I should have written something about this a while ago, but I kept not feeling like writing. I am really surprised at how lukewarm I feel toward this game! I've been looking forward to playing it forever. Since August 2013, I haven't been able to play anything very visually demanding because I lost access to my gaming rig at work, but I just bought a new laptop, so I can now play things my old laptop couldn't handle (basically anything AAA after 2009 or so, including Fallout 3). So it's been...years...that I've wanted to play this. Maybe all the waiting raised my expectations to the moon and they couldn't possibly have been met. Or maybe Fallout 3 has just been surpassed by other open-world RPGs that I have played since, or just other games in general that I've played since this now-7-year-old game was released.
35 hours I've pumped into this game. It feels so long, in a bad way, dragging. I've identified several reasons: (1) the urge to loot things; (2) there is so much space and places to explore; (3) NPCs are dull; (4) enemies are almost all the same.
(1) There is too much crap scattered around. I am constantly looking for valuable items to pick up and sell. I am having horrible flashbacks to Bioshock Infinite. Last night though I realized that I don't need that much money anymore, so I should probably stop pixel hunting for cigarette packs and whatnot. I've boosted my lockpicking to 100, so I can pick any lock. My science is over 75, so I can hack all but the most difficult terminals. My sneak is at 60 or 70, and so I'm an adept thief too. Early in the game, I stole everything I saw. Then I figured out that Karma was being affected (although I still don't know exactly what the point of Karma is), so I stopped. So far, I've been able to recruit a paladin because of my good Karma, and as far as I know, that's the only thing in 35 hours that Karma has affected.
Anyway, why do I feel the need to loot things? It's making me bored! Well, I still need money to buy things every now and then. But wait. I have plenty to buy any schematics I come across (a grand total of 4 so far), and I've bought everything for my house in Megaton. My repair skill is up around 50, and I have plenty to repair my guns. What do I need money for?
(2) Although I appreciate the Wasteland's aesthetic, good lord, it is a boring place to wander through. What's that?! Oh, a crumbling building. And look, there are a couple mutants or raiders inside and I can get a few pieces of ammo and food. What's that?! Oh, a metro station. And look, there are roaches and ghouls, and absolutely nothing else of interest! Repeat x 1000. Drab, drab, drab. I've stumbled on to only a few cool things. Last night (I keep talking about last night because I felt I was reaching a zenith of boredom) I wondered why I was taking side quests and poking around outside the main quest at all. Except for the research for the Wasteland Survival Guide. That quest was amazing. I should probably just start following the main quest around. It, at least, is providing some excitement. I'm currently on the way to Vault...106? The one that's through the Little Lamplight, which, by the way, sounds like a cool idea (as a lot of these places do), but is the same boring town as all the rest. Instead of adults, it's kids, so I guess it's meant to be cute or something, but I found Little Lamplight disappointing. Megaton was my favorite, and pretty much every other place has been void of personality. I have found a couple things (very low relative to time spent!), such as Tenpenny Tower. I thought that was pretty neat, except I couldn't figure out how to get the door to the underground open and I ended up just shooting the ghouls in frustration. I was going to try and move them into the tower.
(3) The NPCs are lifeless too. I appreciate the voice acting, my favorite part. But wow, they just wander around aimlessly, get stuck on things, hold the odd conversation with one another, and basically are not fun to interact with. If you go in any town, 9/10 of the NPCs say practically the exact same thing, in slightly different words. On the plus side, that really hammers home plot points and environmental details, but on the down side, if you talk to all the NPCs, it's equivalent to listening to a loop track. But I don't want to not talk to NPCs because I keep thinking one will offer me something neat to do, which has so rarely happened. 95% of NPCs are just information providers. 5% actually create an interesting situation. I really don't like this.
(4) This is one of the biggest letdowns. I really like the combat, but enemies are all the same! If it's humanoid, it's either going to stay far away and snipe, walk sorta close with an assault rifle or pistol, or charge with a melee weapon. I think all the creatures charge, except the gross-looking spider things that shoot acid. It is so easy to deal with enemies, as long as they aren't just super strong. The only thing I have had any sort of problem with in recent memory is when (annoyingly) I load out of a metro tunnel or something and there are 3 Talon mercs standing right in front of me with a contract to kill me. Oh, and I did fight something called a deathclaw (?), which was beastly, but it only took down 1/2 my life and I have about 100 pieces of food, so that doesn't matter.
To continue the list of crappy things, the keyboard controls sort of suck. They are limited. There is no quick access for anything. I can't assign weapons to hotkeys at all. Why? There is no button for the map. Why can't "M" just open the map? I am sick of navigating through the PipBoy for every little thing. Why can't I just push "Q" to open my quests? I'm sure there is a mod for this.
I thought radiation would matter more too. I was thinking of Stalker, where it was a very real danger, or Metro 2033, where you need clean air. But Stalker and Metro this is not. Radiation, at worst, gives -3 points to attributes, chosen randomly. Not a big deal at all. I spent half the game with severe radiation poisoning and it didn't slow me down one bit. Now I have an infirmary in my Megaton house, so I can just fast travel back there and get rid of my radiation for free. It is not a threat whatsoever. I wish it was!
