Yep. Still playing Elden Ring. Other than that, I plan to play Blasphemous soon enough. Might also play *Pathologic 2 *as well, but I only play two games at the same time at best, and only for maybe an hour or two a day each (again, at best).
Tagging people from previous thread:
@Eat_Yo_Vegetables69@lemmygrad.ml
@Kirbywithwhip1987@lemmygrad.ml
@ButtigiegMineralMap@lemmygrad.ml
@RevolutionaryRatto@lemmygrad.ml
@fuzzylittlepenguin@lemmygrad.ml
@HashtagMarxStuff@lemmygrad.ml
@Eat_Yo_Vegetables69@lemmygrad.ml
@American_Communist22@lemmygrad.ml
Okay, here’s my first attempt at a “bonus discussion question” of the week, but:
Who is your favorite video game protagonist?
Anyways, have fun.
Been feeling kinda burnt out on videogames recently, only played a bit of STALKER Anomaly with the GAMMA modpack. It contains some major changes that are not going to be to everyone’s taste such as removing weapons from traders and making you upgrade your arsenal by scavenging and repairing, but so far I’m enjoying it. Progression is slower and resource management feels much more important. One thing I like about it and a sentiment echoed by one of my STALKER bros is that it still feels like STALKER unlike something like Escape from Pripyat that tries really hard to turn the game into Tarkov. I’d recommend trying it if you’re in the mood for an overhauled Anomaly and don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of building your own setup, but read the feature list first because you may disagree with its basic design decisions.
As for favorite protagonists, I realized I have way more NPCs that I remember fondly than protagonists, mostly because I play a lot of RPGs where the protagonist is player-defined. My favorite is probably Harry from Disco Elysium, the game got me from the first 10 minutes when I looked in the mirror and saw that It’s an expression of pain dialogue option. I really want to replay it with a Psyche focused build pumping Empathy and Inland Empire once I’m in a better mood for games.
My suggestion? Come back to video games a year from now or even just 6 months. Works like a charm.
Otherwise, you don’t always have to play 'em. I think people feel like they have to due to it being in the “vogue” or just to “keep up” with what others are into. Don’t. Just do other things.
Other than that? Maybe find a way to play a video game and do another thing while the game is still on. That generally works for me. The loading time can sometimes be annoying when starting up a game, but dealing with that issue helped.
Breaks work well, even a couple of months make a big difference. I tend to reach the point where I look at my library for 20 minutes without booting anything, then take a break until I feel the itch to play something and it gets me hooked again.
Yeah, same
What would be your suggestion for getting into Anomaly? I’ve tried it a few times and was overwhelmed, but the idea of Stalker sandbox is immensely attractive for me.
It can definitely feel overwhelming with all the features and items it adds on top of regular Stalker gameplay. When you’re just starting out it can be really unclear what you can or should do to progress and the whole amount of extra stuff is making things even worse.
For getting a hang if it, play vanilla (mods can make it even more convoluted) and go for the loner Cordon start. Set the progression difficulty to whatever the middle option was called, it’s a good middle ground. I like to start with some sort of shotgun as my weapon, even better if I can get the full barrel version. Shotguns are good against mutants and mutants are a good source of early income because the ones in your starter area can’t shoot back with superior firepower. I can’t remember if the hunting knife is an option in the vanilla starting gear selection, but get it if it is or prioritize purchasing one if it isn’t.
Do Fanatic’s tutorial for some freebies, and pick up all the tourist safari/mutant hunt/rescue tasks with the target in Cordon from Sid and Wolf for some pocket money which should go into a hunter’s backpack and hunter’s knife (if it wasn’t available at the start). Skin every mutant you come across in the process and keep everything + try to avoid combat with humans other than basic bandits. Once you’ve done all the easy tasks you can complete in Cordon, move on to the Garbage with all the mutant parts you’ve gathered and sell them to the butcher in the train depot. He’s a good source of cash in the early game, you can sell mutant parts at decent prices and buy cheap shells for your shotgun. He also offers hunting missions around the Garbage, and they shouldn’t usually make you go up against anything tougher than a bloodsucker. You can also pop into Rostok, do some easy arena fights and see if you can pick up any task that doesn’t put you in too much danger.
After some hunting trips and random missions you should have enough money saved up to upgrade your gear. My goal at this point is getting a Sunrise suit, a better shotgun and a long rifle of some sort with a scope, though I’ve had good results with a scoped SMG too. The scope makes a big difference when fighting against other stalkers, once you have one you can afford to be more aggressive. When you managed to put a kit together, you can start some storyline missions and also move your hunting grounds up to Wild Territory and Yantar. Wild Territory is great because you can keep to the rooftops, but watch out for mercs. If you can take down Bloodsuckers, Snorks or Controllers, the scientists in Yantar pay very well for their parts.
The rest of the game is just upgrading your gear and moving further North into progressively harder areas. It gets smoother once you’re past the early game and have put a solid kit together. If you finish a loner run and got a good idea of how the game works you can try other factions, or challenge runs, or warfare mode, or go down the modding rabbit hole.