Reviews - lolercaust08

Gave it a fair shake. I just don't like it. While stability is much improved from earlier versions, the Misery-inspired content is still just no good, for all the same reasons it was never good to begin with.

Dying every five minutes from massive radiation exposure just because you strayed two steps close enough to a radiation source to trigger a full-on red dose isn't even remotely realistic, nor is it good gameplay. This might not be the case everywhere, but the Great Swamp is a disaster. You're absolutely fine standing next to the water...just don't stick a pinky toe in. One wrong step and BOOM CATASTROPHIC GAMMA RAYS ENTER YOUR SOUL. This is not how radiation works, nor should it be. It's massively annoying.

The "you're injured" effects that kick in at about 35% health are overblown and ridiculous, which is funny because I actually like effects like these, generally speaking. They're just *too much* here. Essentially, once you get to that point, you're pretty much screwed - you can barely move, you can't see, your vision literally goes almost completely black. Basically, 35%-40% of your health bar is a lie. It practically doesn't exist.

The NPC skins are actually bad. Not only do they not look that great, they're actually world-breaking. Gotta love the leather-on-tracksuit bandits. Very nice. I feel like I'm playing a Youtube version of the Zone. Ahh nuu cheeki breeki, rite? *sigh* I've heard reports that there are assets straight up ripped from other games in here, too. I mean, like, in a completely world-breaking way, stuff like Metro and Fallout. I can believe it now. It's optional, though, so it's not really a big deal.

The graphics are muddy, washed-out, and straight-up ugly. The only positive is increased - and adjustable - grass density.

The stupid minutia of the Call of Miserable Dead Air and Other Such Derivatives is present and accounted-for here. Dozens and dozens of grainy, colorless icons you can barely make out against the inventory background cluttering up your backpack, absolutely everywhere. Every little thing is a badly-hacked in chore. Weapons drop as fossilized rust-and-dirt facsimilies of guns, even though they were perfectly-working bullet hoses a second ago, when the AI was using them against you. Everything is ludicrously expensive, an excuse to pretend at gameplay substance through sheer grind. Ammunition is laughably overpriced. You can't "go local," either, because picking up discarded weapons in a firefight just won't work. The guns are gene-locked to rust into dust the instant you pick them up. Books can be written on how stupid this is, and how badly this kind of non-gameplay needs to go away. I'll let somebody else write them. Suffice it to say, it sucks, and it's not what STALKER ever was, or should be, about.

I understand the nature of a free-play mod kind of necessitates artificial carrots dangling from artificial sticks to make up for the apparent lack of progression, plot, and goals. So far, there's not much left in most mods but the acquisition of gear. This is a fundamental flaw that is better addressed with something more meaningful than making said acquisition of gear miserable, slow, and silly-stupid.

There's no easy answer to the problem, I'll admit, but this is definitely the *wrong* answer. I didn't fall in love with STALKER because I liked grinding bits and bobs, and STALKER didn't get a big international following for that reason, either. So while "softer core" mods like base CoC have apparently "easy" progression and a lack of atmospheric story-based content, Misery-style mods just have stupid progression, bad gameplay, dull repetition of basic tasks without satisfaction or meaning, AND a lack of atmospheric story-based content.

I did like the radio mod, though. There's that.