I really enjoyed my Shepard and Liara romance during the Mass Effect trilogy, but I don’t think it’s particularly well executed in most other games.

Grand Prix on Atari was pretty fun.

Oof, I get it, though… The difference between warm white and cool white is enough to make me want to die. I personally have a soul and enjoy being alive, so I prefer warm white myself.

They’re all orange down here, Georgie…

That’s one unusual looking fellow. Perhaps he could find a new job as a mad scientist of sorts?

Macho Pillow. It’s a big dick bicep shaped pillow for strong, conservative men. Nothing sexual.

Damn, that was a good period, too. They just don’t make 'em like they used to.

America is a shithole. I got out in '17 and my quality of life has improved tenfold.

No problem. I don’t know what it is about 6am bathroom time that makes me write novels.

It functions well enough that I haven’t noticed anything off, save for maybe two occasions in 40+ hours where I was unlucky enough to have bandits spawn in near me. Once out in the woods, and one time they literally appeared sitting in chairs in the room I had just passed through, then attacked on my way back through it. You can’t help but laugh when it happens, but it’s nowhere near like it was on release.

I know that several of the squads I encounter in the wild have been artificially spawned in just outside of my exclusion radius, but they move organically enough that I’ve never had my immersion broken with the impression that these aren’t just stalkers on their own mission. Sure, if I reload a ways back and travel the same route, it may well be a different assortment of them, no one at all, or maybe bandits or mutants the next time, but rather than feeling tacky it keeps the Zone feeling unpredictable. Retracing my steps after reloading often results in a wildly different experience from Point A to Point B, so I can’t cheese my way through much of anything.

I’ve also encountered large, roaming packs of mutants who, when avoided, travel well outside of my exclusion radius and continue to be heard far off in the distance (Flesh are a good example) even though they’re no longer rendered on my screen. I’ve traveled in that direction a short time later just to run into the same pack having changed direction, so there definitely are some persistent A-Life doing their thing out there. It’s just sprinkled with some chance encounters.

All in all, the A-Life isn’t exactly where they/we want it to be, but they’ve taken enough corrective steps that I find it very enjoyable, and I say that as a long-term fan of the originals, as well as hardcore versions like Anomaly. Honestly, the only thing I truly dislike about STALKER 2 is the number of bloodsuckers. They’ve become a lot easier to dispatch with my better gear, but if I’m ever going to run into three bloodsuckers in the wild, it should be like one time. But there are times where I encounter packs of them several times per day, and on Veteran difficulty that is absolute bullshit.

STALKER 2, and I haven’t felt this frightened to climb down into the basement of a decrepit waste processing station since the original trilogy. So in short, it hits just right.

I actually stood in my kitchen last night eating some yogurt and two Lucky Charms cereal bars just to procrastinate what I knew I had to do.

No, mate. Zalyssia just feels like that. We’re all very drunk.

A male protagonist should always look like he either just fucked a bear, or got fucked by a bear. The one on the left meets both of these criteria and is passable.

They all have cousins, so…

STALKER 2

It’s all too fragmented now. I don’t want to commit to any of it. Each platform is 90% garbage and 10% good. You basically have to pay for ten services now just to have a wealth of good content available. It’s easier to just fill my thumb drive up with the content I want.

I’ve always had a fondness for the original Call of Duty single-player campaign. I don’t even care for that series, but the original had a phenomenal campaign.

As a career produce manager I can confirm that we average about a Spock per minute. Usually elderly, and determined to destroy this year’s crop of peaches from BC.

“It’s like my grand-dad always told me… If ya don’t squeeze the peach in’ta noodles it might not be a real peach. Ya doin’ the next guy a favah…”

I’m not Christian/religious at all, but I still have a very deep nostalgia for classic Christmas hymns like Silent Night, O Holy Night, etc. I remember sitting beside my tree as a child listening to our music lights playing midis of all of them. The lyrics can be discarded entirely.

Same. I really enjoyed what I played of it (~4 hours), but as one of the biggest fans of the franchise on this planet, I am torturing myself instead by postponing my first playthrough until A-life is properly implemented. It’s worth the wait. I’ve waited this long already. For now, I’ve gone back to my long-term Anomaly character and have been having a fucking blast.