What Video Games Have You Been Playing XVII: REMAIN INDOORS!! :D

[Sommerswerd]

I started a new survival game of The Long Dark yesterday. Voyager. I just can't deal with playing a Stalker game right now. If that makes me a coward, so be it.

I spawned into Forlorn Muskeg and got the frack out of there as fast as I could. Spent two weeks exploring most of Mystery Lake. Found the hidden bunker. Got decent clothing and every tool except a revolver (I found like a hundred rounds for it, though, sheesh - if a wolf bites the wrong pocket, we'll both be killed in the explosion). Moved into Coastal Highway and bagged a moose. So now I'm doing a little exploring while I wait for the pelt to dry. I found something new in Coastal Highway. I love that the devs add a new thing, here or there, when they finish a significant update, so it's worth exploring old ground, even though most of it will be familiar. I still haven't been to Bleak Inlet. I need that danged .38 first. I hope I find one in Coastal Highway, I don't really want to go to Desolation Point other than to use the furnace.

Spoiler :

Just off the highway, near Log Sort (which is about halfway between Fishing Camp and Coastal Townsite) there's a new mine entrance. There are a couple of lockers and a couple pieces of coal, but the big news is... *drumroll* ...there's an elevator. It wasn't working when I was in there. Obviously you have to wait for the Aurora. I've never bothered to pay attention to how long the Auroras last, or how frequently they recur. There's no telling how big the mine below is, so I don't know whether you can get in and out in a single night, or you have to prepare to stay down there a while.

I kind of miss Winter. We didn't have one this year.

LOL, I'm in exactly the opposite position... I've gone from Voyager to Stalker. We're like two ships passing in the night.

I'd just completed the story mode (Episode 3), so I tried a challenge (Nomad), failed and decided to go back to my Survival game (Voyager). I was 120+ days into a Voyager run with no end in sight really... fully stocked up in multiple bases in Mystery lake and a survival system fully in place. I could have probably lasted at least another 100 days with no sweat... The only problem was I was basically out of bullets, having fully looted both Milton and Mystery Lake. So I basically decided I was bored and would make my first ever trip to Bleak Inlet to try my hand at making bullets... I had nice crafted clothes, an abundance of food, a complete set of tools/weapons and I'd been saving most of my shells all game so I was ready to go.

So this trip involved crossing Forlorn Muskeg... a thousand curses on its wretched name... and of course I was attacked by at least 3 wolves on my way across to the entrance to Bleak Inlet... and since I was out of bullets, that was, needless to say... an interesting experience. Anyway I made it, but I bust my ass falling down a cliff in the darkness of the cave-entrance, so I arrived already injured. On top of that, it was super cold in Bleak Inlet when I arrived AND, there is weak ice that looks different from any map I'd seen before... basically there is weak ice under what appears to be perfectly safe thick ice and snow banks. So I was treated to at least three dips in the frozen drink before I learned my lesson.

Now I'm freezing with hypothermia and its nearly night... so i'm pretty effed since my clothes are soaked. I didn't have the stuf to make a fire and I was too cold to go wood-chopping so I scrambled around looking for shelter before night set in, which as you know is a tough order when you're on a new map that you aren't familiar with. The wind was howling and although it wasn't a blizzard I was freezing fast. I finally found a hunters blind that actually allowed my to warm up slowly if I crouched down from the wind... at this point I was exhausted with no stamina left so I had to sleep or keep losing condition. So I gave the bedroll a try in the hunter's blind and I was still slowly warming, so I thought "Whew, I'm saved" and set the timer to go to sleep for the night... Big mistake... I froze to death overnight, ending my Voyager run. I never made it to the cannery.

The cherry on top? After dying, I realized that when I left for Bleak inlet I'd left all the scrap lead I'd compiled from Milton back at Trapper's Cabin in Mystery Lake... so even if I'd managed to get into the cannery during an aurora, I would have been SOL cause I didn't have my lead with me to make the damned bullets

I'd been itching for months to try Interloper again to at least get the 1 day survival achievement, but I couldn't because I didn't want to give up my Voyager run. So after I died I gave Interloper a couple tries. I was able to get the achievement with a Pleasant Valley start, barely... and only because of having completed the story mode. Since Episode 3 takes place in Pleasant Valley, I'd learned the whole map pretty well and so I was able to survive a few days on Interloper. My other Interloper runs were dismal failures. So now I'm moving on to Stalker for a better challenge, but less intense/stressful than Interloper. I'm off to a pretty good start in Milton, I found a crowbar in the truck near the picnic spot that allowed me immediate access to the gas station's foodstores, and then I got a hatchet and a hacksaw in Grey mother's shed and a knife on her table. So a pretty gold-plated start I must say.

