lately I’ve been absolutely loving playing #Fallout3 with some basic survival mods

specifically I found one called Simple Realism that makes the game into much more of a hardcore experience with extremely high damage and scarcity of healing items and ammo. the damage is so high that often just one lucky shot is enough to remove 75% of my health

as I play I’m constantly looking out for humanoid shapes in the distance and listening for gunfire or explosions. raiders are dangerous even from moderately long distances, and it’s generally better to give them a wide berth and sneak around them rather than risk being seriously injured or killed

and when I do choose to fight I’m often forced to improvise, set explosive traps for enemies, blindly throw grenades into rooms I can hear speech from, try to lure enemies into choke points, etc. and I love that the difficulty is so high that I have to engage with so many different systems that I would otherwise leave untouched, and approach each situation differently

I absolutely love how atmospheric the world is, and the environmental storytelling really draws me in. not to mention the desperation and tension fading into relief as I manage to scavenge what I need to survive, find a safe place to heal myself, or just barely manage to escape a dangerous situation

after this playthrough I’ve been thinking about trying similar mods for some other Fallout games too. it seems like Fallout 4 has by far the most mods - probably because it’s using the Creation Engine which is a little easier to mod for

@kasdeya Based on what you seem to value mechanically, I think you might enjoy Expedition 33. Unfortunately the story (even just up to where I am so far) is deeply traumatic, so I'm not sure that would be your cup of tea. But in terms of gameplay, on the hard mode I'm being forced to engage with absolutely every system I possibly can, and the exultation in virtuosity is sublime.

@kasdeya

Interesting, I will keep that mod in mind.

I like it it when Games make Guns actually dangerous and don't trivialise them.

Brutal Doom has a tactical mode that massively increases Damage output of the weapons, both your own and that of the enemies, it's an interesting way of playing, but a 2/3 of the original levels become unplayable.

@Kaution I absolutely fucking love realism mode in Brutal Doom. I pretty much exclusively play Brutal Doom with tactical and realism mode and I have played so. fucking. much. of it - like probably easily 200+ hours

have you ever tried Hideous Destructor? that’s another ZDoom mod that does a fantastic job of making every single bit of damage feel potentially devastating

@liese ooh - thank you for the recommendation! I had no idea that it could be such a difficult game tbh - everything I’ve heard about it has just been about the story. but that’s really cool - I’m glad that there are still games like this out there, that aren’t just Souls-likes

but yeah from everything that I’ve heard about the game’s story, it’s definitely not a game that I could play unfortunately

@kasdeya

HD is a bit too involved for my tastes, but an impressive mod!

@Kaution that’s fair! it is a lot and very difficult to learn at first. but yeah I absolutely love it too

@kasdeya

BTW, someone used HD as a base to remake System Shock in Doom: SysDoom Shock, a mod of a mod!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr2itrhWEMU&list=PLaoy_D2hurr44MkfqMaQpe1ZQqcPf8VT6&index=4

@Kaution ohhh - that is so cool! I wonder why they chose Hideous Destructor as a base - maybe they’re using its health system? but I love that someone was able to take HDest and run with it like this