(no subject)

[camwyn]

So, um, I realize I sort of dropped my Camwyn Stinks At Video Games thing a while ago in the middle of an early Fallout 3 playthrough, but I sort of have a good reason. Namely: the game is freakin' enormous. Seriously, it was like 77 hours of game time the first playthrough for me. Writing the whole thing up could take months. I can still work on that and on the HL 2 Episodes, but we'll have to see how that goes...

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is because there have been two downloadable content packs released for Fallout 3 so far, and I've played both of them now. I really like Operation: Anchorage. The Pitt? Well...

The Pitt is a well-crafted chunk of game, and it makes for an interesting playthrough, but the difference in feeling between The Pitt and the rest of the game is startling. The best I can do to sum it up without spoilers is to say that The Pitt would not be out of place at all in the more nightmarish modern depictions of post-apocalyptic futures. There are no indicators whatsoever that the events of The Pitt take place in The FUTURE!!! of 1940s and 1950s science fiction. If that and boatloads of shiny new weapons and armor types are what you want, great. You'll love The Pitt. Otherwise, you can take it or leave it.

Oh, one other thing in the interests of fairness. They introduce a new enemy type in The Pitt: trogs. The Pitt doesn't have supermutants. It has people who've been so overwhelmed by residual background poisons and radiation (and possibly FEV, I don't know) that they've become more disturbingly twisted and bestial than feral ghouls- but they still have a couple of words they can call out at times. Trogs are freaky. Part of me not wanting to integrate the Pitt stuff lies in the fact that if I did I'd have to deal with trogs again and I'd really rather not do that.

Anyway, I don't plan on integrating the content from The Pitt into Ellen's stuff at Milliways, and if I get back to writing up the game here, I'm probably not going to deal with The Pitt either. Operation: Anchorage, yes, and when Broken Steel comes out, yes, but The Pitt, no.

Comments

[kotorjedi-amaya.livejournal.com]

So it's almost more like if they took Fallout and put it in the Silent Hill universe? Or am I reading that wrong?

Also, it sounds right up my alley and damn do I wish I had an Xbox.

[camwyn]

I honestly couldn't say, never having played Silent Hill. However, I will note that part of getting through the Pitt storyline- which you absolutely have to do (no sandboxing) once you start on the Pitt content, if you ever want to return to the Capital Wasteland- involves surviving repeated combat in a gladiatorial arena. One where they drop barrels full of radioactive waste in just to make things interesting.

[kotorjedi-amaya.livejournal.com]

....wow.

That sounds kind of epic, actually, though frustrating too. (Mostly because I am horrendous at dodging things.)

[camwyn]

They aren't trying to hit you with the barrels. They're just putting them in there so that if you don't either finish the fight quickly or take whatever Rad-X you could get your hands on beforehand, you start getting radiation poisoning in a hurry.

Now, fighting the guys with the flamethrower and the Deathclaw Gauntlet? That's another story.

[kotorjedi-amaya.livejournal.com]

What's the Deathclaw Gauntlet?

[camwyn]

A handmade weapon that's used for unarmed/hand to hand combat. It's made from the hand of a twelve foot tall killer death lizard and it slices through any armor in the game. Looks like Freddy Krueger, hurts like Wolverine.

[kotorjedi-amaya.livejournal.com]

DUDE.

That's awesome. :D

[camwyn]

There's a lot of handcrafted weapons in the game that provoke responses like that. I'm still proud of killing what amounted to the Incredible Hulk (it was twenty feet tall, green, angry as hell, massively tough, and bashed people's heads in with a fire hydrant on a stick) using a gun that fired railroad spikes and made choo-choo noises. And there are the Nuka-Grenades, which are the single most dangerous handheld explosive in the game- they're made from tin cans, turpentine, household cleanser, and glowing purple soda...

Picture of the Deathclaw Gauntlet, btw.

[kotorjedi-amaya.livejournal.com]

I've heard of the railroad gun! I also want to try out the flaming sword I saw on the Wiki. XD

[camwyn]

Ah, the Shishkebab. Yes, if you make nice to the vampire family leader (no, rly), you get the instructions to make that. Then you just have to chase down lawnmower parts. The motorcycle pieces are easy enough to find and any house that has an oven has a pilot light. That thing's fun. Especially when an enemy runs away while on fire.

[kotorjedi-amaya.livejournal.com]

Mwahahahahaahha.


There is a reason I usually play Pyro in TF2.

[camwyn]

For you, we have the Pyromaniac perk, the Flamer big gun, the Firelance alien energy weapon (no, rly- but it's only available in cases of random encounters and may not appear in your game at all), and the Zhu-Rong Chinese Pistol, which fires .32 cal bullets but they set their targets on fire when they hit.

[kotorjedi-amaya.livejournal.com]

I like weapons that can do area damage; I like plasma guns, flamethrowers, and other such things. So the Firelance thing sounds amazing.

[camwyn]

Frag grenades and pulse grenades are your friends. I wouldn't've made it out of the Pitt without frag grenades- trogs tend to stick very close together, so one grenade is good for three or four of them, maybe more. Pulse grenades don't hurt most critters so much, but if you're up against robots it's lights out for Robbie- that there's an electromagnetic pulse.

There are plasma guns in the game but they're not area effect, alas. May I recommend either the minigun or the Gatling laser?

ETA: And the cars. That explode with mushroom clouds when they take enough damage.

And then there is the Fat Man, and its horrifying cousin, the Experimental MIRV...

[kotorjedi-amaya.livejournal.com]

Well, as far as plasma goes, I was thinking the one in Quake, that has a nice spray pattern.

And exploding cars sound awesome. :)

[slarti.livejournal.com]

In case you haven't seen it yet. (http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=281) :-)

[camwyn]

BWAH.

Priceless.