The other bonus of having done the story mode is I am familiar with the elevator you reference, because its part of the story. Yeah it only works in an aurora.

 

[EgonSpengler]

LOL, I'm in exactly the opposite position... I've gone from Voyager to Stalker. We're like two ships passing in the night.

I'd just completed the story mode (Episode 3), so I tried a challenge (Nomad), failed and decided to go back to my Survival game (Voyager). I was 120+ days into a Voyager run with no end in sight really... fully stocked up in multiple bases in Mystery lake and a survival system fully in place. I could have probably lasted at least another 100 days with no sweat... The only problem was I was basically out of bullets, having fully looted both Milton and Mystery Lake. So I basically decided I was bored and would make my first ever trip to Bleak Inlet to try my hand at making bullets... I had nice crafted clothes, an abundance of food, a complete set of tools/weapons and I'd been saving most of my shells all game so I was ready to go.

So this trip involved crossing Forlorn Muskeg... a thousand curses on its wretched name... and of course I was attacked by at least 3 wolves on my way across to the entrance to Bleak Inlet... and since I was out of bullets, that was, needless to say... an interesting experience. Anyway I made it, but I bust my ass falling down a cliff in the darkness of the cave-entrance, so I arrived already injured. On top of that, it was super cold in Bleak Inlet when I arrived AND, there is weak ice that looks different from any map I'd seen before... basically there is weak ice under what appears to be perfectly safe thick ice and snow banks. So I was treated to at least three dips in the frozen drink before I learned my lesson.

Now I'm freezing with hypothermia and its nearly night... so i'm pretty effed since my clothes are soaked. I didn't have the stuf to make a fire and I was too cold to go wood-chopping so I scrambled around looking for shelter before night set in, which as you know is a tough order when you're on a new map that you aren't familiar with. The wind was howling and although it wasn't a blizzard I was freezing fast. I finally found a hunters blind that actually allowed my to warm up slowly if I crouched down from the wind... at this point I was exhausted with no stamina left so I had to sleep or keep losing condition. So I gave the bedroll a try in the hunter's blind and I was still slowly warming, so I thought "Whew, I'm saved" and set the timer to go to sleep for the night... Big mistake... I froze to death overnight, ending my Voyager run. I never made it to the cannery.

The cherry on top? After dying, I realized that when I left for Bleak inlet I'd left all the scrap lead I'd compiled from Milton back at Trapper's Cabin in Mystery Lake... so even if I'd managed to get into the cannery during an aurora, I would have been SOL cause I didn't have my lead with me to make the damned bullets

I'd been itching for months to try Interloper again to at least get the 1 day survival achievement, but I couldn't because I didn't want to give up my Voyager run. So after I died I gave Interloper a couple tries. I was able to get the achievement with a Pleasant Valley start, barely... and only because of having completed the story mode. Since Episode 3 takes place in Pleasant Valley, I'd learned the whole map pretty well and so I was able to survive a few days on Interloper. My other Interloper runs were dismal failures. So now I'm moving on to Stalker for a better challenge, but less intense/stressful than Interloper. I'm off to a pretty good start in Milton, I found a crowbar in the truck near the picnic spot that allowed me immediate access to the gas station's foodstores, and then I got a hatchet and a hacksaw in Grey mother's shed and a knife on her table. So a pretty gold-plated start I must say.

The other bonus of having done the story mode is I am familiar with the elevator you reference, because its part of the story. Yeah it only works in an aurora.

Yeah, my best game was on Stalker. 90 days, I think. Stalker's my usual difficulty setting, when I'm not feeling delicate.

Milton on Stalker, though.

Spoiler :

I think my best Interloper run was 3 or 4 days. That level of difficulty's a little too nuts for me. I've watched a few Interloper let's plays on YouTube, and I think they all said that near-perfect knowledge of the maps is pretty much requisite.

Oh, I forgot to mention before that I'd upgraded my PC since I last played, and decided to push the graphics settings all the way up. I figured I could lower it if it impacted performance too much, but it didn't. It looks amazing. The draw distance on a clear day must be the entire map.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

In more thread-topic news, I have recently downloaded and fallen in love with Anomaly, a 64-bit FREE stand-alone overhaul for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat that combined all maps of the STALKER series into one game with massively improved, well, everything. They got a hold of the source code and worked out an agreement with the original developers and all you need, as I understand it, is a previous install of Stalker CoP on your PC history, as it reads the Windows registry or something as a basic form of DRM so you can't just enjoy all the Stalker content without having bought the game at some point in time.

