I tried to play through the second time with Vita Chambers off and it was not fun. It's not that the game is too hard that way (and I agree the Vita Chambers made it too easy), it's that the game wasn't built to run like that...

- There are no checkpoints. When you die you either have to replay the entire level or you have to constantly bang the Quick-Save key. Constant quick-saving totally ruins the immersion for me.

- There are some tasks in the game which are palatable once, but having to repeat them after loading a game is extremely tedious. Specifically hacking, camera research, and item scrounging.

- The "Quick"-Save is not quick. If it was a system they expected you to use, I'm sure they could have optimized more.

- When you die you can't use a one button quick-load. You are forced back to the menu you have to navigate the menu, find your last save game (they aren't in chronological order, they are grouped by level saves, full saves, and quick saves) and then load the game.

- The load game process is very slow.

If someone was gonna mod this game to fix the Vita Chamber issues I'd have to possible methods two suggest.

1. Turn off the Vita Chambers and add duct-tape checkpoints. I'd have every successful hack trigger the quick save. You'd never have to repeat a hack and you hack frequently enough that you wouldn't have to replay a ton of game. Also I'd give the option to quick-load after death.

2. Have enemies regen. Leave the Vita Chambers working, but when the player goes to the Vita Chamber have all the enemies on the level regenerate to full health.

thanks alot, i never got the game out of fear steam was a evil thing that consumed the souls of small children, jk. but is steam a resource hog at all? you said it runs in background, i tend to not trust those kind of apps. will it block any attempts to modify code while its running, ie trainers and mod programs like that?Twisted-Ice-God

I haven't heard of Steam apps causing trouble with "trainer" apps for single player games. Valve online games do have cheat detection and using cheats in online multiplayer games (eg.g Half-Life: Deathmatch, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress) will get your account banned from online play.

You are warned ahead of time when connecting to servers that are running VAC (Valve Anti Cheat).

Yes because Chronicles of Riddick and Psychonautsare bad games :roll:.. If you didn't know the mod community has basically fixed every problem with vampires.. With unofficial patchs, i believe they are upwards to version 4.5+ now.sSubZerOo

You missed the point of my post. Every game on that list was a good game I enjoyed and am recommending because of their well imagined game worlds, good stories, and/or great characters. I also loved and recommend VtMB for the same reasons despite it's technical flaws.

The patches the community has put out are nice, but the only "bugs" they can fix are logical flaws in scripted events. They also reactivated edited out events, dialog, and items. All good stuff but it doesn't stop the game from regularly crashing to desktop for many people.

FYI. If you're a gaming purist or live for the "Hard" mode, one common complaint with the community patch is that it makes the game too easy by adding in opportunities for extra XP and powerful items which the developers had not included in their released version.

Sweet topic. If you're looking for games "similar" in being unstable, buggy, not play tested, under-developed, and not taking full avantage of the game engine available to them... the list is disapointingly long.

If your looking for games that despite technical challenges have fun game worlds, stories, and characters how about:

• Bioshock
• Psychonauts
• Stubbs the Zombie
• Chronicles of Riddick
• Arx Fatalis

Ahh the shear bliss of low expectations...

The Battlechest that comes with wow, burning crusade and the game guide book all together is 20$ since its the boxing week sale.

-Origin-

This is great point. For $20 you can play for a month and see if you like it, that's worth it. ...Even though the previous poster is probably right. If you like the pace of actions games and are used to the variety and suprises of player vs. player you're likely to get bored with repetitive grinding of MMOs.

I love the Orange Box and am generally a fan of Steam, but I agree with your points and understand your frustration completely. I'm guessing Valve grossly underestimated the response to their sale and just don't have the bandwidth to support it. I pre-ordered and when HL2 and Portal were available I downloaded both within a couple hours (overnight). It's taken me more than 24 hours to download games I bought since the sale.

The fact that the boxed version seems to prefer downloading everything over installing what it can from disk sounds dumb.

If I were Valve, I'd make the archive files available to file sites like GamersHell, FileFront, FilePlanet so when my servers got abused people could go elsewhere. You'd still need a Steam verified licensed but you could download from someplace with decent download speed and only connect to Steam for the activation.

As far as support goes I'm afraid Valve is no worse than the average publisher. If you want to be a PC gamer, for better or worse, you have to learn how to use FAQs, Knowledge Bases, and message boards. The days of personalized help are gone.