Combat is pretty damn tough. You HAVE to use cover, and using that sawnoff outside melee range is just pointless, but it is very powerful close up. I managed to take the renegade base solo in my leather jacket using my PMM, aiming for the head. It was kind of a waiting game though, I hid behind the trucks and popped out to snipe when the guys got close enough.

Artifact hunting is hard as well, if you just pay attention solely to the detector like I do you walk right into anomalies and fry, or fail to notice the radiation and collapse. You need the bolts as well as the detector, so you can check where the anomalies are.

I like the faction wars, because it’s not entirely based around the player. You can just ignore the calls to help people out and half the time they’ll capture the point by themselves, or manage to defend themselves. That’s why you get mission cancelled sometimes right after getting a mission.

One thing I don’t like is that you can’t call up the map with M anymore, and for some reason my geiger counter makes no sound. Also the weather changes when you load the game.

Apart from that the game would be really cool, it still has an amazing atmosphere and wandering around in those huge maps looking for stashes is awesome. But that’s totally overshadowed by bugs and poor optimization..

So does this patch remove the AI’s penchant of climbing into flaming bins?

I hope not; that sounds awesome!