I've got a long week behind me, so I'll definitely try to get some gaming in this weekend. Maybe I'll see which games I've previously downloaded run ok on Pop_OS since I'm trying to get rid of Windows on my gaming PC.
I've played a little further in Another Crab's Treasure and am having quite some fun. I've reached the next big city and am currently tasked to find some treasure to trade in for my shell.
The dialogue is actually quite fine. I like that basically any NPC and your character curse in one way or another but hide it under PG-language. :D
The colourful atmosphere is fun to navigate through too. It does clash quite a bit with the oftentimes quite dark undertones of the story, but that's exactly the point, I feel like. Makes for an interesting experience.
What about you guys?
Historically not so much, it's more of an alternate history situation. The inspiration for the games was actually a book called "Roadside Picnic" which was also subsequently adapted into a film called "Stalker". But instead of setting it in Canada they moved it to Chernobyl and instead of aliens being the reason for all the strange stuff happening in the zone they changed it to be because of a mysterious later second explosion of the nuclear reactor.
Geographically however they did a ton of location-based research and tried hard to include as much as possible of it in the games. That's a large part of why they are so immersive - they are so grounded in real locations and actual places. In particular the city of Pripyat had a lot of care put in to it to make it accurate in the games, but all over every area you'll find examples of real life observations translated directly into the games. This short video has some examples.
The gameplay is much slower than Bioshock and even Fallout, and it's also more serious and less silly in tone than those games - although it does have its own different sense of humour and some funny moments. It's got a much more brooding atmosphere, and the STALKER games do isolation and loneliness and tension really well. It goes so well with the desolate vibe of the exclusion zone. There are also some light horror elements too and some of the underground locations are famously pretty nerve wracking to explore and can get your heart pumping a bit.
The survival mechanics are there, but in the official games pretty light. You have to eat food, you have to use bandages to stop bleeding, your weapons degrade over time... that sort of thing. It was much more heavily present in the original design documents for the first game, and so it has become something many Anomaly modpacks focus a lot on. G.A.M.M.A. for example (the largest/most popular modpack by far) is very much a survival/scavenging experience.
Okay so a little slower and more methodical, got it. And geographical accuracy is also awesome. I probably wouldn't notice too much since I've not watched too many documentaries about the event itself so I wouldn't notice if it's accurate or not, but the though counts for sure.
Actually, I'm glad the survival aspect isn't that much of a focus in the base game. I often struggle to manage my resources and prioritise aspects of health to focus on in a game like that - good thing I won't have to worry about that.
Similarly to Metro, is there Russian/Ukrainian voice-acting? I speak both so that would sell the immersion even more.
I'm pretty sure all games have both. It's been so long since I've played in English that I don't remember exactly, but I think even the English voice setting has some Russian and Ukrainian lines too, like bandit combat shouts or from stalkers sitting around campfires telling stories or jokes. It's just the main story crucial lines that are in English. The original trilogy also did the Metro thing of having the English voices have russian/Ukrainian accents which I liked. Of course original language is best for immersion and some of the most iconic lines from the games are in Russian, like the iconic cheeki breeki
Memories of the Zone comes with russian voice acting as default, and most Anomaly modpacks will as well. STALKER players tend to favour immersion a lot so most want to use original voices. Though I and many others tend to use US English Spec Ops type voice lines from stuff like Call of Duty for the Mercenary faction as it fits them well lore wise and helps create some variety in the zone.
Ok, so I gave SoC a try last night and, man, it does show its age. The voice acting is eh, but whatever, but the gameplay feels so stiff and shaky at the same time. That camera wobble gives me motion sickness too.
Any mods out there that let me turn that off? And anything that, idk, overhauls the gameplay to make it feel more modern? I get that I'm likely asking too much since the game is the way it is and there's not too much I can do about it, ultimately. Thought I'd ask, tho