It wasn’t terrible for what it was. I just remember being let down after years of listening to my best friend’s other friend telling me all of these promises he had fully subscribed to. It all sounded too good to be true, but both us and the industry itself were too young to have experienced overpromises like that. I thought maybe I just didn’t know how far technology had come, and we were about to see it fully manifest in all its glory…
But what we got was a fuck load of bloom and a few branching choices. And a marriage system that let you be gay. I definitely made my guy gay. Well, not at first. At first I married the barber because I thought I’d get free haircuts. That didn’t work. So I made my guy gay.
I was beating my meat to Natalya’s (Goldeneye 64) cone-shaped tits at age 10. It may have been arguably better for me than jerking off to droves of actual tits.
This is exactly how Eric Barone felt, despite knowing in his heart that he had made something special to him. This is how he thought Stardew Valley would he received. The general gaming community are such cunts.
There is no reason to play anything on Nintendo systems other than Bassin’s Black Bass with Hank Parker for SNES. This is the single greatest fishing game ever created, and still holds the #1 spot even today. Not to be confused with Super Black Bass, which is the inferior earlier version of this game. Super Black Bass is for Mormons.
One of my staff does this every day of his life. His roommate works with us as well and confirms it. Dude will game until 10am, then crash for a couple of hours and be into work at 1pm. Rinse and repeat. Five days per week. Rolls out of bed with ten minutes to spare, throws on his uniform and starts walking. I don’t know how he survives the lifestyle, but I guess it’s working for him.
I remember at least liking it a fair bit because it played a lot like Halo 1. I was a huge fan of the original and never cared as much for the sequels. I remember all of my friends got really into ODST, and I hated the direction it had taken the gameplay. So when Reach came out and felt comfortable in my hands again, I was stoked.
There was so much magic in this game. That soundtrack and overall atmosphere was incredible. I remember trying it in little bite-sized pieces at Toys R Us and the McDonald’s lobby and being really blown away.
It functions well enough that I haven’t noticed anything off, save for maybe two occasions in 40+ hours where I was unlucky enough to have bandits spawn in near me. Once out in the woods, and one time they literally appeared sitting in chairs in the room I had just passed through, then attacked on my way back through it. You can’t help but laugh when it happens, but it’s nowhere near like it was on release.
I know that several of the squads I encounter in the wild have been artificially spawned in just outside of my exclusion radius, but they move organically enough that I’ve never had my immersion broken with the impression that these aren’t just stalkers on their own mission. Sure, if I reload a ways back and travel the same route, it may well be a different assortment of them, no one at all, or maybe bandits or mutants the next time, but rather than feeling tacky it keeps the Zone feeling unpredictable. Retracing my steps after reloading often results in a wildly different experience from Point A to Point B, so I can’t cheese my way through much of anything.
I’ve also encountered large, roaming packs of mutants who, when avoided, travel well outside of my exclusion radius and continue to be heard far off in the distance (Flesh are a good example) even though they’re no longer rendered on my screen. I’ve traveled in that direction a short time later just to run into the same pack having changed direction, so there definitely are some persistent A-Life doing their thing out there. It’s just sprinkled with some chance encounters.
All in all, the A-Life isn’t exactly where they/we want it to be, but they’ve taken enough corrective steps that I find it very enjoyable, and I say that as a long-term fan of the originals, as well as hardcore versions like Anomaly. Honestly, the only thing I truly dislike about STALKER 2 is the number of bloodsuckers. They’ve become a lot easier to dispatch with my better gear, but if I’m ever going to run into three bloodsuckers in the wild, it should be like one time. But there are times where I encounter packs of them several times per day, and on Veteran difficulty that is absolute bullshit.
STALKER 2, and I haven’t felt this frightened to climb down into the basement of a decrepit waste processing station since the original trilogy. So in short, it hits just right.
I actually stood in my kitchen last night eating some yogurt and two Lucky Charms cereal bars just to procrastinate what I knew I had to do.