UBISOFT: Eat Shit & Die

I've recently been playing Prince of Persia, Sands of Time on my Gamecube, and I've been enjoying it... I also noticed that here in the US, this game was given the "Game of the Year" award by both EGM and OPM.

Now, in this game, you recover health by drinking from fountains randomly placed throughout the game. This is the ONLY way, as when you die, you'll re-start with the same ammount of health you had before your death (your last save). Also, when loading a save file, this same system is used.

Now, tonight I moved from one area to another in the game, with a limited ammount of health from the previous area, and upon arriving in the new area, there were about 10 monsters I had to fight. Fighting in this game is pretty easy, but I took a little damage. No big deal I figured, I could see the save point nearby. After fighting all the monsters, I had only a little bit of life left (like having 15 points in VF). I saved my game, not wanting to loose all the progress I had just made. I began to look around for a fountain, no suck luck.

Here's the next thing about the design of this game: it's totally, 100% linear. You cannot backtrack or change locations, at all. No fountain, no backtracking to the previous area, no items in this game: I've gotta get by with my tiny bit of health.

Now, in this room, your partner vanished to raise a platform that you get onto, from here, you'll get up onto further platforms, eventually to swing from sets of bars across the ceiling to the platform on the other side of the room.

Here's the catch: due to poor design, when jumping from the final bar to the platform, the Prince sort of flips then falls to the ground, instead of catching another bar/ledge, then a small drop/pull up to the surface. This FORCED, unavoidable little drop is just enough to kill my character (given my small ammt of health). There is no way around this.

In short, I'm unable to continue the game, at about 70% in. This is unexcusable, and I have NEVER played a game where the player couldn't move on (I know there are some out there) but IMO this should be the first this testers look for: ways to get "stuck" in the game. In any version of Resident Evil, Silent Hill, there have been times where I've been extremely low on Ammo/Life, but there's always a way out. Not here.

Ubisoft seeems to have no help/hint line to call, and the website only offers a sort of meager Q & A function. Upon checking it out, I found that other people had been having different un-passable bugs, some in the SAME ROOM, but with different circumstances:

Gamer's Question:
After loading my saved game at the observatory, Farah will not raise the platform. What is wrong?

Ubisoft Douchebag's Answer:
This is a known issue that occurs rare situations. The way to resolve this is to load an older saved game that will start you a bit further back. Once you do, you'll be able to play through this part just fine. It is always a good idea to have alternating save files for just such an occasion.

"This is a known issue?"

Gamer's Question:
  In the Observatory, I had to reload my saved game and now the princess won't pull any of her levers to solve the raising platform puzzle There was no problem before I had to reload the saved game.

Ubisoft Shithead's answer:
This unfortunately is a bug, and the only way around this is to use an older save (if you have one) or start the game over. We strongly recommend using multiple saves instead of overwriting the same one just for reasons like this.

What's that about recommending multiple saves? There is NOTHING in the manual about suggesting multiple saves, and this is so clearly a bullshit cop-out anyway, people shouldn't have to make multiple saves to work around the game's flaws, you fucking assholes.

I can't believe I have to quit playing this game because they were too busy rushing the product to market to fix shit like this. This is the direction the world is headed in in general: give us your money, then fuck off.

Spotlite

 

I feel your pain, mate
.
Although it sux ass, if it is possible, I always use three saves when playing a game I really care about finishing. So I first use save A, then, B, then, C then A again. This may appear a little unecessary but it is a lesson learned the hard way when playing on a shitty PC back in the days when my saves used to crash quite frequently.

 

That shit is messed up. They need to make a remix version with all the bugs fixed and recall all the old versions and replace them with the new ones. The responses given were full of shit and very tacky...Multiple saves /versus/images/graemlins/mad.gif, The game is broke and they dont want to tell their buyers the truth. This is going to hurt them in the long run.

 

If you were a true gamer you would have been using multiple saves Zelda on the NES!

 

I had that problem when I was playing SOT. The punny amount of life can be quite frustrating.

At the library, I had so little life that I thought I was gone for sure. And, some of the puzzles are just plain impossible to solve. I guess thats what POP so popular in the first place.

 

I beat POP SOT in a day, I didn't think recoverying health was a problem, especially since you can "rewind" the game if you take more damage than you wanted to. I noticed that throughout the game, some of the platforming can be tricky. There is always a way that is not very obvious that'll do the trick. It always means you're not doing something right if you take damage from falling or jumping, at least that's based on my experience through the game. I personally didn't think the platforming was that bad, I've had horrible experiences with games like tomb raider. (Back when it was alright.)

 

You think that shit is nasty? Try Pirates of the Carebeans on the Xbox, I had to start the game over 16 times because of all the games fucking gliches, and sometimes there where part that you had to take damage to go through, if you already went there but you needed to backtrack again to look for an item and didn't have enough Life you where fucked, sometimes you where playing normaly and the game resetd itself or you'll find Important NPC's dead for nu fucking reason, and when I called their help line they told me that I needed to buy a memoricard for backup(since when one file is corrupted or has a glich, it transfers to all the others saves)

 

eh, I do multiple saves anyway, just incase I forgot something. Like person above, I do A, then B, then C then back to A again. IT's useful sometimes, tho I didn't do it for FFX for some oddball reason. oh yea I had the guide, lmao. So I couldn't miss anything important. hehe.

 

Um... I work at Ubi... I didn't work on POP, so I'm not horribly offended.

Most of the time when I see your name in a post I know I'll be treated to a nice rational post. I guess nothing can be infallible huh? /versus/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Anyway I'm sorry to hear about your misfortunes, my opinions of you and your knowledgeable demeanor will not change. I just hope that if ever something like this were to happen again, you might want to tone it down a bit.

Cheers,
Cuz

edit : Ok I just have to add that yeah the "Help line" is shit...

 

so what game did you work on? ravenshield? because damn, that game has alot of problems.

 

I've only been working here for a little over a month, and as for what game I work on... well you'll just have ta wait for E3 for that answer /versus/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Pe'ce,
Cuz