What game are you playing now

I re installed AC Odyssey where Starfield was installed as both are best on an SSD at least and I only had room for one or the other. ACOD is 90gb ultimate edition and SF is 116gb. I played SF for about 150hrs and did almost everyhing other than the ng+ version they have, wasn't too interested and it's been installed for months haven't been back for at least a month, not much else to do really. ACOD is a game that has at least some relation to reality to it and overall funner gameplay and better environments including graphics in some instances. SF is very hit or miss with graphics looks amazing in places and blah in others. But it's not the sort of game I want to load up just to do more exploring after the main story and most side stories, and companion stories etc and I had a hankering for more odyssey after playing origins lately. Better use of the space imo.

Odyssey is so big I've got a lot more to do post main campaign and also mostly DLCs done. Amazes me my last save there from 21 only had 136hrs on it. This time I grabbed Dodi's repack and it installed fine and runs fine, Fitgirls did and does too and I've still got the installer on another disk. A 90gb game down to about 35gb repack is amazing. It took somwhere in the 2.5hr range to install last night. Woke up to it being done. Pretty amzing that for 20gb extra you get a bigger world than origins and both games have all story dlcs ever released installed. Origins didn't have the ship mechanic to it and other things but still a great game, like odyssey it's a no uninstall. No interest in Valhalla.

 

Tried El Paso Elsewhere and after about 30mins I was bored of it, same rooms, janky controls, boring look to it. I think this game is good when high and blasting some good music but I'm neither of those mostly lol It also takes way too much resources for the look of the game, I had low level jet fans for a game that is low poly dark and such. Gone.

Cocoon is interesting and anna purina always has beautiful art games, I just got stuck on a boss and haven't been back but it's only supposed to be a few hours long, may get back to it or not idk.

I'm dling Pacific Drive but have tempered expectations with the reviews and knowing it features a lot of procgen which is usually not the best at this time. Games that use it usually just end up being boring generic where it's used. No Mans Sky looks good but I'm not a hoarder-builder fan, it's a loop that doesn't interest me much despite the visuals which are pretty good not excellent but interesting to look at. Starfield does it ok but the generic aspects get old after a while, oil base 567, underground bio facility 376, etc same stuff. The planet geography is ok but procgen is just not interesting mostly and the point is to add content on the fly the problem is it's self defeating. They want to add gametime but the longer you play it the more generic and boring the procgen is. A short handcrafted game is better or a large pre-built and populated with procgen then coming back for a handcrafting layer works better. I suspect Jubisoft huge worlds are like this, they do procgen at point in the production on their side before release then come back and handcraft it, better work plan there. Using geo maps for populating the geography feeding it to a procgen engine likely is done in most major open world games as a first pass and then refined by hand crafting.

It looks like Pacdrive uses the trick of dark and rainy to hide the generic nature of procgen but the interiors would be hard to do that way and are likely generic like a lot of SF stuff. So I have tempered expectations for this game.

 

Still playing Earth Defense Force 5 here and there it gets boring after 30mins or so but you can do a lot of missions in that time. It's a wave shooter of alien-large insects invasion pretty wild.

Some cp77 with handful of new mods like the F40, Tesla Truck which there are 3 of them on nexus, but doing missions and such is over for me, done w this game other than the modding aspect.

Mostly GTAV w mods and collectibles, occasional missions replay etc

 

Once I got rid of that crap game Pacific Drive I reinstalled a couple older games I've played before. Dirt 3 is a fun game that has good racing and not too bad of nonsense with the announcers and etc still there but easier to handle.

And The Long Dark 225 wintermute with 4 episodes out of 5. This game came out in 2017 and they still don't have all 5 story episodes done, devs just lazy and milking the sales. I played it a bit when it came out before there was a story mode just the survival stuff, and it's fun if you like nature games that are atmospheric but slow. I last played on episode 3 about 3 years ago. It's easy on the equipment and looks fine. I use various trainers to make it less tedious and such. Unfortunately the worst part of this game is how slow you walk, for people with lives you'd have to be happy doing mostly slow walking through winterscapes maybe the occasional wolf to shoot, crafting, fixing yourself up, looting and that's it for a couple hours it's such slow walking, not very fun tbh.

I have yet to find a trainer that has the super speed option to it that works for this version and I tried a bunch of older ones. Only one has a super speed option and some things work but that doesn't, so it's a major turnoff really, it's a zen slow game so you have to be okay spending 2hrs or whatever you can afford timewise doing just slow walking in a snowy forest.

I got to the plane crash, found all the IDs and penicilin and the survivor but the game then expects you to carry her all the way back to the lodge while she freezes so you have to stop and take care of her. I mean how stupid is that? Finding some plastic sheet or tying 5 suitcases together to then lay her on, finding some wire or string and using it as a sled makes much more sense with the distance and speed you can go at while she freezes. Or heading into a nearby cave, making a fire with the mountain of junk at a plane crash and nursing her to health would be possible, there are airplane food meals all over and junk burns a lot better than wood does. Hell even the plane is still on fire just get nearby and make a shelter fire solved. But that's too easy and this game is a micro managing masterpiece. If it was just me to take care of the trainers take care of all that I can just focus on exploration and story and ambiance of walking through a snowy forest.

So it's tedious if you don't have trainers and they add in this escort mission. She died so I'll have to keep trying I guess. You can do just the survival mode which can be fun from an ambiance and exploring pov no doubt but I do like a story of some sort. The two modes are separated and they almost redesigned the game a few years ago, it's been out 7 years now. If you like survival nature games it's pretty good.

