Replayed Fallout 3 as a Small Guns specialist. In this game Small Guns refers to any conventional weapons (rifles , pistols, etc), but not the big ones like Missile Launchers. Weapons of that size among our modern weapons are under Big Guns, which also covers Gatling Lasers and Flamethrowers.
Really much harder than going melee. I guess despite being designed as a shooter, the game mechanics favour melee more.
First it's the ammo supply. In the early game I never get enough ammo and money to buy ammo. I barely get enough for Stimpaks, let alone repairs. I just hold several different guns using different ammo types so that when one breaks/runs out of bullets I just switch to another gun. It was only until half the game was over that I was able to afford to buy ammo from vendors instead of surviving on what I scrape up from the floor.
Second, most of the guns in the early game don't have the automatic fire mode. Using the Hunting Rifle at long range is fine, but when you're battling your way through a maintenance shaft underground, 90% of the monsters are found in cramped little tunnels. Without VATS, I'd be dead all the time. VATS allows the computer to shoot for me with a certain probability of success depending on distance, condition of weapon and surface area exposed in my direction. It also, for some reason, makes the shots slightly more lethal and wears off the weapon faster.
Third, reload! Having used melee weapons all the time in my previous runs, reload feels totally like downtime to me. It's like I'm forced to be disabled each time my gun needs a new magazine. I cannot heal myself when I'm reloading, which leaves me no choice but to find a place to hide before my ammo runs out. Very different from melee battles, in which all I do is run towards the enemies and spam mouse clicks.
It took some time to get use to these, but I managed to finish the game quickly without going for many sidequests. In fact I was only at level 19 when I finished the Broken Steel campaign. Too easy, even at the hardest difficulty. The ability to hit Tab at anytime is basically the I-WIN button of this game.
Left 4 Dead 2 really is better than its predecessor. More weapons, yes, but also more varied scenarios. Now the game is not just about finding tactically sound locations for killing zombies but the final round of each of the four campaigns are also designed to be different from the rest.
Take for example the campaign entitled "The Parish". The final round is a race across a bridge filled with broken gaps and car wreckage. There are few if not no safe corners where you can have your back protected and a clear view in front of you. And not to forget, zombies everywhere all the time. One strategy I have found to work, after playing it twice, is to run like there is no tomorrow. Forget teamwork and forget covering your back, it's every man for himself when the bridge is lowered for you to cross.
The first time I completed that round, it was not me who survived but someone else. He just ran like hell and used the Adrenaline Shot when he encountered the Tank. The shot gives a temporary speed boost and extra HP, so basically he ran like the wind and used his AK47 to clear his path.
I did that the second time and won. Everyone else in my team died, with the last person to fall involuntarily sacrificing himself to distract the Tank from me. When I saw the Tank, I looked at my grenade slot expecting a Molotov, which would burn the Tank till it dies in about half a minute. BUT IT WASN'T! I was holding a Pipe Bomb, which would not kill the Tank. And since I expected a Molotov, I was running straight towards the Tank. OMG FFFFFFFF...
Good thing I was also holding an Adrenaline Shot, so I used that instead and ran like crazy. Didn't even bother to look back till I couldn't hear it anymore. That was when I spotted the big thing bashing my last living fellow Survivor who was already lying down and saying "WTF?" on chat. Oh well, let's not waste this speed boost.
Since the other two were already dead, the cause of which was probably slow reflexes, they were probably watching me. Couldn't lose the round because I had already abandoned them to their fates. Just after I turned back to continue running, the zombie hordes arrived on the scene. Not the usual 5 zombies running towards you as experienced at the beginning of the bridge race, but a whole freakin swarm of screaming blackness.
I THANK MY NOOBNESS THAT I HAD TAKEN THE PIPE BOMB! This grenade beeps very loudly to attract zombies and explodes after a few seconds. Excellent zombie magnet, perfect for the situation. So I threw it to my left like a little boy playing fetch with his pet dog, and all the undead ran towards the bomb instead. Wheee!! Good boys!
I never noticed when it wore off, but my speed boost finally ended some time before I saw the rescue helicopter. I was checking my ammo and HP with a glance when I saw that, but I was already in the clear. So close! The chopper was right there. At the moment someone could have played
and it would be perfect. No, no one did and nothing is perfect. With just two zombies running towards me ahead, I easily gunned down the first and elbowed the second, then I was on the chopper!
Here's the demonstration videos of this stage by some website I've never heard of. It's quite different since they actually used teamwork. Maybe that's why it ended the way it did.
Another final round that I've tried so far is the one in Dead Center. This one is located in a shopping mall and the objective is to gather fuel tanks so that we can drive a race car (which is on exhibit) to safety. The containers are spread across a large part of the multi-storey mall, so there was a lot of running involved too.
