Mr.Kadish

4 comments by Mr.Kadish on Dec 18th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

I've been trying to get this game to

not suck

for a week now, on and off.
My first major gripe was the weapon damage.  You could shoot a single guy about

four or five times in the torso

and he'd come back for more.  Apparently a single headshot's enough to down them ... you'd never know because the weapons fire so innaccurately

you'd be lucky to hit a target that's on-screen

much less nail the top of your enemies hitbox. This weapon failing doesnt extend to your enemies.  I am regularly

sniped by guys with pistols, a km away

As i lie in bushes of course.  In the dead of night.

I modded this out with a "realistic ballistics mod"  which, as well as altering the damage also makes it so your bullets dont "explode" when they go out of range (yes that's another charming feature of Clear Sky, each gun has a maximum range, and its LOW )

So..
Here i am with my modded guns, back in this

shitty looking swamp,

trying to kill bandits for my

asshole benefactors.

I manage to take out an entire outpost now, by being stealthy.  yay.  The objective says

"hold this position until help arrives"

Well ok, ill do that.
Sit down.  Cross legs.  Light a cigarette.
Tick tock tick tock tick tock.  And about 5 game minutes later,

no indication that "help is on the way"

So i go running off to do other stuff, hoping that when i come back later, my allies will have twigged on to the fact that i just john rambo-ed an entire enemy stronghold for their sake.
not the case...
Although it looks as though all those enemies i spent so long meticulously dispatching

have all just respawned again.

@ this point i gave up and decided it would be more fun to kill the lazy pricks @ the church.
"VAT DO YOU VANT STALKER?" 
KA_BAM!  right in the face with both barrels of my hunting shotgun. 
Then i

murder all of my other allies

Now i notice some allied reinforcements are spilling in to replace the lads i just shot up and with them, is a single group of about

3 emphysemic soldiers bringing up the rear

Their destination :  That fucking enemy base i had destroyed , and would clearly need to destroy a second time.At this point i learned an important lesson in the world of stalker : 

Killing your allies fixes game breaking bugs.

If i had just let them waltz merrily into the now repopulated enemy base, it'd have been the end of them.  So i hammer the sprint key to reach that base before they do , and ONCE AGAIN i take out all the enmies there. When my squad of nooblets arrrives they congraulate themselves on a job well done, and then tell me my mission is complete.

So

now its off to the cordon

i have just beat the FIRST , and EXCITING MISSION of stalker :clear sky.

After a lengthy load , i get a warning from my friend back @ the swamp over the radio.
He says that the army is around here somewhere and they might shoot me.
"ok", i think.  surely ill be able to be clever, and evade them.

I press the forward key and am immediately shot.

On the loudspeaker someone rants "THERE IS A STALKER SHOOT HIM"
er..... who shot me ? 
Oh i see .
a guard tower about a half kilometer away.
It's so far away in fact, and

obscured by the ugly DOF effect

that i couldn't make it out at all. 
typical.

I figure i'll be tactical this time.  Rather than running forward, ill try running to the SIDES to  circumvent this ubertower.
Oh, but hold on
there's

convenient barbed wire fences on either side of me. 

In fact, on closer inspection, the whole area is penned in,
creating a

death funnel

all the way to the tower, with just a

few skinny trees

here or there as potential cover.
So i try to run forward and take cover behind a rock. 

pew pew pew

im down again.
It seems that when you get shot, your "sprint" is interrupted, so taking even one bullet -  and by the way their machine gun tower spits out about

500 a second, with pin point precision

will kill your chances of making it to cover.

At this point i happen to notice that the bullets also

Clip through trees

which is fine, since it gives a reasonable answer for why the trees werent really offering me much cover, anyway.

Quickload again and

GO FOR IT !

  WOOOOO!
This time i make it to a fallen log, with bullets wizzing all around me.
My heart is racing , my

pulse is pounding

this is living!

THIS IS LIVING!

OH MY GOSH!

and now i realize i can't fit under the branch, even when im crouching
yes, my character is too fat to fit under this fucking branch.
which is clearly here for the player to squeeze under.

i'm too fat.

The machine gun

riddles me like cheese

pause.
quiet facepalm.

exit to desktop.

NEXT WEEK ON Alex's stalker clear sky adventures:
Random radiation zones that poison you without warning and force you to store a shitload of vodka that will put you over your tiny carry weight :)