ARGH!

Let it be known that I don't get annoyed or upset very often. Generally. Most of the time. Except for recently.

At the end of last month, a game I was actually quite looking forward to came out. (Along with about FIFTY other games I was looking forward to, but who's counting? *grin*) Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines. Some of you may have played Redemption, and enjoyed it like I have (and continue to). Therefore I'm sure there are some of you out there who are similarly looking forward to the second game.

I mean, there are so many reasons to look forward to it! It runs using the Source Engine (same as Half Life 2), it's a RPG, it's a Vampire game, with similar dark overtones as the first game. Sounds good, right? So when it came out, I had already pre-ordered the game, and raced in to pick it up.

I had heard of it being a lil' buggy, but that was OK. Gaming companies tend to release bug fixes for PC games as soon as they can, so if the bugs aren't insurmountable, you can still enjoy the game until they fix it. Life got in the way for me for a week or so, and I didn't have the chance to install and play it right away. But hey - you buy a game, it sits there until you install it, right?

So when I had some time, I tried to install it. Note "TRIED" to install it. Couldn't get past Disc 2 before the errors started. Install program couldn't find some of the files it wanted, and kept flashing up error messages. So I took the game back, and tried to install the new copy. Same problem. In fact, even after a THIRD attempt, it still wouldn't work.

So after much swearing, cursing and gnashing of teeth, I took the game back and exchanged it for something different. My warning to those of you waiting for bug-fixes is to make sure you CAN install the game first! After chatting with the shop owner, I am not the only person who seems to have had this problem. I'm still hoping to one day get this game to work, but I might have to wait until they release an updated version or something... *sigh*

OK - finished my whinge now. Back to our regularly scheduled programming...