Last post before my trip.

Well, I'll be off to Japan tomorrow so I decided to post before I leave. I bought NFS:Undercover like 4 days ago because of Maggie Q. Damn my impulse buying. The game would have been good except for two things that made it irritating. One, there is some massive slowdown during many of the races. One minute my car is travelling at breakneck speeds, the next, I keep thinking i hit the slo-mo button. The next irritant was the cutscenes during every single prelude to the jobs. I mean, I know it's suppose to show off the guys driving skills but it can get really annoying if you have to restart them and you get 15 seconds of seeing cop cars and flashy lights and your guy turning out like in the second last mission.

But I know your not here only for the complaints. And yes I have encountered glitches. One is that when I sometimes hit pursuit breakers no matter the speed I'm travelling, I get stuck in them, like the petrol stations. Then, if that happens, I will reset my car when there are no cops around. But 9 out of ten times, one magically appears and its an instant 'Busted' for me. Another glitch/bug I found was something really useful. There's a race type called highway battle where u try to get 1000 ft in front of your opponent with large amounts of traffic. The later stages are really hard and it is very hard to avoid the other cars. During one such event, when I was about to win, I encountered two trucks blocking the road and a car on the left of them. Unfortunately, I knew I could not avoid any so I took my chances with the car on the left. Imagine my surprise when the car just disappeared, giving me a clear shot down the road. I never really noticed that happening but after that, i saw more and more trafiic disappearing, usually in my favor.

Played Left4Dead at a friend's house again. Powers still intact too. Encountered a huge amount of hordes, something my friend B says he has never seen. Then got my butt kicked by the Tanks that showed up in all sessions since they only seemed to like my character and always went for me first. And there was a large number of witches too. It was like every 5 mins, the crying would start. I estimate that in one section alone, about 4 spawned, again something B never encountered before even on the hard difficulty (and I was playing normal). And have you ever seen a Tank/Witch combo? The Tank will flail abt and smack you straight into the witch who then proceeds to rip you to shreds.

I guess thats enough for now. Gotta go.

Mirror's Edge and Crisis Core

Well, I completed the above two over the past week and guess what? C'mon, guess. Yeah, you got that right, I got glitches again for both. Mirror's Edge kinda froze when I ran into an area that begun loading and then backed out again. Oh and near the end, there was this guy on the roof that I was melee-ing and he got knocked to the floor near the roof edge. Then when he got up, he was suddenly pulled over the edge. Maybe the rooftops were haunted and the male (probably) ghost decided to save the hot Eurasian chick. Who knows? Oh and as a side note, this game is quite good but those with motion sickness should really stay away. The ending is crappy though and hints at a sequel since alot of loose ends aren't tied up.

Then in CC, I encountered a glitch with the Tonberries in the game. Sometimes, when Zack rolled while they were performing that grudge move they are so famous for, they would then do absolutely nothing after that. I mean, I left my psp alone for like 2 minutes and Zack wasn't even injured. BTW this was before I got Aerith's healing DMW. Maybe the Tonberries were so scared of lvl 7 Zack that they were too stunned to move.

Also, my friends think I emit radiation from my hands and thats why electronics go zonkers. Probably explains why my hands are also acidic. Give me a plastic bag and the colours run onto my hands. Metal stuff i handle often ends up getting rusty fast too.

Expanding.

I guess it would be kinda boring if i just related all my problems with games so i guess i'll just treat this blog as a normal one. maybe fill it with reviews or my dark thoughts of the world. but right now i think i'll just have to concentrate on studying for my exams. probably post next after the 3rd cuz i can't think of anything to say now.

Spider-man: Web of Shadows

So the game for me was really fun in two aspects: the fighting and the web-swinging. Now the web-swinging is what I would consider the most important aspect of Spider-man games and if it failed in this area, no matter how well the other stuff is handled would still set me against the game. And I am glad that the swinging here is awesome. I spent 4 hours of gaming just swinging through the city. The combat is awesome too and both suits have great looking combos. The Black suit has moves alot like God Of War after you get to higher levels. Unfortunately, as many already know, the graphics for a next-gen game aren't there and the game is buggy as hell.

