Introduction
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Some games are released but they're not quite there yet; either something's missing, something's broken, or something needs to be fixed. So today, we're talking about 10 games that did finally get fixed.
Number 10
"Starting at number 10, we have Dying Light 2, a game that necessarily wasn't broken or anything. I mean, at launch, Dying Light 2 wasn't terrible, but compared to the excellent original game, it was missing a little something. And unfortunately, the PC port did have some issues. Now, to their credit, Techland, the developers, have been working on the game consistently since launch. And while we wouldn't say that it's as good as the first game, they have made some serious improvements and cool updates like the night, for example. In the original version of Dying Light 2, it was pretty light; it wasn't that dark, and there was hardly any tension to it, a far cry from the original game's night scenes. The night was pitch black and terrifying. So last year, they put out a patch that completely overhauled how night works in Dying Light 2, making it darker, making zombies more plentiful and unpredictable, and putting volatiles on the roofs.
Come on, there's a lot of them, you pay for this one day. They also improved parkour to make it more responsive and less floaty, made improvements to the graphics, revamped melee combat, and just recently, actually reintroduced guns back into the game. The whole concept of Dying Light 2 was that there were no guns, but now they're back in. I don't know how that affects the balance of it all. Honestly, it might seem kind of crazy for such a drastic change, but hey, if you want guns, they're in this now. As we said, we wouldn't put it up there with the original game, but technically, the game is significantly better than when it launched, and some of the gameplay elements feel a lot more fluid and satisfying. So overall, Dying Light 2 is a good example of a game on this list; it's in a much better state than when it originally came out."
Number 9
"Next, over at number nine, we have Sea of Thieves. Now, like No Man's Sky, Sea of Thieves was a game with a lot of promise, but it just wasn't quite there yet in terms of content and stuff to do when it was released. Now, in 2024, after 6 years of consistent updates, there's just a lot more to do in this game, and it has a community, and it's cool. Like, there's a lot to do, almost too much, honestly, because there's a lot here. Rare has been pretty solid with updates over the years, only faltering somewhat in 2023 where there weren't that many big updates. It'd be almost impossible to list all the stuff that's been added to the game over the years; the list is nearly endless. There are more factions, there's more to do, and there are tall tales to engage in, like their own breakout things. There's so much. Even at 6 years old, the game developers have ambitious plans for the game, and they intend to keep updating it for years to come because people are still having fun in it. And now, it's also out on PS5 as well as Xbox and PC. Who knows if the game will last years and years after this, but it has managed to keep a fairly consistent player base, so hopefully, Sea of Thieves does still have a few good years left in it because, for a fun online pirate social game, it is the best."
Number 8
"Next over at number eight, we have Warhammer 40K: Darktide. It seems like whenever Darktide developer Fatshark releases a game, they always seem to go back to square one, never quite learning the lessons from their previous games. These guys know how to make a fun game, but everything else about them is kind of rough. But in Darktide's case, the progression system was rough at launch. It was simple, bordering on basic; leveling up your character took forever, and the things you unlocked were not that interesting. The core game was fun, the shooting and all that, but all the other stuff was a drag. So they listened to the feedback, and on October 3rd, they released a huge class overhaul patch that added skill trees to each class. It wasn't a total fix on the game, but it made it so you could customize your characters more, building their skills in different directions, and overall made the upgrade process way more interesting and, more importantly, rewarding. They've added a few new game modes to spice things up as well, and the items you get are useful for something now. But it's still far from perfect; there's still a lot of tedious stuff you have to get through to build your character. The core game hasn't changed much either; for a live service game, the updates are just too infrequent, so there are fewer active players these days. But the overall package is technically better; if you gave up on the game back when it first came out, then there are some reasons to come back; it has improved."
