User blog:Prof Sakharov/Fun and Frustration, Delight and disappointment.

About  02:00  28-7-19

It was back in 2000 or 2001 that I gave my computer-gaming virginity to a thing called 'Quake III Arena'. I had seen and tried it on a friend's machine, and soon had my own copy. The online multi-player was the place to be. Then.

But soon I found 'Half Life' and 'Half Life 2' along with the following episodes. Pretty soon they were followed by a series of similar games like 'Quake 4', 'Farcry', 'Pariah', 'F.E.A.R.' and 'Doom 3'. Some had sequels and expansions which were also duly consumed.

Then I picked up a copy of what was the latest, and seemingly the current most popular, thing around: 'Crysis'. I jumped into it enthusiastically,  as I do any new (to me) game, and got on reasonably well. Nothing special, but I'd really only just started and had hopes of wonders later. Until I hit the bit where you are first expected to fly an armed shuttle. What followed that point was disaster after catastrophe, as time and again, reload after reload, I proved to myself that my machine just didn't have the watts to run this game properly.

Obviously I was lagging behind and had to build myself a machine to handle such things. Rummaging around looking at prices of new components, I wandered onto eBay. It was there I saw something that wrenched my attention away from electronics and back on to games.

I read a bit about this game I'd seen, and it just got better and better. Of course I bought a copy. That was the beginning of my post-apocalyptic cyber-love affair. The game I had just bought was called 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl', and was destined to consume the vast majority of my waking hours for the next 11 years and more. 'Clear Sky' and 'Call of Pripyat' took their share of that time, as did the multitude of mods that exploded from the 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R.' community.

I didn't just enjoy those games, I was addicted. 'Shadow of Chernobyl 1.0' was the equivalent of a Ferrari F1 engine, except several major components had been omitted or fitted upside-down, and three of the twelve spark-plugs were missing entirely. It was the first game I had ever experienced a crash from, and I had no clue what had happened. Until then I was unaware that games could crash. This caused me to go hunting a cure, and I found it on a site called 'The Zone Survival Guide'. I was a regular there until something happened and it all fell apart. I then found out that some developers have their own forum sites for their games, thus the GSC forum has been a home-from-home ever since.

I had heard of the Metro games long before I experienced any of them. They were mentioned on the GSC site many times. I even went so far as to buy '2033'. But after mentioning that in the forum I had been told that it was just a basic corridor-shooter. How could I go back to that? After freely wandering the maps of the Stalker games, with the ability to return to any map I pleased any time I pleased, how could I go back to such restrictions? Knowing the frustration I would feel at seeing something interesting 'over there' and being prevented by invisible walls from getting a closer look.

And so it was that, on the 5th of July 2019, while tidying my desk I happened upon that copy of '2033'. My diary was clear for the next century or two, so I tore off the cellophane wrapper and opened the DVD case. Little did I know or suspect, but I had just taken the first step on the path of a new addiction.

I'm not entirely sure what happened. I do know that I have seen very little of my bed in the last three weeks. 'First Blood' occurred at 6:49pm, and also gave, unbeknownst to me, my first 'achievement'. On that first play-through I was blissfully unaware of 'Achievements' and 'Moral Points'. I had listened to Artyom's opening speech and had a taste of the dangers alongside Miller in the first section. Then I was called on to pick up a weapon and help hold off a mutant incursion. I wasn't a fan of pistols in Stalker games, and was a bit dubious when I saw the only weapon available to me. However, this .44 seemed unlike any pistol I'd ever used in any other game - it actually hit and killed what you aimed and fired at without needing to be reloaded five or six times. A nosalis would go down to a single head-shot, or at most two or three centre-of-mass shots. Almost everything in Stalker games is a bullet-sponge.

The occasional light-oddity and strange noise meant nothing to me. After all, there are odd noises and various lighting effects used throughout the game. I knew not that these were indicators of a morality system. All I was aware of then was that 'my' home station was in danger and I had to protect it. I had also been given an apparently supremely important job by 'Hunter', who seemed to be someone to be listened to.

With this near-complete lack of information I moved right along. Of course I got the 'bad' ending. But by that time I didn't want it. I knew it was wrong, but there was nothing I could do to avoid it if I was to finish the game. 'If its hostile, you kill it.' Yes, but hostile things attack you. They don't continually tell you they want peace.

After that just a few minutes with the results of a Google search told me where I was going wrong.

I also had to know the rest of the story. That's my thing with FPS games: I usually like the story more than the combat. 'Last Light' arrived on the 11th of July.

