Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Maybe a Graphics Card of God Needed

As you may remember from my opening post, one of the other jobs I have is to review video games. I write a weekly column, and while I don't exactly make money off it, the hundreds of free games every year and free consoles and so forth definitely make a difference, so I don't complain. While I may not post every review of every game I play, I may share some of them when they are appropriate. My column is released each Tuesday, and normally I review 2-3 games per week. This week one of the reviews flowed like water, written in about 3 minutes. I think once you read it, you'll understand.

Legend: Hand of God
Platform: PC
Genre: Role-playing
Publisher: THQ
ESRB Rating: M for Mature
Grade: 0 stars

This may be one of the easiest reviews I will ever write. This is not because Legend: Hand of God was a breakaway hit or an outright failure. What makes it so easy to review this game is that I could not even get it started. Yes, that’s right, the game would never load.
It’s not like I took the disc, set it on the table and stared at it, hoping it would load itself. No, no. Trying to load it onto my PC was an absolute failure on many levels, and it’s all because for some reason Nvidia’s PhysX software – installed separately to make the game work – always crash my system and this rendered the game inoperable.
Failing to lose hope, I tried installing it on the machines of several friends and co-workers, figuring maybe it was just running into a bug since I test games all the time on my PC, so lord knows how many weird files are having a fireside chat in my hard drive. But this same thing happened on five other machines, and after encountering the same problem each time, I figured something was up.
Even with an entirely new disc (yes, I was not silly enough to think my disc could just be corrupted somehow), the problem persisted. At this point, I turned to the almighty Google and came across several message boards where a band of others were sharing my pain. Some even found a workaround, but by that point I was nearly too frustrated to care. I did finally get the bloody game to start, but I was so annoyed after nearly a week-and-a-half of failures that nothing the game was showing me made all the effort feel worthwhile.
I checked around and it sounds like you play in a fantasy world as this guy Targon. Sounds like a Periodic Table element, until I found out it’s actually a mouthwash for smokers. Wow, maybe the universe does make sense afterall. Just avoid this game, it’ll leave a nasty taste in your mouth.

1 comment:

chelsea said...

well, argon is an element, so Targon may just be the next to make the periodic table.