Playing any games?

[The Veteran]

After approximately 11 hours of playtime spread over 8 days, I'm pleased to say Dead Space is a rousing success! In fact, I immediately launched into my second playthrough after finishing for the first time, and I NEVER play games more than once!

 

I won't be completing that playthrough right now as I have a whole stack of other titles to play through which is growing every day, I'd like to return to Dead Space again in the future though as I already have a better suit and weapon that are both now fully upgraded thanks to the carryover in effect.

 

The only thing that disappointed me with this game are the frequent 'puzzle' segments which often require the use of gadgets like kinesis and stasis. While this is fine and commonplace in most similar titles, it felt out of place in Dead Space and also caused at least 50% of my in-game deaths due to me being in completely the wrong frame of mind for silly little puzzles...

 

Plus points are pretty much everything else, from enemy advancement to weapon variety but mostly just the game itself being great. The level structure was great from start to finish and although many areas are revisited several times, they never feel the same. The over the shoulder camera arrangement is rather unique and provides a rather claustrophobic feel to the game, especially when confined to corridor fighting but even in the larger areas! The inability to turn quickly adds even more suspense to an already tense experience and the whole game was thoroughly enjoyable.

 

With regards to difficulty, which I mentioned earlier seemed rather low, it turns out that even the bosses aren't too difficult on the easiest setting but there was still a good balance in the areas when the player gets swarmed even here. The bosses may not be too difficult but they do mostly follow the same 'shoot x, y, z to destroy' rules that make 99% of games have rather anti-climatic endings. This is sadly the case for Dead Space and I didn't find the end boss to be all that challenging, defeating it first try without difficulty, and I found the ending rather disappointing too. Without having played the sequel I don't know if it's done deliberately to setup for it but there certainly weren't many conclusions and it even seems possible that our protaganist doesn't make it home after surviving so much under our control.

 

Either way, I loved this game and the moments of frustration were easily outweighed by the masses of enjoyment I got from it. This one will certainly be revisited at some point in the future and I'm already looking forward to it!

 

Anyway, enough of that, I'm not here to review Dead Space but to choose my next victim... My current stack now consists of Metro2033, Star Wars Republic Commando, Warcraft 3, Far Cry and Far Cry 2. And of course my continuing quest for achievements in Left4Dead2 but that doesn't feature on the list because A. I already love it and B. I'll never complete it!

 

My personal thoughts are that Far Cry is pretty disappointing although Far Cry 2 looks like a stunning game (based solely on box shots!) Warcraft 3 will no doubt be entertaining but with a total of over 30 missions it'll probably eat up some time and I can see myself getting bored and distracted by other games well before completing all 4 campaigns. Metro 2033 won't be too dissimilar to Dead Space as far as mutants, confined spaces and endless darkness goes so I'll have a break between those two. And that leaves my Star Wars title as favourite to be played next.

 

I'm quite happy with that for a result for a couple of reasons. Firstly I'm told it's quite a short game so I can probably burn it onto the completed stack quicker than the others. Secondly, as an older game it would be very hard to play it after all the more recent ones due to a sort of graphical comedown. And thirdly, I really want to play it!

 

So it's decided... Star Wars Republic Commando is currently installing and will be getting a damn good seeing to over the next few days! With 11 hours of Dead Space taking me 8 days, I should be able to fit 5-6 hours of Star Wars into a maximum of 4, less if I play on Sunday and Monday as I don't have a baby to look after full-time

 

Wish me luck and I'll update my progress as I go

[Space Voyager]

Wow, SW: RC... A pretty good team FPS. Liked it. It has been a while, though.

[The Veteran]

I've just played through the first campaign (so I should have the rest taken care of by tomorrow evening!) and I have to say I agree. It's a pretty fun game with some nice squad controls. I have a few gripes with it however which could have been easily addressed before release...

