Real life STALKER cosplay subculture



  • This is AWESOME. They break into old bomb shelters with stolen gas masks, equipment, and tons of booze, and basically act like the NPCs in the STALKER series of games. They even loot crates when they find them!

    (Fair warning: it's really hard to tell when English Russia is pulling a prank. This is the same blog that reported on the Russian cult that worshipped Gadget from Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers. Which was also AWESOME.)



  • Oh, stalker. Good one.

    I just beat AssBro at my usual leisurely completista's pace, so I need a new game.



  • @dhromed said:

    Oh, stalker. Good one.

    I just beat AssBro at my usual leisurely completista's pace, so I need a new game.

    I finished Half-Life 2 (which I replayed because I noticed Valve added achievements-- fuckers!), then finished Portal 2 (single only), now I'm almost done replaying STALKER: Call of Pripyat. Then travel for a few days, when all I'll have is my goddamned Mac, which means... Bejeweled is about the best game it'll run. Then come back and play Metro 2033. And at some point when my buddy gets some time, we're going to record a Portal 2 Co-Op session and do a TV show-like thing with it, and possibly do Overlord 2 and Just Cause that way as well.

    My poor Blood Bowl team is being neglected. Aw.



  • Metro 2033? Looks alright. Fallout 3 all over again.

    I'm enthusiastic about Portal 2, but then, who isn't?


  • 🚽 Regular

    @dhromed said:

    I'm enthusiastic about Portal 2, but then, who isn't?
     

    I'll have to say it is one of the best video games in history. I would put the Portal series on the ranks of Zork, Myst, and Goldeneye 64 in its "significance" in video game history.

    But, beware of another meme explosion coming from it. "The cake is a lie" is nothing compared to the lemons speech or some of the new characters which I will not spoil for you. I'll just say you're in for a treat.



  •  :O

    @RHuckster said:

    Goldeneye 64

    What was significant about this fps?

     



  • @dhromed said:

     :O

    @RHuckster said:

    Goldeneye 64

    What was significant about this fps?

     

    It didn't innovate in any way, it was just well-made and released on a more popular system than the game that actually innovated. Like Half-life.

    Also, Portal 2 is overrated.



  •  This is now the game thread.

     

    OMFG THEY'RE TRAINING A BROTHERHOOD OF ASSASSINS

     

     



  • Also, Portal 2 is overrated.
     

    Overrated by whom? The people that liked it or the media that hyped it before it was even out? 

    Because I've played it, and  I give it a sollid 3 out of 3.

     


  • 🚽 Regular

    @blakeyrat said:

    It didn't innovate in any way, it was just well-made and released on a more popular system than the game that actually innovated. Like Half-life.

    It was innovative in that fps's before it like Doom and Quake had barely a storyline to speak of, and had a *few* levels where you had to do more than just "find keyA and insert into lockA and mercilessly fight zombies on your way." To me, it paved the way for better gameplay you find in many FPS's afterwards.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Also, Portal 2 is overrated.

    Says you. Even my boring dad thought it was awesome. 



  • @RHuckster said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    It didn't innovate in any way, it was just well-made and released on a more popular system than the game that actually innovated. Like Half-life.

    It was innovative in that fps's before it like Doom and Quake had barely a storyline to speak of, and had a few levels where you had to do more than just "find keyA and insert into lockA and mercilessly fight zombies on your way." To me, it paved the way for better gameplay you find in many FPS's afterwards.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Also, Portal 2 is overrated.

    Says you. Even my boring dad thought it was awesome. 

    Well-said. The fatal flaw is that I've played Marathon. Which did everything Half-life did, but is virtually unknown because it came out on an unpopular platform. Which I believe was my original point.



  • @dhromed said:

    Metro 2033? Looks alright. Fallout 3 all over again.

    It's linear as hell by the way. I played it expecting to roam the countryside ala stalker and was sorely disappointed. Still it's not bad if you just want to kill things in post-apocalyptic Russia. They've certainly put some work into it.



  • @dhromed said:

    What was significant about this fps?

     

     

     

    I've always considered it to be because it that was adapted from a movie and didn't suck like every other game made from a movie/TV-show up to that point.

     

    As for Portal as a whole, I think it's a rather good mix between the occasionally annoying puzzle solving and enough script to keep you going through them.



  • @BC_Programmer said:

    As for Portal as a whole, I think it's a rather good mix between the occasionally annoying puzzle solving and enough script to keep you going through them.

    That's pretty much how I feel. Also, I'm probably a bit biased, because I've watched a lot of Stephen Merchant on TV, and I find his humor kind of annoying and predictable. (I wager if you're a typical American who doesn't watch much British, it sounds a lot more fresh.) And with GlaDOS' dialog, I felt like they were trying too hard... there were some clever bits, but mostly it was just "oh look she's calling me fat yet again". Eh.