The only negative thought I even have about this game is that it introduced 'old and damaged ammo' which corrodes your gun condition very fast but more importantly clutters the UI a bit too much imo. Besides that, it's lovely. The world is so much more alive than the original games, stalkers might pay you to guide them to other areas of the zone, and your reputation actually matters so you can't just murderhobo all the Loners unless you want them to shoot-on-sight next time you walk into camp. People of every faction will react to your and each others' actions, like Duty members reporting a firefight with bandits over the radio/PDA system and requesting backup, so you could go to their location (which is not marked on the map like noob-friendly Skyrim, but you actually have to figure it out, which isn't hard either) and help one side or the other, depending on your allegiances - which you can choose, along with your starting location and a limited selection of gear, at the start of the game between approximately eight factions.

I've never been able to get past the bandit fight in the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Somehow one of the bandits is able to shoot me insta-dead from 100 km away with a shotgun.

I am an excellent gamer.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I leveled to 90 in POE and can now just enjoy the game and die as much as I like. The experience loss doesn't matter anymore to me. Delirium is a great league with lots of loot and most of it is pretty nice. Cluster jewels are outstanding.

 

[Synobun]

I've never been able to get past the bandit fight in the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Somehow one of the bandits is able to shoot me insta-dead from 100 km away with a shotgun.

I am an excellent gamer.

"The bandit fight" is perhaps one of the least specific references you can make regarding S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

"What part are you at?"

"Well, there's an anomaly nearby."

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It's at the very beginning of the game.

 

[Synobun]

It's at the very beginning of the game.

Let the wild dogs distract the bandits first.

 

[Takhisis]

The 1upt traffic is atrocious. Great idea but other rules that able to maximized the implementation is not enough (the idea of strict 1upt without considerable exception is lazy implementation, why great people cannot be stack in the first place?).

I think that it also has to do with map sizes in the later civ games, which have smaller numbers of available tiles and cities.

The 1UPT logjams in Civ 5 were infuriating. I think that was the biggest factor in me abandoning the game. I just couldn't take it anymore. It's a little better in Civ 6 , but still annoying. I'd prefer they went back to allowing unlimited stacking, but just disallow attacking from the stack and make stacked units susceptible to wipeout if the top defender is destroyed.

Maybe bombardment reaching more than whatever the strongest unit in the stack is or a mechanic similar to Civ3's collateral damage (i.e. if you attacked a city directly you could destroy city improvements along the way) could help.

 

[Takhisis]

2 hours and 54 minutes for a diplomatic Sengoku victory.

 

[cardgame]

The very beginning of the first stalker game is pretty hard, you only have that garbage makarov...

in Anomaly you have 1000 'points' and can pick from a variety of starter items. Medkits are 75-100, food is 60-100, specialized equipment is 250-300, a gun is 400-600 (there's a semi-auto rifle and two SMGs available, plus a sawn-off shotgun) so you don't start the game with nothing.

 

[Ajidica]

I actually stopped playing STALKER because the game scared me (no joke).

The area was this misty, spooky forest and I had to go into the basement of a factory that held a secret Soviet lab. The flickering of the harsh light and shadows on the decaying concrete walls, the dripping of water, the popping and burbling of nearby anomalies, all culminating in an unseen moan that hurtles objects at me.

I also slept with the lights on after watching The Shining because the lady in the bathtub freaked me out. (I was 20.)

 

[cardgame]

hahahahaha dude I still haven't gone into Agroprom or X18 or X16 laboratories since like 2014 or whenever I first played them. I can't freaking take it. In the MISERY modification I was playing before I found Anomaly (don't, the performance is in the gutter and difficulty is artificially insanely high) they made bloodsuckers even more invisible and next-to-inaudible. Walking along when suddenly, if you're lucky, you see a slight shimmer in the distance as one turns invisible (it takes energy to go invisible I guess, they're visible until something gets within aggro range). Then they made the bloodsucker AI smarter, so it always loops around behind you, and attacks your back, like a tiger. Now you're twitch-jumping left and right trying to avoid exposing yourself and you can't see it, until it suddenly re-materializes 2 feet in front of you with a snarling roar. If you weren't paying attention, it would materialize behind you and take out 75% of your health, if not more. Now, if you're prepared, you had a shotgun out and ready for him. But wait, this was a hunting pack of bloodsuckers, not just a loner! There's at least two more! *claw marks appear on screen as it flashes red and fades to black*

 

[Arakhor]

I actually stopped playing STALKER because the game scared me (no joke).

I have never finished Thief: Deadly Shadows because of one particular @#$%^ level. Anyone else who has played the game probably knows exactly which one it is.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Am I the only one who thinks STALKER would make for one hell of a MMO?