 

I'm tired so I won't compose an exhaustive list of my quibbles but they mainly come down to health, weapons and enemies. Health is recharged via 'Bacta Stations' which is very lore correct but completely ridiculous in the game as the first campaign takes place first in Geonosian (big bug things) mine and factory and then a droid vessel. Well none of those places need bacta stations so it seems a bit daft that they went that way with it regardless of common sense. A better solution would have been bacta tanks that could be consumed on contact or better yet carried with the squad. It would have removed a rather ludicrous aspect of the game and replaced with a better functioning AND more challenging alternative (infinite bacta stations make taking damage pretty much inconsequential)

 

As for weapons, there are basically 3 variants of the same blaster rifle, being standard, precision and anti-armour. While each weapon has specific uses, none of them hold anywhere near enough ammunition to make them useful weapons even for commandos. Remember these guys aren't green berets, they fight hundreds of enemies at once. None of that silent and deadly nonsense, we need ammo!) The most irritating this is that the most basic 'infinite ammo' weapon is a meager pistol whose zoom function doesn't place the ironsights anywhere near the actual target in sight and has about 6 shots before needing to recharge, which it does slowly... Bearing in mind the first enemy encountered on a medium difficulty setting requires 5 hits to kill that seems stupid... Besides these guys have death stars (in the future I know, but they did have the sun crusher in this era I think) and hovercars, you'd think they can make better batteries than that! The Blaster rifle which is our main weapon of choice has a limited capacity of 300 rounds which may seem a lot but it goes very fast given it's inaccuracy and utter crapness at killing anything but basic droids and any more powerful weapons are likely to be out of ammo within a matter of seconds of becoming useful to you...

 

Speaking of basic droids, how I love the staple enemy of Republic Commando! So utterly useless at everything and such fun to blast to pieces with gay abandon! A good shot in the head will see the body flailing around for some time and shooting it's comrades before finally giving up the ghost, though sadly there is no cowardly banter in the droid ranks as there really should be. The new movies (awful though they are by comparison to the REAL trilogy) clearly shows us that these droids were programmed by someone with a sense of humor and the game could have been made a lot more fun with the simple inclusion of a few 'let's run away' or 'at least there are no Jedi' lines mid-firefight. Enemy variation is also awful in this game with 2 geonosians (a weakling and an immensely powerful elite unit) 4 droid types (weak, 2 elites and a super-duper-crazy strong walker droid thingy) and presumably the Trandoshians will have a similar set of foes. The difference in power between the basic units and their elite backup in this game is just so gigantic that going from battledroid to super-battledroid feels like you've dived into a boss fight! Then throw in the walker thing which (in typical Star Wars fashion) has only one vulnerable point to recieve damage and you have a nightmare on your hands a lot of the time.

 

Having just finished the first campaign I can already say with absolute certainty that the game is not only far too short but also completely lacking any kind of compelling storyline, background or plot. It's simply a team of 4 commandos who do 3 missions and that's it... The team itself is great and the ability to issue orders based not only on stance but also individual actions is great. With a sniper, demo expert and hacker at your beck and call, there's not much your team can't do and they have some rather entertaining conversations while having them. The trouble is, the Clone Wars is a bit of a non-event (even now with the animated series airing) so it must be hard to tie a game set in this era to anything we actually know or care about. I've watched a lot of the series and can think of some great opportunities for missions alongside some of the Jedi characters and on certain vessels/planets/systems etc but none of this happens in Republic Commando because it predates the notion of that series by several years.

 

I think I'm going to enjoy completing this game but it certainly isn't going to pose a challenge and it won't be getting replayed anytime soon because it just doesn't have the content that makes me want to. I do however think there's a big place in the market just begging for a Republic Commando 2. Something to take us from the end of episode 2 up to episode 3 and tie in with the animated series. With new technology and next gen graphics I think it would be a big hit and, as ever, ther will be no shortage of fans just itching to pre-order a new title. Especially one that adds to the lore of the franchise!

[Thorondor]

Despite some imbalances it sounds like you're having a good-enough time, Veteran.

 

::

 

Speaking of which - how would you rate the audio?

[The Veteran]

I'm now two thirds of the way through this game and yeas, I am having a pretty good time. Though the first part of the second campaign has made it glaringly obvious what they've done wrong here and it's just inherent stupidity on the developers part...

