I can’t be alone in thinking Never Alone is cute yet disappointing

It was supposed to snow this past weekend, and while it did, all we got was a snusting, a new word I’m pushing to get into the OED. It means a light dusting of snow, in case that wasn’t clear. Anyways, this put me in a mood to play something snowy, and after scanning my list of games still to install on my Xbox One I saw it, the perfect winter weather game–Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa).

Ultimately, Never Alone is a puzzle-platformer developed by Upper One Games and published by E-Line Media based on the traditional Iñupiaq tale, “Kunuuksaayuka,” which was first recorded by the storyteller Robert Nasruk Cleveland in his collection Stories of the Black River People. I realize that is a lot to take in at once, so please, give yourself a moment before moving on. In terms of gameplay, you swap between an Iñupiaq girl named Nuna and her Arctic fox companion to complete puzzles and navigate the wintry landscape. There are a total of eight chapters to get through, and the game was the result of a partnership between the Cook Inlet Tribal Council and E-Line Media. It is evidently one of a growing number of videogames produced by Indigenous people, and that’s really cool. Too bad I found the whole thing frustrating and disappointing, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t keep creating games that celebrate and explore different cultures. I do want more.

You can play Never Alone co-op, but I went through it by myself, which meant manually switching back and forth between Nuna and her fox companion. At first, during the early stages, this was fine, but later you have to take timing into consideration and it can be tricky to get both characters to work in unison. I wonder if the controls would have been better if they followed Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons or ibb & obb. Anyways, Nuna can push/pull boxes around, as well as use her bola to destroy chunks of ice while the fox can jump higher and let down ropes from ledges. There are action sequences where you are being chased that require quick jumping, but most of the game is about moving from platform to platform, often using spirits as ledges to help Nuna get where she needs to be. This does become tougher later on when your fox changes and requires the two to work much more closely to get things done.

Look, Never Alone‘s story and its structure is based on the inter-generational transference of wisdom, and that’s mega neat. It is told in the form of an oral tale, and players are rewarded for collecting “cultural insights,” which are ultimately video vignettes of Iñupiaq elders, storytellers, and community members sharing their stories. These are all well done and produced, and this isn’t the norm when it comes to puzzle platformers, but I’d love to see more of collectibles like this. I ended up missing one by the game’s end, but the majority of them are along the main path, so you’ll find ’em easily enough and should dedicate some time to check them out.

Alas, here’s what I ended up disliking immensely about Never Alone. At first, the platforming and puzzles were rudimentary and simple, but became more time-based as the levels went on, which, when coupled with the fact that you had to switch between characters in a flash, resulted in many annoying deaths. The game is also glitchy, and I’m specifically talking about a tree I ran into during the last level that refused to walk forward; I had to return to the main menu and hit “Continue” for it to truly awaken, but this was only after 20 minutes of attempting to figure out if I just wasn’t doing something right. Ugh. Also, jumping and grabbing on to ledges with Nuna felt seriously inconsistent, and that’s a big part of the gameplay, so boo-hoo to that. I honestly thought, based on the first few chapters, that Never Alone was going to be a breeze, but found myself shouting curses at the TV screen near its conclusion.

It’s a cute game, doing really great things for the Iñupiaq community and culture, but it isn’t the most fun thing to play in the world. Sorry about that. I’m just as bummed as y’all.

Having trouble surveying the score in Grand Theft Auto V

I slip back into Grand Theft Auto V every now and then to drive around aimlessly, look at a few jokey billboards and websites on the game’s internal Internet, and do a main story mission or, at the very least, a random event. Truthfully, I’m always on the lookout for a new Strangers and Freaks mission, really zany one-offs, but they seem few and far between these days, especially since I’m maybe now halfway through the story. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell without looking up online and spoiling myself percentage-wise, so we’ll just pretend like I know what I’m talking about and say that GTA V‘s glass is currently half empty. Or half full. Whatever.

