Trip Hazard

I'm all out of vodka, but I'm clear of the Garbage (for now) and heading for Agroprom. There were some pretty intense firefights in that area, which was great fun. And now I have a machine gun, ho-ho-ho

Am I being thick or is there just not much to do in Garbage the first time you're there? So much of it is irradiated and I simply don't have enough anti-rad stuff to explore properly. Also, does radiation go away by itself over time? I had a green level of radiation, went to sleep for an hour assuming that'd shift it (okay, I'm no nucular physicist) and when I woke up...my pillow was gone! Oh, and I was dead.

I will update you on the hour, every hour. I bounced off that one too, so, although I must concentrate on SoC for now, I will revisit it later on down the line. And it was the very useful PC Gaming Wiki which told me about ZRP in the first place. It's now my first stop whenever I get a new game.

Like Lazarus from the dead. I suppose that would make me Jesus, eh? Fucking...ohmygod, I just played 2 of the most intense hours of gaming in my life just now. Heart is racing. So, STALKER, I've bounced off it in the past, and that has been with the complete mod installed. I figured, right, stop being a nob and just play the vanilla game. Afterwards, you'll know what you like and what you don't like, and can start tinkering with mods. I've read that Complete makes both your weapons and those of your enemies do less damage, which I wasn't into at all. I'd also read that even in vanilla stalker, some bullets just won't find their target - will literally vanish in thin air - depending on whether you go for an easier difficulty or a harder one. Now, I wanted all the bullets to be there, and to do lots of damage, so I booted it up and put it on master mode. The only mod I'm using is the ZRP mod, which I think is more bugfixes than anything else. I also turned off the crosshair for Maximum Insertion Immersion So, right, I meet up with some other stalkers and advance towards a farm to rescue a USB stick, and the person carrying it as well I suppose if you want, whatever. (I get the distinct feeling he's incidental). I manage to take down one bad guy, and then get slaughtered by his mates. Poor planning on my part I reckon, so next time I stick closer to the shotgun wielding guy, who I've decided to view as the leader of our merry band. He alerts the entire camp by firing from a distance, gets shot to bits, and before I can so much as steal all of his things I'm dead too. Drop the difficulty. Try again. Same thing. Drop the difficulty again. Notice with some chagrin that I'm now on the normal difficulty. I always suspected I was shite at games. This time, I'm successful! I rescue the stick, steal everything I can get my hands on, and hightail it back to camp for my reward. Flush from my victory, I tell Sidorovich I'll take any job, no job too big, no job too small. He gives me some jobs which sound really difficult, but while I'm walking around the camp, one of them - to kill some boars - gets completed for me, by god-knows-who (I heard gunfire and shouting), so I lie and tell Sid I did it and he gives the reward to me like a chump. (This is when I'm starting to fall in love with STALKER) I find some great body armour stashed in the rafters of a building, and set off again. At an abandoned factory, I spot a shiny in a nook, behind a terrifying looking anomaly, and wonder how I can get it. Dashing through very much does not work. Throwing bolts at it doesn't work. Shoot the shiny to move it? That works, kinda, and I'm impressed that it does, but I get it lodged into a corner. I scratch my head for a bit, determined not to give up on my prize. I throw some more bolts in frustration, but I notice that I can throw two bolts in quick succession and the anomaly doesn't go off for the second bolt. Huh, so the anomaly needs some time to recharge. I quicksave, of course, chuck a bolt, and dash in to grab it. It fucking worked! I run back to the road, clutching my prize, stone something, who cares, it's mine now. Rescued a wounded fox from some mean hounds, shot a boar in the face, and then shot a second boar in the face, got too close to some guys with machine guns...yeah, really enjoying it so far. I think a big part of why I'm sticking to it this time is immersion. I'm not using the crosshair, and I'm wearing surround-sound headphones, so I'm picking up on so much directional sound coming from anomalies and mutants. Directional sound is the best thing, you guys.

Thanks guys, they were two very helpful, enlightening and passionate posts which have made me very keen to get stuck in to STALKER. I'm going to post some thoughts in the dedicated stalker thread, 'cos I don't wish to derail this topic.

Bastards, aren't they? And the frogs can spring extra far in water, which has caught me out a few times. I've played with my gf Cara a few times, but we seldom make it out of the mines. Perhaps it's just not meant to be...