 

I am talking about playing alone in a game which has had every aspect designed around being a team-based shooter. It works so well when you have 3 other commandos to back you up and can issue orders to others while you continue to do your own thing. Bizarrely enough though, the entire first level of the second campaign sees the squad split up so none of the things that make the game great are present. Once again we're met with fairly basic troops equipped with the most devastatingly powerful melee attack I've ever seen. If you can keep the opponents at a decent range in this game and utilise the cover to your advantage then eventually you'll win, even alone, but sadly the AI has a preference to closing the gap and attacking with claws, staffs, knives, you name it, and all the melee attacks are crippling as they ignore the rechargeable shield. I'm talking really deadly, tier 1 enemies can kill a full health commando with 2 lucky hits...

 

Anyway, I now have my squad back and the remainder of the second mission wasn't too bad although it does pit the player against overwhelming numbers of enemy troops Droid dropships constantly spawn new foes until a demo charge is placed successfully to destroy them and I had a hell of a time getting through it due to many many factors. One of the most frustrating was that occasionally my teammates pathfinding would bug and leave them standing in the middle of a corridor next to the hangar containing the main fight because the AI couldn't decide which door to use... Other than that it was mostly the sheer number of enemies that promted no end of colourful language and I'm glad to have it over and done with!

 

Onto the 3rd campaign now which I haven't started as I had my fill for today. I imagine I'll complete my assignment on Kashyyyk tomorrow which will be the end of this game and then I can choose between 2 games I've already started, Starcraft and Warcraft 3.

 

Starcraft annoyed me on only the third human level by providing a very straightforward 'defend for 30 minutes' mission and then sending dozens of flying units at me about half way through I think maybe complacency was my real killer so that's where I stopped with that one today. Felt good to get back into it but it seems very fast in gameplay terms and my soldiers don't seem to like shooting the enemy unless I tell them to which is odd. Was fine on the defensive mission thankfully but in the previous one I had a zerg attacking one trooper and his 19 friends decided not to help him.

 

The other option for next game is Warcraft 3 which is actually quite good considering I was never going to like it as much as it's predecessor. I think it's a shame that such a compromise was made during the transition from isometric sprite-filled RTSs to low quality 3D engines. Warcraft 3 smacks of the low poly counts that were necessary to facilitate that move given the technology of the day and I think in a way it looks rather inferior to the second title which is a shame. Each unit has a 3D icon now which can be seen talking in a very Sesame Street manner, making the game rather more of a joke than it should've been. The individual units' reactions from multiple clicks are still great (exploding sheep anyone?!) with some heavy Monty Python influences for a few human units already evident and some entertaining Orcs too.

 

One issue that I've already noted with both Starcraft and Warcraft 3 (which really should have addressed it by the time it was released) is that the AI pathfinding sucks. Going from point A to point B is fine, with noone getting stuck at the bottom of a cliff instead of going around a long path to reach the top for example. The difficulty is with grouping as neither one of these games demonstrates the ability for different units to make way for their allies when giving move orders. That means I often have my hero stuck in the middle of a group which I have to individually disperse in order to free the only unit I really want out of the cluster. Bad stuff... The RTS scene was still fairly new with Starcraft so it's somewhat excusable, but Warcraft 3? Notice the 3? They've already made two of these games (and of course Starcraft as well!!!) so why have they once again failed to address such a simple problem?

 

Bah, enough of this chatter, I think Warcraft will be next as I also have the Broodwars expansion for Starcraft giving me about 50 levels or more. Warcraft only has about 30 and I've already done 4 Typically, I ended todays session on a 'defend for 30 minutes' mission, just like Starcraft! Honestly, it's like I'm playing the same game with different sprites! Oh no wait, Warcraft 3 doesn't have sprites, it has really poo 3D...

 

Thor, almost forgot you after my rant I'll pay closer attention to the audio in the final campaign tomorrow but it seems acceptable at the very least. After my comment regarding the lack of cowardly droids yesterday I've started to hear the occasional 'mummy!' unless I'm very much mistaken so they haven't completely missed the trick but I'd have liked to see a lot more of it. The only thing soundwise that is disappointing (but expectedly so) is the lack of any recognisable scores. This is of course because the music we know and love like the Imperial march and such simply aren't used before the rise of Empire (obviously...) so it feels a little less like Star Wars than it could be but at the end of the day it IS Star Wars and we all know it so while it's a shame that we can't play with the original soundtrack, I'm also glad they kept it loyal to the rest of the timeline by using period music only

[Bomb Bloke]

A few tips for Starcraft/Warcraft:

 

Never just click the mouse to order units to move around the map, at least, not when there's any possibility of encountering enemies. Press the attack button (hotkey is "A", to memory), then left click where you want the group to go - they'll move as normal, but automatically stop to fight any enemies they find on the way.

