Started playing STALKER again…  Call of Pripyat Complete has been released, and I never got around to playing it.

Had a rough start again, as usual.  The gameplay is so different from pretty much anything else out there that it is entirely too easy to get yourself killed repeatedly when you’re just starting out.

CoP:Complete has a neat feature called “the Wish Granter”, which allows you to spawn pretty much anything you need.  I used that to equip myself with some halfway-decent weapons and armor right away…  Which made it far easier to survive…  But it’s kind of taken away from the tension of the game.

There’s still a challenge.  It’s still creepy.  There are still goals and objectives and whatnot.  But the edge has been taken off, since I don’t have to worry so much about ammunition or health kits or whatever.  I don’t have to manage my supplies nearly so well.  Getting startled and wasting an entire clip on a zombie isn’t nearly as crushing as it used to be.

I’ve also finally gotten around to trying out Fallout: New Vegas…  The transition between these two games is just plain weird.  Moving from a tense, fairly-realistic survival/shooter game; to a more light-hearted and humorous action/RPG…  Both set in the shadow of nuclear disaster…  It’s odd.

I’m having fun with F:NV…  But it isn’t quit the same as Fallout 3.  It doesn’t have as strong a post-apocalyptic vibe going on…  Feels more like some kind of sci-fi/western kind of thing.  Not nearly enough destruction or radiation.  Not nearly enough obvious mutation.

I understand, from a storyline perspective, that the Vegas area just wasn’t hit as hard when the bombs dropped.  And I realize they were intentionally going for a western vibe with the game.

But I just made it over the mountains on my way towards Novac…  And I’m surrounded by all these rolling hills that look completely untouched by any atomic warfare.  It doesn’t feel like the radioactive wasteland that I’m used to seeing in Fallout games.

Since I haven’t been playing WoW lately, I’ve been looking for other ways to amuse myself.

I’ve spent a good chunk of time working on my Warhammer 40k models.  If I ever actually get new batteries put into my camera I’ll have some new pictures up.

I re-installed Soulstorm.  I know I have frequently claimed that it is the worst of the Dawn of War games, and that hasn’t changed.  However, it is the only Dawn of War game that lets you play as the Sisters of Battle.  So, crappy as it is, it’s what I’ve been playing.

I also finished up the single-player storyline in Dawn of War II.  Very satisfying.  I only wish they’d let you keep playing in a sandbox-type mode…  It is fairly obvious that the xenos aren’t completely gone.  There’s Tyranids everywhere, and I’m sure there are still some Orks and Eldar hanging around.  It would be fun to keep slaughtering the foul creatures.  But you can’t.  And the only thing left in DoW2 is the multi-player, which I haven’t been impressed with.  So I guess I’m waiting for an expansion pack now…

I re-installed Fallout 3, re-loaded my saved game.  Turns out that finding your father in that vault isn’t the end of the game.  He heads back to Project Purity and there’s still some plot left.  Unfortunately, that plot isn’t terribly satisfying.

It all happens very quickly…  You’re helping out at Project Purity, then the Enclave attacks.  You run away and hook up with the Brotherhood of Steel, who send you off to find a G.E.C.K.  Then you fight your way back to Project Purity with the Brotherhood of Steel, turn it all on, and the credits roll.

Not only does the game resolve itself very quickly…  But there’s no wandering around after the fact.  No sandbox mode.  Nothing.

I found another game that looked interesting – Cthulhu Returns.  It’s some kind of Lovecraftian MMORPG.  Looked like a good way to kill some time.  But the installer wanted to do some weird things in my system32 directory, so I didn’t wind up playing it.

I fired up Left 4 Dead again…  But, despite a number of patches, there really isn’t any new single-player content.

I wound up digging through my pile of old games…  Re-installed Wheel of Time…  I never did finish this game.  I bought it back in the day, when it first came out, back when I was really into the Wheel of Time books…  I made it through Shadar Logoth, but then basically stopped playing for some reason.  I thought it would be fun to actually play through it to the end.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that is going to be possible.  The game, amazingly enough, runs great on my computer even without any patches or updates.  But the graphics are horribly, painfully dated.  The textures are very flat, the effects are very simple, and it is all giving me horrible motion sickness.

Worse, that motion sickness means I’ll probably have a hard time playing through other old games like Thief, Undying, and System Shock 2.

