Robin Hoods Playground

360 Can't handle Star Ocean: The Last Hope?
By Mike Hilt
So I have been playing Star Ocean: The Last Hope for a few days now and will be writing up my review very soon but while playing I have come across quite the annoying glitch.

The game seems to have a freezing glitch. Many times throughout the game my game has frozen. I began to wonder if it was my 360 so I tried to playing the game in two other 360's. One of which is a brand new Elite with a Jasper chip set and low and behold the game randomly froze on both the other 360's.


The details I have been able to notice is that the game only freezes during combat. I have never had the game freeze any other time. Neither in a cut scene or on the field. It only seems to happen in combat. This can get quite annoying as some of the boss fights can last a long time and the risk of the game freezing it quite high.

Upon doing some Google research I have found that I am far from the only person having this problem. It seems many have been having the same issue with random amounts of persistence. Some have had the game freeze only once and some have had the game freeze countless times.

Many theories are being tossed around as to why this is happening. Some people think running the game off the hard drive at 1080P causes the problem. Some people think that perhaps the game was originally being developed for the PS3 and that somehow caused the problem however I don't see how that could possibly be a cause. Even more think that perhaps the combat in the game is just to intense for the 360 to handle and that the combination of the graphics on screen and the buttons being mashed on the controller is too much for the console to handle and it gives up the ghost in the process.

Whatever the reason behind the freezing I hope that Square will address the problem soon and make a patch or perhaps have a disc replacement program if it turns out that the disc themselves are at fault. All this said I would like to make it clear that this issue is not very wide spread and not everyone is having a problem. Many people have been playing the game for long periods of time and have yet to have a problem. Nonetheless some people are having issues and it is not just one or two people here and there. That said the game is still quite enjoyable and this issue should not stop you from playing the game.

Some people have been somewhat confused reporting that the game is also freezing during cut scenes however this is not the case. Some of the cut scenes are long enough that the 360 controller auto shuts off. When this happen the cut scene stops until the controller is turned back on. The game gives no prompt telling you to re connect the controller so some may think the game has frozen but that is not the case.

I can confirm that playing the game from the disc in 720P instead of 1080P can drastically reduce the amount of times the game will freeze although it will not get rid of the problem entirely. Installing the game to the HDD not only seems to increase the likelihood of the game freezing but it also seems to cause slow down in many instances during combat and after loading screens such as zoning.

HHHHHHMMMMMMM
This could be bad......
Have any of you guys had issues????

well
you get crap like this from time to time.
most of the time it is fixed with a patch.

gears 2 was full of bugs till a update fix most of it.

They couldnt release a game that the console couldnt 'handle' could they?

I dont think M$ would allow it, for numerous reasons, 1 being that the console would get negative publicity, and seen as a weak machine that is unable to keep up to current games.

Also, before the game is released its tested, and if it froze alot during testing, and was attributed to the console's inablilty to handle the game, wouldn't the developers have to make the game less resource intensive?

I could be completely wrong, but isnt that just logical? I think the problem lies in the drive, I know on one of my xbox's my drive is shit, and games freeze sometimes. Im talking like Left 4 Dead freezing... so it cant be my console isnt able to keep up...

M$ makes sh!t console---get it through your head!!

It really all depends but i know i have had good luck with my Falcon Pro box for a year.

M$ is software not hardware. Thus yes the console is not as good relative to ps3...

IMO M$ has enough intellect to know not to let anything be released (if they can help it) that will hurt peoples opinion of their console.

Also, my box is a falcon, I looked on my shipping box when I got it back and it clearly said falcon. I think 3 of mine are falcon 1 is jasper.

jasper,falcon,eagle,rhino whatever the name microshit can and does release game that are pusing the limits of the 360 so it aint o hard to imagine that they slip out a game that the box can keep up with and u think there really worried bout rep should i remind bout rrod i think they already have egg on there face

At first I thought it was my beloved Xbox the first time the game froze. The game froze on me during this extremely long boss battle with that Manifest boss that spawns little crabs. The game froze while I was switching out a dead character. The game didn't freeze much for me for the rest of the game.

Now on my second playthrough... the game keeps randomly freezing after battles on the stat screen and theres ALWAYS the word "Miss!" on the screen when it happens. This is totally ridiculous considering how few and far between save points are in dungeons and how many levels I go up and then just lose due to crashing. It honestly makes me want to smash the discs!! I just lowered the resolution to 720p and have deactivated the Silence spell from Edge and Lymle since I read on some forum somewhere that the silence spell was also an issue.

This game needs a patch ASAP!

edit: for those still experiencing the freezing problems, I disabled the silence spell for both Edge and Lymle and lowered my resolution to 720p. This has seemed to solve my issues considering it has not frozen since Apr 02