1641

I’m sort of regretting starting on Hard mode. I feel like most major conflicts end up with me respawning heavilly and wearing out the opposition once things get hairy(Die, spawn, nickel and dime, repeat). It’s a cycle that has repeated more and more the farther I reach in the game and it’s starting to sour my experience.

I’ll probably restart on Normal(don’t wanna slide difficulty so as not to mess with achievement gain), but players beware…Hard mode is a serious challenge. Bullet damage is obscenely meager, plasmid use comes at a premium given how sparse those Eve packs seem to come, and taking on more than 1 foe shortfuses my brain.

I adore the game though, so many great scare moments and scripted thrills. Love all the isolated and optional map zones brimming with stuff to discover.

1642

I regretted it so much that I slid down to Normal about an hour in. I haven’t studied the achievement list too carefully due to my pathological fear of spoilers, so I’m not sure what I’m messing up by doing that. But all in all, I concur, hard is a bastard.

1643

How do you tell what tonics you have currently equipped? Can this be only done at a gene bank or is there some hidden back menu screen I haven’t found? I’m still early in the game I guess (just killed second big daddy) so I’m not sure that has anything to do with it b/c I haven’t even seen a gene bank yet.

1644

One annoyance for me is the subtitle timing–I like subtitles, because I read better than I hear. But the subtitles will deliver a whole conversation (like 2 minutes or more) between characters before the first is done talking, and the second hasn’t even appeared on the screen yet. (I’m thinking now of the first time you get the plasmid upgrade).

Why can’t they be synchronized that each character’s words come on the screen when he actually starts to talk?

1645

I think you can only do it at a Gene Bank.

1646

Yeah, that’s an annoyance. It’s one thing to only be able to swap them at the genebank, but it would be nice to be able to see what I’ve got equipped at any time.

1647

Ok that’s a tad lame. An inventory/character screen (even just for display) would have been nice.

1648

Re:Controls, for the pc version is there a way to change which weapons are where in the hotkey selection and plasmids without going to the gene bank? I like certain ones to be close to each other for potential strategies.

I agree with BDGE about hard mode, it’s hard to have any tension when your only less then a minute away from a chamber for the most part, I’ve stopped using medipaks if I’m close to dieing near a chamber since they will give me a nice boost. When you get stronger versions of plasmids and tonics do they replace the original, or can you still select them?

1649

Does anyone actually know what switching the difficulty level midgame does to your achievements? I went in search of the answer and even that minor mechanical question bumped me into a (relatively large) spoiler.

1650

My girlfriend has a serious Carcassone addiction…
She did get your PM, however.

1651

IIRC someone here said it only impacts those trying to get the hard mode achievement. (IE they have to be in hardmode for the full duration, no swapping out … evar).

1652

At the very least, it takes you out of the running for the big 40-point achievement for beating the game on hard. I think that once you switch to medium, you lose your shot at that achievement, even if you later switch back. I’m not sure if there are any other achievements that you might miss; maybe some of the boss achievements (I assume that’s what some of those secret ones are) have medium and hard versions, so that the people beating bosses on hard get extra points. But I don’t know for sure.

1653

Correct, that’s the only one affected.

1654

Doesn’t hard mode treat dying the same way as normal? In other words, you ressurect 20 seconds away none the worse for wear and graveyard rush the monster, who doesn’t regenerate health.

Seems to me the achievement should be hard mode with no deaths.

1655

That achievement would have to be worth a million points, because it would be nearly impossible. Do not for a second believe that hard mode is rendered easy by the game’s respawning mechanic. It’s not. Even with respawns, it’s really, really tough, primarily because you tend to burn through resources (which are also a bit more scarce, I believe) a lot faster. It’s not that hard to get to a point where you simply can’t win some battles–no matter how many times you respawn and come back–because you lack the ammo/health kits/Eve to do it. In those instances, you have to back off, go harvest more resources off random splicers for a while, and then come back to the big battle when you are better prepared.

Believe me, the hard mode achievement is plenty hard enough already. My progress in Neptune’s has been so slow that I’m seriously considering switching down to medium, even though it will mean giving up on that Achievement.

1656

How is that even possible? You can respawn over an over and the monsters don’t heal. Even if you only get one wrench hit per death, you’d still win.

1657

Monsters do heal.

1658

And also, they respawn.

1659

So how are you folks at spending your Adam? Do you hoard it saving up for some theoretical stuff down the road, do you blow it all on the first cool new plasmid/tonic you see? I find my miserly ways kicking in, I think I need to combat that though and spend it a bit more freely.

1660

I’m doing the IRONMAN^tm run. Hard mode…wrench only, NO PLASMIDS!