It seems I get further behind on my list everyday, but I’ve had a series of good books I’ve been enjoying in the meantime. So I’ll certainly hit you up, and don’t really worry about spoilers.
Specific to Atomfall, I’ve heard that it greatly benefits from the stealth-kill option (like Metro and a number of other post-apoc games), though like most (Fallout included) once you have built up enough resources you can do a lot more F**k it, I’m burning it all down.
FO4 was really different that the earlier iterations, because there’s always that option, even very early in the game where you say “F**k this, I’m bringing out the Power Armor!” since you get it so early.
FO 1-3 and NV (minus the courier’s stash) meant a good bit of time building up your skills and gear before you could walk down the street with confidence, and stealth or stealth sniper builds (F3, NV) were always a safer choice. I suspect Atomfall will be along those lines as well.
I love the earlier games and am having lots of fun in New Vegas but there’s a reason I didn’t go heavy armor this run. Power armor is way more fun in FO4 where it is basically a vehicle.
Thanks! I had heard that, and I’ve tried the stealth kill a couple times, but even though I lie in wait until an outlaw or soldier seems to be on their own and then snap their neck, it brings others to the area pretty quickly and they kick my ass. I believe I need to obtain a ‘stealth instruction manual’, one of the ways you level up, so I can sneak up and kill with true stealth.
FYI, to whom it may concern— I since found out that having the action stop when you open the menu (like FO4 and other games) is toggleable in the options and is set to ‘off’ by default. I’m planning to leave it off since it seems more naturalistic that way.
Yes, once you level up your stealth game by getting the ‘stealth instruction manual’, the stealth-kill option gets way better, and I really like making use of it now, especially since the game is so stingy with ammo. It’s kind of not worth even trying the stealth-kill takedown until you get it.
Yes, new skills come in the form of ‘training manuals’ that you either find or can trade for. Once you’ve ‘consumed’ the training manual, the manual disappears and you’ve gained the ability to unlock those skills. You also need to find ‘training stims‘ which give you points you use to purchase the skills you now have access to with the manual.
Pro tip:
Once you’ve consumed a manual, if you find another copy of the same manual it doesn’t help you directly- can’t learn the skill twice. But still grab the manual if you have space in your backpack, since they are high value trading items.
Despite the faint praise for Atomfall in the other gaming thread, I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. I hope you have the same experience when you get to it!
I suspect I will, because I tend to be a lore nerd - I’ll spend a lot of time searching and scrounging to uncover what happened. But that generally means somewhat fewer replay options if the world doesn’t have enough content.
It sounds like Atomfall will play more like Outer Worlds (1) than say Fallout 3/NV/4. Not linear in any way, but fewer options to do different things, or the same things in different ways. Not that that’s bad, just not to everyone’s taste. Your comments on play style (taking a while to “git gud”) and ammo scarcity are more like the Metro games than Fallout.
Finished Atomfall last night. I think I got the most desirable ending-- there are 5-6 possible outcomes as I understand it, depending on with whom you choose to ally. I made an intentional save point where I can go back and try one or two of the alternate endings, if I feel like it.
I will say I felt like the ‘Final Boss’ level was a tiny bit anticlimactic and easy to beat, and it didn’t really answer a couple big mysteries within the game. But overall I thought the game was very enjoyable with a nice balance of storyline, battles, and puzzle solving that felt integral to advancing the story, not tacked-on.
Thanks again @Miller for the rec, and @ParallelLines , I hope you enjoy it if and when you play it!
I’m pretty sure I will. I’ve been told that the next game I have to play is a gifted copy of Starfield along with the major April updates. And then I’m told I have to play Baldur’s Gate 3 which was also a gift. And THEN I’m allowed to play games I’ve bought for myself (OW2 and Atomfall and the rest of my steam purchases that accumulate due to insufficient time).
I’ll be interested to hear your impressions of Starfield, if you feel like sharing them. That was a game I was very interested in at one time, since it comes from Bethesda, makers of the game I’ve put the most hours into by far.
But then I read reports that the gameplay had kind of a soulless, ‘designed by committee’ feel to it. Who knows though-- these things are so subjective. Look at the faint praise for Atomfall on these boards, a game I feel should be more highly regarded than it seems to be. The video preview for Starfield on Steam certainly looks fantastic- just rewatched it.
I have read/heard that if the improvements that are supposed to go live this month are as described, it’ll mitigate much of the pain points in gameplay, though a lot of the open world that was promised will remain underwhelming. So good but flawed like a lot of the feelings about, say, Fallout 3.