 

[H4run]

Never really got hooked with Stalker or Borderland, I feel like it's not rpg enough for my liking, given I don't have sufficient knowledge about the game to pass judgement I just play it for 1 hour at most or maybe even less, but it gives the impression that the game is like 1st person shooter "mine craft" or I can be really wrong.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Yeah, my best game was on Stalker. 90 days, I think. Stalker's my usual difficulty setting, when I'm not feeling delicate.

Milton on Stalker, though.

Spoiler :

I think my best Interloper run was 3 or 4 days. That level of difficulty's a little too nuts for me. I've watched a few Interloper let's plays on YouTube, and I think they all said that near-perfect knowledge of the maps is pretty much requisite.

Oh, I forgot to mention before that I'd upgraded my PC since I last played, and decided to push the graphics settings all the way up. I figured I could lower it if it impacted performance too much, but it didn't. It looks amazing. The draw distance on a clear day must be the entire map.

OMG the wolves in Milton on Stalker are ridiculous. I mean there's always a lot of wolves in Milton, but on Stalker... I just went over to the church to see if I could snag a rifle... I had to use 3 flares just to dodge 3 wolves to get between the bridge and the church and back to Grey Mothers house. Mercifully, I did find a rifle in the church, otherwise that would have been a really expensive can of beans Although, I have to admit that the wolves in Milton kinda balance out the insane amount of concentrated loot you find there. Even on Stalker you can survive for at least a week just on looted food. On Voyager you can make it at least a month on just loot, maybe longer.

I'm happy for you that you got the graphics upgrade, because the visuals in this game are really breathtaking, especially the skies at night and the daytime views from on top of mountains and cliffs... just beautiful.

I think that it also has to do with map sizes in the later civ games, which have smaller numbers of available tiles and cities. Maybe bombardment reaching more than whatever the strongest unit in the stack is or a mechanic similar to Civ3's collateral damage (i.e. if you attacked a city directly you could destroy city improvements along the way) could help.

The main benefit of SOD is the freedom of movement and the uncluttered map. 1UPT just makes movement so much more of a pain than it needs to be, and makes the map into a unsightly, cluttered mess. The drawback of SOD is the overly-simplified combat. I want them to find a better balance than 1UPT.

I actually stopped playing STALKER because the game scared me (no joke). The area was this misty, spooky forest and I had to go into the basement of a factory that held a secret Soviet lab. The flickering of the harsh light and shadows on the decaying concrete walls, the dripping of water, the popping and burbling of nearby anomalies, all culminating in an unseen moan that hurtles objects at me.

hahahahaha dude I still haven't gone into Agroprom or X18 or X16 laboratories since like 2014 or whenever I first played them. I can't freaking take it. In the MISERY modification I was playing before I found Anomaly (don't, the performance is in the gutter and difficulty is artificially insanely high) they made bloodsuckers even more invisible and next-to-inaudible. Walking along when suddenly, if you're lucky, you see a slight shimmer in the distance as one turns invisible (it takes energy to go invisible I guess, they're visible until something gets within aggro range). Then they made the bloodsucker AI smarter, so it always loops around behind you, and attacks your back, like a tiger. Now you're twitch-jumping left and right trying to avoid exposing yourself and you can't see it, until it suddenly re-materializes 2 feet in front of you with a snarling roar. If you weren't paying attention, it would materialize behind you and take out 75% of your health, if not more. Now, if you're prepared, you had a shotgun out and ready for him. But wait, this was a hunting pack of bloodsuckers, not just a loner! There's at least two more! *claw marks appear on screen as it flashes red and fades to black*

Does anyone remember the Forest Temple in Zelda:Ocarina of Time for N64? OMG that whole area was pee-your-pants terrifying with the creepy music, ambient sounds, shadows and dark spots, and the scary enemies... particularly those effing dismembered hands that would scrurry across the ceiling in the darkness and drop down on you without warning... jeez... gives me the chills just thinking about that place

Am I the only one who thinks STALKER would make for one hell of a MMO?

I've never played that game, but I definitely think The Long Dark would make a great MMO, especially if the number of players allowed per map was kept very low.

 

[Lexicus]

Something happened in this Civ 4 game I've never seen before- an AI settled an island, moved their capital there (they do this all the time), then actually granted independence to their original core lands on the mainland of the big continent.

 

[cardgame]

You've never played STALKER? It's on sale this weekend for like 70% off, $12 for the whole trilogy or less for just Chernobyl or Pripyat (lots of people including me think Clear Sky, the last game, sucked, and almost every mod is for Pripyat)

 

[Senethro]

You've never played STALKER? It's on sale this weekend for like 70% off, $12 for the whole trilogy or less for just Chernobyl or Pripyat (lots of people including me think Clear Sky, the last game, sucked, and almost every mod is for Pripyat)

Clear Sky was the middle game and prequel!

 

[cardgame]

I don't remember it that way, but it's definitely the last game in my heart.