No, it's not a sequel title. It's an ordeal. Yesterday, like most avid gamers out there, I went and purchased a copy of GTA IV to be played on my PS3. In true GTA fashion, I stood in the road, waited for a sports car to stop in front of me, and beat up the driver and stole his car. Using nitro and the jump button I raced the back roads of Western Pennsylvania to my closest Best Buy outlet and without any substantial load time, I purchased my reserved copy and hightailed back to my safe house to play.
I loaded the disc into the PS3 as if I was transporting a Faberge egg over the fault line at San Andreas. After what seemed like a good five minutes of installation onto my hard drive I was ready to hit the streets of Liberty City. Ok, here we, um, go, uh, where is the sound? Why can't I control anything? Hold up, everything stopped moving. Ok, maybe I got a little anxious. Let's reboot.
Reboot. Violins play. Game is selected. Rock Star logo appears....second logo appears. Credit screen starts up.....and where's the sound. What the hell?
Reboot. Violins play.....firmware update required? Ok, fine, update me. Update starts, installation happens, 5%......10%.......38%........hold on....why did it reboot?
ERROR 80010514
What? What do you mean? Ok, try again.
ERROR 80010514
Let's try uninstalling GTA IV and reinstalling it. Ok, delete game data.....delete save data.....Let's retry this.
Why isn't it reading my disc? WHAT THE HELL?!?!?! AGGGGGHHHH. Switch to rocket launcher and find a Rhino, we're turning this place into The Wild Bunch!
Apparently, in my life it's either feast or famine. Not only did I get hit with the freezing issue that has spread through GTA IV's launch like the instantaneous freezing scenes in The Day After Tomorrow, I also got nailed with the PS3's version of the Red Ring of Death known as the 80010514 error. This error describes a condition we've all known to loathe as the dreaded Disc Read Error from the PS2. After doing some research on this error, I've found loads of pages, blogs, support sites, and a bunch of Diggs on the subject. However, calling Sony support they did not seem to know anything about the error. Yet, when I returned to Best Buy, the supervisor I spoke to got a look of a "ball tapping" on his face when I rattled off that number. Sony doesn't regard this? Is that like Bigfoot in San Andreas? For some reason Sony doesn't recognize this as a substantial error. Yet, they are willing to bring my PS3 in for repair.....not replacement since they don't acknowledge the error, but everyone else does. I've heard some horror stories about replacements and repairs as I have worked in a customer service setting for durable equipment. However, I find it suspect that everyone and the brother has heard of this issue and Sony hasn't. I'm just hoping that they don't decide that my PS3 is too dusty and my warranty is voided.
What really gets my goat is that my PS3 will more than likely be out of commission longer than the exchange or refund period with Best Buy. Since swapping a disc out at the retailer won't matter because my machine won't read it, I'd rather return the disc now for credit and await my PS3's return from repair and an answer from Rockstar as to what the hell is going to be done to rectify the issue. As of Wednesday, nearly 24 hours from sending an email to usa@rockstarsupport.com, I have not received a reply. They're either clueless or have been so inundated with emails regarding this that they can't get to mine.
I'll keep you informed on both counts. Frankly, I can't believe I had the luck of the draw on getting both these problems on the same day......Of course; I just got a summons for Jury Duty over the weekend. I wish there was a cheat code that could get rid of that.
For more posts on my love of video games, check out the five part series entitled All Your Free Time Are Belong To Us
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