I have really a tailback of screenshots, time to post some.
First to start with: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat. A game I yet had to finish.
I must say that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat is the best of the 3 titles. Gameplay has really been advanced and the levels became finally huge. Feels really like 'players most wanted'.
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Ok, you might wonder why I post screenshots for the following title, though I consider it the worst game I've seen for years. But I feel like explaining myself a bit.
It is the 1950ies, you're sitting in a plane and suddenly its...
a.k.a. No One Lives Forever 3 Well, ok...
...looks like we drowned.
But there is hope: This is Mr. Ryan, the founder of Ryan Industries. Originally he is russian, hence the name(!?!?!). He fled from the communist in russia to the USA, where he finally considered Roosevelt a bolshevik and decided to leave a country once more. With his enormous financial weight he founded his private hideaway where he could live the sort of capitalism he desired to. An underwater city called Rapture where he is even taking money for the oxygen the inhabitants require to breath.
Well, here we are. A huge city with skyscrapers and...wait...illuminated advertisings for the fishes!? Or do the inhabitants wander with dive equipment in between?
So,
Welcome to Rature. If this is the outside, will the outside be the inside then?
I tell you what happened here. Somebody designed a game for a fictional surface city when he suddenly jumped onto the train of using first-class-looking-but-nevertheless-simple-to-implement-water-effects and moved the complete city to undersea. In the first levels there are plenty of windows. Don't ask for any windows later. There won't be a lot.
Ok, lets move on. This is the fishing factory. If I ever build a pressurized city on the bottom of the sea, I'll use corrugated iron for the walls inside of the fishing harbour and factory and will print 'fish' on them. Don't ask me how people are supposed to fish here. I don't know either. I found no fishing equipment, no bathyspheres, no bathyspere ports and tell me, how to fish from a bathyspere anyway.
Sadly this ugly japanese looking guy could not tell me either. You know, people don't talk much down here. They rather scream and throw things at you.
If this is a pier, where are the frickin boats?
Which brings us to the next problem: The leveldesign. If I wander in an underwater city with skyscrapers I expect each floor to have the same floor plan. But this is leveldsign in the style of
Wolfenstein 3D. I'll give you a cookie if you manage to read this multi-floor-map without actually having played the game.
Well, just escape to the next level where we face Dr. Steinman. Beautifulness is enforced by law, and Dr. Steinman is the one who defines what can be considered beautiful.
Anyone interested in a 1960 plastic surgery?
Ok, some game mechanics: This is an automata for ammo and other stuff. You can loot your enemies for ammo and money, thus you get money. Looting is pretty annoying as many enemies respawn.
Automatas can be hacked, then they provide help or cheaper products. Reminds me to Oil Imperium.
These cameras can also be hacked. They look pretty much like the ones in No One Lives Forever 2.
On alert they attract these drones that can be hacked as well. They're like those drones from No One Lives Forever.
These little girls extract some kind of manna from bodies. You can take the manna from the girls, but have to kill their bodygards before. No easy task. But there is a chamber in each level for respawn. You got unlimited lifes. Thus you could kill these with you're bare hands, if you feel like respawning and returning for 20 times.
With the manna aquired you can buy genetic upgrades at the gatherers garden. Which also explains under which circumstances the whole game must have been designed. This game isn't like a drug trip, it is rather the result of the trip the developer has been on.
Most of the upgrades are rather useless.
Like these bees.
So, most of the time you spend with collect and bring missions that make you run from one side of the level to the other side, with enemies respawning again and again, until you learned the leveldesign by heart. Gladly there are never more than three enemies at once, as Ryan prohibited gathering above 3 people. The floors would crowded anyway then.
I didn't finish this game, it was rather a pain to play. Be warned.
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Mafia II
Yes, I was on drugs.
Do you see some couple in the kitchen?
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Which brings me to more happy occurences. My biggest surprise was Metro 2033. 20 years after a nuclear war earth is still shaken by nuclear winter. The last remnants of the population of moscow are living deep down in the tubes and stations of the subway. You grew up in an outer station and witnessed the dangerously inceasing attacks of alien species from the surface. One day, you're being sent to the heart of the Metro, to the the Depot, to call for help in the polis there.
The engine feels a bit outdated. The levels are very tiny and compact, compareable to Bioshock. I guess they had to be small to run properly on consoles. Nevertheless there are plenty of levels to rush through. It is not like you get bored and stay in a level forever. Gameplay is very solid, its an old school first person shooter in the style of half-life. Aliens alternate with Soldiers and tricky passages with jumps or traps. Overall it feels like mixture of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Fallout 3.
Sadly the game is a bit short. Takes about 15 hours or as long as Mafia II maybe.
And of course you get all the funny stuff you expect when being in a subway labyrinth.
You can get a cookie if you found the alien creature.
In case you get lost: the arrows will show you the way.
Let's roll!
They didn't mention tanks.
Well, when there are Panzers, these guys are never far.
The Depot.
The Polis.
Don't ask.
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Did you know that there is an Addon for Tropico 3? Its called Unlimited Power. Comes with 10 new maps, 10 new buildings, 10 new edicts, 1 new radio moderator as annoying as the one before and 20 new slogans for them.
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Grand Theft Auto IV & Episodes from Liberty City impressions. Didn't like Part 1 of the Addon very much. It is all about bikes, and if you're not interested in bikes it is all the same.
Haha.
Hi there!
This guy is everywhere!
Everybody ran, he kept playing.
It was just a lousy car accident, Officer. Nobody told him to bail the car and get close to the flames. Sadly his body incinerated the other car as well. Morons.
Jeezus Christ!
Don't ask!
Edit:// alternating url for a large Gif(Metro2033).
Edit:/// alternating picture for GTAIV - The Lost and the Damned.