by Red Schuhart » Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:50 am
My very first impression - and I've only just got to Yantar - was of near total confusion.
You get a task. Before you can get there you've been given another three tasks, two of which and the first one are cancelled. Then the first one comes back, accompanied by three or four more, which cancel and re-engage randomly it seems.
You spend a lot of time running your ass off trying to get to tasks which are always at least twice as far away as you can run, and to get there in time you have to run all the way.
I found myself backing out of places because there were bandits there. Then I discovered that you can actually go and talk to them - some of them anyway. That seemed just downright wrong to me. So I shot a few of them to make them all my enemy and I felt much more at home.
But you have to be careful with that. The Bandit mechanic is apparently the only one who can upgrade a SEVA, so if you make them enemies you can't make the SEVA into a supersuit. And they upgrade other star items.
I'm unpatched at the moment. Lots of CTDs for what seems to be no apparent reason. But the main pain in the arse is that important characters vanish at random and you have to save and reload to get them to appear where they should be.
I went back to Cordon from Dark Valley once, and there was NO-ONE in the entire map except me.
I recall the wonder of coming out of Sid's place into the Zone for the first time. That wonder, awe even, stuck with me right through the game. Clear Sky didn't have that. Annoyance seems to have been installed instead.
Still, it is interesting enough for me to keep going - plus it cost me £30 and I intend to get at least my money's worth out of it.
Roll on a few decent mods and bug-fixes.
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Few know, and I'm not telling.