Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. €8 from the bargain bin.

This game is trying really hard to make me dislike it. It is confusing, laggy, buggy and the story is told in Babelfish translation that is borderline incomprehensible. It is also bloody hard - shootouts are an exercise in luck and desperation rather than fluid skill with the stark "Game Over" message a regular outcome.

Just when I thought that I was getting the hang of things I suffered the frustration of a mission failing to complete. Apparently some passing wild dogs ate the last of the mutants I had been tasked to kill. Google uncovered a patch and joy of joys this very quest bug was mentioned in the patch notes.

I dutifully downloaded and installed the patch and ...

$%@&&%*@

..."Cannot load save game because of incompatible version number"

Of all the crimes a game developer can commit surely producing a patch that invalidates a player's saved games is the most heinous.

I have struggled through some ponderous buggy games before because the atmosphere sucked me in and I have discovered hidden jewels (Arx Fatalis, X2). Eurogamer gave the game a good but honest review. I may just give up or I might just give it one more try.

Comments

Zoso said…

If you can stand it, I'd try and get through at least to lab X18 which is really very creepy. I didn't get an awful lot further with it myself, it's nicely atmospheric and all but never gripped me enough to bother finishing it.

11:47 pm

mbp said…

I wish I read your blog entry before patching Zoso - at least then I would have known about save games being rendered useless.

I probably will give it one more go - but I hit another bug last night - a quest to kill some zombies at a location only to find no zombies there. This is on the patched game.

11:52 pm

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein...

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p...

Lotro: The Forgotten Treasury

Throg joined a Kinship group for the Forgotten Treasury instance last night. It was an enjoyable change from the solo questing that the now level 55 dwarf champion has been mostly doing so far in Moria. Some members of the group had tried and failed to clear the Treasury before so we knew it would be challenging but we were lucky enough to have a well balanced group with Guardian, Minstrel, Lore Master, Hunter, Burglar and Champion (Throg). Throg (level 55) and the minstrel (53) were both below the 56ish level of the instance but the others were all higher so it more or less balanced out. [SPOILERs ahead] It is a well designed enjoyable instance set in a circular chamber with balcony around. As you enter, a boss absconds to a locked side chamber with his treasure leaving the fellowship to clear trash ringed around the balcony. Once the trash are cleared you have access to a puzzle which must be solved in order to open the locked door. Clearing the (including six mini bosses) also get...

Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

Search This Blog