 

You can queue orders by holding either shift or control while assigning them (one or the other, can't remember which). Telling a squad to assault a group of enemies in a particular order means they can all combine their firepower and make individual kills ASAP. Also handy when getting SCV/peons/peasants/whatever to do repairs, you don't have to sit and wait for one to finish before telling them what to work on next.

 

A good Terran defense point consists of at least two bunkers filled with marines, and at least one missile turret. Vultures are useless for this purpose, as are firebats and ghosts - just go with marine bunkers, turrets, and when you've got those setup in all your choke points, start throwing in siege tanks. Also keep spare SCVs nearby for repairs.

 

If you can't keep up with the demand for more units, by all means build additional barracks etc. They really are quite cheap.

 

So, say for example you've got a group of marines, and some zerg run up and start attacking. First select the entire squad, tell them to attack, then click on the *ground* in the middle of the zerg forces. This will cause them all to start shooting *something*. Next, pick a target and tell them to shoot that; then hold the queue command down and select each enemy individually. If you aren't able to keep up (due to small zerglings running away from your mouse cursor), tell your solders to attack the ground again to make sure they stay occupied.

 

Playing that half-hour defense mission on my 486 taught me a fair bit, as for whatever reason, the clock only ticked down at half speed - had to hold out for over a full "real" hour, and the clock issue didn't seem to slow down the zerg's ability to build...

 

Note that Warcraft 3 has a special ending if you finish it on hard mode. To memory, you can "cheat" if need be, and only turn the difficulty up at the very end of the battle.

[The Veteran]

Thanks BB, will remember that advice when I get back to playing them The defences I had on the Starcraft missin were 2 bunkers and 3 rockets on each side, all marines in the bunkers I think. I had 2-4 more marines ibn elevated positions to each side of both choke points and about 4 vultures behind each of the two defensive lines. Somehow both positions were completely overwhelmed at the same time with only 13 minutes actually gone. Very odd as the walkthrough (I checked after my humiliating defeat!) says the only big attack comes with 1.30 left on the clock... That would add up as being the opposite of the issue you had and enemies being ready twice as fast as they should have been which is nice lol

[The Veteran]

Just launched into Metro2033 and I'm sadly rather disappointed. The game itself seems pretty good but it's bugged before it even loads up... After the lengthy install (thankyou STEAM I do actually have the cd in my hand...) it simply failed to boot up and I had to uninstall/reinstall multiple applications in order to even make it into the game (as have a great deal of others according to google) The first hurdle overcome I set the game to maximum settings on a 1600x1200 resolution (not max) and it played for less than a minute each time before crashing my whole system.

 

Again this is a problem that's been encountered by numerous players and Google provided me with a 'solution' which involved changing the graphics settings from Very high to high. No great drama right? Wrong... The drop in quality from Very High to High is simply astounding and on pushing a button for the third time of trying to get through the prologue I realised it now had distinct corners where it was previously nice and circular. A lot of the effects are of poorer quality and edges are poorly defined for characters and scenery alike. Textures suffer on top of everything else and for some reason the game has even become less responsive to my commands on High settings...

 

Anyway, I've played through a few 'levels' though really they can't be called such as they're very short at the beginning of the game, I just can't think of any better terminology for them... My first thought is that it's rather confusing as to what the mission is actually meant to be. Even after you're given a journal it doesn't tell you which direction your objective in and there's no map for reference on your location either globally or locally. Further to this the claustrophobic and dingy level construction (NOT a bad point, it's in the Metro what else can we expect?!) make it very hard to find your way around manually and there is very little in the way of assistance even with fairly linear design. There are dozens of doors in these levels the majority of which can't be opened and I've even come across a curtain which I can see through to a room but can't open or push aside. Very odd...

