The "What should I know before I play this game for the first time?" Q&A!

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TheTofuShop: Aug 28, 2009

Stri-Daddy posted:

I really want to play Phantasy Star 1-4.

Which one is considered the best, and what should I know before starting?

4. 2 is nostalgic. But just play 4. It's worlds ahead of the other 3

# ? Mar 1, 2010 21:51

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# ? May 23, 2024 04:47

al-azad: May 28, 2009

Stri-Daddy posted:

I really want to play Phantasy Star 1-4.

Which one is considered the best, and what should I know before starting?

Phantasy Star 1 is a completely different game and it plays out like a cross between Ultima V and Dragon Quest. It's not very friendly and doesn't clue you in on anything so you can safely skip it unless you like hardcore oldschool RPGs where you had to have a pencil and paper at hand to get anywhere.

# ? Mar 1, 2010 21:58

Stri-Daddy: Feb 15, 2003

TheTofuShop posted:

4. 2 is nostalgic. But just play 4. It's worlds ahead of the other 3

I heard that 2 is INCREDIBLY long. Any truth to that?

E: not talking about my penis.

Stri-Daddy fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Mar 1, 2010

# ? Mar 1, 2010 23:13

Halloween Jack: Sep 12, 2003; I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

It's been a while since I've played it, but the plot of PS 2 crosses from planet to planet, has multiple subplots, and a large rotating cast of characters, kind of like FF VI. I'd say it's definitely a very long and detailed game for its time. I also remembered there being a poo poo-ton of random map encounter battles.

# ? Mar 1, 2010 23:17

Scalding Coffee: Jun 26, 2006; You're already dead

Phantasy Star is a brutal old school game with samey dungeons that require writing down on large pieces of paper. You will frequently find trapped chests that damage your party and is too dangerous to open in dungeons. Only open them outside dungeons and near towns, so you won't waste MP healing or detecting. Opening chests is the only way to get money from enemies. Yeah...
The music is really good and the gameplay is leagues better than the absolutely boring sequels up to 4.
warning- I like old school games.

PS2 is basically multi-layered-samey-confusing-dungeons between towns. All characters start at level one no matter how far you advanced, so you get to keep grinding and artificially extend the gameplay several times. Get paper for the dungeons as they never try to make it look different and teleporters are everywhere to confuse you. The combat is a pain since you are permanently stuck with letting the AI do your work and have to cancel out (mash the cancel in case it doesn't register) if you want to do anything different, which make battles so much longer to select these weirdly named spells. The enemies can turn up to be the most horrible looking things you ever fought. The bosses are very disappointing after going through such bad dungeon design.

PS3 has nothing going for it. It is the most boring and cheaply made game in the series and the stories don't make sense at all. You spend time backtracking through the same dungeons when you want to travel to places and some glitches would require you to reset or permanently ruin your game at a later point. You move a slider to make certain techs stronger over other ones and balancing them gimps you. Battles are a quick sound loop that repeats forever until you do something different just so you can hear something else loop.

PS4 is in line with other RPGs at the time and is fun to play with by not having those extreme features of the previous games. You can combine many attacks for varying effects and set up several scripts to keep battles quick. There are no living relations with that character from the old game.

Scalding Coffee fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Mar 2, 2010

# ? Mar 2, 2010 16:27

Twitch: Apr 15, 2003; by Fluffdaddy

Phantasy Star 4 is, by a massive amount, the best game in the series on Genesis. You'd probably be fine just playing that, although it contains a ton of references to the older games, so playing the previous 3 would enrich the experience. If you don't mind Let's Play threads, the LPs of 1-3 done by Thuryl are pretty good and would suffice in place of actually playing those, as far as the references are concerned.

If you have a high tolerance for old RPGs, I do suggest playing them in order, but at least get dungeon maps off the Internet, and don't feel too bad about consulting FAQs when necessary.

# ? Mar 2, 2010 19:42

mythomanic: Aug 19, 2009

I need some advice for playing Civ IV. I got that and the two expansions, Warlords and Beyond the Sword. I've never played a Civ game, and never really played this sort of game, aside from a bit of Warcraft 3 (which, from what I can tell, is vastly different). Anything I should know?

# ? Mar 2, 2010 22:49

Astfgl: Aug 31, 2001

mythomanic posted:

I need some advice for playing Civ IV. I got that and the two expansions, Warlords and Beyond the Sword. I've never played a Civ game, and never really played this sort of game, aside from a bit of Warcraft 3 (which, from what I can tell, is vastly different). Anything I should know?

