Perfect for when I shake my current STALKER addiction and get back to actually playing the AW2 DLCs. Bookmarked, thanks for sharing!

Same story for almost every passion industry. I remember being surprised at first to learn how underpaid Formula 1 engineers are when some of them are literal rocket scientists, for example.

There is an alternate universe out there where the N-gage was a smash hit, Nokia is reigning supreme in the handheld market and we’re all rocking gull-wing phones.

I’m more or less done fiddling with mods at this point, and so the last week I’ve been spending my time actually playing STALKER: Anomaly. It’s been an interesting experience, both familiar and different as I’m using several mods that have released since my last playthrough and that completely change the game. Some for the better, some I’m not sure. STALKER players seem to love three things: misery, immersion and realism and while I am one of those too I also recognise that the pursuit of them can sometimes get in the way of enjoyment.

But even with a heavier-than-I’m-used-to Military presence around the starting areas the early game is playing out much the same as always. Grind some simple missions, take the fights you can win, try to loot NPCs kills if possible, abuse any free temporary companions you can get from quests and gradually scavenge your way towards assembling the kit required to move north. Which involves finding a better armoured suit, finding a better helmet with gas mask, finding a scoped rifle or sniper to repair (I got lucky and found an SVT-40), finding a pump-action or semi-automatic shotgun, crafting your entry level tier night vision goggles, getting enough good healing items and anti-radiation meds…

I’m just about setup now and ready for the trek to Dead City where I’ll make my next base of operations I think, but I decided to finish up some missions in the Great Swamps first while I’m still in the south. Despite my initial misgivings about the idea I managed to clear out the military outpost thanks to being able to sneak my way to a perfect cover and some well timed headshots, so now I should be good to actually do some missions in this area.

Despite the bump in difficulty with the new mods I’m having a great time, Anomaly is just such a unique and special experience - the immersiveness, the desolate loneliness, the horror elements, the atmosphere and world design… It’s hard to explain the beauty of it in text, and it definitely isn’t for everyone. But whenever you get that specific itch, there really isn’t a lot else that can scratch it.

LiDAR has been such a phenomenal step forward for archeology.

For me in general I think FPS games have aged the worst. There is such a big part of the pleasure that comes from animations, gunplay, recoil implementation, enemy AI, ragdolls, hit effects… I have a much easier time playing something like Fallout 1&2 - which are even older but have mechanics that are more timeless.

But yeah it was definitely a time in gaming where technological advancements felt like they were happening at an exponentially increasing pace. Comparing games from 2000 with just a few years later is like night and day. Splinter Cell came out only two years after NOLF and that’s a stealth game that’s aged spectacularly. And even Monolith’s own F.E.A.R. came out in 2005 and feels like one of the first truly modern shooters - one that still really holds up well.

The writing, setting and concept were charming and the art direction is good which means despite being polygonally challenged I don’t mind the way it looks. Great soundtrack too. That being said I tried playing it earlier this year for the first time and it just struck me as one of those games that have aged like fine milk mechanically. It really really wants you to be a stealthy spy sneaking around and being non-lethal yet the stealth gameplay felt terrible, and going guns blazing wasn’t particularly fun either as gunplay in these old games is hard for me to enjoy having gotten used to modern FPSes. And it doesn’t help that the guns blazing approach forces you to listen to a constant soundtrack of blaring alarms, which frankly was hard for me to deal with.

I couldn’t make myself finish it despite really wanting to be able to say I’ve played it, but maybe I’ll give it another go some day. At least I don’t think it’s all that long.

I know it was very original and different back in the day, but is it really one of the “best game ever”?

Ah. I guess of the Sigmas it’s the least offensive version. It’s a shame still though as NGB is the perfect version. But yeah I momentarily forgot about it being an Xbox exclusive.

Great game though!

Does the switch have Ninja Gaiden Black? 04 is good and all but Black is even better.

When seeing “goat” and “Hamilton” in a headline I did not expect it to be so literal. Shows you how much F1-brainrot I’ve been exposed to.

My STALKER: Anomaly playthrough is progressing at the typically languid pace. As soon as I find a scoped shotgun for Hip’s quest I can start thinking about migrating my base of operations a bit north. For a Loner run this would be prime time to setup in Rostok, but Mercenaries aren’t on friendly terms with Duty so that’s out. I’ll have to make it to Dead City probably and that will be quite a trek. I probably have to wait until I find and repair a better suit. And also hope my companions don’t die on me as I need them to haul over all my collected shit in my stash.

I’ve also been playing Chaos Zero Nightmare on my phone. Yes it’s a gacha game (don’t buy any currency to gamble) and yes the character designs are unfortunately a bit too gooneriffic, and yes the story is pretty bad and the translation is pure Google Translate level machine-translated slop. But you know what? The actual gameplay of the roguelike deckbuilder portion is actually very fun. Tons of customisation with an incredibly mutable deckbuilder that has tons of variations for every single card. Even the balance is surprisingly good, with such endless possibilities in combos and specific versions of specific cards that you can make pretty much any character shine with enough work on finding just the right decks and setups. Don’t know if it will stick, and I’ll keep an eye on balance going forward to see if they start making it more pay-to-win, but for now I’m having a surprisingly good time with it.

It’s between this or Silverstone for me, although the opener in Australia in the wet was also a banger. But maybe I’m swayed by the memes on that one.

What a race! In with a shout for race of the season along with Silverstone, surely? God, when was the last time we had two bangers back-to-back? Interlagos once again showing why it’s probably the best track on the calendar.

Even though it turned out that being on the Hards for any extended amount of time was probably a mistake it’s still always so good whenever all three compounds are in play and the strategies are split across the grid. Max made the three-stopper look good in the same race Lawson and Hulk pulled off one-stoppers without even using the Hards!

Big standout besides Verstappens incredible charge through the field was Antonelli hitting a patch of form and pace and now consistently over the last couple races showing why he has had all that hype about him. Also have to single out Lawson, who somehow made the strategy work and held up half the field with some phenomenal defensive driving. Same goes for Hulk, great call from both RB and Sauber to gamble on track position and it paid off. I’ve been critical of Lawson in the past and I still have question marks about his pure pace, but the man can definitely defend.

Absolute horror show for the current underperformers. Both Hamilton and Piastri with a weekend to forget and it’s getting tough to watch both. Piastris title hopes feel well and truly gone and Lewis continues to just feel utterly lost at sea. And of course Aston being the only team stubbornly holding on to their faith in the Hard tyre.

In the end it’s almost a shame that Max put in that masterclass because otherwise Driver of the Day would be a super interesting and open discussion. Lawson with the defensive driving, Hulk making the Softs last on that long stint, Antonelli for his pace and defending P2 and Bearman flying too and pulling off a fantastic overtake on Hulk. Or what about Gasly dragging that dog of an Alpine to a points finish twice in one weekend? Hell, even Albon almost salvaged an otherwise horrible race and strategy with some scorching pace in the last stint.

But of course, Max has to have it. Just a class of his own and I hope something unpredictable happens to make him take the championship down to the wire.

But man, it’s so good to have some great races again, this was just fantastic.

Verstappen with a super aggressive pitstop strategy thanks to the spare unused Softs from going out on Q1. I love it.

They were waiting to serve potential penalties on track so they wouldn’t carry over to next race.

Great strategy race this, all three compounds in play and nobody seems to know the best tire or strategy ahead of time.

Antonelli is flying right now

Verstappen slicing through the field 👀