.6 gigs on disc, and its day one patch was 7.8 gigs. Generally, these are to patch bugs that have been discovered since the disc shipped, though some conspiracy-minded folks seem to think it’s to keep people from shipping a game early. By some accounts, the only things that were playable pre-patch were the tutorial and the editor mode; others say, the game is fully playable without the patch. Either way, the physics is apparently still a wreck even with all the patches. AND, to make matters worse, it shipped without ever sending review copies to reviewers — a move widely recognized as an admission that they knew it was a mess internally before shipping. Remember when Hollywood tried to tell us that texting during movies was responsible for their poor showing? Seriously, Hollywood tried to blame viewers’ ability to rapidly warn away their friends for Gigli’s flop, because if it weren’t for all those easily-accessible reviews, nobody would know the movie sucked and they’d have been able to grift more people.
Of course, SINCE early reviews aren’t accessible for THPS5, more people like me who remember the franchise fondly would be willing to pre-order or buy this on launch only to find a buggy mess that downloads patches that almost double the shipped disc. Tell me this — which is more unethical, being a woman indie dev who didn’t have sex with a game journalist? Or being a big company selling a grossly broken product for a gigantic fistful of cash? Cross-reference Batman: Arkham Knight on the PC, or Assassin’s Creed: Unity everywhere.
Also of note is that Penny Arcade is now decrying criticizing a medium that you love, where once they argued the exact opposite. They are rapidly descending into a spiral that will inevitably land them in the cesspool of other reactionary right-wingers who just hate, hate, HATE that anyone could possibly think anything’s actually fundamentally wrong with their beloved medium, or, say, with themselves, like with their own Dick Wolves nonsense. (Trigger warnings galore if you decide to Google that shit. Just don’t.)
I’m kinda heartbroken that my childhood memories of Tony Hawk Pro Skater were so, so much better, less glitchy, and — compared to its contemporaries — competitive graphically than what passes for a $70 game today. But, I wasn’t planning on buying this before — and I’m definitely not going to now.
The Forbes article, incidentally, quotes liberally from our good friend Tauriq Moosa‘s twitter account, which, while you should definitely follow because Tauriq is awesome, I’m sure isn’t being written for Forbes’ benefit.