You should load up Civ IV (just vanilla Civ IV, and not any of the expansions yet) and play the tutorial. It'll cover most of the basics. But if you don't do that, then this one's a doozy, and I'll probably be beaten before I get this out but here's how Civ works:

- The map is composed of tiles, and each tile has a yield (Food, Gold, Hammers, or nothing). Yields can be altered slightly by certain structures, allowing you to tailor yields to your needs. So farms will provide an additional unit of food to a tile, and mines will provide an additional two hammers to hill tiles.
- When you build a city, you'll get to collect the yields from the tiles around the city, and only ever from those tiles. This is called the fat cross, with your city at the centre:

code:

   _____
 _|_|_|_|_
|_|_|_|_|_|
|_|_|C|_|_|
|_|_|_|_|_|
  |_|_|_|

- To collect yields, you need populations, and it's important to remember that your population is NOT THE NUMBER OF UNITS YOU HAVE. Your population corresponds to the number next to each city's name, and if you go into the city screen you can see how you're using the population. You can either have them work tiles within the city limits to collect the yields (worked tiles have a white circle around them) or you can assign them as specialists to provide unique bonuses.
- Some tiles will have resources like horses, corn, or uranium. They don't have to be inside any city limits for you to access the resource, but you will need to build a special structure that's usually unlocked by a certain technology. Resources come in three kinds: military, luxury and food, and will almost always provide some kind of special benefit with access (so horses let you train cavalry, corn will make your cities healthier, and uranium lets you build nuclear weaponry).
- The structures you build to affect yields or gain access to resources are called improvements. Improvements are built by your workers, and can be razed by enemies passing through that tile. Resource improvements need to be connected with a road to a city in order to provide access to the resource.
- Your cities will be able to train units who can move around the map. Units will cost you maintenance fees and will take time to train, so be careful about which ones you train and when.
- Cities can also build buildings (as opposed to improvements) and buildings don't affect yields but instead grant bonuses to the city they're in. So building a library will increase that city's cultural and research output, while building a forge will increase production.
- In case you're wondering:

Your research is the little green beaker in the upper left corner of the screen. Every technology has a value, and your research controls how much income you devote to technological progress every turn. You can contribute to research by increasing the amount of income you spend on research, erecting research-buildings like libraries and laboratories in cities, and tasking citizens as scientist specialists.
Your income (aka commerce) is the little stack of gold coins, above the research beaker. You gain income from a variety of sources, including tile yields, diplomatic agreements, and random events. You spend income on research, diplomatic agreements, military upgrades, and later culture and espionage.
Your production is going to be different in every city, because production is entirely governed by the amount of hammers in the worked tiles in that city. As a result, you should always try to find a location with plenty of hills or certain production-oriented resources (stone, marble, oil, horses, etc.) and build a city there.
Your culture governs how quickly your city borders expand (but not your fat cross, which will always stay the same dimension in every city), and you can boost it with certain buildings like temples and wonders. Certain great people will also increase a city's cultural output.

- Here are some general tips:

Never neglect your military. At least one city should always be building military units, and this should almost invariably be the city with the highest production rate.
If you choose your leader (instead of playing randomly), look for good unique units and unique buildings (UU/UB). As a general rule of thumb, civs with early (ancient/classical) military unique units are very powerful. Also, there will be some buildings you'll build in almost every city (like granaries) so civs with unique versions of those buildings will also be very effective.
Even if you don't play with espionage, it's extremely useful in wartime, so it might pay to spend a little bit of cash to keep an eye on your enemies.
There are two philosophies when it comes to the ideal method of income generation. The first is the cottage economy, and it involves building cottages everywhere as early as possible as their output increases over time. The second is the specialist economy, which involves building farms everywhere to increase your population, allowing you to devote every available citizen to being scientist/merchant specialists (for research/commerce). If you're interested, you can find more info about running either economy here.
Rival civs will attack you for a variety of reasons, like getting too weak. Pay attention to your graphs, especially the power graph, in order to see how you stack up to your foes. You can have the highest score and the weakest military, so you need to look at more than just your score.
Regardless of what style you plan on playing, bronze working is generally agreed to be the most important tech to grab at the start of the game. It not only lets your workers start chopping down trees to hurry unit and building production in nearby cities, but also unlocks military units like axemen which can steamroll over less advanced military units. So if you can get bronze working early, you should be able to march into most cities and take them out without much resistance.
In the later game, siege weapons will be one of the most effective military units, meaning you'll want to build as many as possible. Not only can they obliterate city defenses, they can also do massive amounts of collateral damage to several units at once. Your armies should eventually be AT LEAST half siege weaponry and half infantry, if not more.

