A well crafted failure

[wossname]

Some failures are so well executed that they not only impart a deep sense of disbelief and irritation, but also a profound feeling of disappointment in the nature of the universe.

One such event occurred this morning. I begin to play a game on my XBox 360, a promising one on paper at least. And after about an hour of playing through the interesting tutorial, watching the surprisingly good special effects, being impressed by the voice acting and the MOCAP, and finally getting quite excited about the prospect of getting utterly enthralled in the game... it crashes as soon as the first real level is over.

"The disc appears to be scratched or dirty" - XBox hangs and needs to reboot.

I'm a seasoned gamer and I realise that this is not usually the end of the world. However I was mildly aggravated by the small but significant fact that THERE IS NO BLOODY DISC! -- this game is an "xbox original", downloaded from XBox Live.

Damn and damn again.

I almost had to put my pipe down, that's how angry I was.

What's more is that I have no idea who to blame, MS (who I have now renamed Failcrosoft, due to the depressing frequency with which this kind of thing happens), or whoever the hell it was that wrote this game. I may try to download it again in the foolish hope that the download was corrupted, I'm not averse to throwing good bandwidth after bad.

[BillGeek]

Hmmm... maybe the original was damaged when they made the "image" for the xbox original? Gotta hate technology, eh?

[mendhak]

Have you tried wiping the XBox hard drive with a soft cloth?

[visualAd]

THERE IS NO BLOODY DISC!

Maybe you should try putting it in.

[wossname]

Hmmm... maybe the original was damaged when they made the "image" for the xbox original? Gotta hate technology, eh?

I had mused as to that possibility but then it does say that "The game has been fully tested to work on the XBox 360". "Fully tested" apparently means that it boots the the initial menu and so it must therefore be 100% compatible. Shortly thereafter it says "No refunds".

Grrrrr

[Siddharth Rout]

Shortly thereafter it says "No refunds".

[kregg]

This thread made my day.

[wossname]

Happy ending - I re-downloaded it and now it's fine.

I guess MS have yet to discover the joys of MD5.