I’m having trouble here. The game as it was was for me almost perfect. I could wade in and multi-fight, needing an adrenaline shot if necessary, but triumphing eventually, or I could sneak my way round, avoiding battles I didn’t want.
But if I got into a battle, I could find something in my armoury to fight with. But now, I have nothing to fight with. When I first crossed the second bridge, the Hunter fell from a direct hit from a bazooka. I came back when I saw it again and sniped the car next to it - that also took it down. The last time I tried it, I hit it with the bazooka, which also exploded the car next to it, and it was just the start of negotiations. After twelve follow-up rounds into the centre of mass from the hunting rifle, I had to close and finish it off with four rounds from the shotgun at close range.
Now from what I have seen on Youtube a tank takes 8 or 9 rounds from the bazooka to knock it down. It gives back 2 smoke grenades and a dual-usage explosive round, leaving me eight rounds down on the exchange. I don’t have that many anyway. I have to hit it with one or two and then snipe it down. Two canisters won’t do it now (I’ve tried), so it’s two hundred rounds to bring it down. For two smoke grenades and one explosive. Not worth it.
The Hunters now take a gas bottle and twenty 7.62 rounds to take down. I am generally up against three of them, which takes more ammunition than they give me. The Hunting rifle rounds now come 1 to an ammo box, so I have run out of them. Shotgun rounds I haven’t seen for four settlements so I have no shotgun. The last Dog I took on took all four of my last solid shot shotgun rounds to take it down.
Ten minutes later, I am besieged in a house by a Tank, four Hunters and about eight Dogs. I was reduced to my pistol and three smoke grenades. All other ammunition expended. I did not make it, since bullets were coming though the walls, and my only possible exit strategy was to save my two adrenaline shots, and respawn, with 100% health, in a safe house miles away. I stopped playing in disgust, but when I restart, I shall have to go back to the first safe house and work through them all, looking for ammunition, so I shall be at least an hour’s preparation gameplay before I play my first minute of the actual game. Anything I killed, or damaged is now respawned so I am right back to zero.
And in the safe houses that you go back to to look hopelessly for ammunition, ticks spawn in mid-air three feet from your head and you lose 50% health before you can physically react, and possibly lose a life. I don;t like respawning anyway (I think it’s false) but at least before the update, you could take out the radio towers (which had something to do with it) and whereas you killed ten, when you went back three were there. I can live with that - I have achieved something in my first battle. But what have I achieved now?
If it is just to be a shoot’emup, why bother to make such a perfect world? This is the first game in my life I have pre-ordered, because I bought into the whole bit about the continuity of the world, about machines carrying damage for months or years, until you met them again. Now they all respawn from thin air (not containers) every time you switch on.
It used to be you could even the odds before the battle with your first couple of rounds. But since the update, not one single Dog has fallen to the first shot, even at quite close range onto the fuel tank with the Hunting rifle - it just runs about trailing smoke and sparks, alerting all its buddies. What that means is that taking it down takes much, much more ammunition and there is nothing to replace it with.
Somebody explain to me how to survive, 'cos I can’t see how.