Slashdot | Bethesda Announces New Fallout Game for 2010

On Monday Bethesda announced a new title in the popular Fallout series called New Vegas, set for release sometime in 2010. It’s planned for the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. They said it wasn’t a sequel to the highly-acclaimed Fallout 3, but rather a brand new game set in the same universe, though they confirmed that it will be similar in style to Fallout 3. The new game will be developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a studio containing members of the original Fallout team, which Bethesda’s Pete Hines discussed in an interview with Shacknews. The Fallout series also made headlines earlier this week when Bethesda trademarked the name for TV and film.

I wish I was more excited about this…  The first two Fallout games were fantastic, but Fallout 3 just didn’t really do it for me.

It was decent enough, taken out of context.  A relatively fun, relatively simple, relatively light post-apocalyptic RPG.  But it seriously lacked the depth and complexity of the previous games.

Fallout 1 and 2 both had quests that really made you wonder if you were making the right decision.  Quests with vague goals and even more vague motivations.  Quests that sounded like a good idea at the time, but ultimately turned out to have fairly undesirable outcomes.

Fallout 3, for the most part, makes it pretty obvious what the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ choices are.  It doesn’t take a whole lot of brain power to figure out that detonating a nuclear bomb in the middle of a populated town is probably a ‘bad’ decision, while disarming that bomb so that it no longer poses a threat is going to be a ‘good’ decision.

In Fallout 1 and 2 simple survival was a challenge.  Right from the start you were constantly running into fairly nasty critters that could kill you far too easily.  And the wasteland itself was a constant threat.  Making it back to civilization was a major accomplishment.  Morality often seemed like a very expensive luxury.  Fallout 3 makes it far too easy to stay alive.  Most enemies can be killed fairly easily or simply avoided in the first place, which makes it very easy to pick and choose your fights – which makes it very easy to choose whether you’re going to be ‘good’ or ‘evil’.

Still…  This new title is apparently being made by folks involved in the original Fallout game…  And it seems that I’m not the only one complaining about the lack of ambiguity – The Pitt DLC offers a lot more grey areas to play in.  So maybe this new title will be more satisfying…

Yesterday I accidentally finished Fallout 3.

I was getting sick and tired of all the combat in and around the metro area.  Three Dog wanted me to go fix his relay dish…  And the folks in Rivet City wanted me to go look for my father beneath some monument…  And the loony author in Megaton wanted me to go play with mirelurks…

And I just did not want to deal with any of that.

The combat system isn’t bad.  It’s actually kind of fun in small doses.  It’s neat to stumble across a small band of raiders out in the wasteland…  Or a lone robot…  Or a few super-mutants…

But the metro area is just plain painful.  Every two or three steps you’re getting jumped by someone.  And the ruins are full of impassable barriers, so you can’t just go from point A to point B…  You have to keep ducking into the tunnels, which are stuffed full of enemies.

Making my way through the metro area really reminded me of playing Quake 2…  With super-mutants instead of Strogg…  And a much higher chance of death.

So I got fed up with all the combat.  Figured I’d go wander the wasteland – that’s what I was having the most fun with anyway.  Wandering across the barren wastes…  Stumbling across deserted towns…  Making my way through the ruins of civilization…  Occasionally having to fight off a radscorpion or two…  Good stuff.

I basically just started wandering off to the west.

I stumbled across some kind of military base, which I carefully avoided.  The whole reason I was out there was to avoid the excessive combat in the metro area.

I saw something fly overhead one night…  And got irradiated…  And then found a bunch of alien power cells…

I located a big ol’ toxic waste dump…

Freed some slaves here and there…

And then I stumbled across some kind of gas station with a vault hidden in the basement.  This vault, unlike some of the others I’d found, still appeared to be functional.  I was greeted at the door by a robot who told me to put on a jumpsuit and go sit down in some kind of relaxation pod.

I did, and was dumped into a virtual reality simulation of some kind.  I worked my way through a number of quests and eventually ended the simulation – and rescued my father.  Somehow I managed to bypass a big chunk of the storyline and stumble upon my father completely by accident.

The game didn’t seem to know what to do with me.  I still had a quest telling me to go look for my father beneath some monument…  And there didn’t appear to be any way to abandon the quest.

