Keyrock

This looks like about as Metroid clone as Metroid clone gets. I'm not against being influenced by one of my favorite game series ever and using some of its design ideas, but some of the stuff looks like it was ripped straight out of Metroid, like the spinning jump, the doors, and some of the enemies. Hopefully much of the art is placeholder and will be revamped in a more unique style with the funding, otherwise I could see an incoming lawsuit.

On the plus side, they got The Safety Dance. I'll mostly be rocking my own tunes (assuming Mixtape returns) or listening to Klassic anyway. I wish they had more than just one Fryderyk Chopin track, but I guess one is better than none.

That's a rather sizable collection of songs, I imagine most of them are snippets rather than the full song. Gen X, Klassic, KRhyme, and K12 I recognize as stations that have been in every SR game. Hopefully Mixtape (user station) is coming back. I don't see why it wouldn't, but stranger things have happened.

I had just the opposite luck at the Sawmill. The place was so packed with zombies you'd pretty much have to stack them on top of each other to fit any more in there. The zombies weren't the problem, despite the fact that I'm not sure I had even brought enough ammo to deal with all of them. The place is also crawling with dogs. But the real problem is the controller (hopefully it's just one). Those creeps suck on any difficulty, but on Misery Mod difficulty, they will pretty much insta-kil you. I gave it a bunch of tries, but as it stands right now, it's pretty much straight up impossible for me to get in there and get the tools. That place is swarming. I'll have to come back later and hope for better luck (or come packing much better weaponry). On the plus side, on the way back I looted a stalker corpse and several beasties, so at least I got some money out of the trip.

I got the basic tools from the ranger station after killing the group of mercs that was there. That battle took me 4 tries to survive. The key was finding a good defensive position where I had partial cover and close enough to a spot I could retreat to when I had to reload this slow as molasses rifle. I was so ridiculously overloaded with loot off the mercs' bodies that the rather short distance from the station to Stradovsk took me some 5+ minutes to cover because I couldn't walk more than 30 yards before having to stop and rest. The whole time I was just praying "please no blowout, please no blowout, please no blowout". It will be the same thing but with a significantly longer distance and more dangerous terrain when I go to get the tools from the Sawmill and kill some of the zombies there and loot them. On the plus side, killing the zombies should be much easier than killing the mercs, even if there are a lot more zombies.

Part of me worries about how SEGA will ruin Atlus. On the other hand, if they were to make, say, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 3 for PC, then I would hurl my money at them hand over fist.

"We now turn to Buck Stanley with the Freeside Traffic Report. Buck" "Thanks Chip, News Nomad 6 reports a brahmin pile up on I-95. Traffic is stop and go as raiders are on the way to loot the merchants."

Cool. The tools at the Ranger Station will be a breeze. I'm not looking forward to going to the Sawmill and having to kill a horde of zombies. Not that it's difficult. At least I should be able to buy back all the ammo I'll use up killing the zombies withall the gear I'll be able to salvage, it will be a tense and slow trek back to Skadovsk with all that mostly broken gear weighing me down. I finally got a pump-action shotgun. It was just over 50% when I got it and I decided it was worth fixing. It's a little bit less powerful than the break-action I started out with, but I'll gladly give up a bit of stopping power for vastly larger capacity and a little bit faster firing rate.

I hate the fact that "you can kill anyone!" is the gold standard for reactivity. Yes, I recognize that it's a symptom of having combat as your primary gameplay mechanic. But real reactivity, it seems to me, would involve interactions more sophisticated than just kill/don't any character. Like talking? Going into business with? Sharing an apartment? Playing tic-tac-toe? The problem of course is that a lot of these require specific scripting to be done well, unless you go the Fable/Sims route of fake speech. I don't mean that you necessarily do kill these people, I just like that the option is there. I prefer a game to allow me to break it and then have to deal with picking up the pieces rather than making characters invulnerable to avoid said situation. Of course the ability to engage characters in a variety of ways, from violence, to cooperation, to duping, to charming, to intimidation, and so on, is ideal. How many of these could feasibly be programmed in to have real ramifications beyond a line of dialogue or two in a timely manner is the real question, and it seems it's one inXile are trying to answer.

Well, I got the PDF versions of my Numenera books (Core Book & Players Guide). I'll get my physical Numenera Core Book in about 2 weeks. I guess I have a lot of reading to do. /rubs hands together

Just got to the crashed helicopter in the swamp. Had to deal with a couple of Bloodsuckers to make it to it and consequently died a couple of times in the process. Bloodsuckers aren't super tough or anything, but they're a bother to deal with in an open field with tons of shrubs to obscure vision and a break-action shotgun as my best weapon for the job. The best strategy I guess is to let them get almost on you and blast them at point-blank range. Of course, if the timing or aim is off... death. Man, I need some better weaponry in a bad way. I kinda wish I had kept that AKS-74. It would have swiss-cheesed those Bloodsuckers.

