Windows

You Are Empty

I'm playing this curious game at the moment and I really want to know what it says on this safety poster. Can anyone enlighten me? Thanks in advance!

Obviously I don't read Russian, but until someone who does replies, I'd like to take my guess. Judging by the pictures it instructs someone on how to remove people from being electrocuted by high tension cables.

I know it looks that way... kinda... but it also seems just a bit more bizarre. Anyway, my curiosity seeks fulfillment.

I'm translating pretty much word by word:

[Written with larger black letters]:

Measures of Electrosecurity [that's the word in Russian - don't know how to translate it better]

The ways of freeing oneself from the effects of electric current.

[Now, written with smaller white letters over red background below]:

When affected by electric current, the victim should be freed as soon as possible from the activity of electric current.

[not very interesting, I'm afraid :))]

Thanks! :)

Thanks! :)

Any time, my friend :) Let me know when you finally play STALKER and want to know what those guys mumble to themselves (for some mysterious reason, they still do it in Russian in the English version, even though they are perfectly capable of speaking in English to the protagonist) :)

They actually do say some interesting things, I remember one of them saying a whole monologue that went something like :"Oh, it would be so good to sit at home... a cup of tea in front of me on the table... it's warm... no damn radioactivity, no frantic search for those rotten artifacts... a normal life, that's all I want - my normal life back!".

He then went rambling like this until he started randomly repeating himself, which sounded pretty weird: "a cup of tea in front of me... (suddenly interrupting himself): those rotten artifacts!!!.. A normal life... a cup of tea... it's warm... those rotten artifacts!!!... a cup of tea...", and so on, until he got absolutely crazy and started looping those sentences without any connection to each other.

I went away to kill some mutant dogs and then visited this guy again, but he didn't even look at me and continued talking about tea. I then put him out of his misery. After all, I had no tea to offer to him.

Are you just saying you killed a guy in cold blood just because he kept mumbling about a hot cup of tea? Man, that GTA game really messed you up...

Man, that GTA game really messed you up...

It probably did. I remember days when I couldn't sleep because I accidentally hit a cow with a sword in Baldur's Gate. Now I killed everything on a farm in Gothic 3, including chicken, sheep, and the farmer. I hacked the old man in two just when he was thanking me for freeing him from the orcs. I relieved him of the burden of gratitude, you know.

Proof that playing violent videogames causes... violence in videogames??? :)

Man, you're so jaded. I still have hard time killing animals in games. Whenever there is hunting involved I have to rip out a part of my soul. But violence against humans? Great fun, especially with good physics engine.

Pseudo just mentioned this game in another thread, so I thought I would post this appropriate warning here :))

Man, you're so jaded. I still have hard time killing animals in games. Whenever there is hunting involved I have to rip out a part of my soul. But violence against humans? Great fun, especially with good physics engine.

I think that killing a couple of sheep who will be slaughtered soon anyway, and eating their meat to restore a bit of health (that's how it works in Gothic games) is morally more acceptable than killing human beings.

But in Gothic 3, the human beings drove me crazy. First of all, none ever helped me to fight orcs; they were all just standing there and applauding (really). I didn't feel like saving those stupid slaves any more. I came and hacked all their guards to pieces, but all they did was stand and walk around. Some of them even sat at a campfire and started roasting meat and drinking wine, while I was struggling against elite orc warriors who came to investigate the scandal.

But what truly drove me to senseless homicide was one guy who stood in a doorway, blocking the way to a room with a bed, while I was on a run from a horde of angry orcs. I had no choice but to stop nearby and to take on the orcs at once. While doing that, I accidentally slashed at that guy. And what do you know? For several days he was standing in my doorway like an idiot and just watching how and the orcs hacked at each other, without even thinking of helping me, even though he had a sword. But the moment I accidentally hit him, he drew his sword and attacked me! I had to kill the bastard.

And that's how I lost faith in humanity and became a walking homicidal maniac. Poor farmers have thus to share the fate of their sheep.

Ahh, I understand your story and feel sorry for you. Now I know why you had to do it! Would a court agree though?

I still struggle with moral dilemmas. A good example was recently, when playing Deus Ex 2. The transport system was broken and I wanted to use it. I met the station manager and two workers. The workers refused to do the job, and the manager decided to ask ME, a random passer-by, to do it. She promised to pay me. So I had to battle crazed security bots, climb along narrow catwalks, locate another worker who had some access code but was hiding from the bots like a coward, then I had to do all manner of technical crap while choking on poisonous fumes and FINALLY, I went back to the manager, ready for my reward. That b!tch wasn't even grateful and gave me a measly 100 credits - a pitiful sum that I could've found in a trash can. I really hated her at that moment, and thought that she needed to learn a lesson. I knew what I had to do, yet I still struggled with various questions: "Would my character do this?" / "Should I do this?" / "What if it breaks some quest later in the game?" (not likely) - So I did it. I smacked her on the back of the head with a wrench, knocked her unconscious and watched as the two idiot workers ran away in terror. I knew it was the right thing to do, I felt good about it. But I had to wrestle with my conscience first. 100 credits... really!

