10 Triple-A Video Games That Stayed Broken

High-profile messes that were never cleaned up.

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EA

Triple-A games have technically been a thing since the late 90s, but only in recent decades has that term actually grown to mean something.

Referring to any game with a high budget and profile that typically draws a ton of eyeballs to them with every release, it isn't enough for a game to be an international icon like Sonic or Mario, it has to have that little extra pizazz.

Of course, with so much pressure riding on a release, it only makes it hurt more when the final product is a broken, bug-riddled mess. Sadly, though, that has become all too common with Triple-A releases in the past several years. Terrible management and business practices have made the need for things like day-one patches an all too common occurrence.

Sometimes, though, those patches aren't enough. Sometimes, god help you, you don't get a day-one patch AT ALL; a triple-a game releases and it never stops being a little broken.

In ways both big and small, the following games were never truly fixed.

10. Halo: Master Chief Collection

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343 Industries

One of the most anticipated PC releases of 2019 was Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Finally, non-Xbox players could experience Microsoft's flagship franchise in one glorious package, without having to shell out the money for another console.

However, when the collection was released, PC players found the game riddled with bugs, network issues, and visual glitches. While, setting aside the many bugs, the offline campaign was playable enough, online multiplayer - the thing millions buy Halo games for - was damn near unplayable with the amount of issues compounding it.

Sadly, these issues have yet to be completely fixed. Even in 2022, 343 released another patch to fix yet more visual bugs they failed to iron out before that original release now four years ago.

The best thing about the Halo games on their original hardware is how they run smooth as butter, being some of the most tightly built triple-A titles out there, to this day. So the fact that Microsoft is *still* fixing this collection so long after launch is just abysmal.

Contributor
Contributor

John Tibbetts is a novelist in theory, a Whatculture contributor in practice, and a nerd all around who loves talking about movies, TV, anime, and video games more than he loves breathing. Which might be a problem in the long term, but eh, who can think that far ahead?