And sigh, this made it so much harder for me to play. An already buggy game plus my abilities? I can tell you it was a huge struggle. There was a point of time where I had to reset my PS3 every 30 mins cause the game would just freeze on itself. Thank my lucky stars the developers decided to throw in an autosave function that activated every 5 minutes. Now I sat down with two of my friends to compare notes on how buggy the game was and surprise, surprise, my powers still shone through. Here's the result:

Problems

1. Missing voices
2. Innocents can't be put down
3. People running into walls
4. Objects can't be put down.
5. Invincible Enemies
6. Disappearing Safe Zones
7. Innocents who can't be picked up
8. Disappearing Buildings
9. Enemies sinking into the ground
10. Randomly disappearing enemies (which is a pain due to certain mission requirements)

Up to point 4, my friends totally agreed with me. Then they stared at me as i listed stuff they never experienced in-game.

Well that were just a few problems i had in the game. If i could just figure out a way to make money out of this now.

Left 4 Dead

Well, I played the demo and the actual game once each at my friend, B's, house and I have to say it's really fun. Unfortunately, with my 'gift', the computer tried really hard to kill me. B said he played the demo over 4 times and has never seen that much bosses and zombies in one playthrough. I'll give two examples of what I mean. In the demo, just after stepping out of the safe room, it literally began to rain zombies, about 30 or so. They just came falling from the ceiling. Next, how many players can claim being attacked by all three usual bosses within 5 secs of each other. First a Smoker got me and started pulling me up. Then, when the ai teammate shot it and I dropped on the floor, a Boomer throws up on me and i get swarmed. Finally, just as the bile clears from the screen, i get pounced on by a Hunter.

Later on, when he got the game, I tried out a campaign online. Well, the people I ended up playing with turned out to be idiots. Always refusing to help me while I got them out of messy situations and helped earn them achievements. First of all, when I got pulled by a Smoker, they just watched and waited while I died. I decided to be forgiving and thought maybe they just couldn't get a shot. (Though the Smoker was on a rooftop in plain view.) But the last straw came when we reached a part with a turret. Now, normally in a team game one person would man the turret while his teammates covered his blind sides. So i manned the gun and believed that the team would know what to do as the first wave appeared but lo and behold, i was suddenly losing alot of life. As I turned around, i noticed the other 3 guys were standing 20 meters back doing nothing. What great team players. Well, my powers helped me get revenge as later, I decided to play their way so when a Boomer puked on them, i just sidestepped into a clump of trees. What happened next was beautiful as about 100 zombies swarmed past me and descended upon them without noticing me and the others took a heck of alot of damage. Unfortunately, my powers backfired on me at the last area when we faced 4 Tanks in the last area, 3 at a house and 1 just outside the exit. And, the moment they saw the last Tank, 2 of them jumped past me and another dude and ran for it, where they proceeded to aid the Tank in finishing the both of us so they could save themselves.

Origins

I'm begining to think that what I have is actually inherited from my dad. With him, handphones just don't seem to work properly. He's tried many different brands but within two weeks, always seems to encounter problems with them. There was a point in time where he had to get his phone fixed every other week. He tried switching to my brand and model of handphone. Within two days he was having glitches I had never seen in over a year with my phone. The camera always took photos that were strangely darker than usual and his screen would sometimes freeze, forcing him to remove the battery and put it back in to get it working again.

So I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

The Begining

So I'm actually starting this blog based on a joke from my friends. First a little background.

The guys at Penny Arcade did a strip a while ago titled Behold! which can be found here: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/10/6/ . In it, Gabe easily figures out the Beta codes for a few games and Tycho calls him the Beta Whisperer.

Well, after that episode, my friends found the perfect name to give me with my uncanny ability to encounter glitches in games where they never experienced one. And so, that was the begining of the Glitch Whisperer. That's not the end of it. My friend B. sums up my abilities pretty well, "Lesser games will bug out on you and bigger games try to kill you."

What am I gonna add here? Probably I'll just write about the glitches I experience. Now the first time my powers showed itself that I can remember clearly was while playing Assassin's Creed on my PS3. Now, all my friends had almost no problems with their games at all and were able to finish it without resetting their systems. I on the other hand, had this big problem where Altair would leap into the air and ... just hang there. People would move normally and Altair would still be going through his falling animation.

Grand Theft Auto 4? Cars disappearing randomly, people suddenly falling out of the sky, people actually walking in the air. None of my friends had this problem.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed? My friend X. played through the game twice with no glitches. I went to his house to try it out, Wookies committed suicide when they saw Vader approaching. Also, I managed to get stuck in the wall two or three times in half an hour. Yeah, go me.

I think that's enough for now. I still have a load of stories I could tell that you wouldn't believe.