- Other than that, play on an easy setting to begin with and experiment with a playing style that feels fun. The game starts you on a mostly even playing field with the AI, so decreasing the slider will give them penalties while increasing it will give them massive bonuses. Keep that in mind when you play your first few games.

Astfgl fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Mar 3, 2010

# ? Mar 3, 2010 07:02

Corridor: Oct 19, 2006

Thanks for the DQ7 comments guys. I haven't had time to play it since but will implement all advice!

# ? Mar 3, 2010 11:49

Anonymaus: Oct 20, 2009

Requesting DotA and Age of Empires 2 multiplayer.

For DotA , out of all heroes I think I can only use Broodmother , Zeus and Earthshaker decently for their roles are straightforward .But I can't seem to grasp any other heroes.

More specifically , for some reason , I can't play any kind of multi-facet heroes like Priestess of the Moon and QoP.

For Broodmother, it all boils down to NOT showing up at team fights and siege enemy base with spider-lings and mana management.
For Earthshaker , the only trouble is saving money for a dagger. Blink - Echo Slam will guarantee someone will die as long as there's enough creeps.

For AoE 2 , I'm having trouble on surviving till Imperial Age.

Anonymaus fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Mar 4, 2010

# ? Mar 3, 2010 12:37

Elswyyr: Mar 4, 2009

I'm buying Mass Effect 2 soon, and I already have a Mass Effect 1 save. But I've heard rumors that having a maxed out Mass Effect 1 char will make Mass Effect 2 incredibly easy, since the added resources would make you able to buy all the best stuff from the start. Is this right, or is it just a rumor?

# ? Mar 3, 2010 13:28

Zedd: Jul 6, 2009; I mean, who would have noticed another madman around here?

Elswyyr posted:

I'm buying Mass Effect 2 soon, and I already have a Mass Effect 1 save. But I've heard rumors that having a maxed out Mass Effect 1 char will make Mass Effect 2 incredibly easy, since the added resources would make you able to buy all the best stuff from the start. Is this right, or is it just a rumor?

You just get more resources when you did all the mineral/tags/etc missions, enough to buy 3-4 upgrades or something. but you can not buy everything you want with that.

# ? Mar 3, 2010 13:32

Perfect Potato: Mar 4, 2009

Elswyyr posted:

I'm buying Mass Effect 2 soon, and I already have a Mass Effect 1 save. But I've heard rumors that having a maxed out Mass Effect 1 char will make Mass Effect 2 incredibly easy, since the added resources would make you able to buy all the best stuff from the start. Is this right, or is it just a rumor?

It's hogwash, a maxed character just means you can hit the level cap in a single playthrough if you do everything, and even with the extra money and resources you still won't have enough money to buy everything, and resources are gotten through a tedious minigame so who gives a gently caress.

# ? Mar 3, 2010 13:33

Dr. Video Games 0031: Jul 17, 2004

Astfgl posted:

[*]Your income (aka commerce) is the little stack of gold coins, above the research beaker.

Just a quick little correction to avoid confusion, commerce is actually the raw yield harvested by cities and is represented by a single gold coin. That raw yield is transformed into science, gold (the stack of coins previously mentioned), culture, and espionage depending on the percentages you set at the top left corner of the screen.

Otherwise, your overview is great. For a brand new player to Civ and TBS gaming in general, I recommend you do the Civ 4 tutorial, then read this man's post to get a fair grasp of the basic mechanics. Then mess around on Settler difficulty for a whole game. You'll probably fail in some fundamental way, but that's ok. Once you have some time with the game under your belt, head to the Civilization Fanatics' War Academy and read the introductory courses there. Particularly, Sulla's Civilization IV Walkthrough (super old and meant more for pre-release hype, but still really good for beginners) and Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners, which is up to date, comprehensive, and contains all the game's fundamentals and basic strategies in an easy to read and understand format.

# ? Mar 4, 2010 07:38

SpazmasterX: Jul 13, 2006; Wrong about everything XIV related
~fartz~

Perfect Potato posted:

It's hogwash, a maxed character just means you can hit the level cap in a single playthrough if you do everything, and even with the extra money and resources you still won't have enough money to buy everything, and resources are gotten through a tedious minigame so who gives a gently caress.

