Down in the Zone (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.)

[bakelite]

That's what I suspected based on the terrible SoC late game. Has anyone else tried the Misery mod for CoP? It's really good except for a few questionable decisions(everything costs a billion rubles, some monsters can take copious amounts of damage).

[feelthedarkness]

CoP is so much more polished, it's almost like you can see shifting design theory, and what the possibility space is. SoC's ending, particularly the rush into the reactor facility is just brutal, but largely systemic, but the end of CoP is more scripted. 

[eot]

That's what I suspected based on the terrible SoC late game. Has anyone else tried the Misery mod for CoP? It's really good except for a few questionable decisions(everything costs a billion rubles, some monsters can take copious amounts of damage).

I think I tried to play it with misery, or at least something similar. It was misery regardless. I'm too stubborn for my own good, but it was still too hard and I had to quicksave like crazy just to pass the first missions. Never got that far in CoP partly because of that. Gonna play it vanilla some day.

[Trip Hazard]

HG101 put up what I thought was a pretty interesting article about the STALKER series, which is here

I'm still playing this loads, and have probably another 5 hours or so under my belt since the last update. I sided with Duty in the army warehouses and helped them attack Freedom. Nothing against Freedom - I'd say that on balance, I prefer it to bondage - I just happened to talk to Duty first and didn't even realise there would be an option to pick sides. Anyway, the Freedom base was trashed and all the soldiers put to flight or put to the sword. I got a *lot* of great loot from here, including a G36 rifle which has not left my side since. Oddly, after I'd done this part I started to feel like things were going a bit too fast: too many new guns, too many decisions to make, too many odd new artifacts which were absolutely everywhere. I got anxious about everything and ended up spending lots of time around the bar doing sidequests.

I decided eventually that I had mucked about long enough, and went to the Dark Forest. I loved this whole area, creeping up on the base in the dead of night, killing snipers by timing my shots with thunder booming in the distance (I don't think it helped but it felt good) and then going underground going underground, with a weapon which was seizing up far too regularly and ammo supplies creeping ever downwards towards zero. As had happened with Agroprom, I crept around, keeping to the shadows and peeking around every corner, avoiding roving electrical anomalies and hovering ghost-boxes...which probably sounds silly but was actually really scary. Purely by accident I found that my bullets seemed to impact the anomalies, and that they were shitty restless poltergeists with nothing better to do than maim me with junk. I killed them all, presumably for the second time.

Then there was a fire-breathing super-geist, and I expended my last ammo on that. And then the fucking army showed up, and I ranawayveryfast, tail tucked resolutely between my legs.

Looking forward to fighting some of these in Yantar

[neonrev]

The G36 is one of my favorite guns throughout the entire series. Just great. The Bar is pretty much the main hub for mid to late game everything, so its not weird to get overwhelmed. I like to bunch a couple of sidequests or areas likely to contain a juicy patrol or unlooted loot into a single patrol that starts and ends at the hub. Or you can just activate all of them and just do the ones the main quest line takes you past, it ends up being the more important ones I think.
The Dark Forest is one of my favorite areas. It is just a snipers paradise. There's even random civie sniper dude!
Hearing that story about the electrical anomaly things in that area is really cool. They freaked me out for more than one playthrough, and I never tried to shoot them because I usually was also low on ammo, and paranoid about drawing worse things with my fire. I only found out about it on a wiki years later and felt real stupid. Having the boxes and trash float up and hit you is a really interesting player weakness move. It does sound silly, but after a while you start to go crazy, especially when you don't know how to stop it.
 

 

Has anyone else tried the Misery mod for CoP? It's really good except for a few questionable decisions(everything costs a billion rubles, some monsters can take copious amounts of damage).

Yeah, the bulk of my obsession with Stalker stems from that mod and my time with it. I've put a really terrible number of hours into it and got really fascinated with its design for a couple months, and I've been unable to really put down my thoughts, but yeah, the Misery mod is awesome. Just amazing. I totally understand your criticism about the money, and agree completely about mutant health (It's just unreasonable at a certain point. Dogs DO NOT keep running after two .45's in the body. And it only gets worse from there. Ugh.). I personally like the really deep economic oppression, it makes me really consider the cost benefit of an engagement in terms of resources in a way I've never done before, and that's just really exciting to me.
Do I creep up and find a good ambush point for that bandit patrol and hope that I either avoid getting hit or grab more medical stuff from them, how much ammo do I have, and are these guys carrying enough stuff to make the ammo worth it's while? Have I heard distant gunfire recently? Are these guys walking back fat and rich from knocking off a couple of duty guys, or are they weak and poor after fending off a pack of snorks? Should I just give them room and head back? It's a sort of tactical gameplay I haven't really found anywhere else. Maybe Dayz, but the multiplayer part sort of ruins the possible peace of non-action, as the higher skill bounds make things a little crazy. Also the respawning nature of it, but Stalker has saves obviously, so I don't know. The respawning in Stalker is less a new world and more a new chance to play a situation better. All I know is that A-life is a fucking amazing engine. I desperately want an Old West game utilizing the faction system and AI of Stalker. Different towns/counties, nearby tribes, federal troops and officials, bandits and guns for hire, all with goals and alignments and territory to patrol. A lot of room there to create a lot of different situations, using a more limited weapon set. I've been thinking of it for years.

[eot]

You guys are confusing me you mean Dark Valley right? Because there's a place called the Red Forest but I don't think there's a Dark Forest.

[Trip Hazard]

Uh, yeah, Dark Valley

 

Edit: Scoured Yantar, and the underground lab there. Mainly I perched atop high places, where snorks could not tread. The lab itself was arresting, and I don't mean to do it a disservice by keeping this brief, but I am quite drunk. Snorks are unpleasant, but I found it quite easy to bait their leap attack into or against an obstacle, leaving me free for to pump a few rounds into them as they scurried away in embarrassment. 

 

I'm heading to the Brain Scorcher now, which sounds ominous. Disappointingly, I am now the #1 stalker in all of the zone; an accolade I don't feel that I've earned, or will be able to exploit.

 

...I feel I may be drawing close to the end of SoC, but it has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience and drawn me in more than any game since Dark Souls. When I'm done writing my crappy fan-fiction, I'll post it here for you all to laugh at