The dead soldier near the crashed helicopter on top of the plateau has a scoped AKS-74 that's in very good condition, plus a bunch of ammo for it. He also has a lightly modified Makarov pistol. I kept the pistol because I need something I can use while holding a flashligh. The Makarov is weak, but it's better than nothing. I sold the assault rifle so that I could afford the PMK gasmask. It's a decent rifle, but not my thing since I'm a sniper. It's easy enough to get to Noah, and on top of the plateau you'll most likely only have to deal with several snorks. It's not too hard if you're careful, though I still died a while bunch of times trying to get through the burning field and once to the snorks. I wasn't paying enough attention, I deserved to die.

Nah, all I had was a heavy overcoat and a headwrap. Now I've traded in the headwrap for a PMK gasmask. Still not exactly great protection from the environment, but better than what I had before. Also, the Dragunov is not there (past the Sawmill), as suspected. Oh well. It will probably be a while until i get a decent rifle.

Wouldn't you need cars, functional ones, to have traffic?

I sold bloodsucker meat for 277 RU each. To be honest, I didn't notice the economy changes until you brought it up. I don't think it makes the game easier or cheapens the experience at all. Money is still very tight. I just did the jump into the anomaly deal and got to the crashed chopper on top of the plateau. It took me some 6 tries to correctly repeat Noah's pattern and get through the burning area safely, and by safely I mean damaged but survived. With the gear I looted off the dead soldier I should be able to afford some head gear with a breathing apparatus. Part of me want to save the money to get a better sniper rifle, but I think the headgear is more important at this point. I desperately need to raise my resistance to radiation and poison. I should check to see if the Dragunov you can get for free early in the game is there in the Misery Mod. I doubt it, but it's worth a look. Upgrading from the 1891 to the Dragunov would make one heck of a difference.

No, the Sawx ain't going away. I'm just happy that it seems the Rays have cooled off a tiny bit from their insane hot streak during July. On the plus side, for both the Sawx and Rays, the Orioles lost, finally creating some separation between the top 2 teams in the AL East and everybody else. It's looking more and more like a 2 horse race for the division, and both team will most likely make the postseason.

Good stuff from Peavy in his first start for the Sawx today. 7 strong innings, 2 runs given up and a W. It's only one start, but he looked like the guy the Sawx were hoping he would be when they traded for him. If he pitches like this for the rest of the year then the Sawx are in good shape.

This made me think of great bassists. It sucks tha most of rock bass is basically just the guy plucking the same notes as some of the guitar line an octave lower. Tghank God there is Jazz and Funk to show what the bass guitar can really do: Tal Wilkenfeld https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLEGQ4VO4Uo Victor Wooten http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVQEe8OI3zk Marcus Miller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfJuezN_xA And, just so we don't leave rock out, it IS possible to have sick bass in a rock song. I'll let my man Geddy Lee demonstrate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbsC_fGArVc

King Crimson - Larks' Tongues In Aspic Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqLxfFEzw5I This is about as prog as prog progs. And, keeping with the prog theme, Emerson Lake and Palmer - Karn Evil 9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeQsZOQqO6I And Yes - Roundabout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tdu4uKSZ3M ****, this is an amazing song. The bass just punches and drives so hard it's almost unfair. Chris Squire is so underrated it's mind-boggling. These days most bassists just pluck a note or two that matches and accentuates the guitar track, my man was laying down intricate harmonies like a boss. Music this awesome still exists today but it's generally deep underground and not generally popular because people are idiots and they'd rather listen to bubblegum pop garbage. I hate people.

Yes it is, it absolutely is. You did better than I did. I died 4 times before I ever made it to Skadovsk as a sniper. I really need to get a better sniper rifle. The 1891/30 (Nagant) is a decent gun, but it's just way too slow firing because it's bolt-action to take on anything beyond 1 or 2 enemies at a time (the meager 5 round magazine doesn't help either), unless you get your ass perched up in a real good inaccessible spot with good cover. I need to get my hands on a Dragunov SVD, then it's on like mother ****ing Donkey Kong dealing semi-auto death from afar. Of course, I'd trade the Dragunov's semi-auto firing rate for the slower firing bolt-action Sako TRG-42 any day, because of the ridiculous stopping power and ruthless accuracy, but I don't envision getting one of those until much later in the game. No way they would let me have an uber killing gun like that early on.

The only critic I put any trust in ripped Pacific Rim apart. I'll see it when it comes out on video. /shrugs

I saw that too, thanks though. I'm mulling it over, got the whole weekend. The price is fairly agreeable, it;s just that I'll be playing CoP Misery 2.0 for the foreseeable future, then Saints Row 4 once that comes out, and I still have to finish Unepic...

Nice. I got such a long way to go myself, I just hit lev 18 leadership.

"More dakka is always the answer" - Ancient Orkish Proverb

Absolutely, and if you're stupid enough to lead the pigs back through the minefield a whole bunch of them should by all means get blown up (assuming you didn't disarm every single mine in the entire minefield). I don't want the game dumbed down just because little Timmy might get upset because he can't be bothered to use common sense.