Thanks Leaf. It's still in EA of course so even though I am digging it I can't say if others will. I think players who enjoy the freedom to just deploy and conjure up their own objectives will have a good time with it. There are missions, but that side is still limited. The stash quickly becomes too small, as you gather stuff needed for safe house upgrades, but don't have it all or have the requirements met, like faction rep or other requisite safe house improvements. So all this stuff is taking up more and more space, along with the weapons and ammo and other stuff you're collecting and before long there's is none left. Once you gain some rep and can start upgrading, this eases. But it's sort of frustrating in the second half of the first 50 hours, or it was for me.
Another thing I'm looking forward to is the next update is to add the ability to 'submit' the materials to the project, which will take them out of the stash and hold them until you have everything needed. That will free up a lot of stash space in the early going for sure.
One of the ways I got in to the flow, as I said, is I realized every enemy is moving. And that means footsteps. Another thing I did to make it easier is I disabled the setting that requires two AI or more within a certain proximity for them to speak out loud. Without this, solo enemies never say anything, and this is valuable in finding them before they find you. Most games have everyone mumbling about something to give the player some audible cues, but IRR it's there's no chatter with isolated enemies which is cool, even though I turned it off to help me survive. Another setting I tweaked was the proximity radius for AI to communicate with each other, and ended up in a good spot. It's improved the stealth side to the game for me, so good play and suppressed equipment feels rewarded. Set higher, local actions draw in area foes. But this is all part of how the game allows the player to dial it in to suit him.
Once you have an optical sight, and higher grade helmet and armored rig, plus a steady supply of the health booster injectable, the survival rate goes way up. Getting to that point is fraught with peril
And personally, kitting out assault rifles with the lowest possible recoil. Kill them before they kill you. The AI is better than most I'd say, and puts up a decent firefight if you let them. They corner-fire and use suppression, dash, duck, seek cover, flank and reposition. They are still AI and I feel like the puppet master at times, funneling and drawing them in to good spots. If I shoot someone, I don't go and loot him. I sit still, or pull back, and keep overwatch, because there's always someone nearby who will come to investigate and you don't want to get caught with your mitts in that dude's backpack when another walks up. The footsteps help a ton, but only at medium to short range. The more patient a player is the more success he will have in IRR I think. There are no mulligans here, and I know already you like that sort of thing Leaf. All headshots are final
