I'm pretty new to the whole digital downloading thing, particularly when it comes to games. Given the state and cost of Australian bandwidth that's really no surprise. It took several days of careful offpeak downloading to get Call of Pripyat (which is quite small and well compressed. Ask me how much fun it was getting GTA 4 recently...). On the other hand, given the state of Australian game prices and release schedules it's no surprise that I and probably everyone else are jumping ship. I feel bad for a couple of nice game retailers I'm stiffing by doing this more often. I'd tell them to get into the downloads business ASAP, except Gabe Newell kinda got there before them, not to mention a few others. Maybe if they hitched themselves to my ISP and they came up with some deal so downloading the stuff is not counted towards your quota (which they already do a lot of with other stuff). That'd be nice.
Anyway, impressions. I only played it for a little while but it seems so different already. Truly a lot closer to the old 'Oblivion with guns' notion. You're dropped in without much intro and have to make your own way. A bit confused, you chat with the first guys you meet and they'll send you to the nearest camp and tell you about interesting stuff. Then there's bandits who don't shoot you on sight and guys conspiring against each other from opposite sides of the room in the same bar. Visually it's a little too brown so far. The short-ish vegetation rendering distance becomes a little too obvious for my liking in this colour scheme. Hopefully it gets more green and blue as we go along.
They seem to have really pulled out all the stops this time though, so far. It's going to warrant a lot of attention, if I can find the time.
My impression after about 10 hours or so is that although the Bandits Are Now Your Friends (and I do wonder how long that is going to last), the game is actually a lot harsher than the previous two. The repair guy can't just upgrade your equipment - he needs 3 seperate sets of tools, please go retrieve them from spooky, seemingly empty locations (and he won't tell you which locations). You can't just lug around every weapon you find - buyers won't buy equipment if it's not about 80-85% repaired (my educated guess). The money is in the missions - stuff like "please drop into that deep, completely dark canyon and retrieve a box I dropped there - ohandit'sfullofsnorks", which isn't the kind of thing you want to hear at the start of a STALKER game. I hate snorks. I really hate them. Stupid snorks.
ReplyDeleteYeah I've played it a bit more now and it is as you say. I really like that about the guns and things. You can't just loot grind your way to riches anymore. I like plying the tech with just enough drink (but not so much that he can't help you), the specialties of the different traders etc.
ReplyDeleteThat first bit where Tuna cons you out of the glowy wheel )if you let him) is great. I was so mad I hung around and waited for him to leave the ship so could exact my revenge. Then I went off to do other things and he got himself killed in the blowout. While I was looting some corpses some bandits came along in a big group and told me to piss off and got very threatening about it, bt some other stalkers came along just in time and started shooting at them.
It's got a lot of life to it. I love all the hearsay, the cicuitious quests, the finding some guy's pals and things. The linear fps feel is almost competely gone, so far at least.