Jan 21st, 2011, 09:23 PM
Stalker: Call of Pripyat.
Within the first 15 minutes of playtime, I killed a bloodsucker, betrayed like 5 guys, hunted mutated pigs, and was mauled by a pack of wild dogs who charged into the middle of a gunfight.
I'd say it was pretty awesome.
I've also been slumming around on a World of Warcraft trial account. I leveled a Troll Shaman up to 19 in about 7 days of casualfagging, which is about the point you have to start dungeoneering to keep up experience flow. After two or three dungeon attempts with PuGs I can see where some of the vehement hatred of the game comes from, because everyone who's not a serious-business smacktard busy kickbanning me for sucking is even worse than I am, which is horrifying to behold.
I did get lucky and end up saddled with a party that was at just the right level of retardation; a mage, a hunter, a priest, and, after our Tank crapped out, myself, playing rock-guitar solos on every monster's face with my battleaxe and having their chair shots to my midsection balanced out by a constant spam of healing spells from the other guy, all the while supported by bullets and fireballs from the peanut gallery. It wasn't entirely sophisticated - we were basically just spamming whatever made the biggest numbers as fast as we could - but I had quite a bit of fun once I found some easygoing dudes to play with. Of course, the chances of getting saddled with a good group even a fourth of the time are probably pretty fucking slim, if Left 4 Dead is anything to go on.
So yeah, I can see how people would enjoy the camaraderie, the setting, and the art style, because I thought those were neat. And gameplay-wise, after you start to get a respectable collection of powers and shit, it's pretty satisfying to unload them all on a boss monster over and over again, but it's more or less Diablo: Slow Edition. Not to mention the massive amounts of jogging through barren wilderness in between quests and dungeon groups. That alone has probably taken up about half of my play time.
|