 

The most disappointing thing so far (except the trouble I had to go to just to load the game up) is the fact that the game starts with a 'prologue' that is actually placed 8 days after the beginning of the real game. Well that's not a prologue then is it? And judging by the fact that the protaganist seems to be killed at the end of this video (I'm sure he's not or the story SUCKS!) this seems like more of an epilogue and makes me wonder why I must go through 8 days of gameplay to reach a point where I still only have the same items I'm carrying now.

 

I've already encountered both mutant and human opponents and each come with significant challenge for whatever reason. The mutants, even this early in the game, tend to rather swarm the player and I very quickly ran out of ammo in my pistol when fighting the first invasion. Knifing a creature that attacks with tooth and claw is a VERY bad idea so I find it odd that there is no extra ammo provided in this scene as I by no means wasted what I did have!

 

Health is a sore point as well as although I think I know what shows it, the game never actually tells you how to monitor it. It regenerates on it's own in time which is a saving grace for this game so far but it's not displayed on screen or during firefights so you have to actually stop shooting and get your watch out to check your remaining health! This is ridiculous and it gets worse in that even the ammo counter doesn't stay on screen when you aren't fighting! You can't carry weapons in the 'stations' of the underground so even when you're in a dank dark abandonned area you know you're safe from attack as you have no means of defence! Reloading weapons and healing both have realistically accurate and therefore rather lengthy animations but this adds to the seriousness of the players situation rather than detracts from enjoyment. There is apparently a way to use the mouse wheel to change weapons but for the life of me I can't make it work, number selection is fine though.

 

BAck to enemies one last time, I've just had my first encounter with bandits, maybe 6 or 7 of them in a rather unpleasant gauntlet! Hell it was awful... I don't think it was level construction or gameplay awful though which is good, it was just incredibly difficult due to the lack of unrealistic features and suicidal AI I'm used to having in other games. For starters everyone has helmet lights for looking around and this includes the enemies, they don't seem to be able to use your light to locate you though and while the reverse is true for a human player it's still very difficult due to open flames, strange shadows and their preference towards turning off their lights in combat. Well that's great and all but how is it they can shoot me in the face every time I sidestep out from behind a crate for half a second when noone has any lights switched on? I actually found myself resorting to crouch-stand-crouch techniques to try and find these guys without getting blasted in return and even then they still got me a fair few times! It looked ridiculous and even though I was only playing a game I felt like an idiot doing it... Again the fact that I had no idea of what health I had left and that it didn't seem to be regenerating at all made this a very edgy fight as I had no idea when would be a good time to use a medkit (and I only had 4!) There's no sort of binoculars to locate enemies (though they wouldn't have helped in this ambush situation anyway) and also the lack of a map meant I had no idea how many enemies I was facing OR where they were.

 

It made for a very difficult and rather intense fight but the only things I'd like to see changed are the enemies tendency to snipe the PC every time the sole of his boot shows around a pitch black corner, and a MUCH better representation of how much health I have left. How close I am to dying when I'm facing overwhelming odds is quite important to me. It's also a complete joke that I turned up here with a friend and he stayed hidden with his AK47 the whole time while I had to face all of these enemies alone with my naff SMG thing.

 

Then after I beat all these guys and before it autosaved, it crashed the computer again...

 

So much as I'd really love to play this game, I want to do it on a stable platform at it's highest settings and according to the community at large that's just never going to happen. The lack of a permanent HUD of vital statistics like health and ammo is also a complete joke. It's safe to assume that the protaganist is aware of how badly hurt he is so as long as we're controlling him, we should know as well!

 

Not sure if I'll be able to continue playing this game due to it's obvious instability but I would like to so I'll keep my eyes peeled for patches and updates but may wait till I get a hardware upgrade and see if that helps (according to google it won't!)

 

Has anyoen else played this game and experienced the same issues? Or contrarily has anyone played this game and not had any issues! I'd be interested to see what hardware it does and doesn't play up for...