More importantly, I didn’t really know what to do with myself.  I could certainly continue west and see the sights…  But that didn’t seem nearly so engaging now that I knew how it would all end.  I could go do some of the other quests I had – like the mirelurks, or fixing the relay – but I still didn’t want to deal with the combat.  I could reload from an earlier save…but that wouldn’t erase the knowledge of how things end.

I contemplated starting the entire game over again…  I thought I might enjoy myself more if I rolled up a more combat-oriented character this time around.

I actually created a new game, started running through the character creation/tutorial stuff…  But before I even made it to my 10th birthday I was disinterested.  I just didn’t care enough to go through all the lowbie stuff again.

So, I’ve un-installed Fallout 3, and I’m glad I never got around to spending any money on it.  I wound up playing for about six hours, not counting all the dying and reloading.  I’m sure there’s hours and hours more gameplay if I actually bothered to go through the storyline, or if I did more of the side-quests…  But I just can’t be bothered.

Originally, we had a copy of Fallout 3 pre-ordered and paid in full.  We were just waiting for it to be released.

But as the release date drew nearer, and more reviews became available, my interest waned quite a bit.  It looked more like a shooter than an RPG.  It looked like it had been simplified and dumbed down a bit too much.  It looked like Oblivion with guns.

Even though the reviews were generally positive, I had the sneaking suspicion that this wouldn’t actually be the game I wanted it to be.  So, we wound up canceling the pre-order.

And, until recently, I’d completely forgotten that Fallout 3 even existed.

But then Terri started talking about it again…  And they released the new DLC stuff…  So I decided to track down a copy and give it a try.

They’ve done an incredible job of creating the wasteland.  It really feels like a post-apocalyptic world.  I feel like I’ve just stepped into Mad Max or Six String Samurai.  The voices…  The characters…  The visuals…  The over-all setting…  They’re terrific.  Absolutely amazing.  I’m thoroughly impressed with the job they’ve done in creating the world around you.

However, the gameplay and plot aren’t quite doing it for me…

The gameplay is a little too much Oblivion and not nearly enough Fallout.  I miss the complex, roaming, rambling quest lines of previous Fallout games.  The kind of quests where you weren’t really sure whether you were doing the right thing or not.  The kind of situations that were genuinely morally vague.  Things are a little too simple, a little too obvious in Fallout 3.  It’s usually pretty clear what the right choice is.

And the main storyline…the quest to find your father…just isn’t doing it for me.  In previous games you were sent out to save you vault or re-build the world…  This time around you’re just running along behind your father, trying to figure out where he’s gone and why he left.  Again, it seems a little too small, a little too simple.

So, I’ve pretty much grown bored with the main storyline.  I’m now wandering the countryside looking for adventure.

The gameplay is a little too shooter-y for my tastes…  There are lots of encounters that boil down to simple run-and-gun gameplay.  And the V.A.T.S. thing just doesn’t really seem to do much…  Sure, it’s a nice way to specifically target a body part, but I can usually do almost as good by aiming manually.

Ultimately I’m just not feeling terribly compelled to keep playing.  It’s a decent enough game…  It’s a great setting…  But it just isn’t engaging enough to make me put up with all the annoyances.

So, yesterday was Thanksgiving.  Terri got the day off on account of her slaving over a hot stove every other day of the year, so I did the cooking.  Everything turned out surprisingly well.  Not that I really thought I’d ruin everything…  I can cook fairly well usually…  But a big ol’ Thanksgiving dinner is a little imposing.

I, of course, ate far too much.  Piles of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, rolls, pumpkin pie…  It’s amazing that I didn’t rupture something yesterday.

I also spent a good chunk of the day yesterday playing WoW.  My Warlock is now 76, and my Death Knight is 62.  I’m more-or-less done with Dragonblight…  There are still a few group quests for me to do there, but I’ve had enough.  Some of those quests were pretty frustrating and I’m glad to be out of the zone.  I’m currently grinding in Howling Fjord – technically a step backwards, as the zone is lower level, but it’s a lot of fun.

I haven’t played Left 4 Dead again since that first session.  It was certainly fun, but I’ve been tied up in WoW almost nonstop.  That’s the problem with the holiday season in general – excess.  Too much stuff going on, too much to do, not enough time for any of it.  I’ve still got to play through Red Alert 3, and I wanted to try Fallout 3, and I never did finish Dead Space…

The best part though, is that it is only Friday night.  I’ve had two full days off from work, and I’ve got two more to go.  Very nice.