    And being a sequel, this is a problem it's bound to have, but there's no real amazing part like in the original when you break off the treadmill and start exploring the game on your own. In Portal 2, you just ... end up in another treadmill. It's no less open or flexible (those segments in the first game were extremely linear), but it really *feels* less open and flexible. I'm an Oblivion kind of guy, not a Final Fantasy kind of guy... I don't like being on rails. Unless it's a rails shooter, in which case I like being on rails. Also I felt the puzzles were too easy. The toughest one (for me) only took about 5 minutes to solve, and that's only because I was still up at 1:00 AM.

    Of course when you criticize things, people get the wrong idea. So let me be clear: I think Portal 2 is easily one of the top 3 games this year, and likely the top one. The software ran smoothly and bug- and quirk-free, and I think it was well worth the price I paid.

    That all said, I still think it's overrated. Probably mostly because the games industry has ADD.


  • Garbage Person

    @blakeyrat said:

    I think Portal 2 is easily one of the top 3 games this year, and likely the top one.
    I dunno. This year is looking AWESOME. Still to come, we have: Duke Nukem, Elder Scrolls:Skyrim, Forza 4, Mass Effect 3, Saints Row 3, Batman: Arkham City, Max Payne 3, etc.

    Portal is definitely the best game out thus far, but I'm picking at a minimum ME3 and Duke over it.

     

    That said, I still haven't played coop - but singleplayer was solidly 'alright'.



  • @Weng said:

    Still to come, we have: Duke Nukem,

    Anybody I see paying good money for Duke Nukem, I am going to kick in the nards. Seriously, why the holy shit would anybody be looking forward to a game consisting of 15 solid years of FAIL.

    @Weng said:

    Mass Effect 3

    Mass Effect 2 sucked shit.

    @Weng said:

    Portal is definitely the best game out thus far, but I'm picking at a minimum ME3 and Duke over it.

    Nard-kicking time. What the hell is wrong with you people? Mass Effect 2? The game where the end boss was like a Nintendo reject? Where the plot was so confusing that it actually made less than zero sense? (It retroactively made things that made sense in the first game, like the gun-heatsink thing, make no sense.) An RPG where you can't do the one action every single player of the first game wanted to do? (Tell Cerebus to go fuck themselves.) A game where the heros are so morally bankrupt, you want to pull your hair out? (Sure, they can heal Shepard from being "dead" to being "alive" but don't spent 10 fucking minutes fixing Joker's bum leg, you assholes.) Ugh.

    I think I'm in a different world than every other gamer. And most other people in general. Why do people pay for sequels to games that sucked? Why do people look forward to a game that let them down for literally decades? What is wrong with everybody but me?


  • Garbage Person

    @blakeyrat said:

    Anybody I see paying good money for Duke Nukem, I am going to kick in the nards.
    Have you seen the trailer?

    No, really, have you? If the game manages to live up to that piece of cinematic artwork, it will be the absolute embodiment of everything AAA gaming lost when it sold its soul. Yes, 3dRealms were a bunch of perfectionist dicks, and yes, it's been 'in production' since most FPS gamers were just a gleam in their daddy's eye, but that shit doesn't actually affect the end product in any meaningful way. In the unlikely event that it does manage to live up to that trailer, it will be among the grandest things ever published. Of course, nothing ever lives up to its trailer anymore, so you aren't going to see me paying money for it until I've already made damn sure it does.

    @blakeyrat said:

    What the hell is wrong with you people? Mass Effect 2? The game where the end boss was like a Nintendo reject? Where the plot was so confusing that it actually made less than zero sense? (It retroactively made things that made sense in the first game, like the gun-heatsink thing, make no sense.) An RPG where you *can't do* the one action *every single player of the first game* wanted to do? (Tell Cerebus to go fuck themselves.) A game where the *heros* are so morally bankrupt, you want to pull your hair out? (Sure, they can heal Shepard from being "dead" to being "alive" but don't spent 10 fucking minutes fixing Joker's bum leg, you assholes.) Ugh.
    Oh, no. I'm totally with you. ME2 sucked some pretty serious dick if you weren't playing Morally Bankrupt Female Shepard. I couldn't even get past the intro sequence playing Paragon Dudeshep. Why the hell is the male Shepard the 'canonical' one? The female voice actor actually seems to know something about voice acting, and it's a fresher-looking story anyway.

