I swear “quietly” is the new “slams”.

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.

They all have cousins, so…

That’s unusual. Yeah, I had only played on mobile. Couldn’t tell you whether or not it contained spyware, but the game itself is fantastic and the only paid content (additional classes/decks) are well worth it.

Night of the Full Moon is excellent.

That’s honestly pretty bog-standard. That’s a term I learned on here a few days ago.

Me attempting to take the time to read twenty poorly formatted articles per day, broken up into fourteen paragraphs each and seperated by what I assume are intended to be hundreds of intrusive ads and completely diverging from what the headline baited me into thinking this ad (er… article…) was about in the first place:

Being an entomologist would be sweet as hell. You walk into the lab on a Tuesday morning and Jerry, a gray-bearded researcher with spectacles and a friendly demeanor is like, “Hey, come over here, Kevin. Come look at this bug.”, and you go over there and see the coolest fucking bug.

It means everyone is probably getting sick around here and having bad days because Mercury is in retrograde. At least, that’s what my co-worker once said in front of like fifteen people.

Grass Metal!

Mowing my lawn must be a fucking nightmare for everything involved. ☹️

Very pretty spot.

Hate when that happens…

As someone who can barely approach the edge of a 3-story parking structure, I would come unraveled on one of those balconies.

I actually can’t pee with other people in the room, so public washrooms are a nightmare. But I learned that I can pee real easy in them while I’m sitting down to take a shit. So anytime I’m in one with other people, I just chill in the stall and pretend to take a shit. Might even fiddle with toilet paper after a while and flush just to keep the charade going.

Well, through that I learned that sitting to piss feels waayyyy fucking better. Especially in the middle of the night after crawling out of bed. I’m married, have a kid, and no longer care if people know I sometimes sit to pee.

Waldorf, as per court order, was not allowed to take photographs with children and was omitted from the shot.

We used to prepare and eat these back home. They’re a bit like eggplant. My dad would sometimes hop out of the car on his commute home from work and grab these off the side of the road.