As much as I hate glitches, especially ones that bring a gaming session to a halt, such as Half-Life 2‘s Nova Prospekt level and the randomly spawning Alpha Male Deathclaw in Fallout: New Vegas, I still do find them fascinating pieces of broken tech and marvel at what they can do to a system, both visibly and behind the scenes. So far, throughout my decent amount of time with Grand Theft Auto V, I’ve not come across many, and if I did, they were pretty minor stuff, like a pedestrian getting caught in a walking animation against a wall or being unable to switch characters for seemingly no good reason. Nothing game-breaking, and so I continued to carry on, little by little. Please note that I’m not including my troublesome time in the early days of Grand Theft Auto Online in this analysis, which was a hot mess of server problems, but also some strange connectivity glitches.

While Giant Bomb streamed for 48 hours over the weekend to raise money for Extra Life, I tried to do my part at home as well, staying up with them and playing some games. Granted, I didn’t last terribly long, but I tried to keep things fresh, jumping between my Nintendo 3DS, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Ni no Kuni, and, our topic du jour, Grand Theft Auto V. I haven’t really played in a couple of weeks from the look of things, and as far as I can tell, the next main story mission is called “Surveying the Score,” which involves all three of our colorful characters–Trevor, Franklin, and Michael. It’s basically a reconnaissance mission, there for the characters to observe their next target, the Union Depository, and plan how to strike it based on the number of guards they see and its alarm system. That’s all well and good, but I can’t seem to start the mission, and the one time I did, my game glitched hard, with Franklin literally standing inside the car, unable to leave, unable to switch out over to Trevor or Michael.

Basically, you have to go to the Vanilla Unicorn, which Trevor owns, and find him in the back office to kick things off. However, something is seriously wrong in my game. The outside door that supposedly leads directly to the back office is locked, and I don’t think that’s right. If you try to go through the strip club, body guards will chance you when you cross into the back room area, and they shoot to kill. I died three times trying attempting this, but was once able to reach Trevor’s office to begin “Surveying the Score”–with body guards still in tow. I think that had a serious effect on the mission going forward, the system confusing itself, which led to Franklin stuck in the car, kind of clipping out of it, but unable to do much else. Grrr.

I turned on the DownloadStation 3 this morning to snatch up my free copy of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen and noticed that there was a new patch available for Grand Theft Auto V. Alas, I think that’s mostly for Grand Theft Auto Online stuff, but maybe there’s a Vanilla Unicorn fix in there, too. We’ll see. I’ll keep playing until I run out of other missions on the map to do, and then I’ll try again; if I can’t get through Trevor’s strip club unscathed, I guess my dream of completing a GTA game for the very first time ever will come to a sad, but inevitable conclusion.

That http://deckers.die glitch where the final boss simply disappears

At this point, I’m pretty sick of bugs and glitches ruining games I am playing. Of late, I’ve groaned about that weird door situation in Deus Ex: Human Revolution and that switch that wouldn’t work in Half-Life 2. Plus, all those strange happenings in Bethesda’s games–such as an Alpha Male Deathclaw randomly spawning outside a small town every now and then–but to be honest, those don’t bug me so much as I feel like they are part of their open worlds’ charm, and for the most part, those kind of glitches don’t actively stop me from playing. But the former ones did, or almost did, and it seems like my newest glitch find also wants me to stop playing Saints Row: The Third.

So, I’m on the http://deckers.die mission–yes, that’s what it is called–and it’s pretty whacky. You’re a toilet, you’re a sex doll, you’re a Tron-like wireframe silhouette, and you’re shooting down virtual reality bad guys like there’s no tomorrow. Also, at some point, you will play a text-based adventure game starring a unicorn, as well as an over-the-head tank simulator. Unlike any mission I’ve ever played before. Too bad I can’t complete it.

At the end of the mission, you come VR face to VR face with Matt Miller; he’s dressed like a reject from Final Fantasy VII and wants to do you much harm. You shoot him a few times and then there’s a quick time event to rip his angelic wings off his borrowed body–only, for me, there’s no QTE. My character says, “Oh shit!” and then Matt Miller leaps into the digital sky to completely vanish. I ran around shooting everything I could for ten minutes before I determined that, no, this was not how it was supposed to go down. Quit mission and restarted at my last checkpoint, but the same thing happened. Tried quitting the entire mission and playing it all over again, but alas, nope, same thing happened. Also, I’m not the only one suffering.

