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September 17, 2003

Ghost In The Machine

Okay, now I know why Primal was on clearance at Fry's. There is a very annoying bug which only crops up when you are deep into the first level. Scree, the gargoyle sidekick, who is necessary for successful play, occasionally eludes a clipping plane and ends up in 'inside-out' world. He seems to be stuck behind the walls of the world, and while every once in awhile he can maneuver into the same space as Jen, he cannot interact with her. He flashes in and out of existance, but he just ain't there man!

I think I'll try to play through the first level, saving frequently so I can go back to the last place where he wasn't stuck, which is tedious but doable. But if I try another level and this sort of thing continues, then it goes on the shelf.

By the way, I've already gotten my money's worth by the movie scale, so I don't feel gyped, or lured into a scam by that low price.

P.S. - Searching the Internet, I found this quote:

And then there were the lovely multiple instances of dropping out into a skybox (all architecture disappeared and I was left with just the background image that’s wrapped around the whole level), once with each character, and once simply by walking up to a wall. The first time this happened, I tried saving and resetting the PS2, but it saved the skyboxed character as well. If for some reason someone happened to save over their only savegame, they’d have to start over from scratch. Clipping issues that result in skyboxes are something that should be caught by QA long before the game ships, and it was utterly frustrating to see a game that otherwise felt very polished end up as such.

PSX2 Reviews

"Skybox", that's a word that's goin' into my gamer's vocabulary, right up there with "gibbed".

Posted by dpwakefield at September 17, 2003 09:38 PM