I beat Deadlight after just shy of 5 hours after getting it in a bundle. It wasn't bad, felt good capping zombies but mostly you weren't doing that, you were running away from them. Sometimes it wasn't obvious enough how to get out of a given situation, so I ended up beating the zombies back with my axe trying to buy myself time to figure it out. Not always the games fault, that. What was the game's fault is that it wasn't always apparent what was in the background and what was in the foreground, and the main character (Randall? He didn't have much personality) didn't always do what I wanted him to do when I was jumping about. I really hated the section with Also finished Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. After getting my head around the controls, I bombed ahead with it and finished it in two sittings, I think. Great game, lots of lovely sights and actually quite moving in places. I'd recommend it. Edit: I have now started playing Riddick, after a recent thread raving about it, and also STALKER, a game I've bounced off a couple of times in the past. Any tips from Zone veterans?

I want this in my life. How have I not played this game? Speaking of campy ridiculousness, does anyone have fond memories of Neo Contra? The Nazi dog was my favourite. Also, most preposterous ride to work ever (start of vid)

Shattered Memories is dead good, I loved the sound effects from the wii remote and the surreal Twin Peaks vibe it gave off. Worth softmodding your Wii for it if you can't source a legitimate copy.

How much have you played of it, may I ask? I don't think I'm a slouch when it comes to platformers, but it still took me almost 50 hours before I finally beat Olmec. Slow degrees of improvement. A failure where you learn a lesson should be viewed as a success. Glad to hear you're warming to it. You sounded a little cool on it in some other posts.

One of the chief joys of Spelunky is finding those things out for yourself, through natural play *ahem* (not that I didn't watch the odd hell run to give myself a bit of extra insight )

The Culture books are amazing. I've been working through them from the start, in the wrong order because I'm a dummy, but I reckon they improve as you go along, with "Use of Weapons" being my fave (so far)

I haven't played TWD series 2, but I just wanted to say: fuck you, Ben.

Finally got the Speedlunky achievement! My time was 7:04 seconds (too bad I accidentally did it on my girlfriend's account. D'oh!)

My girlfriend is addicted to Spelunky at the moment. I find it as exciting watching her play as playing myself, because of the vicarious thrill I get when she discovers something new, or gets further than she has before. I hope I'm there when she beats Olmec for the first time.

That first boss win is amazing. I think after that, it's a case of diminishing returns. I completely stomped the end boss and just felt emotionally void, whereas every time I beat Hell in Spelunky I feel great. Not saying Rogue Legacy is a bad game, but.

Hahaha! Seriously, I want Necrodancer so much, but Spelunky is still giving me so much joy that I'm not ready to move on. I've told myself that when I bag the last two achievements (for me, speedlunky and co-op win) I'll quit playing, but that's bullshit. I'll defo be back for the Daily, just not all the time.

Same. I did all the training a while back, played a few games with bots (never really knowing if I was playing properly or not), but bottled it when it came to playing with other humans from planet Earth. Humans are scary. If there are other newbies, I think I could pluck up the courage for something like that.

Slapped my headphones on in bed yesterday, thinking a bit of music would soothe me to sleep. Put this on and was then grooving around restlessly for the next 20 mins. I love this track so much. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nueez9Igtgg

Sounds like my idea of a good time You're right though, I've died once with my Necromancer and I'm up to the third area of the game. Spawn loads of minions and spam Skull Barrage, and most encounters are over in a few seconds. I'm only playing on Normal difficulty, but then I've not played many ARPGs before so this seemed about right. I don't think I'd enjoy the game more if I had to think about the best way to approach every encounter with elite or named enemies though, as there are just so many of them. There are probably two types of people attracted to games like this - ones that want their dexterity, planning and adaptability challenged...and then people like me who want to watch all the bad mens go SPLAT, hur hur

I'm generally playing literally all of the damn time 'cos I just can't seem to stop. You have to have a runic games account linked to your steam account, if you're using Steam (I think T2 only came out on Steam?) and I figure if we're all playing on Steam it'll be easy to get a game together. Haven't tested it yet though...

So, how would you hit an enemy which is on a tile diagonally from you? I do love everything I've seen about this game so far, but curious about that.

Cheers Bjorn. I'm not even sure my mod-made character would transfer over, but I reckon I can kill my way to Lv.11 in fairly short order.

I think I'll make the berserker my next class, I like the sound of getting stuck in, swinging away with claws and getting lots of crits. Can I add you on Steam, Bjorn? Would be up for some co-op. And give Synergies a whirl if you want more baddies to bash. There are *thousands*

Same! I read through the entire thread, you all had such good points to make about Torchlight and ARPGs in general. I've had a massive torchlight II binge yesterday and today, using the Necromancer (from the Synergies mod) to swamp my enemies with chittering fiends and then pummel them to bits. FUN