I never did finish this even though I was shown what to do. Basically due to the car being on the first floor , we had to run to the containers, pick them up and throw them down, all the while covering each other from zombies that come from everywhere. Seriously, it's amazing how many zombies can run out from the washrooms. It's like when people get attacked by the undead their first thought is to run towards the safety of the cubicles.
The difficulty is in the lack of railings. They're all metal bars with big glass panes, and guess what happens to them when we're spraying gunfire everywhere to hold back the zombie avalanches. So without them, we easily fall off and get separated from the rest of the team. Many things can make us fall, ranging from simple panic to Jockeys. When that happens, let's just say that lone wolves in L4D2 are always zombie food.
The third (I've only tried 3 finales due to lack of hosts) one is in Dark Carnival. This campaign ends with the Survivors attempting to attract the attention of the rescue choppers by turning on the light show of a rock band. Lots of fireworks and loud music, which obviously would make the stage a zombie magnet.
Nothing too original about this finale. It's the standard sort from L4D1 where players hold the area till the rescuers arrive and then they run to them. Not too hard to finish since most L4D2 players are experienced enough from their time spent in L4D1. Just find a corner and shoot, that's all.
Also spent a few hours on this new MMORPG called Face of Mankind. This game is quite different from the normal go-out-and-kill-monsters type of game because there are no monsters involved. As a sci-fi game, it is based on a imaginary future in which people have discovered teleportation and colonized other worlds.
First thing about this game that I learnt is that there are 8 factions - 2 government armed forces, 3 underworld clans and 3 corporations. Basically the armed forces and underworld clans are always fighting and the 3 corporations provide the resources for the wars.
The Law Enforcement Department (LED) is the police force. I tried it at first and it was interesting. Their special abilities are scans, the power to arrest criminals and the ability to use stun weapons. Scans are the futuristic version of a body search, in which one can find out if the person is carrying illegal items like drugs. Penalty Points (PP) is what makes people criminals. These are gained by committing felonies and lost by spending time in the prison at DeMorgan's Castle which is run by the LED faction. Stuns are required to disable criminals in order to arrest them.
But I got bored of doing guard duty as a policeman, so I went on to try the Vortex Inc. As an employee of Vortex, I get 90% discounts for transports, which is the only way to move goods between planets. How is this important? Well for example certain things can only be mined at certain planets and after making a certain item for sale in New York, I find that half the cost of making the item available for sale from scratch is made up by the transportation fee. That's after the discount. This privilege is given to us because Vortex Inc invented and owns the teleportation system known as the Vortex Drive.
The other armed force apart from the LED is the Freedom Defense Corps, ie the military. While the police maintains order in the cities, the military does the heavy work outside. Their special abilities are the same as the LED's except they can't see the PP of the people they scan. In place of that is the ability to see fellow FDC members on their minimap. I think it's supposed to help in battles. Also, while the LED gets exclusive access to everywhere in the prison (they run the place), the FDC gets the same for a giant spaceship, which is supposed to protect humanity. From what, I don't know.
Now back to the corps. The second corporation is the Eurocore. Its fictional history says that it is what eventually became of the European Union. Its special ability is that its employees get excellent discounts when making goods from raw materials.
The third is the Colonization and Mining Guild, which is the result of Man's space colonization. They get big discounts for mining raw materials.
Finally, the clans. The most prominent clan is the Brotherhood of Shadows. Their special ability is the illegal drug production. I've never tried drugs but supposedly it helps with many things including fighting capabilities (more stamina, etc). The catch is that they cannot mine for materials and this applies to all three clans.
The second is the Mercenaries of the Blood. They can't make drugs but they can form departments at lower ranks. Not sure how that is supposed to help with anything, but it must be quite beneficial in some way.
The last is the Guardians of Mankind. They believe they're fighting a corrupted government, the Global Dominion, which controls the LED and FDC. The GD isn't a playable faction. Anyhow, these guys are pretty rare from what I've seen. Their special abilities are cheaper clones (aka resurrections), clones start with more HP, they heal for free at medical terminals and they are the only ones who can make the XL-size medkits. Most importantly, GoM is the only faction that can produce medic guns that heal with their rays.
This game is NOT player-friendly. You don't get special PVP protection at the beginning. I got ganked twice while AFK in New York City as a police before I realized there are people who do nothing but look for AFK people to kill. The game has no NPC guards to guarantee safety, so all guards are human-controlled and thus not very alert and suck at shooting. You'd be surprised by how much friendly fire I saw during my one day in the police force.