Seems like the only trick I haven’t tried yet is making a manual save during the mission, quitting out of the game, and then reloading said save from my crib. While that might sound ridiculous, I don’t have many other choices. I want to keep progressing in Saints Row: The Third, and there’s only so many side activities and collectibles left. Not sure if THQ is aware of the bug or not, but maybe a patch could help. It also seems like GPS is wonky too, only showing a short bit of green line instead of it fully with guiding arrows and such. Sigh. The life and times of big ol’ videogames.

And yeah, I’m aware of the irony that there are homemade glitches within the Deckers’ virtual reality setting, such as lag and reversed controls, and that this is just one more on the pile. However, it’s not a fun one. Wish me luck that the next time I take on Matt Miller and say “Oh shit!” it’s because I’m ripping his dumb-ass wings off.

Switch glitch in Nova Prospekt level brings Half-Life 2 to a halt

I keep running into these horrible glitches, but this one’s the worst. Mostly because I can’t seem to find a way around it save for starting Half-Life 2 over entirely, something I’m not interested in at all. Especially considering how long it took me to get to the Nova Prospekt level, which I’d estimate is about three-fourths of the way through it all. Let me explain the problem though.

In the Nova Prospekt level, Gordon Freeman has a bunch of antlions on his side, which make fighting off armed soldiers a lot easier. You just toss this weird, alien ball at a group of them, and the antlions pounce like it’s feeding time. Well, for them, I guess it really is. We’re indoors, at what looks like a security prison of sorts. You eventually stumble across an alien that was tortured to death, and a switch upstairs that opens the main gate, which I assume leads to the level’s exit. I assume because I don’t know. The switch won’t switch on. It just stays red. When it’s on, it should turn green and open some doors. But it does nothing. I even tried throwing a computer keyboard at it.

The worst is that the game autosaves a millisecond before approaching the switch. And unlike Fallout: New Vegas and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I do not make a thousand and seven saves. I figured my journey through a linear shooter wouldn’t need it. So, I have a hard save from the beginning of Nova Prospekt and an autosave moments before the switch is to be flipped; reloading neither worked. The switch will not turn on, and after looking around online, I found some other Half-Life 2 players frustrated with the same problem. Sigh…

So, I did something I hate to do: I skipped ahead. Without knowing how Half-Life 2 concludes, I quit to the main menu and started up Half-Life 2: Episode One, and boy was I confused. I guess, in some manner, I know how the previous game ends, but the opening cutscene with the aliens, um, making sexual gestures with Alyx was particularly disturbing. Also, looks like the world has gone to rubble. And dark clouds. And crazy electric storms. Gordon and Alyx, now armed with some vital computer data, have to make it out alive. Episode One plays just like Half-Life 2, but–to my happy surprise–is much more focused and direct, with little room to get lost. Just runnin’ and gunnin’, with no more driving sequences (so far).

Popped a couple of Achievements that I liked, too:

Watch Your Head! (5G): Make it to the bottom of the Citadel’s main elevator shaft in one piece.

Grave Robber (5G): Steal a Zombine’s grenade.

I think this came up shortly after Alyx’s Zombine joke, which was adorable.

Attica! (5G): Destroy the gunship in the hospital attic.

There’s more, but I’ll save ’em for the next edition of Achievements of the Week. Looks like I’m actually on the last level of Episode One, trying to safely get some citizens on a train, which is a little shocking, seeing as I’ve only logged about three hours of gameplay, but probably a good thing. Small chunks of Half-Life 2 are okay with me, especially when I can get through them sans glitches. Think I’ll move on to Episode Two next, and then spend some time reading the Internet on what I missed at the end of Half-Life 2. Because I’m not going back and playing that thing over again; you couldn’t pay me money to drive that horrible airboat or take down that hunter-chopper again. Well, wait. That depends, I guess. It’d have to be a lot of money. Throw down your best offer.