Number 7
"Next, over at number seven, here's another game that has seen some serious improvements over the years: Fallout 76. It was the punching bag of everybody: YouTubers, enthusiast press, just players for a long time. But to Bethesda's credit, they didn't give up on it, and they've been updating the game pretty much nonstop since. Not all those updates have been all that exciting, but there have been a few significant improvements made to the game over the years, and it found a solid player base. There's a standout Wastelanders update that added NPCs and a proper storyline into the world. I remember playing that and finding the game much better. The Expeditions they've added since then, I want you to tell me where you and the rest of your num crew are hiding out. What? What the mort? What was that? Called me a monster, alright, what he was going to kill us. But the game isn't just better because it has a lot more content than when it started playing; the game is just a lot more fun too. Weight limits have been eased up, and food, healing items, and bullets are more plentiful; it's just a smoother experience overall. Yeah, it makes the game a lot easier now, but I'll take easily over annoying sometimes, especially when it's a live service game selling you ways to make the experience smoother. It's not a perfect trade-off because I'd rather that sort of stuff just wasn't in the game at all. But at least here, a lot of it's completely unnecessary; you can enjoy the game either way. The game is also a lot less buggy, and the servers are way more stable; I remember this being awful at launch. Fallout 76 may still arguably be the worst Bethesda-era Fallout game, at least for a lot of people; they're still never going to touch this, the damage is done. But at this point, a lot of that stuff is marginal; they've stuck with it, they've made it a much better game. And if you're just here for the open world, it might be one of the cooler experiences."
Number 6
"Now over at number six, Battlefield games having rocky launches are nothing new, but 2042 was rough when it first came out. Not just because of the performance and all the glitches and all that chaos, but also from game balance and just whatever weird choices DICE made with the game. There was a lot of stuff about it that people just straight-up did not like. Specialists were chief among them, especially for me personally. Instead of using classes like every Battlefield game prior, this one had hero-style special characters with their load-outs, which might work in an original game, but this is Battlefield, man, come on. DICE listened to some of the complaints and reintroduced the class system back into the game. It's more of a class specialist system because they're not going to completely dump all those specialists they made, but it makes for a more balanced and fun experience overall. Along with the class system, they've also changed many of the more hated maps in an attempt to make them less annoying to play, to mixed results. For the most part, the really important changes that fundamentally improve the game are more backend stuff, hit detection and polling rate, and stuff like that just makes the game feel better to play. It's still not the game many Battlefield players want or what was promised, but it's much better than it used to be. Maybe that's damning the game with faint praise, but it could be worse. It could always be worse. It could be Battlefield 2042 at launch."
Number 5
"Next over at number five, we have The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition. This game, you know, not that intense, a pretty simple RPG that wasn't going to tax anybody's GPU in 2019. But now, fast forward to a 2023 re-release, the remastered version of the game on next-gen hardware that somehow runs significantly worse than the original. How did this happen? Well, the port was done by some developer we haven't heard of called Virtuous, the folks behind the porting success stories like Batman: Return to Arkham and Dark Souls Remastered, both games that somehow ran worse than the originals. I don't know, I guess it's just a trend with these guys. This port might be their crowning achievement in badness, though; it was shocking how rough the game was. It took a year and a lot of patches, but it seems like Spacer's Choice runs a lot better now on certain consoles. It still doesn't have the consistent frame rate of the original, but it's at least playable. We don't want to sell the remaster completely short because it does look better overall, but there are some filters over everything that are meant to make the game look more vibrant, which we could take or leave. It's just an unnecessary remaster for a game that wasn't even all that old, but with the point of this list, at least if you do get it, it is playable now."
Number 4
"Incoming, take cover now over at number four, Imperator: Rome. The Steam reviews on this one say it all; overall review scores are mixed, but the recent reviews are overwhelmingly positive. You rarely see a switch like that, even as far as Paradox games go. Imperator: Rome was just really sloppy when it first came out, missing many major features. It was buggy, and the balance was out the window for a lot of people, and that's only the start of it. The developers kept updating the game and eventually released a massive 2.0 patch that completely redesigned the UI and added many highly requested features, and they've been putting out more updates to balance the game and improve stability since then. Unfortunately, the game just didn't meet Paradox's expectations, and it's been slowly abandoned. But at least the game was patched to a playable state; it's a good grand strategy game after all the patches and an even better one with fan-made mods."
