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Thoughts on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (part 3)

Well, I completed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. today. It happened somewhat abruptly. I developed tunnel-vision and ended up flying down the chute to the ending. It started when I was in Prypiat, the town just outside of Chernobyl where the nuclear reactor incident happened. I was constantly surrounded by gunfire. There were snipers on the rooftops with Gauss rifles and absolutely no one that wasn’t trying to kill me.

I had all kinds of shit to sell, but no one to sell it to, so I had to just drop any extra I was carrying and stock up on whatever ammo I could find. There was very little ammo too. It didn’t matter if I used the same guns that the enemies were using and pulled off headshots every chance I could…there just wasn’t much ammo around and a hell of a lot of enemies lurking in the distance with much better armor than me. Nearly every enemy was wearing an exoskeleton suit.

It really changed the pace of the game. I had to run a lot more and avoid enemies, so I stopped paying attention to any side missions and just kept to the main mission.

Prior to entering Prypiat I first had to shut off the, “Brain Scorcher” device. As I got closer to the Brain Scorcher I started to suffer from hallucinations of the wraith-like-creatures-attacking-me-from-ever-angle kind. Everything was covered in this hazy sepia-tone tinge. It reminded me of F.E.A.R., in a way. :)

I skipped some side missions here and I wish I hadn’t. I didn’t realize how fast the game would end if I just followed the main mission after shutting down the Brain Scorcher. I had probably 8 or 9 side missions waiting for me, but they were all in the opposite direction of Prypiat.

I was also kind of disappointed that the number of mutants and paranormal occurrences decreased as the game went on. There were several mutants that I only ran into two or three times during the entire game.

Still, it was a really awesome game. I’m going to have to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. again too and I’ll tell you why. I got one of the shitty endings. The, you’re a greedy materialistic bastard ending. That’s not satisfying. I took a peek at the Gamespot Game Guide for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and apparently a lot of those side missions I skipped were really important. Since the game was a lot of fun, I’m going to head back in and try again. This time I’ll try and spend some more time doing side missions. I think I’ll use one of my saved games from a couple levels back rather than starting all-the-way over, though starting from the beginning might not be such a bad idea as I never made any alliances this first time around. I was an enemy to nearly everyone. I mean, I did help out the Freedom faction at one point, but they’re barely anywhere. I think the better faction to help out would be Duty as they were definitely the most wide spread.

Gears Of War (PC)

Anyways, with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. out of the way for now, I’ve started playing Gears of War. I just completed ACT 1. Not much to say yet other than the fact that this game is way different than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Gears of War is non-stop action, but I’m not really sure if that’s a good thing just yet…

You move a into a room, stop, take cover, shoot shoot shoot, move into the next room, repeat. It never ends…and that kind of gameplay seems to be getting more popular. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 was like that in some spots and so was Crysis…but at least in those games I could quicksave during a lull in the confrontation. Gears of War only has a checkpoint system…so If I get killed by the last enemy in a room, I’m sent back sometimes 10 minutes to replay that entire battle again…which was just like the last battle and the one before that.

Though, the main problem I have with Gears of War so far is that my team will not stop rushing into the middle of a Locust infestation, getting themselves killed. I take cover and everyone else runs headfirst to their deaths…so I have to take out all of the enemies myself. My team is utterly useless. I’ve renamed Dom to Dumb.

Gears of War also has that horrible feature where every enemy in the game shoots only at you. That sounds contradictory to my previous statement about my teammates always dying but the thing is, enemies will shoot at your team mates…unless they see you, then you become their sole focus. it doesn’t matter how many people are shooting at them, they don’t care about any of them except you. It’s not a new problem, lots of games have it and I find it really annoying. “Drop everything, there’s the player, kill him!” Oh well, I’m used to it – like rubber-banding in racing games.

I’m not even going to get into what a piece of shit XBOX/Windows LIVE is. It was screwed up numerous times today both in-game and out of game, simply trying to go to my profile online. It didn’t record all of my achievements either.

Hopefully the next blog will be about the GOOD things in Gears of War. :)