The early life and times of an Imperial Dragonborn with an obsession for cheese wheels

My Grinding Down post…uh, post playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the very first time did not turn out like I originally planned. I was hoping to do more of a summary of the times, the handful of hours spent, about the things Lohgahn did or did not do since stumbling into freedom, as well as my usual colorful commentary on all things broken with Bethesda’s supposedly brand new engine. In the end, I babbled on about the quest The House of Horrors and how surprised and conflicted I was by it. So here we are again, for Skyrim post numero two.

If you’ve ever read any of my posts on Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, or Deus Ex: Human Revolution, then you know how I like to roleplay. At least initially. Sneak, steal, and get by with skin still on my bones. Sell everything not sealed down. And so that’s how it began, with Lohgahn getting his greedy Imperial hands on a bow and quiver of arrows as soon as possible. He snuck through caves, snuck up to villages, snuck through the forest, and so long as he was able to hit an enemy first without being detected, they were usually dead with one shot. If not, they generally didn’t reach him by the time he had reloaded his bow. However, I did have a backup strategy for when things got up-close and personal, and that was a combo of fire magic and an enchanted axe that also contained fire magic. Yeah, fire’s cool. Also now have a fire-based Shout, so watch out frost-based critters.

And sadly, I’ve been using the bow less and less. Now I’m really into summoning a spectral wolf companion or a demon from another plane to help out in battle. I haven’t gotten another stable companion since Lydia died, and I don’t know if I ever will. I do enjoy going at it alone, even if the dragon fights are tough with nobody else to aggro at. Speaking of dragons, I’ve taken down six now. Some perks I’ve picked up are zooming in with the bow, gaining a bonus to armor protection if wearing all pieces of light armor, and more damage with one-handed weapons. It’s weird seeing where Lohgahn started and where he’s at now, a mixed bag of tricks. This could potentially be dangerous down the line, with him decent in multiple styles, but not strong in a single element. We’ll see. I might not ever even complete the main storyline considering how many side quests rock and how many miscellaneous tasks I’ve got in my log.

And now, some more blabbering about a fantastic quest I turned in recently called A Night to Remember. Spoilers follow, people. After a hard day of looting bandits and cooking their food, Lohgahn headed to the tavern in Whiterun for some drink and music. Well, he certainly got one of those two things. A man named Sam Guevenne challenged me to a drinking contest for a magical staff, and I accepted, guzzling back three glasses of whatever we were guzzling. After blacking out, Lohgahn woke up in an entirely different hold, with no memory of what happened. He then has to piece it together, and in the end, after talk of stolen sheep and getting married, it’s more mindgames being played by Daedra princes. I think I’m going to absolutely love every single Daedra quest in Skyrim.

Also, I’ve begun recording some of the glitches in the game. Here’s one where doors in my Whiterun house magically stand up without walls. I’ve got another one to upload that’ll make your head spin.

In summary, after roughly fourteen or fifteen hours, Lohgahn loves cheese wheels, is now level 16, and has only done a smidgen of the main storyline quests. He has, however, been deemed a hero of the people. It’s true. See right here:

Hero of the People (30G): Complete 50 Misc Objectives

He’s thinking about learning more about magic, and yet, at the same time, wondering if he’d fit in with that underground thieves guild. Hmm…

Y’know, that Alpha Male Deathclaw glitch

I’m going to be talking about a spectacular glitch from Fallout: New Vegas today, one so amazing in its horribleness and mind-fuckery that I had planned to draw a journal comic about it, but my wife beat me to the punch, which is fine as it’s a great l’il comic that captured the infamous event perfectly:

Click for a bigger version, yo. And yeah, I like to sit on the floor when I play. Wanna make something of it?