Sounds like someone is a little jaded. :v:

# ? Mar 4, 2010 07:43

Astfgl: Aug 31, 2001

Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:

Just a quick little correction to avoid confusion, commerce is actually the raw yield harvested by cities and is represented by a single gold coin. That raw yield is transformed into science, gold (the stack of coins previously mentioned), culture, and espionage depending on the percentages you set at the top left corner of the screen.

Awesome, thanks. I always get tripped up with the gold/commerce distinction, and can never remember which is the yield and which is the derived stat.

Also, condensing Civ IV in less than a page is drat near impossible, and that's without even touching on espionage, religion, corporations, or diplomacy.

# ? Mar 4, 2010 15:50

Halloween Jack: Sep 12, 2003; I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

Another Silent Hill 2 question: Is it actually possible to sweep the streets of all those cancerbeasts, or do they just keep infinitely spawning?

Also, I've noticed I'm playing a man who gets down on his belly, in a filthy abandoned warehouse full of monsters, to try to reach a key through some bars. While he's holding a wooden stick.

# ? Mar 4, 2010 18:31

Morpheus: Apr 18, 2008; My favourite little monsters

Halloween Jack posted:

Another Silent Hill 2 question: Is it actually possible to sweep the streets of all those cancerbeasts, or do they just keep infinitely spawning?

Also, I've noticed I'm playing a man who gets down on his belly, in a filthy abandoned warehouse full of monsters, to try to reach a key through some bars. While he's holding a wooden stick.

Wait until you find the wallet.

# ? Mar 4, 2010 21:52

Bloodcider: Jun 19, 2009

Morpheus posted:

Wait until you find the wallet.

And the hole in the moth room. James generally likes reaching into places that he logically shouldn't. Daring attitude, or CRYPTIC METAPHOR?

# ? Mar 4, 2010 21:57

Scalding Coffee: Jun 26, 2006; You're already dead

James is always reaching for something whether it is a stick to kill with, a knife, or a pillow. Now if he could avoid doing any friendly fire and not get a game over.

# ? Mar 4, 2010 23:54

Morpheus: Apr 18, 2008; My favourite little monsters

Bloodcider posted:

And the hole in the moth room. James generally likes reaching into places that he logically shouldn't. Daring attitude, or CRYPTIC METAPHOR?

Yeah I'm pretty sure James is just stupid as a sack of bricks is all.

Anyway, so I'm playing Persona 2: Innocent Sin right now. I read through the wiki, and it's quite helpful, but I could've sworn hearing sometime earlier that there is a choice or two in the game that determines whether or not a party member lives or dies (or something of the sort), but there's no mention of that in the wiki. Am I imagining things?

# ? Mar 5, 2010 05:21

al-azad: May 28, 2009

Halloween Jack posted:

Another Silent Hill 2 question: Is it actually possible to sweep the streets of all those cancerbeasts, or do they just keep infinitely spawning?

Also, I've noticed I'm playing a man who gets down on his belly, in a filthy abandoned warehouse full of monsters, to try to reach a key through some bars. While he's holding a wooden stick.

No, you can't kill all the monsters but they're easily avoided. Just hurry up and get to the end of the game because all the dumb poo poo James does and the graffiti on the walls (THERE WAS A HOLE HERE IT IS GONE NOW) make sense once you realize the context of Silent Hill and the three key players (that hot sickly chick always hanging onto James, the suicidal girl, and the paranoid fat guy).

# ? Mar 5, 2010 07:29

1337_CroniX: Nov 22, 2005; The Warrior Of Ruin

Anyone have any starting advice for Star Ocean 4? I remember the last one had a tonne of stuff that was never fully explained so I'm assuming this one does too.

# ? Mar 5, 2010 15:23

lactomangulation: Jan 29, 2009

1337_CroniX posted:

Anyone have any starting advice for Star Ocean 4? I remember the last one had a tonne of stuff that was never fully explained so I'm assuming this one does too.

The battles are much simpler than in SO3 as there are no weak/strong attacks anymore. Certain bosses have a specific part that you must hit, otherwise you'll do terrible damage on them.

Maxing out Critical Hit and Focus with Reimi will make your battles much easier.

There are Private Actions which are missable, be sure to go back to your ship after every major event if you care about these. If you want to get all the endings then you can't miss too many of them, you can check a FAQ for more details.

