demagogue on 29/9/2022 at 06:33
I mentioned in my last post about the
Arma Antistasi mod, which simulates a long-term rebellion in pretty insane detail. I like these kind of full sandbox sims where you can jump into these worlds for as long as you want, do what you can, then come back to continue the fight later.
I picked Tanoa because I was thinking the jungle is better cover than the open fields of Altis, but of course foliage means nothing to AI, so all I'm really doing is blinding myself. But I've got myself kind of invested in this place, fighting for my homeland and all, so I'll stick with it. It's a real challenge for one player without using exploits, but if the game lets you do it, it's not cheating, right? In this case anyway, the exploits are more of features for single player than bugs.
I was thinking this is one of the perfect true to life sims for an FPS, but recently I've found one that may match or supersede it... This may have been mentioned before, but it's the first I'm learning about it, and that's
Stalker Anomaly with all the Gamma mods, a package of like ~300 of them. It's another full sandbox sim that goes into insane depth. Have y'all seen this? Stalker was already one of my favorite games ever, but this is on a whole new level.
It's reminding me of the energy and devotion of fans with games (like Darkmod also) and has been convincing me that you're more likely to find best experiences in gaming lately among these really ambitious community mod projects than anything companies can come out with. They're taking these old models and just fine tuning and perfecting them to, er, perfection. Also I get to vicariously fight for the territorial integrity of Ukraine from its alien invasion, which is a nice bonus.
I'll talk more about it when I get deeper into it. But by the way the whole package is free for anyone to download and play. Give it a shot!
- (
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/downloads/stalker-anomaly-151-to-152) Anomaly
- (
https://discord.com/invite/MePVDTHVan) Gamma (get it from their Discord page)
And here's a nice & recent (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UytG_91f44) video overview of it.
Thirith on 29/9/2022 at 07:18
Is there a specific Antistasi server you play on, dema? Or are you basically playing it as a downloaded mission on your PC?
Tomi on 29/9/2022 at 07:58
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
How you upgrade the mountaneers can have a large impact on the difficulty, one of them has some upgrades that make exploring at night and sleeping during the day a solid option (especially if you grab the sleep without tent level-ups during a climb). Sanity is basically the timer for each climb, so having more, losing less or even gaining it lets you take even safer paths.
Thanks for the tips. :) Yeah, I like the upgrade options. The gameplay seems so simple at first, but there are so many little things affecting each other that it's actually surprisingly complex. So far I've pretty much neglected sanity as it's the only "resource" that I haven't had much trouble keeping up, but I suppose I will have to pay more attention to it on the more difficult mountains.
demagogue on 29/9/2022 at 10:13
Quote Posted by Thirith
Is there a specific Antistasi server you play on, dema? Or are you basically playing it as a downloaded mission on your PC?
The latter. Well it's still through the server menu technically.
You have to remember, being in Japan, a lot of servers aren't going to be up when I play most, or even if they are (many are persistent servers that are just running all the time), they're going to be empty at those times. And even if they weren't, I like going at my own pace and it being my own thing.
So I just make my computer a host and go through the server menu by myself. But that does mean if anyone would ever like to join sometime, they can join the same game through the server menu and I could show them around the place. (It has a save feature through the mod itself, so the world persists between sessions.)
PigLick on 29/9/2022 at 11:23
I've been playing Anomaly for the last few weeks after a big vanilla Soc playthrough. Its quite good, yeh like how STALKER might have meant to be played. But you do need to play the orginals to undestand the story and stuff.
Thirith on 29/9/2022 at 11:45
@demagogue
I could definitely imagine joining in one of your Antistasi sessions at some point, though scheduling would be difficult as always. Who knows: perhaps there'd be others from the old Arma crowd who might be interested. Does the version of Antistasi that you're playing require any other mods?
Briareos H on 29/9/2022 at 12:09
Has anyone tried Arma Reforger? I hear it's a mess, but it looks pretty nice.
Thirith on 29/9/2022 at 12:36
I've not tried it out, but it looks pretty nice and it seems a definite step forward in terms of the engine and UI, incorporating some of the things introduced by the big mods (like ACRE or ACE), without overcomplicating things. I've not tried it out, but I'll definitely keep an eye on it.
demagogue on 29/9/2022 at 14:28
@Thirith, it doesn't require any mods, although it's generally compatible with them if you want them. I basically just kept the mods we used, I think I just added Zeus as a failsafe & everyone recommends Enhanced Movement, although I don't even know how mods with multiplayer. The map doesn't really care if the host and client use different mods, right, as long as the map itself is compatible with whatever you want to use? Anyway, I figure this game will be simmering on the back burner for like the next year or so, so anyone is welcome anytime.
Re: Reforger, I've only seen a few videos. It somehow reminds me of X Rebirth. That was also a kind of buggy mess that looked better than X3, but ultimately was a proof of concept for some X4 features and a way to get some income while X4 was still in development. In that case, it was better to just wait for X4. You knew X Rebirth wasn't going to get maintained as soon as X4 came out, and X4 would supersede it in every way.
So the first thing I thought about Reforger was maybe it was doing the same thing & I should just wait for Arma 4. I mean the way the naming scheme worked in pretty literally the same way, and the kinds of early reviews it's getting, gave me those vibes. But I'll give it some months or a year or so and see what general opinion is on it anyway.
Tomi on 29/9/2022 at 22:59
I finally picked up Wreckfest (f.k.a. Next Car Game) after it had spent years near the top of my wishlist. Why did it take me so long? It's a great game, a proper spiritual successor to Bugbear's Flatout. The driving is fun and feels realistic, the destruction can be glorious, and the difficulty level seems just right for me most of the time. The tracks look a bit more monotonous than in Flatout for example, but they're well designed. The ones with two-way traffic can be cruel though, but the way how the track sometimes looks like a war zone at the end of the race is awesome.
There's a lot of content (both single player and multiplayer) and it's not just mindless arcade racing. In fact it's not even close to that. You can either try to outrun your opponents or be more aggressive, but you'll have to tune your car according to that. An armored car won't be as fast, but you can deal some serious damage to your opponents. It's all quite well balanced too, and I love it how intense the races can be, but unlike in many other racing games, it never feels like the CPU is cheating. I'm not too keen on the overly chaotic destruction derby events or some of the way over-the-top races with harvesters and school buses (etc), but fortunately there aren't too many of those.
I'd highly recommend Wreckfest to anyone who's looking for a fun racing game that doesn't take itself too seriously.