Right. Glitches and Fallout: New Vegas. I just can’t seem to escape writing about ’em. And this one’s a doozy. I was just beginning to scope out the landscape with Rhaegar, my fourth playthrough character, trying to locate some of the more pertinent locations so that they would be ready for fast-traveling. Leaving Goodsprings, I headed out towards Sloan because I knew that I could at least get a few snippets of EXP from fixing one of the generators and healing Snuffle’s injuries. What, you don’t know who Snuffles is? Why, she’s Sloan’s personal mole rat, a friendly one too. As I crept closer, I noticed the [hidden] status changing to [caution] and then [danger] despite no enemies being nearby at all. The status continued to change back and forth, too. Very bewildering. I headed into one of the shacks in Sloan to ask about how to make Deathclaw omelets, hoping to nip this weird status glitch in the butt. Nope, so I headed back outside…

…to discover, to my and Snuffle’s horror, that an Alpha Male Deathclaw, probably the toughest enemy in all of Fallout: New Vegas, had spawned directly in the middle of Sloan. Now that blinking [danger] status made sense. With one swipe, it murdered Snuffles and then took Rhaegar down. The game loaded up with my latest auto-save, which was me exiting the building, and the Deathclaw still spawned. Rinse and repeat. The third time, I turned 180 degrees, and went back inside the building, praying nothing followed me–nothing did. Carefully, cautiously, I went back outside. The Deathclaw was gone, my status stated I was safely [hidden], and all was quiet. Too quiet. No sniffling sound, and that’s when I saw her, Snuffles, slumped over, unmoving, unmovable. The Alpha Male Deathclaw glitch had left its mark for certain. I made a bee-line for Novac and haven’t gone back to Sloan yet. Probably never will.

Last night, Boone found himself trapped inside a bunch of desks in Vault 3 for too long, switching between melee and ranged weapons with strange determination. A funny glitch, but not as harrowing as the Alpha Male Deathclaw one. We’ll see how many more pop up as I continue to hunt for those few remaining Achievements…

Ridiculous door glitch in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is ridiculous

For about twenty minutes last night, I had lost all hope. I had resigned myself to believing that all my progress, all my hard work and suffering of bad boss battles and frustrating level design and tiny text in Deus Ex: Human Revolution was all for naught. The game kept freezing, seven times in total, all at the same spot, which is in front of a door on the last level called “Tipping Point.” After each freeze, I popped the game’s disc out and checked for scratches, but there were none–of course there were none, having never dropped the disc or mishandled it in any way possible. So, how was I going to get through this blasted door then?

The Internet told me not to worry, that it was a glitch. Others had come across it on the Xbox 360. I was not alone in my pain. But many were just as confused and confounded over it; some tried walking backwards to the door, which worked, but the moment they looked at it, the game froze. Others suggested turning invisible or sprinting, but nothing was working. Until…I read a post with what sounded like a totally ridiculous solution, but, at the end of my rope, decided to try. I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. And lo and behold, the trick worked. For my fellow glitch prisoners, here’s how to get through those doors:

Before heading up the stairs leading to the double doors, crouch. Then position yourself so that you are looking at the ground below your feet, but at a forward enough angle to still move forward when pushing the controls to do so. Go forward until you hit the door; you should be able to see a sliver of it, and if you’re lucky enough, the prompt to “press X to open” should still be available. Open that door and walk through, still looking down at the ground. Keep going down the stairs until halfway. You should now be able to stand and save your progress. Do not turn around to look at that door or go anywhere near it ever again. That door and you are done.

How ridiculous is all of that?

A. Extremely
B. Incalculably
C. Unequivocally
D. Immeasurably
E. All of the above

Please show your work.

Glitch might be my very first MMORPG

I had to wait a full 24 hours, but I finally got my invite to Glitch last night. When I first signed up, the message said it would be only “a few hours,” but a sudden increase in interest lead the folks behind Glitch–Tiny Speck, Inc. and some of the founders of Flickr–to extend the wait to not overload the system. Okay, understood. Can’t really complain too much about the wait considering Glitch is a free, browser-based MMORPG. Don’t have to download anything, don’t have to pay for anything. And it’s pretty good, too, considering I don’t really love MMORPGs–I just have to remember to close down all other open applications and ignore the lure of checking my email every few minutes, as between those two I crashed the game several times. My laptop is certainly on the way out…

So, what is Glitch about? Well, let’s use the creators’ words first, and then I’ll see if I can figure it out any better for y’all:

Glitch is a web-based massively-multiplayer game which takes place inside the minds of eleven peculiarly imaginative Giants. You choose how to grow and shape the world: building and developing, learning new skills, collaborating or competing with everyone else in one enormous, ever-changing, persistent world.