    Since my ME1 playthrough mostly consisted of me being the biggest asshole imaginable on at least some level, Cerberus worked for me. The gun-heatsink mechanic pissed me right the fuck off, and I was not sad to see it gone, even with the kludge to the universe.The final boss was retarded and I hated it. The final sequence where people die? Hated that. Even if you'd aced all the loyalty quests, there was only one frakking way for everybody to live and you had to guess it more or less at random (or do like I did and Google It). Senseless deaths are stupid. Deaths that the player can't predict reliably enough to be able to avoid them without replaying are DOUBLY STUPID.

    It wasn't nearly as good as ME1. In ME3, the Normandy is wearing an Alliance paintjob again, so the story will hopefully be less bullshit and support a player path other than 'galaxy's biggest asshole' - because it's a lot easier to be morally ambiguous when you're in a military than it is to be morally ambiguous when you're a frakkin' terrorist.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Why do people pay for sequels to games that sucked?
    I usually don't. I'm making an exception here because I really, really like the underlying universe and I'm somewhat attached to my stone-cold icebitch of a character.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Why do people look forward to a game that let them down for literally decades?
    No, seriously. Have you seen the trailer? I thought the same thing until I saw the trailer. Now it gets the same chance that a new franchise gets.

     

    Oh yeah, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is also this year. It's already been shown just how hard you can fuck up a Deus Ex sequel, but this is a prequel. Most gamers seem to be ABSOLUTELY HATEFUL towards this game because it isn't merely Deus Ex with better graphics. They introduced new mechanics and threw away some of the shitty ones! THEY'VE RUINED IT FOREVER! I, however, am cautiously optimistic.

     

     



  • @Weng said:

    Have you seen the trailer?

    Nope.

    @Weng said:

    No, really, have you?

    No, really, nope.

    @Weng said:

    If the game manages to live up to that piece of cinematic artwork, it will be the absolute embodiment of everything AAA gaming lost when it sold its soul.

    Bunk. AAA gaming is better now than ever. People who say stuff like this are mind-crippled by nostalgia. You're not 14 anymore, and those games weren't nearly as great as you think they are.

    @Weng said:

    Why the hell is the male Shepard the 'canonical' one?

    Mysogyny. Also, male Shepard has an awful voice actor... seriously. They should have fired that guy three lines of "could you at least pretend to act?" in.

    @Weng said:

    The gun-heatsink mechanic pissed me right the fuck off, and I was not sad to see it gone, even with the kludge to the universe.

    Maybe; but gameplay or not, it was canon. Now the canon is "we used heatsink ammo-less guns for decades, then we all switched to replaceable heatsinks that inexplicably work exactly like ammo clips, and the entire galaxy switched in like 3 years or less so now you can't even find the old style of gun, even on abandoned bases Cerberus set up 20 years ago or technically isolated communities."

    @Weng said:

    The final sequence where people die?

    Yeah; it's essentially random. It does depend on actions you take, but figuring out which actions and when and how much to talk to people about them is... well, that's probably one core of the Xbox CPU right there.

    However, once I found out it *is* possible for Shepard to live and Miranda to die I felt a lot better about it. Fuck Miranda.

    @Weng said:

    It wasn't nearly as good as ME1.

    It wasn't even good.

    @Weng said:

    No, seriously. Have you seen the trailer?

    No. I'm over the age of 10, so I know that trailers have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the final game.

    @Weng said:

    I thought the same thing until I saw the trailer. Now it gets the same chance that a new franchise gets.

    Then you are a fool, and your money will soon be parted from you.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I'm an Oblivion kind of guy, not a Final Fantasy kind of guy...
     

    I think this is quite apt, and i think the games industry should create a sliding rule between the two to classify their games.

     



  • @stratos said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    I'm an Oblivion kind of guy, not a Final Fantasy kind of guy...
     

    I think this is quite apt, and i think the games industry should create a sliding rule between the two to classify their games.

     

     

    I think of games as character-control games (HalfLife, AssCreed, Portal) and system-control games (WoW, Civ).

    I play mostly form the first category. Fallout 3 contained enough of both to entertain me greatly.

    If a person plays Dragon Age in that typical pause / issue commands / unpause way, it reduces the likelyhood that they'll enjoy games like Gears of War and Halo, and vice versa. It's not impossible, of course. I really enjoyed both HL2's action, and F3's VATS tactical system.



  • I find your definition of system-control weird. How exactly is WoW even remotely the same as civilization.  Now if you would have said eve online, fine, but wow? wow is bascially dungeons and dragons but with lots of other people.



  • @stratos said:

    How exactly is WoW even remotely the same as civilization.
     

    Short version:
    In a system game, you can evade a hit by having a high agility stat. In a control game, you evade a hit by "manually" stepping out of the way using the controller. In a system game, inability to hit an enemy is artificial product of the stats. In a control game, it's because you suck.

    Long version:

    WoW and Civ are both basically flashy frontends for a system of numbers and values that you have to understand to play the game well. It's a pretty cerebral activity.