I'll stop ranting. There are things I enjoy, obviously, or I wouldn't still be playing. I'm drawn on by the hope of finding cool stuff in the world. And I do find enough diversions and secrets and odd characters to keep me going, although the down time can be long. The main plot line has me interested, and I was especially surprised by Dr. Braun's simulation in Vault 112 (?). That was really awesome. I also am in love with VATS. The combat is pretty fun, if easy, especially when you go into VATS and blow an enemy apart in slow motion. I just unlocked the Mysterious Stranger perk, where sometimes this "mysterious stranger" will come to your aid in VATS and drastically improve aim or something. I dunno, I haven't had it happen yet! One of my favorite perks that I unlocked is the one where your enemies explode in a gory mess sometimes. It's so fun watching them in slow motion, their limbs coming off, them disintegrating into a pile of ash. I'm a big fan of the leveling, the perks, the skills, the weapons...a lot of the core mechanics and character elements are a win.
Actually, do you know why I started playing this last week? Because I went to see Mad Max and I said, "I need more wasteland. It is time for Fallout." Perhaps I want Fallout to be as crazy as Mad Max, which isn't happening. Ah well. I am about to settle in for another couple hours today, then I've got some work to keep me occupied for a while. Hopefully I can make some progress.
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Beat Grimrock and am proud of myself. This is the most intense game I've played in a long, long time. It's wonderfully atmospheric, very gloomy. I wish I knew how many times I died. It doesn't keep track of that, but I can tell you that I fell into a pit 66 times (usually on purpose!).
Starting roughly halfway through, the game reached this sweet spot of making me alternate between wanting to quit because it was too punishing and jumping with joy at solving a difficult puzzle and discovering the way forward. All of the puzzles can be figured out without a walkthrough. They are tough, but they all make sense! I admit to looking at a walkthrough one time only, and that was because I didn't realize I could drop items through a gate (hint: you can drop items through gates). I had another ridiculous AHA! moment when I realized that you can put items into bags you find on the ground. Duh. Don't I play enough RPGs to know this? For whatever reason, I would pick up bags and crates, empty their contents, and then discard the container. And I wondered why my inventory was full all the time.
One of the most interesting things about the game is how the feel of the combat evolves over the course of it. At first, I could hardly even figure it out, it was such an odd system to me. Then I decided it was repetitive. I learned you can exploit nearly any enemy in the game by just doing a little dance around them, attacking them, moving out of the way before they attack back, and repeat until they die. This works well enough with one enemy at the time, but if you can't isolate them, you find yourself in a tough spot. Two enemies can easily corner you, and even late into the game, the most basic enemies can kill your party members. You *always* have to be careful. And the last room in the game is insanely difficult. There is a constant stream of spawning monsters of various types, plus the boss at the end (although the boss will crush enemies in its path, which is useful for clearing the room a bit). Anyway, it isn't so much repetitive as it is a dance with death every encounter. It looks slow if you're just watching a video (my prior exposure to Grimrock), but you will be poised over the mouse and keyboard to quickly maneuver this way or that and attack depending on what the enemy does. It is intense.
Another thing I liked about Grimrock was all the secrets. According to the stats at the end, I found about half of them. I know I missed a couple big ones, but I thought I found more! You have to kind of pixel hunt along the walls (which does get tedious because all the walls look the same every few levels of the dungeon), looking for anomalies to explore. Then usually a door will open somewhere and you go find it and loot some treasure. It felt rewarding to find secrets, because often they were hard to spot.
Let's talk about my party. My tanky warrior was awesome. I maxed out defensive skills, so he was tough to kill, and still packed a little punch. The minotaur could deal over 100 damage on a regular basis, but died relatively quickly, so near the end of the game, I began pumping him full of armor points so he could wear heavy armor. My mage, I just kind of scattered points across most of the spell schools, with most in spellcraft (+50% cast speed!) and fire. But I did have a bunch of poison spells and some cold spells. Fireball is a great spell. My rogue became a super badass once he unlocked the "throw two throwing weapons at once" skill. He essentially did double damage from then on out. If I could do it over, I probably would have put two tanks in front because the front takes a lot of damage. Then I probably would have just used two rogues, one with throwing weapons and one with daggers (they can get a skill to attack from the back row with daggers). The reason is that, although the mage was powerful, you have to click sequences of buttons to cast spells. This was neat, but practically, it took time to do. It is easier to click on some throwing knives. Also, mana is a resource that my mage burned through, making me rest often to refresh it. I could have just saved a lot of time with two rogues back there.
Another thing I would change is that I would just get rid of alchemy altogether. I used maybe 3 potions the entire game. They were pointless for me and the alchemy ingredients just took up space.
I know there is a Legend of Grimrock 2 out, and I will definitely be buying it! I need some time to relax from this stress-inducing game, but I will have seconds in the future. I am very curious to see what changes they made.
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