[Bomb Bloke]

Health is a sore point as well as although I think I know what shows it, the game never actually tells you how to monitor it. It regenerates on it's own in time which is a saving grace for this game so far but it's not displayed on screen or during firefights so you have to actually stop shooting and get your watch out to check your remaining health!

https://www.pressstarttoplay.net/comic/?cid=43

[The Veteran]

Well it's definitely not just me then lol

[silencer_pl]

I have recently played Hydrophobia that was released on Steam - not to good conversion from consoles, don't know how the optimization patched improved gameplay. The game would could have potential if some serious player would take the concept (and I am not talking about EA which I hate the most from some time). Oh and also it is very short. I've seen better games for 8.99 EUR

 

Now it is Witcher 2 time, though I realy hate how they destroyed the fighting concept.

The humor is back with twice the more action and the sweetnes of those dialogs. They just put any other languages to shame.

[Knan]

Has anyoen else played this game and experienced the same issues? Or contrarily has anyone played this game and not had any issues! I'd be interested to see what hardware it does and doesn't play up for...

 

Never had Metro 2033 crash on me, though only played a few levels. Intel multicore, nVidia 4xx series graphics, win7 64bit.

[The Veteran]

I think it would be better on Win7 as you can run it with DX11 and do all sorts of fancy stuff there. I wonder if I should start thinking about an upgrade #shudder# I don't want to leave XP but software is slowly moving away from giving it any support these days so I may have no choice soon.

[silencer_pl]

Win7 x64 is much faster then old XP now - producers tend to optimize everything now for W7.

 

I had a test once when Vista was year old - the test subject was Sacred 2 - not well coded game, but on Vista x64 I had 10 more FPS than on XP on same testing ground.

[The Veteran]

Time for anotehr update! Since I've been having so much trouble with Metro2033 I've put it away for a while and will most likely leave it until I upgrade my computer. In the mean time I've been playing FarCry 2 and I have to say it's a winner with me.

 

I love games that go that little extra distance to remove the linear nature of games, especially FPS, so a free-roaming open world game is just perfect. In that sense I like it for the same reason as I enjoy the stalker games but it goes much deeper than that.

 

For a game that's now a few years old the graphics are excellent and not too far behind Crysis which is currently one of my favourite visual experiences of the year. Explosions look, sounds and feel great, especially when they come from a gast tank on some dry grass which you just set fire to... There is so much room for interacting with the environment that honestly I don't know where to start. Everything softer than brick and steel tends to be pretty destructible so you'll often come across an enemy outpost which is soon left in tatters by the ensuing firefight to clear out the guards.

 

One of the negatives of this game for me reflects my previous issues with Metro2033 as again there is no visible health bar or ammo counter when you're not engaged in battle. Unlike Metro however they're easier to get hold of by pressing the reload button as this displays them even if your weapon is fully loaded. In addition to easy access to this information, the way it's displayed is also far more helpful with a simple regenerating 5 bar health gauge. In the top 4 bars of health you heal back to the top of that bar quite fast but if you get to the last one you must perform some pretty nasty actions to heal yourself such as removing glass or bullets with a knife or pliers. It takes a little longer which could be crucial if you're caught out mid-firefight but it's a great touch and has been done very well!

 

There's the ability to carry 4 weapons including a machete and a sidearm plus 2 additional slots and while this is still rather superhuman it's a good compromise between all or nothing and it provides enough variety while still preventing the player from lugging one of each weapon into batle with them. Various safehouses are also dotted around the wilderness and you can store weapons here for temporary swaps, another neat feature but not necessarily a new one.

 

The wilderness itself is where the game comes alive and despite being gigantic it's far from empty. There are plenty of missions outside of the main storyline including work for a shady guy on the blower who wants a lot of people dead and the local weapon traders who will reward you with access to better guns for knocking over their competition.

 

A sore point for me is that all of the hostiles in the world respawn way too fast, posing seriously annoying issues at roadblocks and outposts. You'll come across almost 60 of these throughout the game and while you can kill the handful of people defending them, they'll be back a few moments later... Certain people have suggested a minimum 24 hour respawn time which I think should have been in place from the start but even then you'll be killing the same people way too often after 40 hours of playtime!

