I’ve learned to drive either through sentry posts (running down as many enemies as I can) or simply driving around them. Sometimes they catch up in a jeep, but I’m now fairly practised at jumping out and gunning them out before they can even leave their vehicle.

P.

The big problems are:
- how systematic the “main missions” feel – other than the fact that they’re completely unrelated missions, and haven’t gone anywhere near what’s meant to be a “plot” during the entirety of Act 1, every single time I get a mission from one of the factions, my “best buddy” will ring me up 5 seconds later and say (at 500wpm) “Heymeetatthebarnontheoppositesideofthemap”. I drive over there, and they’ll give me some alternate way of completing the mission. And what do I get in return? “Reputation”. After the first couple of times, I decided that bitch wasn’t my buddy, and shot her in the leg. And again. She fell onto the ground (and a cloud of blue smoke magically appeared), begging for help. Then I drove off and got pissed off at:

- Every bloody person in the bloody game jumping in their cars and chasing after me in a bloodlust whenever I so much as drove past. Gets really old, I’d much rather some kind of faction-reputation system… something as simple as Stalker:ШoC would do, or preferably the sort of thing you had in Freelancer. At least let me join a faction so only half of the checkpoints are full of insane snipers.

- Guns jamming so much. Sure, guns jam, and probably more so in a gritty environment like Africa, but surely not every bloody magazine. Stalker with the right mods made me appreciate the benefits of having new weapons, but not to the point where I simply won’t scavenge for weapons unless I’m down to my last pistol bullet – it’s ridiculous. I haven’t looked into modding possibilities yet, but hopefully the ability to tweak AI behaviour, weapon jamming, etc is there.

- Malaria – adds nothing, not even realism as far as I’m concerned – just progressively longer intermittent incapacitations, with the eventual result being “death” followed by awakening at the doctor’s clinic. Hopefully this can be modded out too, as I’m sick of doing the exact same mission to get the meds over and over.

However, I forget all of these things when I botch a headshot on an assassination mission, the target dives for cover in the camp, and I’m forced to kill everyone to get to him. In the middle of it, I use an RPG to take out a guy hiding behind a fence, turn around to grab some ammo and discover the RPG’s backflare set the dry grass between me and the ammo cache on fire… and then the ammo explodes in my face, with a shot from an enemy finishing the job.
I awaken seconds later with one of them “buddies” pulling me to relative safety, with the whole camp burning up around me. There are some truly epic moments.

That was much too long a comment. I shall tl;dr the preview, deal with any silly boo-boos yourself.

A gun jamming on you mid combat is awesome. You have to dart into cover quickly and get the jam cleared so you can continue fighting. Personally I never use rusty guns, i just buy them, but I once had a rusty Mac 10 which exploded in my hand due to wear and tear, that was pretty bloody surprising.

P.

I’ve gotten past act 1, and am very impressed so far.

‘All right, you poindexters, let’s get this right! One: “Hey, hey, kids, I’m Talking Krusty.” Two: “Hey, hey, here comes Slideshow Mel” — again — “Here comes Sideshow Mel, Sideshow Mel”. Three: “Huhuhuhahahah!” Badabing badaboom, I’m done. Learn from a professional, kid.’

And I agree about the shadows, they are a bit on the pitch black side, especially in the midday sun.

I wonder if the checkpoint spawn/jamming/malaria could be modded out… we’d really be cooking with gas then.