Note #2: In the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, ALL squirrels and cows HAD to be murdered. That was a given. I felt bad about killing that little girl's lost cat though (even though it was funny).

So I did it. I smacked her on the back of the head with a wrench, knocked her unconscious

You didn't kill her, then? Amazing. You're such a compassionate person. You'd probably kill her if she were a man, right? But, being a gentleman with impeccable manners, you showed your respect to a woman by merely causing a severe brain concussion instead of ripping her to pieces with some futuristic weapon. I'm so proud of you!

:)

Anyway, did you like Deus Ex 2, after all?

Ah, but that was even worse, in my opinion! Instead of killing the woman and sparing her from suffering, he let her to deal with the sequelae brought by his act. I'd rather kill the poor woman instead of seeing her living as a crippled or something...

I was 'role-playing' it... I felt my character would be angry enough to give someone a light tap with a blunt metal object, but I didn't see him as a brutal killer. Didn't really consider the long-term consequences for that woman, though ;)

My opinion of Deus Ex 2... meh. Very disappointing game (despite the fun that could be had from just 'messing around' in it ;)

You animal.

Cross-thread reference: this post made this song haunt me.

I guess this suits well, then.

And how do you feel about the game itself?

I had a pretty weird affair with it: On the one hand, by all means it's a shooter that falls well below "average" on each and every aspect (crappy graphics, no effects that justify its tremendous power hunger or even its DX-9 requiring, buggy sound effects, "CHAERG!"-style AI, linear almost to the point of a rail shooter, storytelling progression so uneven and confusing you'll simply forget what the hell you were supposed to be doing most of the time); however, for some odd reason I simply fell in love with it. I don't know why. Call it "atmosphere", I guess. Even the story turned out to be fantastic at the very end.

It was a chemistry-crush type thing, I guess; similar to the one I got with Pathologic, and the kind of unexplainable feeling that makes me have high hopes for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: I guess russian developers just know how to push my gaming buttons.

It was a chemistry-crush type thing, I guess; similar to the one I got with Pathologic, and the kind of unexplainable feeling that makes me have high hopes for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: I guess russian developers just know how to push my gaming buttons.

They also push mine and Sam's, so I think this justifies a discussion about why people rate those Russian games so low. I still cannot understand why Pathologic was so trashed by everyone. I never played You Are Empty, but only from looking at the screenshots I understood that the ratings are way too low. It's very suspicious, and I'm still trying to find an explanation to that.

Oh, and STALKER is Ukrainian, not Russian.

More food for thought: Pathologic received terrible ratings everywhere except Russia. STALKER received good ratings everywhere except Russia.

Dr. Von Katze wrote:
And how do you feel about the game itself?

Glad you asked that, Doc, and glad you loved this game, despite all its shortcomings.

I loved it too! I have to admit, I'm a sucker for Russian shooters and have amassed a large collection of them - Some are admittedly awful (e.g. Kreed, Utopia City, Liquidator, plus any number that I'm never going to try based on screenshots alone) but others really don't deserve the low ratings they get everywhere (especially in their native country: witness the hatred of domestic shooters at AG.ru!) GameSpot gave 'You Are Empty' a rating of 1.5 and (tastelessly) likened it to 'Soviet gulags'...

Anyway, 'You Are Empty'... Straight up, it has the best graphics I've ever seen. Now, I know, that technically they are behind the times (no bump mapping, etc., etc.) but artistically and in their level of detail, they are stunning. The amount of work put into these environments is incredible. The game had a strange and compelling atmosphere - It wasn't scary, really (not after the first hour) but it was somewhat creepy and weird. And although the levels are totally linear, I was drawn into its world rather deeply, in a way that a lot of other games have failed to do.

The game could've been much better, and I think it was rather confused about what it wanted to be (Scary? Funny? Satirical? Painkiller-clone? Serious Sam III?) - Its enemies were an odd mixture, some really cool, others just too silly.

But in the end, it's got a special place in my heart and is my favorite of the mass of Russian shooters I've played (though others were faster, smoother, more exhilerating). It's a strange case of great art (both in-game and those amazing cutscenes) mixed with totally standard and rather clunky shooter mechanics. But it makes a compelling whole. I enjoyed it from start to finish and it still left me wanting more.

Pity it's the only game Mandel ArtPlains ever made.