Cutscenes are very boring compared the previous games, and if you skip them you even get a text summary of what just happened.

# ? Mar 5, 2010 17:48

bbcisdabomb: Jan 15, 2008; SHEESH

I just started Metal Gear Ac!d, any tips for it? It's not exactly what I was expecting, but in a good way.

# ? Mar 9, 2010 11:54

Orvin: Sep 9, 2006

I figure here is a good a place as any to ask this question.

Is there a big difference between Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES?

Is the extra content in FES a must have, or will just playing Persona 3 be enough if I only plan on playing through 1 time.

# ? Mar 10, 2010 20:10

Dr. Video Games 0031: Jul 17, 2004

Orvin posted:

I figure here is a good a place as any to ask this question.

Is there a big difference between Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES?

Is the extra content in FES a must have, or will just playing Persona 3 be enough if I only plan on playing through 1 time.

FES adds a new social link, adds a few new features like weapon fusion, rebalances the personas a bit, just has more items and equipment in general, makes the social links easier overall, new ways to raise your social stats, and more. The changes are small but numerous and add up to make it a much better game. It also adds The Answer, pretty much another game that's a sequel of sorts. You use the original cast, minus a character or two with a new one thrown in, and it's 100% pure dungeon crawling with really lovely cutscenes and plot points thrown in. No social links or time management stuff or any of that from P3. It's entire purpose is to flesh out one of the characters a bit better and explain what exactly happened in the ending. Overall though, The Answer is a lovely experience and shouldn't be what encourages you to buy FES.

There's also a remake of sorts coming out for the PSP this July. Persona 3 Portable is going to be more or less a complete overhaul that I hear is better in almost every way. Almost all of the social links have changed dialog, they redid a lot of the old mechanics like the tiredness deal. They added new events, new social links, the ability to control your entire party (normal P3 works kinda like FF13, you control the main character and everyone else is AI controlled), and more. And then they went all out and made a second playable character, a female, that completely changes like over half the game, including all of the social links, a ton of major plot points are altered, and more. P3P is shaping up to be really awesome and the upgrade FES should have been.

So, if you have a PSP, I would recommend waiting for P3P to come out and buy that, and ignore the PS2 titles completely. If you do not have a PSP, FES is the better game, but The Answer is arguably the main attraction and it's sub-par. If you already have P3, you have to consider if the surcharge is worth it for the new stuff in FES. If you don't already have P3, then I don't even know why you're asking this question, get FES, it's the better game despite The Answer being a disappointment.

Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Mar 10, 2010

# ? Mar 10, 2010 20:35

ahobday: Apr 19, 2007

Orvin posted:

I figure here is a good a place as any to ask this question.

Is there a big difference between Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES?

Is the extra content in FES a must have, or will just playing Persona 3 be enough if I only plan on playing through 1 time.

I've always heard that it's worth it to buy FES.

But just in case you need more detail, this review seems to cover it:

http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/persona3fes/index2.html

# ? Mar 10, 2010 20:37

Orvin: Sep 9, 2006

Thanks for the info. Looks like if I do pick up a copy it will either be FES, or the new PSP version.

# ? Mar 11, 2010 00:36

Nate RFB: Jan 17, 2005; Clapping Larry

If you actually have a PSP you should probably get P3P. Every indication out there is that it is the definitive version.

Nate RFB fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Mar 13, 2010

# ? Mar 11, 2010 01:36

A Real Happy Camper: Dec 11, 2007; These children have taught me how to believe.

Just picked up God of War and God of War 2. Anything special I should know? I played Chains of olympus, and so far I'm getting by pretty well.

# ? Mar 13, 2010 04:18

SpazmasterX: Jul 13, 2006; Wrong about everything XIV related
~fartz~

Captain Novolin posted:

Just picked up God of War and God of War 2. Anything special I should know? I played Chains of olympus, and so far I'm getting by pretty well.

Weapon upgrades always take a backseat to the Blades. Check every corner for health and magic upgrades.

# ? Mar 13, 2010 04:24

Minorkos: Feb 20, 2010

Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2: 2 point strategy guide for beating both games
1. Always block when standing still
2. Never, EVER stand still

# ? Mar 13, 2010 13:37

mystery at hog island: Aug 16, 2003; Captain of Outer Space

Minorkos posted:

Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2: 2 point strategy guide for beating both games
1. Always block when standing still
2. Never, EVER stand still

These are the most important tips, but also, at least for Ninja Gaiden 1:

3. Use a guide for the golden scarabs. A few of them are permanently missable and it sucks to not be able to get all the bonus items/weapons.