    WoW is a system of D&D RPG, with HP, mana, leveling, damage multipliers, buffs, etc.
    Civ, and every other RTS or TBS right down to tower defense games, is a system of tech tree and upgrades and the myriad effects they have on eachother and on your high-level tactical decisions.

    Skill in a system game is directly proportional to how well you can think up a solution to a tactical situation, and how effectively you issue commands to units. You play a lord hovering over a field and your association with the units you control is indirect. The fact that in WoW you have 1 "unit" is irrelevant. As soon as your RPG game has a party and lets you issue commands to the avatars (ex. Dragon Age), you're basically playing an RTS.

     

    This is completely opposite to running/jumping/hitting/shooting, when you control 1 main character via direct and basic means. Skill is related to how well you puppeteer your character.

     

    To take WoW and AssCreed as examples:
    in WoW, the character animations are completely meaningless. The models just play an attack animation that slices through air and the opponent's model, but there's no physical interaction between your weapon and your enemy. What matters almost exclusively is the total damage, as summed by the stats on your character and gear.

    In AssCreed, the animations are crucial. You have to respond to enemies by observing their movements, time your counters and attacks, and there are many key combinations for various movement patterns. Conversely, the stats on a weapon do practically nothing and what matters most is how well you've learned to use the controller/keyboard. I greatly reduced the time needed to cut through a group of enemies, because I took some time to take those fighting tutorials. In other words, I learned how to fight, not my character.

     

    Hm. I'm coming off  as sort of anti-rpg and pro-action. FYI, I enjoy going through gear, spells, weapons etc to distill the best combinations and find out which ones are overpowered. Still, I stopped playing Lineage II because it just felt too obviously a graphic shell for a game of numbers vs. numbers.

    You know, if there was StarCraft version (or whatever) where all your units are unique and have stats and gear like in an RPG, that might be the coolest thing ever. Maybe that exists and it failed. :\




  • Ah, I see your point.

    Actually about a hour prior to your comment I was having a discussion in a IRC channel about mmorpg's and innovation. This fuelled by my complain that the main staple of a many a mmorpg, killing monsters/mobs's was boring and repetitive, and in the newest MMORPG I was playing (champions online) the mobs all walked in very simple combinations of 3 monsters, which after you've figured out how to beat was just rinse repeat.

    Now via some side roads this discussion came upon the subject of permanent changes by players, which mostly shows itself in PC influence over terrain, and why this actually only got implemented correctly in eve online. The reason for this is because eve online is more like civilization then D&D, resources are a strategic resource, while in games like wow resources are a time sink and more or less useless. As such it would be useless in games like wow to implement a permanent influence over terrain by players since there can be no real benefit.

    Anyway, not really important. But because of that discussion your grouping of wow with civilization seemed somewhat strange.  



  • @stratos said:

    Anyway, not really important.
     

    Heh, this kind of think seems the be the only thing I can have a conversation about, as witness by my wall of text. :)

    I'm very interested in rich interactive experiences which are almost completely exclusive the games and simulations.



  • @dhromed said:

    You know, if there was StarCraft version (or whatever) where all your units are unique and have stats and gear like in an RPG, that might be the coolest thing ever.



    You mean like X-COM/UFO, only realtime ?



  • @Nelle said:

    @dhromed said:
    You know, if there was StarCraft version (or whatever) where all your units are unique and have stats and gear like in an RPG, that might be the coolest thing ever.



    You mean like X-COM/UFO, only realtime ?

    The little dudes in the Overlord games have their own level and equipment. But you can't dress them, they automatically pick up equipment they like.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    The little dudes in the Overlord games have their own level and equipment. But you can't dress them, they automatically pick up equipment they like.
     

    The recruits in AssBro have levels and equipment as well, but stats in AssCreed are totally meaningless anyway, so it's fluff


  • :belt_onion:

    @dhromed said:

    Heh, this kind of think seems the be the only thing I can have a conversation about, [b]as witness[/b] by my wall of text. :)
    You play some interesting games there: AssCreed, AssBro, Ass Witness, ... do I detect ass trend?



  • Half Ass 2.
    Metro 2455
    Grand Ass Auto
    Sphincter Cell
    etc.

     

     



  • @dhromed said:

    Half Ass 2.
    Metro 2455
    Grand Ass Auto
    Sphincter Cell
    etc.
    No Red Faction 2? No Prototype?

    What kind of half-assed gamer are you?



  • @DOA said:

    Red Faction 2
    Oops. meant Red Faction Guerilla



  • @DOA said:

    No Red Faction 2? No Prototype?

    What kind of half-assed gamer are you?

     

    These ar not all games I've played, just games I could contort into an ass version.

     


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