Number 3
"Now over at number three, here's another one that was cool but not quite ready for prime time when it was released: Outriders. Server stability was a constant problem, but the main problem was that so many abilities just didn't work; numbers were all over the place, and many of them were meaningless or a skill just didn't quite do what it said it would do. Loot was also very sloppy too; that was one of my main complaints. Awkward rule explanations and tons of stuff that just didn't work as intended at launch. Early on, they made some pretty major changes to the balance of the game and added a pretty small story expansion that added some new game modes among other things. But in total, the game only has about 18 updates, with the last one being in 2022, so it's safe to say that at this point, support for the game is pretty much dead. It's a lot better than at launch though, and the game is perfectly playable solo, so the lack of updates isn't that big of an issue. At release, it was a rough game with some good ideas; now, it's just a generally pretty fun, simple game if you're into looter shooters. Bring it on."
Number 2
"Now down at number two, Ghost Recon Breakpoint. If you have to give it to Ubisoft for anything, it's that they generally don't abandon their games, at least the ones that still have some potential to get money out of people. I mean, For Honor has been supported for years. But Ghost Recon Breakpoint was not good at the time of release; I did not like it. It was ugly, it was awkward, and not as fun as the previous game, with a lot of weird, annoying gameplay systems. It felt like a step back from Wildlands significantly. There was potential though; you know, the tech bro utopia island was a unique setting, but everything else about it just kind of felt off. The live service, hidden village, the half-ass survival elements, the lack of team members, the gear score stuff, it just didn't feel right in a Ghost Recon game. As someone who's been playing since the original back in the day, to their credit though, they at least fixed those last two problems. They brought back AI-controlled teammates with one update and completely overhauled the gear experience in another. Now you can just play the entire game with guns that kill everything the same regardless of level, which really should have been the way the game was at the start. All these updates make for a more user-friendly experience, and then there are the additional missions and episodes they've added to the story; it's a whole lot of stuff if you want to dig into it. But the UI remains kind of a mess; it's very confusing, and all those extra options just make the game even more of a mess to play around with. How do we get stuck with this detail? There are so many options though to customize your experience, but with no real intended experience, things can feel off for some players. Still, there are a lot of positives; now commanding a squad is satisfying, the guns feel good to shoot, the map is still beautiful, there are tons of new missions they added post-launch, and there's a good community out there; they're playing on more realistic modes, turning some modes off. It has found its footing in some corners; it is a big improvement overall."
Number 1
"Now down at number one, Halo Infinite. Unfortunately, it seems like 343 is pretty much done with Halo Infinite in 2024 and not a lot of people are playing it anymore, but the game itself is in a better place these days. At release, the game was fun but it was just lacking game modes and content; the battle pass and cosmetic stuff is still a drag, but it's hardly the worst monetization we've seen. There were some speed bumps, but yeah, some of that stuff hasn't changed much, but the amount of new content has finally. Bringing back Forge was a game changer for some people with custom games; so there's like an endless supply of fun and interesting things to do. New modes like firefight and infection are a lot of fun, and they've put out some good new maps. There are problems with the game though; matchmaking is still a crapshoot which often leads to unbalanced teams that either dominate or get crushed. Now as technically a live service ongoing game, there's still not as much content as many players expect, so people have gotten bored with it, so there are a lot of people out there just ready to move on from Halo Infinite. I guess the early stuff, the damage was done, but that doesn't mean that it isn't an improved game. It started well and has gotten better over the years, but for a lot of players, it's just too little too late. So, your thoughts on Halo, the series, the franchise, the live service thing you aside, at the very least they did make Halo Infinite better for some people. They would say that it's fixed and that's what we're talking about here at least today. As for the future of the Halo franchise, who knows? We'll save that for another video."
Outro
"But those are 10 games that were improved after launch. As you probably know, there are so many other games we could include on this list: Cyberpunk 2077, and No Man's Sky, but we tried to stick to some different ones here today that you don't hear about all the time. So let us know what you think in the comments. But as usual, thank you guys for reading and we'll see you next time."
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