Finished Misery 2.1.1 + The Armed Zone for STALKER-Call of Pripyat
Misery is all about bullshit. Bullshit always happen, when you make mods with "realism" as a top priority.
Always.
Where to start...
Misery introduce system of proficiency. There're three classes in the game - Assaulter, Sniper and Recon, both have dedicated suits and weapons. Sounds cool. But.. This make absurd situations, like wearing leather jackets by Assaulter (supposed to be the toughest class in this mod) getting more exhausted. Why? because it's not his dedicated suit.
Exoskeletons and heavy suits with plates are heavy (one is 48kg, other is 27kg, oh and carry limit is 45kg), but you can run without constant halting, even when you go over the weight limit.
Another detail - there're plates (kelvar, metal) that you can place in the armor. They give you not only some protection
(but don't rely on it) but also reduce the speed of suit degradation.
First time with artifact hunt? Grab gasmask, lead container and sneak into radioactive anomalies and maybe PSI one with some drugs. Gasmask stop
incoming radiation but won't help when you're already exposed to it and need to smoke all tabaco that you can grab. You need to smoke after eating cooked mutant meat. To get any smoking things - raid every stashes from vanilla. They don't have cool items inside anymore, only junk and cigs. When you get suit to run into anomalies - your finances are better. If you don't get mad that artifacts are cheaper and suit designed for artefact hunt is helluva expensive. This might count as a bullshit for new people.
AI is not good. They have Far Cry syndrome of bush blindness. It means that they have glues vision toward our character. More human AI, my ass... plus constant bombardment that give you CoD vibes.
You live decent with mutant hunting (it exist in Sigerious Mod but it's a gimmick), shotgun shells is cheap and most effective and most surprising - effective against armored enemies even when description said "armour penetration - None". You can even hunt for birds (ravens) and find cool things inside their corpses like coins.
Oh and here comes 50% of my deaths in this mod. When you find dead mutant and want to get his parts (trophies, meat)
you look around (see if , then press F and get window with parts. Here comes bullshit. Pressing ESC do not close it,
no matter what you do, what you choose - you still grab all things in longass animation. Some dog bite your ass?
Bandit spread bullets in your back? Press ESC and enjoy
sukaaaa....., then loading...
Even when you look around - still some wandering mutant bite your sorry ass off and you die from one hit. Oh, and their attack reach is bigger and wider. I could swiftly dodge their attacks in other mods, but in Misery their attacks still hit you even when their mouth or claws are nearby.
Bullshit.
Another detail is ammo description. .45 HydraShock is great against mutants but here is a thing - your gun damage must be high or have good rate of fire, to notice difference. That's the theory.
Based on shotgun shells case - it's another blatant lie.
Misery filled my daily needs of greed. Nothing more entertaining that running around and robbing laying stalkers.
Especially Mercenaries. They're walking piggy bank, not that average stalkers are poor (only NPCs with leather jackets are poorfuks).
You may find broken guns, use the toolbox that you've found on some random corpse and enjoy new gun.
What's the first thing you notice in the game after dark colors?
Hueg bloat of items. Food (cooked or imported), and tools. Tools work in strange way. You can find tools for short gun with high calibre, long gun with high calibre, pistols and assault rifles.
For these groups, you find toolboxes and minor tools that work in certain, minimum states of % condition (or item HP) and above, which is = 90%, 85%, 75% and 25%. Suits have same but also 65% iirc.
But wait, what to do with 50%, or any item below 65% of condition? Well, You need to buy most expensive tools. No matter if if that's somewhat broken of almost trash.
So much spread so little options beyond some point...
Not sure if I described it clear, it's just stupid when you play it an experience, and I'm not sure if anyone beside Misery's devs and DraQ could defend this shit.
There was a thing - can I play other Stalkers (+mods) after Misery? I say - yes. Only problem are colours. Now Call of Pripyat is full of colours argh
Another idea is to make anomalies and surrounding more deadly. This include PSI, which turn into joke in last stage of the game, where you're forced to make close contact with PSI monsters. They make annoying noises, flash your screen but the worst is - if you come closer - your health drop in the blink of the eye. Not even meds, environmental hazard suits and drugs help.
Last fight is another savescum festival. Nobody survived, including my commander and Strelok from SHoC. Well, technically I could wander around Pripyat and clean it, but I was too eager to finish the game and kick it from my HDD.
The worst thing is - artefacts do nothing to you, excluding radioactivity. Third class - Recon - is supposed to use them but I didn't tried him and won't do in near future.
Oh, and one thing about suit/helmets/mask updates. Dem +400% PSI protection sounds soooogooodNOPE. It increase a
BASE value. If you have one dot/line/%, then hefty +400% PSI protection become nothing in reality. You won't go into
new anomalies with few updates for your pitiful gasmask. Environmental closed suit or GTFO.
Oh my, your venture to Iron Forest end in pain and disappointment. Mostly pain, and noises. Lot of noises PARTYHARD
Misery in a nutshell
because you need it to recover stamina. When you have some experience with artefact hunt -
it become your new habit to snort and THEN run.
This way my Stalker fever is over. I installed it after year or two pause caused by some bullshit infested mod
(iirc it was StalkerSoup, still not much progress of development in 2015, surprise big not).
There're 3 big megamods incoming, one mentioned in the Stalker thread that supposed to be long dead, but creators
made their page on moddb month ago, other is Wormwood that supposed to be "Misery done right" and other one is in the limbo.