I don’t expect it have the redemption Arc of say, Cyberpunk 2077, which was practically half-formed at release, only got good almost a full year+ later, and presented a near-perfect DLC as a swan song.
I can absolutely endorse the current state of CP2077, especially with Phantom Liberty without a single qualm. It plays very well (though no Ray tracing) on my system with 32G of 2133 MT/s RAM, a i5-11400F @2.60GHz processor and my ARC B580 graphics card with 12GB of RAM.
Not the highest settings, but say medium-high to high settings overall TBC.
But yeah, maybe wait for a sale rather than the current full price option on Steam. Because you’ll want PL, and that total is $82.78 right now. GOG is slightly cheaper right now at $79.99 with their Ultimate edition.
IIRC I’ve seen the combo at $49.99 on one of the major sales in the past which I think is fair, but I’d absolutely wait for the next big Summer sale or something similar.
Jonesing for a new game now…I tried ‘Rebel Galaxy’ again last night and I dunno- the traveling seems tedious, and I can’t seem to get the hang of the spaceship shooting. Then I tried Mass Effect again-- that game has promise for me, but weirdly, though it shouldn’t be a big deal, I can’t seem to get used to the 3rd person ‘over the shoulder’ thing. I’ve heard there’s a mod for the Legendary edition that can make it a FPS, but eh. I want a true FPS!
Then I saw Metro Exodus (Enhanced Edition) was less than $5 on Steam. It looks fantastic in the video preview. Snagged!
Then I remembered that I have plans tonight, so I may have to wait to play it. Oh well.
I think you’ll like them. Do remember, Exodus (IIRC) is the third of the existing games, starting with Metro 2033, then Metro: Last Light, and finally Metro Exodus, though equally IIRC they’ll be announcing a sequel soon, maybe this month.
The games do get more polished over time, which is partially offset by the Redux versions of the two earlier games, but there is a continuity of character and story, so you may want to do pre-game Lore research.
Well, Metro 2033 and Last Light are both $1.99 right now, so I suppose I could just buy them both as well
I’m guessing I can probably pick up the lore from context in Exodus pretty well…? I played Half-Life 2 not knowing anything about the lore, and pretty quickly figured out I was in a world that was overrun by an alien species that the ‘powers that be’ on Earth had made an unholy alliance with. So when I played Black Mesa (Indie remake of HL 1) afterward, it played out for me like a nice prequel / origin story.
What would you recommend, PL? You’ve never steered me wrong with game advice yet. The first of the trilogy, Metro 2033, was only released a year before FO4, so still a pretty modern game by my standards. Is it worth it, story-wise, to play the series from the start? Or might I find the earlier games a bit old and creaky after coming off a relatively modern game like Atomfall?
It’s… nuanced? First, you jumping right into FO4 without any problems proves you’re almost certainly correct - you’ll pick up a lot of lore from context and it probably won’t be a problem for you. But, it’s a continuation of the same character and story, so it would be like jumping into Witcher 3 without the other games - yeah, none of the jankiness of the earlier titles, but sometimes you’d be wondering “Who is this person? Why do I care?”.
Even more so than many games, Metro is about the setting. Unsurprising since it’s derived from a series of published novels (though with a lot of divergence, one of the reasons for the Witcher comparison!). Metro is also a bit more linear, especially in the early games.
So, after much equivocating, I’d advise (at current prices especially!) buying the Redux version of Metro 2033 and play it immediately for a few hours. If it doesn’t work for you, do a return (thus the suggestion for playing immediately), and just skip to Exodus. As above, I’m pretty sure you’ll do fine. But the earlier games are solid storytelling, and if you like some of the scarcity of options from the early stages of FO4, you’ll get involved in “What weapon do I use now? Can I save ammo for later? What do I need to do for this next section?”.
Thanks! But heck, at $2 a game, I’ll just buy the first two and I’m not worried about returning them. That’s less than a lunch. I’m more worried about my remaining space on the drive I keep my games on, but I still have a fair amount of space left, and I’m guessing those older games aren’t too big.
ETA: I did a bit of googling, and overwhelmingly the internet gaming community (and Google’s AI, for what that’s worth) recommends playing the first two games first to have a deeper, more immersive experience with the characters and lore. Also the first games apparently are relatively quick and linear (not a lot of getting into the weeds with side quests and such) so I think I will definitely try that.
