Tomb Raider: AoD, Enter the Matrix, and Bugs

[zmeston]

I'm nearing the end of Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, and I'm just staggered by the bugginess. It's an embarrassment and a disgrace. I hear that Eidos might quietly sneak out a second print run that fixes (some of? all of?) the bugs, which is a nice way to fuck over the hardcore fans who bought AoD at launch.

If you've played through both AoD and Enter the Matrix, I'd love to hear which game you think is buggier.

Also, can anyone think of an old-school game that's anywhere near as buggy as AoD or EtM? Say what you will about Todd "Give Me Royalties Or I'll Screw You Over" Frye's version of Pac-Man, but at least it didn't lock up every ten minutes.

-- Z.

[TheJuggala]

When i play enter the matrix for the cube, i didn't enconter one bug at all, and i beat it with each character. I haven't gotten around to playing AoD for myself but some of my friends say it's really buggy.

[zmeston]

When i play enter the matrix for the cube, i didn't enconter one bug at all, and i beat it with each character. I haven't gotten around to playing AoD for myself but some of my friends say it's really buggy.

No bugs at all in the Cube version of EtM? Interesting! Thanks for the heads-up -- I'll have to check it out.

Angel of Darkness has so many technical issues, I'm convinced that Eidos sent a flock of high-priced escorts dressed up as Lara Croft look-alikes to Sony's offices, where they fellated anyone with concerns about allowing such a badly broken game to ship.

Even if you disregard the bugs, there are the wretched controls, and the idiotic plot, and the awful voice acting, and the feeble hand-to-hand combat, and the useless stealth move, and the horrible level design. The more I play it, the more I despise it. (At first, I didn't think it was as bad as the critics claimed; I'll never doubt them again.) AoD is easily right down there with Daikatana and Shaq Fu and E.T. as an all-time-worst. Instant and permanent "What were they thinking?"

The only good news to come out of the whole mess is that freelancer and notorious gig-stealer Scott Steinberg, who gave AoD five out of five stars six months before it shipped and before he'd even played it, can never be taken even half-seriously again. One less competitor is always a good thing.

-- Z.

[Bratwurst]

I encountered a bug with Megaman and Bass last night. When I tried to hit A+B+Start+Select to enact the almost universal soft reset, the game instead froze and started making static sounds. It continued to lock up after shutting it off and on and random button presses until I shut the gameboy off for several minutes.

Granted, a port is hardly on the production scale of the games initially mentioned in this thread but I expect better quality control from Capcom, of all companies, with a dinky Gameboy cart.

[calthaer]

No way man, 0ld sk3wl gamez were way better. I'm sure one or two games had some bugs, but it's almost like a plague right now sweeping the industry. There are so many incomplete and / or buggy games released that it's not even funny. Who knows - maybe it's the evil Corporate Execs shoveling products out the door to turn a quick buck. I mean, even if a game isn't buggy, it's often just completely lackluster because they haven't taken the time to implement the nifty little features that make games great.

I for one have always liked classic gaming, but recently I've severely limited my game-buying and with few exceptions I'm ONLY playing games that are at least 2 years old. The only exceptions I'll make, in fact, are a) Nintendo, because their products are almost always top-notch (even their failures tend to be better than a lot of other companies' successes), and b) Ion Storm (Austin, the non-Romero one, you could say it was formerly Looking Glass Studios), because their products are also always top-notch. The rest of the companies can take a hike; until I've gotten wind of the greatness of their game from reliable sources they're not getting my money.

[zmeston]

No way man, 0ld sk3wl gamez were way better. I'm sure one or two games had some bugs, but it's almost like a plague right now sweeping the industry. There are so many incomplete and / or buggy games released that it's not even funny. Who knows - maybe it's the evil Corporate Execs shoveling products out the door to turn a quick buck. I mean, even if a game isn't buggy, it's often just completely lackluster because they haven't taken the time to implement the nifty little features that make games great.

Angel of Darkness was thrown out the door just before the end of Eidos's fiscal year, and Enter the Matrix was thrown out the door just before the release of The Matrix Reloaded, so Evil Execs indeed forced the premature release of both.

I realize that making a modern game is such a complicated task that all the bugs and glitches can never be caught. And I realize that there have been bugs and glitches since the beginning of videogames. ("The Big Book of Videogame Bugs" would be an entertaining read.) AoD and EtM, however, are buggy beyond anything else I've encountered in, what, 25 years of console gaming.

Was there a lawsuit involving an unfinished/buggy MMORPG a while back?

-- Z.

[Zaxxon]

What's sad is that EtM is selling insane amounts of copies to all the Matrix fanboys that would've bought it no matter what. The developers/publisher isn't suffering in any way and now figures they can just rush out the next crappy, bug-filled movie liscence game and the game after that.

[Britboy]

I must be lucky, I bought PS2 EtM at launch and havent had a single bug.

[Mayhem]

Sadly from what I hear, Eidos used the US release of AoD as a testing ground to root out bugs before the PAL release...

[zmeston]

Justice is served: Adrian Smith, the executive producer of Tomb Raider: AoD, resigned yesterday. There's all kinds of gossip going around about the ugliness of his departure, but the jist is that he somehow had all the suits at Eidos fooled until the game shipped and the brutal reviews rolled in.

-- Z.

[xaqar]

When i play enter the matrix for the cube, i didn't enconter one bug at all, and i beat it with each character.

I only played through it as Niobe and my cube did crash once. It just all of a sudden stopped, and some text appeared on the top of the screen. Hardly a game breaker though. Just as fair warning: I would rent, not buy this one. :)
Xaqar