Monday, October 3, 2011

The Sometimes-Late-to-the-Party Gamer // Tools of Destruction

Today (or tomorrow), I am finally finishing Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction after about a month...and 3-plus years I guess, since it's certainly not new, which is the reason for the title of this post.

Anyway, on the off chance that you're also playing an old R&C right now, I was a victim of the holo-plan glitch on Ardolis. The thing is, I didn't know about this glitch and was going a little bit nutty until I looked it up. I was way beyond the point where I could have reloaded a save before the glitch happened. It was the end of the game before I noticed a holo-plan piece was missing, and there was no way I was going to start all over again. There are only a few games I've ever had the time or inclination to replay, such as Dead Space, Gears of War, and Halo. I loved Tools of Destruction, but Gears 3 came out a couple weeks ago and I'm really anxious to get to it. I would have already, but when I start a new game before I'm finished with an old one I almost never go back. There's always something else to distract.

Oh, back to the reason I started this post. The consensus seems to be that the only two ways to overcome this glitch are to reload a previous save, start over, or to finish and start a new challenge mode. Today I just decided to try again, for possibly the sixth and seventh time, even though I knew my efforts would be futile. At first, I smashed the boxes as usual and nothing happened. Then just before I gave up I tried once more, carefully breaking boxes one at a time, and suddenly the holo-plan was there! I have no idea if it mattered, but I killed myself to get to the last checkpoint instead of finishing the level or reloading. Strange thing, though: I remember getting the holo-plan here on my first trip to Ardolis, but then it wasn't counted, which I did not notice until it was too late. I haven't read if it happened that way to anyone else.

A Crack in My Brain

So I finally got to play Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. I've had it for at least six months (and it came out almost four years ago!), but I've had God of War III, Dead Space 2, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and many others to get through. I've been playing for a week now and of course I love it. I've always greatly enjoyed Ratchet & Clank. But I just couldn't find a gold bolt on Outpost L51: Sargasso, so I looked it up. If you know the game then you might have just gone, "Huh? I don't remember Sargasso in Crack in Time." Well, you would be right. Turns out what was actually in the box was Tools of Destruction. Doesn't really matter to me because I wanted that one too, but I can't believe I didn't notice a different title than the one I thought I was playing every time I loaded it for an entire week. D'oh! There's another argument for buying new over used/trade...or checking inside the box when it arrives, not months later.

Um...meant to publish this a few weeks ago. The next post is about finishing the game. Oops.