Games, PC games especially, are prone to bugs. Lots of them are visible or game breaking.
Some are more subtle.
I got the game Director’s Cut edition of QUBE in the latest Humble Bundle. In the promo materials, there was a bunch of talk about how they hired some great writer for the game, but I played for about an hour without any inkling as to why a writer would be needed. There’s no text, and there’s no dialogue, and there’s no voiceover.
About halfway through the game, I check the steam reviews and, lo and behold, they talk about how the narrator is really irritating and doesn’t add anything to the game. Turns out, for some reason, I’m not hearing the narrator at all! In fact, I’d been dwelling on how QUBE is trying to tell a story without any dialogue and why that was or was not a good idea.
Here’s another one:
I played the PC version of Resident Evil when I was young. I got somewhat into it but it wasn’t really scary, and I didn’t really get the hype. It was just a big ol mansion with some monsters in it.
Then one day, I turn it on again and now the game is dark, moody, and full of atmosphere. Also it scared the shit out of me because I was essentially playing a different game, and I couldn’t figure out why.
Turns out that, for some reason, the first few times I played it, the music and weather effects weren’t working. A fully lit mansion with no music to speak of wasn’t really very intimidating at all. I never really figured out why they didn’t work the first few times. Really bizarre.
I also played Doom for a good while without realizing there was music. I thought it was this kind of quiet violent action game, but it turns out my MIDI drivers weren’t working.
Anyway, I’m curious if anyone else has these experiences where they’ve played a game “wrong” without realizing it due to bugs or weird issues with hardware/software. Anyone?