Posted February 20, 2016
Hydrophobia Prophecy - Update:
It appears that I am at or near the very end of the game because the difficulty of proceeding has went up a fair bit compared to most of the rest of the game. I've attempted the area I'm in several times but got stomped badly. The problem is that one of the areas in which this game suffers is the weapon systems and ballistics are very unrealistic. You have a single gun more or less but choose what type of ammo you wish to use from about 5 or 6 different types. There is the default unlimited "sonic" ammo which you hold the trigger down and wait for it to charge up, then let it go. The problem is that you have to wait a bit for it to charge up which is lag time while enemies are shooting you and ducking for cover.
Next is the fact that the game is in a third-person perspective, and when you are near the cover of a wall or similar, your character does not reach around the wall to shoot. Even though you have a clear visual path between your gun and the enemy, when you actually shoot it, most of the time the wall which is off to the left ends up taking the bullet. You're forced to expose a major part of your body in order to shoot around objects. No matter what ammo type you select, the muzzle velocity of the rounds is so slow that you can see the bullets travel from point A to B. The enemies literally can outrun your bullets and hide behind cover. It has a very unrealistic weapon system that is unpleasant and does not react like real weapons would even in video game context. You may be holding a gun but you get a feeling that it is more like a slingshot, however a rock fired from a wrist-rocket slingshot would probably travel at a higher velocity than the bullets in the weapon in this game. :)
So, I'm biding my time trying to figure out the best way to proceed from one piece of cover to another, if I get hit to wait for the game to recharge my health before proceeding, etc. It's feeling a little mechanical rather than immersive currently, but I have made some progress. Problem is though that this game is entirely checkpoint based, so no save games. If it had save games, I'd be saving immediately after every successful kill where my game state is in my favour. Instead, I must proceed with caution and hope the next checkpoint isn't far away. :)
This is probably my 4th or 5th day of attempting getting past this spot. With a little more endurance I probably could have finished it by now, however each time I've sat down to play it was at the end of the day when I was in "brain fart" mode so I didn't give it any gusto. Today though I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (no idea where that expression came from, I think it is old though) and ready to rock n roll. With any luck, I can clear this puppy and cross it off the backlog list. :)
In other progress news: Half-life: Opposing Force and Half-life: Blue Shift
In the mean time over the last week I was experimenting with Half-life: Opposing Force to pimp out the graphics configuration a bit and ended up playing my game-in-progress. A few minutes turned into an hour, which turned into 2 hours, which turned into 4 hours, which turned into 8 hours. Yes, my hours turn into longer time periods in powers of two. Anyhow, I had a vibe going so I went with it and made major progress in my game. The next day later I continued from there and ended up finally completing the game after 16 years or however long its been since that game came out, and did so on the hardest difficulty level.
After playing that game for 2 days and finally beating it though, I still had some Valve love in me so I decided to install Half-life: Blue Shift since it is about half as long as Opposing Force was, so I figured perhaps I could put two games to rest in one gaming sweep. I played through half the game on the hardest difficulty the first day, then the next day I completed the game as well. So that's two long-time games from nostalgia land that I was able to finally put to rest!
Now that my tea-break is complete, it's time to head back to Hydrophobia and plough through the rest of it hopefully. Hopefully I'll have a crowning victory to report in a few hours. :)
It appears that I am at or near the very end of the game because the difficulty of proceeding has went up a fair bit compared to most of the rest of the game. I've attempted the area I'm in several times but got stomped badly. The problem is that one of the areas in which this game suffers is the weapon systems and ballistics are very unrealistic. You have a single gun more or less but choose what type of ammo you wish to use from about 5 or 6 different types. There is the default unlimited "sonic" ammo which you hold the trigger down and wait for it to charge up, then let it go. The problem is that you have to wait a bit for it to charge up which is lag time while enemies are shooting you and ducking for cover.
Next is the fact that the game is in a third-person perspective, and when you are near the cover of a wall or similar, your character does not reach around the wall to shoot. Even though you have a clear visual path between your gun and the enemy, when you actually shoot it, most of the time the wall which is off to the left ends up taking the bullet. You're forced to expose a major part of your body in order to shoot around objects. No matter what ammo type you select, the muzzle velocity of the rounds is so slow that you can see the bullets travel from point A to B. The enemies literally can outrun your bullets and hide behind cover. It has a very unrealistic weapon system that is unpleasant and does not react like real weapons would even in video game context. You may be holding a gun but you get a feeling that it is more like a slingshot, however a rock fired from a wrist-rocket slingshot would probably travel at a higher velocity than the bullets in the weapon in this game. :)
So, I'm biding my time trying to figure out the best way to proceed from one piece of cover to another, if I get hit to wait for the game to recharge my health before proceeding, etc. It's feeling a little mechanical rather than immersive currently, but I have made some progress. Problem is though that this game is entirely checkpoint based, so no save games. If it had save games, I'd be saving immediately after every successful kill where my game state is in my favour. Instead, I must proceed with caution and hope the next checkpoint isn't far away. :)
This is probably my 4th or 5th day of attempting getting past this spot. With a little more endurance I probably could have finished it by now, however each time I've sat down to play it was at the end of the day when I was in "brain fart" mode so I didn't give it any gusto. Today though I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (no idea where that expression came from, I think it is old though) and ready to rock n roll. With any luck, I can clear this puppy and cross it off the backlog list. :)
In other progress news: Half-life: Opposing Force and Half-life: Blue Shift
In the mean time over the last week I was experimenting with Half-life: Opposing Force to pimp out the graphics configuration a bit and ended up playing my game-in-progress. A few minutes turned into an hour, which turned into 2 hours, which turned into 4 hours, which turned into 8 hours. Yes, my hours turn into longer time periods in powers of two. Anyhow, I had a vibe going so I went with it and made major progress in my game. The next day later I continued from there and ended up finally completing the game after 16 years or however long its been since that game came out, and did so on the hardest difficulty level.
After playing that game for 2 days and finally beating it though, I still had some Valve love in me so I decided to install Half-life: Blue Shift since it is about half as long as Opposing Force was, so I figured perhaps I could put two games to rest in one gaming sweep. I played through half the game on the hardest difficulty the first day, then the next day I completed the game as well. So that's two long-time games from nostalgia land that I was able to finally put to rest!
Now that my tea-break is complete, it's time to head back to Hydrophobia and plough through the rest of it hopefully. Hopefully I'll have a crowning victory to report in a few hours. :)
