there's always a way out

A personal mantra whenever playing an installment in the Metroid series or one of the recent Castlevania GBA titles is, “there's always a way out”. I trust in the game designers so completely, that if I found myself wandering into unauthorized territory there will always be an exit, no matter how lowly my skills or power suit upgrades are. This has come into play many times while playing Zero Mission, which gives the impression that the game is more free form than it actually is by simply pointing you towards your destination instead of locking you inside a prescribed sector. Coupled with the new automap – a luxury only dreamt about in 1986 - the game is very easy to traverse.

This past weekend, however, my pet theory was put to rest, because sometimes there isn't a way out. I obtained my very own copy of The Sands of Time a couple of weeks ago, and was happily approaching the 50% completion mark on Saturday when I decided to take a break, pleased with my progress. When I sat down to play again, I restored the savegame only to find myself back at the reload screen with the Prince's familiar words, “No, that's not quite how it happened”. That's strange, I thought to myself. Thinking it was some sort of misload of the game, I turned off the 'cube, yanked out the memory card and did an NES-style cleaning, then started it up again. This time I managed to wander around for a few seconds before hearing the Prince's mocking “No, no, no. That's not what happened. Let me begin again.” Alright, this isn't funny. I was talking to the Gamecube now. Was my savegame corrupted? Did someone fiddle with the memory card while turning the power on and off? After a few times of trying to reload my game with no success, I trolled the message boards. It was hard for me to accept that I was possibly face to face with a bug in the game, but that was indeed the case. Farah, your companion for the better part of the adventure, can apparently get stuck between areas if the pathfinding screws up. And even worse she can die en route - by falling off a cliff or into a spike-filled chasm. Trudging through many heart-wrenching tales of woe by gamers that had to restart the adventure because of a similar bug, I quickly resigned to the fact that I, too, would have to start over.

“Save early, save often” is another mantra, mostly for PC RPGs or absurd missions like Sniper Town. However when dealing with console games and limited save slots, sometimes you don't have that flexibility. In the case of The Sands of Time, three save slots is more than enough to alternate safely without trapping myself in one of the game's bugs again, something that even the Dagger of Time cannot reverse.