Seriously Annoyed

Lucky me. I finally get a moment to play some Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 27 hours into the game, just about ready to go to the Sky Temple. But no, I run into a known glitch that leaves me no choice but to start over from the beginning.

The glitch goes like this:
Once you collect all 6 symbols to unlock the statue that blocks the cannon to the Sky Temple and enter the room if you save and exit the game after this, you cannot continue because an NPC that should be in the room isn't there when you load your save game. You have to talk to him in order to progress the story and advance to the Sky Temple. (See attached video below for an example.)

That just sucks.

On one hand, I don't mind because Twilight Princess is a really fun game. On the other hand, I'm really seriously annoyed that a simple glitch like this got past Nintendo QA.



Time to start my adventures in Hyrule once again... and delay playing FFXII and finishing Okami until much later. =(

Update: I'm glad that GameFAQs has save files for download. Huzzah for standardized data storage!

Tempted by Evil

I was once a rabid WoW addict. For almost two years I played WoW and only WoW for as many hours I could every single day. I played a priest, took her to level 60, raided with Avatars of Destruction in Molten Core over and over, perfected ZG and AQ20, and hell we even killed Nefarian in under 5 attempts. We kicked ass. My priest was tricked out PvP gear, 6/8 tier 1, and even had 4/8 tier 2.

Purples galore and in longest running and most revered Alliance guild on the Uldum Realm. It was the Azeroth version of heaven.

And then, I woke up.

I spent nearly $400 playing WoW for those 22 months. Not to mention the 60+ days worth of game time accrued amongst all my characters. The game literally became a new life for me. It was time to stop. And stopped I did...

I quit the guild, deleted all my lesser leveled characters and sharded all my shiny purples. Once the sharding was complete, the remaining characters were erased from WoW existence.

Knowing all the crap I put myself, friends and family through just to play this game, why, oh why, am I tempted to start anew in The Burning Crusade?

Damn you Blizzard, you evil, evil empire. Just give me Diablo 3 and/or StarCraft 2 already.

Wii louder than 360? o_O

I'm sure we all saw this article on Engadget stating that the Wii is the loudest console out of the big three.

I'm confused by this, being the owner of both a Wii and an Xbox 360. (No, no PS3... it's not worth it.) And in my time spent with both consoles it's very clear to me that the Xbox 360 is the loudest console by far.

A friend of mine believed the article until I took some videos of my consoles booting and then loading a game. You be the judge...





This is in no way scientific, obviously, and I don't have a fancy instrument that measures decibels. Some 360s may be in fact quieter than the one I have due to different DVD drives. But I still doubt that any current 360 on the market is more quiet than a Wii.

Symphony of the Night

Even though I have both the PS1 and Saturn (import) versions of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, I'm really looking forward to playing it again on the Xbox 360. Hopefully nothing will be lost from the move to the 360, but from what I have read I won't be disappointed.

In related news, I'm also looking forward to seeing Super Metroid 3 appearing on Wii Virtual Console.

Laziness

It's been a while since I've written regular updates. I really want to keep this blog active and I'm going to to write at least every Friday evening from now on. =)

Previously working for EA, I've seen a lot of bugs that get past QA for reasons known and unknown. Understandably, publishers have a deadline to meet and the developers will never have enough time to fix everything that QA would like fixed.

But some bugs just astound me. How can simple things like this get past QA? RITCHITER mode? That's almost as bad as "Bimmy and Jimmy" from Double Dragon III. (See the attached Angry Nintendo Nerd video at the end of this post.) I also remember that Alien Hominid for the GameCube had its button mapping instructions all screwed up. Whatever was listed in the game and in the manual wasn't even close to the actual controls. Amazing to say the least.

Now, I totally understand a game can't be 100% bug free even when the developer is given all the time in the world. However, leaving simple bugs such as the ones mentioned above do reflect the quality of the game and shows a lack of interest by the publisher to make the game the absolute best that it can be.

EA's company motto is ACTION. Each letter stands for something, but the only one I remember is "O" which stands for Ownership. No matter what industry you work in and what job you have, if you take ownership of your projects you will reflect your dedication into your product and make it all the better for the consumer.