100 Things Challenge - 003 / E3 Thoughts
Video Game Memory 003 - Going through THREE copies of Baten Kaitos just to get to the end
Baten Kaitos (GameCube, 2005)
Oh, Baten Kaitos, you bug-riddled game, you! If I hadn't been so enamoured with your story, I probably wouldn't have bothered. To be honest, it was the first time I'd ever really encountered glitches/bugs/whatever it was that kept making the screen freeze when I changed scenes in a game, so I wasn't really sure what to do. Except buy a new, equally bug-ridden copy, of course. I can't remember the name of the exact village where it first happened, but it was just after I'd met my fourth or fifth party member, Savyna, and I had to go through a jungle to get to my next destination. But when I got to one particular screen, it just kept freezing every time I tried to move to the next one. The screen would fade to black like usual, but then it would just stay like that and buzz strangely until I was forced to reset it. I tried again and again but eventually realised that there must be something wrong with the disc, so back to Amazon it went.
Thankfully they were quite good about it, and they sent me a new one. I was a bit anxious it might just happen again, but when I finally made it to that elusive next jungle screen, I breathed a sigh of relief. And I kept breathing sighs of relief right through the game every time we moved forward hitch-free, all the way up until the final door before the final boss. I almost couldn't believe it. I'd made it so far, and now it was going to rob me of everything I'd been working for? Not on my watch.
I was so determined to finish it that I ended up resorting to eBay to find another copy. This was during the GameCube famine of the late 00s after all, and faithful Amazon no longer stocked it, so I had no choice but to risk it elsewhere. Now I've always been a bit wary about buying used games after I accidentally bought pirated copies of Pokemon Emerald and LeafGreen from an Amazon Marketplace seller once (another story for another time), but I really, really wanted to complete this game. And it worked! I got past that door, and I beat the final boss into the next decade. I even managed to return my second faulty copy to Amazon (several years after I actually bought it) and get a refund too! A happy ending to a rather troubled story, but we finally got there in the end.
Now I just hope I won't have to go through the same trauma again when I come to replay my current copy, because if I come across another Baten Kaitos bug one more time, I might just cry.
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Man, E3 this year was a bit of a let down, wasn't it? I was all ready for Nintendo to completely blow me away with Wii U and all those awesome games they totally forgot to talk about, and they fell completely flat on their faces. That said, Sony and Microsoft's conferences weren't that much better, but it was definitely one of the least memorable E3s of recent years - although it certainly provided a good handful of whacky comedy moments, that's for sure.
Still, while the conferences weren't anything to write home about, goodness me, I'm so excited about Wii U now that I've actually had a chance to play it! I went to Nintendo UK's Wii U showcase the other day for work, and they had nearly all of their E3 games available to play. I'm particularly excited about ZombiU, Ubisoft's new survival horror game. I must admit, I thought the name was pretty lame to begin with, but I actually found out a few days later that the first game Ubisoft ever published was called Zombi, and I managed to track down a Commodore 64 version of the game to see how it compared to what we know about the new one. The results were quite surprising!
I'm also super excited about Trine 2: The Director's Cut and Rayman Legends. Both of those games look awesome, and they also use the Wii U's GamePad in really interesting ways too. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm still going to be awful at dual analogue controls, but hopefully I'll be able to get some more practice sometime on my brother's PS3.
Anyway, here's hoping next year's E3 will be a little bit more exciting!