 

I tend to just run over as many as I can on the way through now, only stopping on the first visit to see what goodies they have. This is one of the 'collectables' in FarCry 2 which include 221 diamond briefcases (these diamonds form our currency here in the warzone) and something like 57 outposts which you can 'scout' so the map displays what they stock thee. It can be health, ammo, gas or explosives. This is a nice way to pass the time and a good reason to visit more of the map than you otherwise would do but when I began attempting to document these outposts I seriously struggled. The advice given at the end of the tutorial made it seem very simple and it took a bit of googling and a lot of trial and error to finally figure out how it was done!

 

Driving has taken up a lot of my playtime so far and I certainly wouldn't be enjoying it so much if there weren't so many cars for use as the distances between location, let alone objectives, is astounding. The natural feel to the scenery is great for immersion but makes for rather stressful driving conditions with often hard to follow lanes and pretty poor spacial awareness while driving. A large part of that is probably down to me but even then, it's hard to drive quickly AND safely through an area such as this without knowing the lay of the land. Perhaps in time I'll learn the map but I doubt it!

 

I've read masses of comments about this being the buggiest game in the world but personally I haven't encountered any yet (touch wood) the only recurring issue I have is that occasionally when I'm firing a mounted weapon it makes the sound but not the graphics (or the bullets either I think!) Another personal quibble I have with the game is that none of your weapons are even remotely accurate without being zoomed in so it's right mouse button then fire which is a serious headache. It may just be I aim poorly when zoomed out as there's no crosshair but I don't think that's it. Either way, firefights are fun and on the normal difficulty (2 of 4) you can take an awful lot of punishment but so can the bad guys if you don't shoot straight! I was surprised when my first 'corpse' fired on me yesterday as seriously injured foes can go into 'last stand' mode and fire from a crippled position. All good fun though, just get to kill them again!

 

All in all I'm loving this game and am slowly working my way through the diamonds and other collectables and extras having printed off their locations from the interweb. I know it's kind of cheating but they're actually quite easy to find anyway but in GTA games and the like I always end up with a few of these items left to find while being unable to ascertain which ones I've already found. This time I figured it would be easier to mark them off as I go to avoid such confusion but in a rather glorious twist the game marks the location of diamonds you've already found on your map so now I'm just using it to save myself time searching

 

If anyone has ever played Mercenaries on the PS2 (or anything else) then this is what that game reminds me of, just a little more low-tech! Mercenaries is a kind of Gulf War deal while Far Cry is an internal African conflict as you'd expect. I'd highly recommend it to anyone in the market for a FPS at the moment, I'm really enjoying it and don't really want to stop playing now!

[Knan]

A sore point for me is that all of the hostiles in the world respawn way too fast, posing seriously annoying issues at roadblocks and outposts. You'll come across almost 60 of these throughout the game and while you can kill the handful of people defending them, they'll be back a few moments later...

 

Yup. Enjoyed it to begin with, but this killed the mood after a while.

[The Veteran]

I guess that means you didn't play right through? I'm finding it ok in most points, there a landrover Defenders all over the place with machine guns on the back and it just takes the tap of a button to stop driving and man the gun. So my general tactic is to storm through enemy checkpoints, run a few of them over then just keep going. If I hear a cehicle following me or gunfire behind after a while then I stick on the handbrake, slide into the MG and tear them a new one

 

And now I'm off to play some more lol

[Azrael Strife]

I love games that go that little extra distance to remove the linear nature of games, especially FPS, so a free-roaming open world game is just perfect. In that sense I like it for the same reason as I enjoy the stalker games but it goes much deeper than that.

Try Just Cause 2

[Sunflash]

Try Just Cause 2

 

 

Seconded.

[silencer_pl]

Boring - repetetive.

 

I somewhat ended replaying Icewind Dale 1, probably do 2 later.

[The Veteran]

Just Cause 2 is on the list, thanks for the advice boys! What's boring and repetitive Si?

[silencer_pl]

Just Cause.

 

Just for laugh:

 

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/vie...32-Just-Cause-2

[Jman4117]

Now I need to get a console..damn!

[silencer_pl]

JC2 is on PC.

[The Veteran]

Bloody hope so too! I'd never own it if it wasn't at any rate Hilarious review, think I've seen a few of them before. Very good stuff