I started out with nothing but 20k credits. In the LED I had to buy armour and weapons but in VI someone gives out newbie gear for free. It's cheap and I could easily afford it, but later I realized that every credit counts because mining stuff, producing goods, transporting goods and selling goods cost credits (taxes are imposed in the case of sales of goods). Also, anything that isn't a production component can only be produced if I buy the modul (aka recipe) which costs thousands of credits each.
Quests come in the form of objectives. 5 are given at any given moment and you have to complete 3 to refresh the list. The 5 are randomly chosen according to the priorities of goals set by faction leaders. For example in the LED the highest priority is to maintain peace in New York City, so at least one of the 5 is always guard duty at NYC, which is done by standing in sight of either anyone or clan members, depending on the objective description, for a certain period of time (at least 30mins game time or about 15 minutes real time from what I've seen).
As a VI employee the corp's top priority is to gain economic monopoly in the home planet of the BoS, so two of my 5 present objective is to produce goods and sell stuff there. Maintaining peace at VI's base planet is of Normal Priority only, so only one is guard duty there.
Anyway it's not actually fun if you want to kill monsters regularly. I find it interesting only because making money is always fun. Producing items at the cheapest rates possible and mentally laughing at the fact that my seemingly reasonably competitive prices are in fact horribly inflated never fails to entertain.
Now I see how big companies make so much money. People would find raised prices reasonable if they don't know how much it actually costs to make the items and are used to those numbers on the price tags. And don't say that people have to eat. What are they eating? Gold bars?
FoM is serious bizness. At least, it is to some of the policemen. I've been camping at a prison gate while waiting for my raw materials to be mined (it's automatic, you just need to wait) because it's always safer to be camping near a heavily guarded place. I tell you, those guys will shoot at any trespassers. It's just like a real prison!
It's not just that they shoot to kill, but they don't even allow anyone to stand on the ramp leading to the sealed gate that only non-newbie LED (police faction) members can open. If you stand on the slope, they would give a warning before firing. Those guys don't joke about their protocols. They don't even allow guided tours!
But in the end it's safe there, unlike in other places they are supposed to control, like New York City.
Safety is important because when we're mining or manufacturing stuff, we often go AFK. The production and mining system is such that the costs of the process is directly proportional to the speed of it. You shorten the time you wait, you pay more. In addition to that is that if the machine is working faster, it heats up faster too. So more speed requires more cooling, which in turn requires more money. Personally as a newbie I set it to the lowest possible setting and camp at the prison gate. Let the police guard me while they guard the gate.
But the prison world, DeMorgan's Castle aka DMC, doesn't have everything. In fact, all planets only have some raw materials available. So I do have to visit Tokyo sometimes, which sucks because I have to find some really isolated spot. Still, it's doable and I haven't died in a while.
Entertainment is usually available at the gate just because it's heavily guarded. Lots of people would go there to tease the guards or try to run through when it's opened for the LED to enter. It's kind of like IRC but with fake identities and purposes. The drug smugglers would push their limits of the law by asking the guards if they wanted illegal stuff. Sometimes someone would throw a grenade at them for fun. Other times people try to troll the guards.
Once yesterday about 20 members of the Brotherhood of Shadows travelled around the public part of the prison in a train formation and tried to annoy the guards by bunching around one of them. Eventually the guards did fire at them, but there were over 20 of them so it really didn't make much difference.
So after a few days of playing, I see that roleplaying is very important in this game. In my company there is a department for taking transport contracts from other factions and even a R&D department. In the LED faction there is a Internal Affairs Department that investigates crimes committed by their own members. In fact I just sent them a complaint, with screenshot shown below attached, of a police officer who tried to stab me thrice while I appeared to be AFK and within a few hours they told me they were handling it.
Now my faction's base planet is being attacked by the Mercenaries. According to other members, some people may have made a contract with the mercs to attack us. It won't destroy the faction, but we will lose the discounts we enjoy while at home. So it's still a very serious matter.
As for the title, the answer is yes.
I was curious when I saw a video on Youtube's homepage about putting on makeup.
1) I don't visit Youtube often.
2) I was mining stuff on FoM and didn't have much to do.
3) I have never seen a girl put on makeup before, other than a few glimpses on TV or in films.
As I watched her put on her eyeliner and mascara and whatever on her eyelids, all I could think about was how uncomfortable it must be. I mean, don't those hair on the brushes touch the eyeballs occasionally?
The other thing was how much time it took. It really must take some motivation to spend half an hour to paint your face, then some more time at the end of the day to un-paint it.
Also noticed how many tools she has. I swear she has more beauty products and brushes than the number of spare parts and tools in my late father's toolbox. And they're all just for her face.
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