Caltrops - What Are You Playing Right Now?





	[quote name="Rafiki"]whole time. Walk into town, "What's going on around these parts? I'm new here and just arrived.....<i>right now.</i>" "Well, we're trying to resolve this long-standing, complex, decade-long social/political conflict that's probably going to lead us to war." "I'll take care of it." "OKAY ^___________^" OBJECTIVE: Infiltrate a heavily fortified enemy stronghold and find a way to disable the hrrglbglrbglrbglrbgl Walk into a building, kill 5 enemies, walk upstairs into the one other room in the building and push a button on a console. QUEST COMPLETE! confetti and party favors "We need a part to fix our cooling system, but the one guy who has the part has stubbornly refused to give it to us for months and he's impervious to reason." Walk 10 feet outside, ride an elevator downstairs, walk 10 more feet to the guy. "Gimme that part or we'll all die." "OKAY ^___________^" I appreciate not having to invest in a sprawling 100-hour RPG, but everything winds up being so abbreviated it's laughable. The wandering stranger template of walking into a variety of settlements and outposts and inserting yourself into the local drama doesn't really work across such a short game because everything has to be resolved so abruptly. If every single sidequest was just built around supporting the central questline, it probably would have worked better. They eliminated VATS and also the reason for weapon skill points to exist. There's no need for simulated proficiency when you have a real-time combat system that relies solely on player proficiency, but rather than deleting weapon skills they just made points do things like "increased crit %" and decided that was fun. Upgrading weapons and armor is like unlocking godmode. Once I understood what the Tinker option on workbenches did, I was unstoppable and so were my companions. I guess maybe a lot of content was cut? I go from steamrolling through combat the entire game and passing trivially low dialog checks, and then get to the final area where I'm suddenly assfucked by enemies and have 100-point skill checks. Nearly every single perk is combat related despite combat being so easy they're not really worth it. If you try to pick all of the non-combat perks, then after about 2 it devolves into, "well....I guess 25% faster walk speed is good." The goop gun that makes enemies float into the air and then ragdoll to the ground was the only good gun. Even worked on the final boss! All of the other weapons were the most vanilla melee, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, and sniper rifle. The game has a useless reputation system. They provide vendor discounts despite the fact the world is overflowing with money, items, and ammo. Scattered across every table and counter-top, crammed into every drawer and cupboard. You will never, ever, at any point be wanting for ammo or medkits. Waddling across the landscape, every pocket stuffed full to bursting like Marge at the candy convention. Spoiler, but who cares: if you help out assorted factions, then they show up in the final area to help you raid it and clear out enemy troops for you. It's payoff for completing their quests favorably, but in terms of the story it makes no sense at all. They had no idea you were going there, why you were going there, and EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. you tried to explain to someone who you are and what you were doing they were just like, "Huh? Wha? Wa ha ha, you sure are crazy with all of that crazy talk!" This game kind of sucks :( The one silver lining of the game is that it ran buttery smooth, load times were virtually non-existent, and I can't recall a single bug I encountered the entire time. So at least it was really polished.[/quote]