Disappointed

With v5.5 out of my fucking hair for the week or so's respite I'll get until someone declares the sky is falling and it's all my fault again, I decided to try out some of the new mods I've had downloaded that required a new game.

These include: Arwen's Realism Tweaks, A Crowded Wasteland, Real Injuries - Primary Needs, and Zombie Apocalypse.

Gotta say, I'm not liking a single one.

Arwen's follows the tried-and-true(ly annoying) formula for video game "realism". IE: I KNOW! LETS TAKE AWAY ALL AMMO AND MAKE EVERYTHING HARDER! I guess cause so many people can't shoot a gun, take a punch, or carry heavy things that they assume no one can, and thus your digital avatar's ability to do so is the height of unrealism. Worse yet, the "AI rweaks" appear to have royally fucked over my companion system. I'm still investigating that one more closely, but when I switched Arwen's off, I was able to order the companions to follow again, and they went back to normal... may not be directly related, but the empirical evidence is pretty compelling.

A Crowded Wasteland and Zombie Apocalypse are both pointless, plain and simple. They spawn hundreds - if not thousands - of enemies all out for the player's blood. Everywhere you go. In a neverending horde. I had three companions laying down fire, and they couldn't keep up with the tide. That is a shit ton of enemies, folks. I don't get it. If you can't win, what's the point of playing?

Crowded Wasteland did provide one amusing moment, though. Had ducked into the access tunnels, as I was level one and out of ammo, and two of the 'crowd' followed me into to attack... only to get promptly capped by one of the tunnel guards.

Real Injuries annoyed the holy living shit out of me in record time. With the default timescale in Fallout 3, RI has you needing a drink every minute or two. It gets old, fast. Tried resetting the timescale to real time, and we'll see if that makes it any less a pain in my ass.

Also fired up MMM RC5. It's... MMM. What can I say? Badly retextured creatures that spawn at 5x the normal rate and drop useless items.

I was hoping this batch of mods might rekindle my rapidly waning interest in Fallout 3. Quite the opposite, it turns out. I'm less inclined to play now than I was before.

The only up-side to this little endeavor, is that the endless hordes gave me a perfect opportunity to test out the new combat style I've written for the girls. Got tired of that Bethesda CHARGE "tactic"... I swear, fuckin' cherries left and right...

Anyway.

Decided to see if I couldn't monkey with things a bit, and get the girls acting like people who actually know what the fuck they're doing with a weapon.

Can't call it an unequivocal success. Fallout 3 simply doesn't have the capacity to run truly realistic fireteam level infantry tactics. Still... I've got them using cover, making proper lateral movements while under fire - rather than that forward and backward bullshit they were doing before - and engaging in combat via aimed semi-automatic fire from a distance. Still tweaking here and there, but I think it'll make a passable addition to the mod.

Now if I could just teach them to fast-rope from a Vertibird and begin every sentence with the word fuck...