Of course some of the reactions here are overblown. However...
As a developer myself, I would feel pretty ashamed by this product. I'm sure there were time pressures to get this out the door, but this really is an unfinished product. I'm speaking about both Munch (which was not ported by JAW, was it?) and to a lesser degree, Stranger.
I'd say Munch has more a more egregious problem, though much easier to fix (controls are broken). Stranger does work, but not very well. I'm speaking for those that aren't experiencing crashes, just severe slowdown. I say this because if played in the low default resolution the game seemed playable.
Granted, I did come into this
expecting to be able to play in higher resolutions, but GoldenHead is right - this should not necessarily be expected. However you will not impress your user base if you tell them that what they expected is beyond the norm when most of the competition (other ports) can meet those expectations.
I also realize that solving the HD resolution problems with Stranger will be difficult. I hope you do solve it, however, because A) I really want to play Stranger in HD and B) I will have to seriously consider purchasing future JAW products.
You know, this reminds me a good deal of Stardock's release of Demigod. I was so excited to play the game, but it was fundamentally broken (much more serious, since it was an online-focused game and the matchmaking was a mess). Yes, it was playable, but hardly in the manner I'd expected when I purchased it. By the time Stardock released a supposedly stable patch for the game, months had passed as had my interest in the game. I have not considered another Stardock purchase since.
This isn't meant as a threat by any means, I just hope that this all gets resolved and that people that already laid out their money will soon be happy with their purchase. I sincerely wish you the best of luck getting these issues resolved.
D
edit:
Pai Pai Master said:
Sure, it's expected. When following this release I just assumed it was going to be a "HD remake" in the essence of the PS3 ports and stuff like Beyond Good and Evil HD, and it's not crazy to expect a port of an Xbox game to be able to run on a modern PC at 1920x1080 at like 60fps or something. PC versions of stuff like Psychonauts, BG&E and Splinter Cell are certainly capable of it.
However if they didn't ever market the game in that sense, if their objective was to simply port the game to be playable on the PC, which it certainly hadn't before now, then it's not like they misled us. I can't be bothered to look up whatever PR wording is out there, but I definitely apologize for jumping on the devs' backs about it.
That said, it's still not a great port and support for resolutions and framerates that practically every PC gamer expects these days would be nice, but I look forward to the fixes that will help it run at least a little smoother.
My sentiments exactly.