Gaming Diary - Day 24 (31.12.10)

Company of Heroes - another campaign mission finished. Maybe I'll get to complete the basic campaign before I leave.

King Arthur - slowly digging myself out of the many quests. I still can't do some optional battles because of how demanding they are (they throw very powerful armies against you), but finally can do the stupid ghosts/wraiths battles, even though they are still going poorly. But at least I'm not losing each such fight! Another game I'm hoping to finish over the next week or so.

GTA Vice City... got to that irritating mission part. See, the mission itself is great. It works plotwise, it's fun to play and all, but I've tried doing it for around five or six times now, and always something goes wrong, some stupid random thing. My car gets hit and spirals out of control. I somehow lose all my armor when shot at. I am left with a silly amount of life and a stray bullet hits me. That's not my main problem. The main problem is this: watch this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se6KP5xfcYM ), and tell me - WHY THE HELL ISN'T THERE A SAVE POINT WHEN YOU SAVE LANCE? WHY. THE. BLOODY. HELL? Each time you screw up, you have to do the whole thing again - going there, getting through the guys, saving Lance, listening to the god-damn short cutscene. And there's absolutely NOTHING you can do about it. I mean, look at it! You see what's happening when you leave that street leading to the junkyard? Seriously, it's a dice roll! I've seen videos where the guy doesn't even get hit on his way out and loses the tail, somehow, by some grace of the game, and it's a blue milk run. This guy - not so lucky. He basically gets gang banged by those cars.

I almost made it at one point. I lost the tail, I was way ahead. What had to happen? I stopped dead on a electrical post (because the metal lamp posts break like matches, but electrical posts in Vice City are made of titanium alloy - I'd say concrete, but you break the concrete signalling lights with no problem), and then when I tried to backtrack, I got hit into ANOTHER post and the car started to burn. I got out, Lance got out, but didn't follow me and died in the explosion. And this sort of thing happened to me at least three or four times!

Why did the people at Rockstar insist on ruining a perfectly good game like that? There's no way I can skip this mission, because it's a pivotal moment in the plot. There's no way I can make this mission easier, because there's not much I can do at all. So yes, this is my first major disappointment with Vice City. And to think that it could be made so much more bearable if they decided to add that one god-damn save point... I just hope this is the only mission which is ruined this way, though knowing the GTA series, I think I'm up for another disappointment.