# ? Mar 13, 2010 14:31

ahobday: Apr 19, 2007

Captain Novolin posted:

Just picked up God of War and God of War 2. Anything special I should know? I played Chains of olympus, and so far I'm getting by pretty well.

Poseidon's Rage (The first spell you get) is super powerful, so upgrading it is a good idea for getting out of those tight spots against more than one powerful enemy.

# ? Mar 13, 2010 22:51

Barudak: May 7, 2007

bbcisdabomb posted:

I just started Metal Gear Ac!d, any tips for it? It's not exactly what I was expecting, but in a good way.

Always use like ammo. What I mean by this is every type of gun has a type of ammo it produces and requires. Try to only use this gun with an equivalent gun, without mixing ammo types. Some guns produce more ammo but deal less damage, so use them only as ammo, and use your high damage low ammo guns as your equipped weapon. You get several bonuses and it streamlines your deck rather rapidly, and can absolutely wreck any guard you come across.

Additionally, if you can get it, the "fortune" card from the MGS2 set is absolutely broken.

In terms of gameplay, the best idea is to fill your deck with health cards you plan to use to move with, and then tons of guns. You may want an RPG or nikita mixed in as well for a little variety. If you enjoy it, get the sequel which is pretty much a complete upgrade in every regard.

# ? Mar 13, 2010 23:00

Shimrra Jamaane: Aug 10, 2007; Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

I'm about to start playing Silent Hunter 4 and I feel I should probably get some tips. I have never played any other game in the series and I have very little idea about what I am getting into. I just want to sink some aircraft carriers. :shobon:

# ? Mar 13, 2010 23:47

TheKlontz: Jan 7, 2009

Anyone been through Generation of Chaos on psp? I started it up the other day and I found it confusing to say the least.

# ? Mar 13, 2010 23:51

Anonononomous: Jul 1, 2007

Who wants to tell me how to play Stalker: Clear Sky? I didn't have trouble with the first one, but I can't even do the first mission in this one. There's absolutely no cover and enemies see through the reeds killing me. Plus the one time I managed to sneak up on some dudes I put two rounds of buckshot in a guy from 10 feet and then he turned around and killed me.

# ? Mar 14, 2010 02:36

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# ? May 23, 2024 04:47

al-azad: May 28, 2009

Anonononomous posted:

Who wants to tell me how to play Stalker: Clear Sky? I didn't have trouble with the first one, but I can't even do the first mission in this one. There's absolutely no cover and enemies see through the reeds killing me. Plus the one time I managed to sneak up on some dudes I put two rounds of buckshot in a guy from 10 feet and then he turned around and killed me.

I haven't beaten it yet but going through Clear Sky right after Shadow was pretty jarring. The guns now have (or rather it's more apparent) a stat called "flatness" which determines their distance. You'll notice you shoot something 50 yards away but if you see a bright ball of light you'll miss your shot because apparently your gun has lovely range. Armor has been beefed up compared to Shadow so armor piercing rounds against human enemies are now necessary. Even worse is that pistols have no loving ironsight which makes absolutely no sense and makes the beginning game unnecessarily difficult until you hit Cordon and start acquiring automatics.

Good news is that the "hot spots" where enemies congregate usually have one or two exits with the rest of the area being blocked or fenced off. Just find that exit, camp there, and pop everyone that shows up. I don't know if it's a bug in the AI or a flat out game design but enemies camping in a specific location don't move from the area except when they "attack" another area. Just use the AI limitations to your advantage. Health packs and bandages are plentiful so you shouldn't be strapped for cash or equipment.

Pretty disappointed midway through. The mechanics, artifacts actually being rare and dangerous to find (although artifacts being invisible and magically moving around until you find them is super gay), and upgradeable equipment are better than Shadow but the atmosphere is destroyed by this lovely arcade-like design with a greater emphasis on action over survival horror. Call of Pripyat looks leagues better but I hate leaving things unfinished.

Edit: I forgot, whenever someone asks for your help you should immediately drop whatever it was you're doing and run to that location as fast as you can. The rewards you get for helping people out trump anything you may find in a secret stash or someone's body.

al-azad fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Mar 14, 2010

# ? Mar 14, 2010 04:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The "What should I know before I play this game for the first time?" Q&A!

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