Oh yes, and it *does* indeed have very Russian environments that make me think of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Pathologic - Decayed yet beautiful :D

EDIT: Another thing I really liked was the slight 'survival horror' aspect - Okay, so there were health packs *everywhere* but you were constantly low on ammo and having to scavenge for more (I think that'd be a real problem on the 'hard' difficulty level, which is why I'll have to try it sometime) - A very different feel to most shooters where you've always got a fully-loaded chaingun ;)

I actually needed to reply to your message first, but I feel the same way about You Are Empty. Up to par with Half-Life 2 as far as graphics go, but some of the locations have that typical Russian appeal of desolation along with brilliant design. Not to mention the cut-scenes are far more than what other games offer. Must-play for the atmosphere despite the linearity.

First off, I'd like to state that the lack of bump-mapping (at least that ridiculously over-used bm a la Bioshock) is a plus for me. Other than that, you just hit the nail right in the nose, and I'm totally onboard with your idea of "best graphics I've ever seen".

Maybe not THAT much, but the artistic aspect is brilliant indeed.


That nail is really hating you, but this is a spot-on description too. In fact, it reminds me of the capricious genre we invented with a friend to describe the movie Session 9. That movie was somewhat a horror movie, but not exactly, and at the same time it was way more unnerving than most "proper" horror movies, so we ended up creating a genre we call "disturbing" movies. And it's my favorite genre too.


It's funny you mention HL2 because I kept comparing the settings of both games all the time. I guess the city reminded me a lot of City 17, but there was something else too, some kind of spiritual link between both games, if you will.

And I agree about the cutscenes. They're rather "unusual", that's for sure, but they count among my top-3 favorite cutscenes of all times.

All in all, I'm glad so many of us knew -and liked- this game. Now we could get up our lazy asses and go write some nice reviews, no?

...says the guy that hasn't written a thing in over two years :$




Ouch. Well, from this far away they look kinda similar :P

Hehehe, I'm currently psyching myself up to write a review. It takes a lot of effort for me to write those things nowadays :P

Gotta strike while the game's fresh in my mind, though.

P.S. All this talk of nails is reminding me how much I liked the nailgun in this game. Very cool!

All in all, I'm glad so many of us knew -and liked- this game. Now we could get up our lazy asses and go write some nice reviews, no?

Can I predict what will eventually happen? I'll get interested in the game (already am), play it, and be the first to write a review.

You lazy animals :)

I don't know if you'd really like it, Oleg - It is just a straight-up shooter - Though I'm sure you'd admire certain aspects of it.

As a complete piece of trivia, here's something I stumbled across in my usual quest to dig up interesting facts about games I like:

Game designer (and MobyUser) John Romero at KRI 2004, talking about games he liked at the show. What's the first one he mentioned?




Yep - "You Are Empty's awesome!"

(That's Tom Hall next to him, cleaning his glasses. He was there to talk about Anachronox. The game that caught Tom's attention was this oddity.)

Btw, be careful while consulting (even score-wise) AG.ru, its staff has very weird and twisted values there. Not only concerning games, but everything else too, language, people, politics and culture.

I wouldn't judge gaming tastes in Russia and Ukraine by that site alone.

Btw, be careful while consulting (even score-wise) AG.ru, its staff has very weird and twisted values there. Not only concerning games, but everything else too, language, people, politics and culture.

Really? I love this site. They have some very talented writers, and a lot of their reviews are very witty and well-written.

I'm curious, what kind of twisted political/cultural values do those guys have?

I would really hate to badmouth any of them. They ARE a talented bunch of individuals.

It's just that most of the times the game is based not by its merits, but by some preconceptions devised from how the game was recieved in the west and among the general public.

Also, in pursuit of a more striking metaphor or pun, they often tend to exaggerate game's faults, for the sake of the review being more well-written and effective.

I have some more personal grudges with some of the staff, but I won't dwell on it.

Well, I won't push you to explain any further ;)

I've become so accustomed to reading Russian sites through weird Babelfish translations that it's become second nature to me. AG.ru is my site of choice because, although they *hate* most of the games I like and rate them extremely harshly, they're a great source for videos, screenshots, info, etc. Plus their reviews do seem rather witty and cleverly written, so I still enjoy them - even when I don't agree with them :)

Recommendations for other good Russian sites?

Hey! I take that as an offense! Come here, you'll see the difference.

Btw, does anybody remember, when we discussed the lack of Ukranian language in STALKER, even though the game was made exclusively by the Kyiv team and took place in Ukraine?

To GSC Game World credit, they have, in fact, released full Ukranian translation as a free downloadable patch. So the national pride was succesfully restored.

STALKER was very hyped here, it was labeled by media as "The Greatest Patriotic (Отечественая) Game Ever". It's development cycle was closely watched, so when journalists finally received the game, they obviously found it very under-whelming and failing to meet their expectations. No such problems existed outside ex-USSR.

As for Pathologic, I think it is the translation to blame. And the whole "weirdness" of the subject matter.