You’re midway through an awesome RPG, and you’re working your way through that quest where you find the thing, and kill the dude that will give you the perks to take on the big bad. You know the one I’m talking about. And suddenly, out of nowhere, you fall through a staircase, or get trapped behind a table, or actually find yourself below the map. You try to exit and reload, but something’s gone horribly wrong. Depending on how diligent you are at saving, and how the game is designed, you may have only lost a few minutes, a few hours, or weeks of work! And sometimes, when you go back and retry, the glitch occurs again, and again, and again!

We’ve all been there! Usually it’s just an irritating annoyance, but sometimes it’s catastrophic and prevents a GREAT game from achieving what it was designed to. Depending on the severity, sometimes I’ll just walk away from a particular title completely. It’s just not fun if I can’t complete Quest X, so I move on to the next big RPG. I’m not talking about floating heads, Donkey Women, or paint brushes that just hover in midair. The bugs I refer to are the ones that have the potential to completely destroy the experience until patched.

While working on my review this week (for a game you’ll get to read about Friday), I sadly had just such an experience. This time I found a work around and was able to continue, but while I frantically sought a solution, I was reminded of a similar experience I had long ago in Oblivion, and felt like commiserating. Please share your worst “bug” experiences below, and what you think about large games that get shipped with these time bombs lurking within.