All games have problems, and at the midpoint of a development cycle any game will probably look like a fairly large mess ...
Some developers are lucky enough that they can not only delay a game to fix its problems but can introduce further delays to polish up every element of the game; games like The Legend of Zelda, Mario, Grand Theft Auto, Halo and Gran Turismo are all games that have this luxury.
In contrast, most games have very solid budgets and release dates and are not give the opportunity to delay the game regardless of what goes wrong. A perfect example of this is Red Steel which was riddled with countless little problems which dramatically impacted the overall quality of the game, but it was released when it was because it had to be released along side the Wii; had Ubisoft taken an additional 6 months and resolved all of the little problems, while polishing the controlls the game would have (probably) been consided to be dramatically better than it was.
