Each week, I look back at what Ive played and I choose a topic for these articles based on whatever really stood out. In week 33, I finished Batman: Arkham Origins, and I thought that endgame content would be a good topic. But then I fell victim to an insidious and infuriating glitch in the game, and so Im going to rant about that. 8/24/14: * SpellTower (STFJ) 8/25/14: * ZMR (En Masse Entertainment) 8/26/14: *ZMR (En Masse Entertainment) * SpellTower (STFJ) * Bricks (Alstertouch) 8/27/14: * ZMR (En Masse Entertainment) * Batman: Arkham Origins (WB) 8/28/14: * Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian Entertainment) 8/29/14: * ZMR (En Masse Entertainment) 8/30/13: * SpellTower (STFJ) There is a known bug in the Xbox 360 version of Batman: Arkham Origins which either corrupts save files, or reports them as corrupted, and wont let you save any further progress, or let you load from that save. In effect, its a glitch that makes you start the game over again ... or just quit entirely. I only became aware of this bug when I had already finished the game--or at least the main storyline. I sat through the closing credits (which includes a wonderfully twisted version of Hank Williamss Cold, Cold Heart as sung by the Joker and directed at Batman), and then got a quick progress report from Alfred regarding the fact that I still had content I hadnt explored. And from where I was perched, I could see an informant--one of the Riddlers bag-men, who I could interrogate for information that would get me inside the Riddlers headquarters. That informant is where things started to go wrong. Normally, when you encounter these goons, you beat them down (along with any of their companions), and then get the option to interrogate them. But I didnt get that option this time, no matter how I approached the guy, and I quickly concluded that the game was bugged. So I decided to try to reset the encounter, fast-traveling back to the bat cave, then returning to the bridge where Id first spotted the informant--and lo and behold, he was back. (Youd think these guys would figure out that waiting around in the same location where you got beaten up by a brutal vigilante might not be the best course of action.) This time, the encounter worked as intended, and I got the locations of several of the Riddlers data packs. With that accomplished, I decided to call it a night. Now, when you exit the game in Batman: Arkham Origins, you return to the main screen, and work your way through the menus back out to the Xbox dashboard. (Unless youre one of those people who just powers off your console when youre done playing; I am decidedly not that kind of person.) En route, you pass by the saved game screen, where, if youre really, really unlucky, youll be informed that you have a corrupted save, and asked if youd like to try to recover it. Naturally, youll try to recover it, and when that fails, youll be asked if youd like to delete it. On the Feelings of Helplessness scale, stuff like this falls well below having a loved one suffer a debilitating injury or fatal illness and receiving a notice from the IRS that you owe more taxes than youd calculated, and they went ahead and applied a late payment penalty. But it still takes the wind out of your sails, especially when you come to the realization that its likely to happen again, with just as little warning. Whatever effort you put forth, whatever progress you make, its only going to be undone by perverse misfortune, giving you a firsthand taste of the tortures of Sisyphus. Faced with that prospect, the natural choice is to put the disc back in its case, put the case back on its shelf, and find something less glitchy to occupy your time. And thats what I chose. Dont get me wrong: I tried to find a solution. Thats actually how I discovered that this was a known bug, with no apparent fix. I saw advice, and plenty of examples of others who had run afoul of this bug--most of whom hadnt finished the game first, like I had--but the only suggestions I saw proved to be wishful thinking. In essence, I was still at square one. I suppose I could rant and rave bout the deplorable lack of customer service on this--and its really easy to justify, given that Warner Brothers promised to fix this bug a couple of years ago, and claimed to have fixed it in December, but with a caveat: For those players who have already experienced a corrupted save as described above, we advise that they start a new game, as unfortunately, a corrupted game cannot be salvaged. Odd that my corrupted save came in August, nine months after the problem was fixed. The thing is, I enjoyed Batman: Arkham Origin, and I would play it again--assuming I could be reasonably assured this wouldnt happen again--but the existence of this glitch serves to make a very important point: No matter how good a game is, if something about the media (whether its computer code or physical components) somehow ruins the players enjoyment of the game in a way thats beyond their control, people wont play it. And I have to say, I feel bad for the people who worked so hard to make this game as good as it is, only to have a bit of faulty code ruin the enjoyment for everyone. Odd also that this wasnt caught during the QA process. But perhaps thats indicative of a larger problem. A frequent complaint among gamers is that far too many games are rushed into production before theyve been fully tested-- that the first few months after a games release are an unofficial second Open Beta, wherein the games earliest adopters pay for the privilege of finding all the bugs that QA and the previous testing periods failed to catch. To a degree, thats accurate: There are always bugs that only manifest during actual play--sometimes because of the system the players are using (in the case of computer games), sometimes because a bug only occurs once every million iterations--and naturally, those arent going to show up until the game has thousands of people playing it, under a vast array of gaming conditions. And so the first few months of a games release are going to see a lot of bug reports and patches, to fix the problems it wouldve taken months of additional testing to notice. To another degree, though, its symptomatic of the sense of entitlement that we gamers have: We want every game to utilize cutting-edge tech (particularly in the graphics), be 100% bug-free, and most importantly, be delivered exactly on the originally announced release date. (And even though game companies have learned to announce release dates in broad terms--Summer 2015--impatient players will still expect the game on the first day of summer, and half-jokingly complain when it doesnt ship the moment the clock strikes midnight.) What we are actually entitled to, as gamers, is a refund: If a games shortcomings so outweigh its achievements that we have no desire to play it, then we should be able to return it to where we bought it for a full refund. Thats it, legally speaking. Its voting with your dollar, at a very basic level. Of course, sometimes a games flaws dont appear until well after the retailers return policy no longer applies, and in those cases, I think its incumbent upon the game company to make other forms of reparations. A full refund perhaps, although I can see how unethical players might take advantage of that. Free stuff? Most likely the same problem. Discounts or special content on the next title? Would that be the responsibility of the studio or the publisher--and what if neither company lasts that long? I dont know the best solution--but I have to say: Should a game company ever come up with the answer, I would become a fan for life.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 18:37:51 +0000
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