Steam tells me that, since unwrapping and installing '2033' on the 5th, I have given 137 hours to '2033', 154 hours to 'Last Light', and 52 hours to 'Last Light Redux' which I bought for the DLC. It now being around 2am on the 28th of July, that's 343 hours out of a possible 535 hours spent in the Metro electronic universe. So, on average, 8 hours and 45 minutes per day in the physical world. Definitely addiction.

I am a bookseller by trade, so I operate in a field one could call 'post-apocalyptic' in that the printed book business has been nuked by electronic book-readers like the 'Kindle'. Beyond that I have no income at all - If I don't sell a book I go hungry. My last sale was back in May. My resources are just about depleted, and I'm a bit scared of what this nation's benefits system has become: people die because of it now, and that never happened before, even in Thatcher's time and she despised the unemployed - even though her policies were responsible for the loss of most of their jobs.

So it may be a while before I have anything in my game-buying budget and can continue the story with the latest instalment, 'Exodus'.

In the meantime I can seek out the answers to some of the things that aren't clear to me about the first two games and their updated versions. Things like the vanishing of the 'Arachnaphobia' achievement from 'Spider Lair'. And how you are supposed to know which throwing weapon you have equipped in 'Ranger' mode, as there is no HUD which also means no ability to view your inventory. In the middle of sneaking through a bunch of Pavel's grunts I threw a knife at one of them. Unfortunately it turned out to be a grenade, ignominiously ending my stealth career for that section.

Hiding the inventory like that is either a stupid idea that never got weeded out, or another of the dev's little gifts to the player, like the unsportingly-long delay in handing back control after a cutscene, usually when something unpleasant and dangerous is waiting right there for you. Or unnecessarily replacing some simple move with a cutscene, like a point in 'Arachnaphobia' where you drop down into the silo from one of three openings, the first two being too small. You've jumped down deeper drops before on your own, but the cutscene does it for you because you will be attacked immediately, and that delay in handing back control is easily enough to get the player killed.

Another similar frustration is the length of time it takes for Artyom's arm to raise the compressed air weapons and the 'Hellbreath' when the 'reload' key is pressed to raise pressure or charge. I quite often think I've hit the wrong key and quickly try again, just extending the time the weapon is unusable.

And how many hits from the 'Helsing' does it take to bring down a demon? I hit one with over 20 and it just shrugged them off like they were rice grains or something. I know some demons are scripted, also appearing in short cutscenes, and can not be killed. But that one I have killed with other weapons previously. There is even a corpse with only three bolts in it, but it could have been hit with other weapons as well to bring it down. I don't know as I wasn't there.

These things, of course, are only gnat bites: annoying, but not interest-killing.

I have spent enough time here for now. I can hear the 'Last Light' DLC levels that I haven't tried yet calling me. I may have to decontaminate myself in the shower after 'Sniper Team' - the 'Reds' in this storyline give me the creeps, and the overwhelming urge to shoot all fifteen thousand of them. Though one of them I just want the opportunity to punch a few times - I despise cowards, and nothing is more cowardly than beating on someone tied up and unable to defend themselves. I'm hoping, in a future 'Metro' game, to get ten minutes in a locked room alone with Moskvin. I'm sure his brother would approve, his son too - if he survived freeing Artyom.

04:44  28-7-19

Something I thought of when I first saw the deam sequence cutscene of Hunter's meeting with a Dark One, then forgot all about until I saw it again. I don't believe Hunter is dead. I have no idea where he has been since early in '2033', but he isn't dead. At least, the dream cutscene wasn't of his death. In that you clearly hear him speaking to Artyom. But Artyom never went anywhere with Hunter or it would have been mentioned. Especially as Artyom made out that his trip to Riga, as security for the supplies caravan being sent (which was actually nowhere to be seen), was his first time out of Exhibition.

It would make a lot of sense if the Dark Ones were able to see the future. It would explain a lot, and perhaps offer a glimpse into their 'agenda' concerning Artyom. Artyom said that nobody knew whose idea it was to go outside when he and his two friends opened an outer door when they were children - and that it was a good lie. That sounds like it was Artyom's idea - an idea that could have been put there by a Dark One who had seen Artyom's future and decided to lure him out to make contact, hoping the memory of which when he was older would sway him to avert the tragic path he was originally on. The whole scene with the watchmen, and the Dark One's defence of the young Artyom, could have been a set-piece arranged to impress on Artyom that they were friendly, protective, helpful. The young one in 'Last Light' certainly is.

Hunter calling to Artyom could only place the situation in the future. And now that would have to be beyond the events in 'Exodus'.

So. The fourth game. If there is one. I've been at three, patiently waiting for a promised four before with a post-apocalyptic FPS. We didn't get 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2', but hopefully not all developers lose interest in their own universes.

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