Hmm…basically, you are you, and you live inside the brainspace of one of eleven Giants. You will then help that world grow, going on quests, learning skills, interacting with other…um, Glitchers. There’s very little warfare, instead focusing on social aspects and friendly topics. For instance, a lot of early missions in RPGs (and MMORPGs, from what I can tell) involve slaughtering some kind of weak animal X number of times. Oh, new adventurer, eh? Go kill ten rats to prove your worth. Oh, fresh off the boat? Go eviscerate fifteen boars and wear their skin as a cloak to show me you mean business. In Glitch, one of the first quests you get involves petting six pigs. I liked that. I also like petting trees.

So, yeah, it’s a light-hearted affair, but I think that’s good. Plus, the whole “inside of the brains of Giants” is unique enough to really let the art style go wild. So far, I’ve explored caves, lush forests, wild fields, and I’m sure there’s even more. Each hubworld is made up of dozens of mini sections, all brimming with people or things to interact with. There’s a lot to learn, such as skills and what each item does and why it is important to collect butterfly milk or eggs from an egg plant (not to be confused with eggplant), but everything is gradual.

And this is what I look like, after tinkering around a bit with the avatar customization options:

Since the game is browser-based, your profile is always kept up-to-date, which is great as a refresher on things you’ve done and things you can do. I never used this feature too much with Dragon Age: Origins, but since Glitch plays within the very same browser that’s getting updated, it’s much easier to explore. Right now, I’m choosing the next skill to learn (Animal Kinship III?)–and I’m not even technically playing the game.

Easy to get into (well, once you get the invite), friendly, fun, with lots to do, Glitch might actually be the first MMORPG I’ve liked and continued to play. So long as I like and continue to play it, that is. I don’t have any buddies playing with me because I refused to connect with Facebook, so it’s solo me in a world of many, and while one always levels up fast in the beginning with four dozen things to do, I’m curious as to how long Glitch can hold out for. Granted, it’s adorable graphics are more than enough to keep me walking left to right, right to left, until every section of every world has been scoured.

Pick-pocketing glitches from the pockets of Fallout: New Vegas

At this point, y’all should know how I like to roleplay in my big, open-world RPGs, especially in Fallout: New Vegas–stealthily. I love skirting conflict, sneaking around the building’s side, lockpicking my way in, tampering with the security computer to switch the turret’s targeting assignment from me to raider, and then creeping up on anyone left standing to pop em once–critical damage guaranteed–in the head. Then we loot and move on to hopefully do it all again.

That said, there’s one aspect that goes hand-in-hand with being sneaky that I just don’t like to do or take advantage of, and that’s picking someone’s pockets, whether it’s to grab a key they got or drop a live grenade into their trousers. I just don’t like doing it. It seems to me that, even with a high Sneak skill, you’re chances of getting caught are greater than not, and then I usually have to reload my game because I don’t like getting caught and having the entire New Vegas strip mad at me because I stole somebody’s fresh apple.

How then, you most certainly ask, did I unlock the following Achievement over the weekend?

Artful Pocketer (15G): Picked 50 pockets.

Here, let me tell you. I used a glitch. Yup, even with two (or is it three at this point?) patches for Fallout: New Vegas, there’s still a few glitches to lovingly grope. I mean…use with love. Because 50 pockets is a lot of pockets, and I know that I’d never actually get that many in a single playthrough especially since I hate doing it so much, but this glitch made it all too easy. First, let me explain how pick-pocketing in Fallout works: you crouch, you wait until it says hidden, you search their pockets, and you take an item. If done successfully, the item will disappear and  you’ll hear the sound cue for losing karma. If done unsuccessfully, the menu closes, and the victim turns into an enemy, ready to beat you down for your blatant thievery.

