D.C. said:
Alex_P said:
In Fallout 3, I certainly never felt like I was actually in danger of running out of stuff. Fallout never really has truly frantic moments, either: everything's kind of running on a smooth beat.
If you want fallout to be frantic and stuff hard to find.. try turning your luck right down and your difficulty up. I did this on my first go and spent up until level 20 constantly running out of bullets, stims, everything breaking on me. If you do find ammo its a small amount. I spent most of my time picking up any rubbish so that i could afford to buy ammo, or picking up a melee weapon until it broke. Made the game a lot more frantic and so in my mid fun.
That'll definitely bring in some of the feeling of attrition. To be honest, attrition is actually the thing I hate most in shooters -- I think it works well in Stalker because it's really the centerpiece of the game(*).
Stalker also has a kind of faster-paced violence that I don't think Fallout 3 can really do out of the box (there may be a mod mix that can achieve it, but you have to really change up a lot). Turning Fallout's difficulty up moves you further away from that because now you have to fire several shots at everything you fight; whereas part of the thrill of Stalker is that a well-aimed shot will probably down most of the critters you face, but things tend to get messy and you're busy trying to run-and-gun or keep to cover instead of being able to take that leisurely shot (the somewhat unnatural way in which most enemies absorb shots to the body in Stalker really doesn't help that).
In Fallout 3, you're the guy (or gal) with nerves of steel -- when the shit hits the fan, flip on VATS and take your time picking which enemies you want to blow away first.
It's sorta like scary-fun vs. badass-fun. Stalker was at its best as a game about scrounging and sneaking to get by; Fallout 3 was at its best as a game about kicking ass with confidence and style. I find the former more intense, but -- with a bit of modification to get rid of that every-shot-takes-away-25%-of-the-enemy's-hit-points feel -- the latter entertained me longer.
-- Alex
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* - Although I find it strange that so very little of your cash actually comes from artifacts. Really I got all my money murdering guys for their guns. That rather ruined some of the fundamental
feel of the Zone.
