AFL Live patch fixes nothing
AFL Live had so much potential, but even after the longest patch submission in history has finally concluded, it hasn’t made the game any better.
AFL Live still freezes, constantly. Maybe it’s how I play, and something like interchanging at the wrong time triggers a freeze, but AFL Live 1.01 is as broken as the first release.
The patch, which took a ridiculous 3 months and still hasn’t been released on Xbox 360, fixes a number of issues, but those are irrelevant if the game still constantly freezes.
I didn’t want to jump the gun and write this too early, but not even halfway through the official season mode, AFL Live has frozen 6 times. If anything, that’s worse than before I applied the patch.
It’s unacceptable that a game can have so many issues when it’s released, but even worse that the developer takes three months to release the fix, only to be riddled with the same problems.
I’ve been a long-time admirer of Big Ant Studios, and still am despite my negativity here. I hope they continue to improve on what is the best AFL game to date, but it’s disappointing that they hyped up the almighty fix, only to be struck down by the same problems.
I can’t remember another game for which a patch was so eagerly awaited, and perhaps this is why, it doesn’t actually fix anything. They also don’t normally take nearly as long. However, Big Ant isn’t necessarily to blame for that.
It was up to Sony and Microsoft to approve and release it, and as a small scale Australian game, it was relegated to the bottom of the pile; having said that, Big Ant should have hounded them to release it earlier considering the magnitude of glitches. In hindsight, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
The other fixes are actually quite good, and improve the gameplay once the player adjusts to the changes. A full list of the major improvements can be found here.
If they had fixed the unacceptable freezing problem, the tone of this article would have been very different, but that wasn’t to be. As a result, the other fixes are almost moot. What’s the point in improving a game you can’t actually play?
I wish Big Ant good luck with AFL Live 1.02. I hope it can finally eliminate the game crippling bug once and for all and get us back into playing AFL Live.
It’s going to have to happen much faster than three tedious months. There’s no point finally fixing a glitch that makes an AFL game unplayable in November. It would be like changing your Facebook profile picture to you planking now: you just look like a useless idiot.
Good luck Big Ant Studios, I still have faith that you will craft the AFL game I so crave. For now, it’s back to Fifa.
By Ben Salter
Are you still playing AFL Live?