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Feeling disorientated, I managed to clean myself up and sort myself out. I go downstairs, get a bit of breakfast and sit down to watch some TV (day off, you see).
Whats this? On my living room floor, glistening in its brand new packaging I find my new copy of Azurik: Rise of Perathia (quite a sensational name - must be good). This had slipped my mind as it had arrived the previous day as part of my reward pack. I quickly consume the remainder of my toast and power up my beloved box of 'X'. The disc goes in, the tray slides shut, i'm ready.
After the not-so-sensational intro sequence, I find myself controlling Azurik. I get acquainted with the controls and i'm out, roaming the land, searching for fragments of elemental discs.
Some two and a half hours pass and I have progressed through the game quite quickly, I have three of my elements and am now on my quest for another, while still searching for those disc fragments.
This game isn't as impressive as I was led to believe - I have encountered slowdown in many places, sometimes some really heavy slowdown, and the game itself is repetitive and boring, but I must push on.
I enter a new world, this must be where my next items are located. I play on, solving the bland puzzles and killing the same monsters over, and over again, using my incredible, fantastic, mind-blowing, limited moves.
It seems my persistence has paid off though, as I am now the proud(?) owner of the Earth element. This new power i have earned must now be implemented in my strategies to obtain the next fragment, also located in this world.
I found it (geeez! that was hard!).
Having obtained over ten obsidians (you'd understand if you have played this game), I head back to the village to enhance my powers.
On my way back, I come across the enemies I had previously killed.
I engage in combat with them since they are easy enough to destroy.
One after the other, they fall, but as i engage another, the now expected slowdown joins the fight.
This game ain't big enough for the three of us, so I proceed in wasting the monster. Mr Slowdown gets jealous though, as i'm ignoring him. This is when payback kicks in.
WHAT?
(the game is frozen)
(silence)
Already knowing this game has a reputation for slowing down, I decide to wait patiently, it'll continue in a moment, right?
(extended silence accompanied by still image of Azurik kicking a$$)
Did I say right? wrong
Frustration now resides in my mind, along with increased anger, and disappointment.
The game has officially crashed.
Nothing I could do would bring the game back to working order, I was forced to press the power button.
This atrocity has only occured once, while playing Azurik.
I wasn't bothered about losing my progress, more the fact that my faithful Xbox was a tragic victim of the menace known as 'crashing'.
I previously thought this not possible on such a superior machine, and on Azurik? That game is so poor, a Dreamcast could handle it! It happened a while ago, and has not happened since (bearing in mind I no longer have Azurik [maybe the developers put a deliberate slowdown problem in it as an act of sabotage???])
I hope no-one else has experienced such a terror on their machines, and that it was just a one-off malfunction, although if anyone else has had this problem (or similar), let us know!
> One other thing i hate about the gaycube
Ohh...You're sooo mature.
Mario
Luigi
Donkey Kong
Diddy Kong
I find it quite repetitive....
oh my friends Gamecube crashed 7 times in a month, down wit gamecube! sorry i hate gamecube so much and the controller is too small. Long live xbox!
Consoles crash its a fact of life :-)
> As GlideM says, all machines crash occasionally. It just that it
> happens so infrequently with consoles that people tend to think it
> means there's something wrong with their machine!
>
> My PSone crashed a grand total of three times in the 5 or so years I
> had it. My PS2 has crashed once. My Xbox hasn't crashed at all yet,
> but it's hardly had enough of a workout, nor has my Gamecube.
I'm not stressing about a possible defect of my machine, it just caught me by surprise (what with happening during a terribly poor game).
I too have had previous console-crash experience. My PSone choked about five or six times and my PS2 did it about twice. My old N64 did it e few times too.
My Gamecube has yet to crash also, which raises a thought - maybe the gamecube is the toughest console of them all? <- (not a dig at other consoles, i'm not like that!)
My PSone crashed a grand total of three times in the 5 or so years I had it. My PS2 has crashed once. My Xbox hasn't crashed at all yet, but it's hardly had enough of a workout, nor has my Gamecube.