Firaxis patches game-breaking bug in Marvel's Midnight Suns

I ran into a game-breaking bug in Marvel's Midnight Suns yesterday. As I am in very deep on my leisurely second playthrough of the game, there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth. I stomped into the other room after spending an hour or so trying to recover my save and moaned to my wife that my Spider-Man, whom I've worked on until he is actually useful in battle - was gone forever. She super-cared, you guys.

I've spent scores of hours on Midnight Suns that I wasn't able to spend on my first run-through, building up my characters in a way that might be termed "psychotically obsessive". My dudes are ludicrously OP for where I am in the game, and I've taken Hunter on every mission, to the point where she is a good four levels above everyone else. My team of Avengers and Midnight Suns are powerhouses.

And just when I thought that all of that work was gone forever and I was going to have to start the game again - POOF - my PlayStation updated the game, and everything was fine. Firaxis heard my howling cries in the night and issued a patch, just in time for me to stay up to late AGAIN, grinding battles.

It seems that I'm one of the lucky ones. According to the whirlpool of acrimony I found on Reddit, some players have been struggling with this bug almost since launch. The bug was caused by the inability to complete Hero Ops, which are the little missions you send your dudes on to pick up prizes and extra abilities. You pop them in solo, they run off to do stuff, and 24 in-game hours later, they are back. You get your prizes and move on with your day.

But in the case of this bug, there was no way to complete the op. Whichever character you sent off was trapped in there, like Montgomery Scott endlessly cycling in the transporter buffer (if you know, you know). In my case, I had sent Blade off to do a mission that was supposed to reward him with an epic ability. He got stuck in there, and my next story mission required me to take Blade with me to advance the story. No Blade = no story mission - dead game. And like a big dummy, I burned through all of my previous saves loading up the same one over and over again trying to free him.

But thankfully, the real-life heroes at Firaxis and 2K came swooping in with a remarkably well-timed patch, and saved me from having one of those horrible gaming stories that you tell people years later. I've been pretty lucky in my gaming life, missing out on a lot of legendary bugs that people talk about (though I did have the red ring of death - twice). And though I did encounter this one, it was resolved - from my perspective - within about 90 minutes.

So if you've been holding off on Midnight Suns because you got one of your dudes locked in the transporter buffer, load that bad boy back up! You've got work to do. Lilith isn't going to kick her own ass.