Okay, so on the New Vegas strip, there’s a hotel hangout place called Vault 21; it’s actually a true Vault-Tec vault that’s been transformed into a rich place for some R&R. It’s a little bizarre you’re first time through as it’ll feel a bit like returning home in Fallout 3. Anyways, all the residents of Vault 21 are glitched; the items in their pockets do not disappear when pick-pocketed, but the sound cue for losing karma still happens, and when you check the stats menu it clearly shows you were successful. This means you can sit there and just pick-pocket someone over and over and over. I did this to a woman snoozing with her eyes open. Took me less than 15 minutes to go from three pockets picked to 50. I did, however, have to save frequently as the woman did seem to catch me after the third or fourth try, but if that happens, you just reload and try again. Easy peasy. Sometimes glitches are good, time-savers. Sometimes they’re not, like in the case of the Achievement for recruiting every companion, which I’ve done, but which has not yet pinged. Grrr…

Thanks for listening, chiiiiiiildren!

Found my first bugs in Fallout: New Vegas, and I’m not talking about radroaches or bloatflies

Fallout: New Vegas was only released like two weeks ago, and the world mostly knows it for being an extremely buggy game. And we’re not talking about a wasteland full of mutated swarms of praying mantises or radroaches; no, these are programming bugs, wonky coding and scripting that can totally ruin one’s gameplay session. Or, in my case, help keep me alive for a few more minutes. More on that later. But yeah, bugs. LET ME SHOW YOU THEM, says LOLCAT.

How bad can it be? Well, the game shipped, and several players found a rather unsettling bug in the very first few minutes. Not a good start. Luckily, Doc Mitchell’s head stayed put for my first playthrough. Over the past few days, thanks to a patch, Obsidian Entertainment passed along 200 scripting and quest bug fixes for those connected to the Internet. Me? Nope, no Web yet. Still gotta call Comcast and get it all set up at the Leaky Cauldron, which means I’m playing vanilla Fallout: New Vegas, the true layer, broken and spotty, the way it was meant to be played because, well, the game shipped like this, and that’s actually a little sad. They had like two years to toy with that engine. But Fallout 3 prepared me for glitchy gameplay, and there’s nothing too terrible to really get me to put this game aside.

So, last night, while working on the quest My Kind of Town I came across three different bugs.

Buggy bug #1: I entered an NCR tent near Primm to find a trooper standing on top of a chair as if she was five years old and throwing a tantrum for a cookie before dinner. Tara and I laughed out loud and waited for her to walk off the chair back to the floor. Which she did quickly. Odd, all in all.

Buggy bug #2: Being chased by two radscorpions, which, if both hit me, would be certain death. Thankfully, one of the radscorpions walked into a rock…and got stuck there. Like…inside the rock. I could target it with V.A.T.S. and all, but it was not moving from that rock. Sweet. I took care of its brother and then left it to die a rocky death.

Buggy bug #3: Now, this is the one that worries me. Was in the NCRCF, taking out Powder Gangers left and right in search of a new sheriff when all of a sudden…my gun disappeared. Poof. Gone. No more 9mm pistol. Yet I could still fire and damage enemies. I just had no way of aiming, but V.A.T.S. still worked as well. I tried putting my weapon away and taking it back out so to speak, but nothing showed. So I hid in a corner, freaking out with a bunch of corpses and bent cans. Then, without reason or sound, the gun came back. Thankfully, the room was already cleared out by then. This kind of bug can be very damaging though, and I hope I don’t see it happen again.

But at least no quests have wonked out on me…yet. That would be the saddest thing ever, like not being able to finish one’s favorite meal. I love quests. I love starting them, following them, and finishing them. Especially Fallout quests; they are so inventive and open, and they can be done this way or that way or not even done at all.

So, yeah. Fallout: New Vegas is kind of a crappy game from a programming bird’s eye view. However, that won’t stop me from having a good time. Think I might even head to the strip soon…