 

Ok so I found a mod site just for TLD that has a speed up mod but I don't think it works since I can't get the mod settings mod to work.
https://xpazeman.com/tld-mod-list/
It has a lot of mods for the game but idk seems like some of the directions are confusing. I think you may have to launch it through steam first which I can't do since it's the free version so idk. Then I read in the faqs page that the mods don't work for the story mode wintermute, like WTF? the Sonic mod which has a slider for your walk run speed SAYS specifically wintermute so not sure what they are talking about. The flow is this.
1. you need melon loader to load in mod settings for a mods settings menu in the game.
2. then press f1 for mod settings to come up, this doesn't work for me.
3. apply mods.
I can't get mod settings to come up so it's useless for me.

Once I get my carry weight down I can sprint which is pretty fast since I have trainers which disable the fatigue so I can just run as long as I want which is nice so it's fine. The game is pretty fun I've always like this game since 2017 but always with a trainer to negate the grind. So it's an exploration and missions game which is great. I finished all 4 survivors which was a grind since when you carry them you walk really slow and the devs do you a favor and THEN wolves come at you, since I have god mode and such I just carried on and got them to the community center for dropoff but getting there took forever. Done with it now thankfully just need to find kerosene and antiseptic then it should move on to episode 4 the last one they've finished.

 

The Long Dark has always been enjoyable to me especially the story mode wintermute, I previously did the first two which were the first released then later they released ep3 and from what I saw with my years old save file I started but abandoned likely for a better game. Coming back now they released ep4 also which I'm currently playing. It's more of the same really just with a mysterious story wrapped around the typical survival mode in the canadian yukon. It's too bad they still haven't finished the story after 7 years of release. So ep5 will come out who knows when. These devs play games no doubt. They've had the whole story written from the beginning otherwise they're in trouble and they do this for episodic release like tv stuff really obnoxious. Similar to Resident Evil Revelations 2 which was episodically released for mostly marketing reasons. Once the hype dies down for a while they release a new episode to then ramp it up again and get more sales.

Except in this game the devs came out with whole new regions for the survival mode which they really should have devoted to finishing the story of wintermute. They reconfigured the whole game a few years ago also. A full game should be done and not changed too much at release but some devs just don't get that. Look at cp77 and v2.0 which was really for PL lone dlc for the game but they didn't need to add on all the changes to the game as it was in 1.63. They created whole new bugs and such just by doing that rather than take a measured approach and just simply adding PL onto 1.63 and then all they needed to do was work on PL bugs and the remaining bugs in the base game which still has plenty. Nothing game breaking for me but still. TLD never had really any major bugs afaik just balancing issues and it's not realistic really. Wolves aren't that aggressive and they don't just show up in packs at certain points like these devs like to add in. But the loop is fun for me and with trainers I negate a lot of the nonsense the devs put in there. I'm not interested in the micromanaging aspect of most games and there's a lot of that here.

For instance to make things you have to gather them, sometimes tan them or cook them or whatnot as an ingredient then you can use them to make other things, pretty tedious and I stay out of the crafting benches and such as much as possible it's not fun to me. So no hunger, no cold freezing, no stamina drain, godmode, no ammo hoarding and reloading, no weapon degradation and so on. Negates the boring micromanagement as much as possible so I can focus on the exploration and story as well as the side stuff. This dev would have opened the game up to an even more wide audience with exploration level of difficulty option, normal for in between some light struggle to find things and nightmare for the ones who love all that difficulty and managing. As the game is without a trainer it's very niche, hey they lose the sales it's on them though.

The combat isn't the best with the wolves as the aiming is slow and imprecise and they needed a wolf speed mult to dial down the difficulty there. So an overall lighter difficulty and more options for it would have been a lot better and like I said opened the game up to a much wider audience. But with a few trainers it's fun for me and I enjoy the game loop with the story and like the survival mode also mostly for exploration and the little side stuff that's there. They added new regions there and some small side things like info and such on locals and mysteries in the canadian wilds. I love the nature and quietness of the game with some lite atmospheric music with the nice northern lights at times and mystery with the blinkering lights and such when you get the lights.

So fun game for me with a trainer, wouldn't bother without one too tedious. These devs just need to focus on finishing the final episode.

 

I forgot I booted up Project Zomboid and did the tutorial part. It is still early access after 10+ years it's been out since 13 but has not had an update since dec 2022 so I'm not sure why after over a year now they can't take it out of EA. It's a game that's one of the rogue games where it's expected to die or something. Very old school graphics but a lot of survival aspects to it. I like the retro graphics but wish it had an exploration mode also with the occasional zombie to dispatch and npcs and such. Can't see myself playing it too much just not my thing and it's a pretty clunky UI especially for controller. Idk a lot of reviews say similar like at first it left a bad taste then kept going and it finally clicked. I got that with Far Cry 2 but once I got mods which made it more casual and exploration based and a trainer for more it really clicked for me. I think I've done the whole story a couple of times now and explored most places but the loop of FC2 keeps me engaged. I haven't played it in a month or so but could see coming back to it.

PZ might be similar and I do have some mods but nothing like a trainer for say godmode and to negate similar micromanaging that TLD has. So not sure PZ would fit into the same category as FC2 for me. It's not that big at 7gb or so though so might keep it around a while. Devs need to finally take it out of EA.

 

Got into the Long Dark survival mode which I think includes the tales from far territories, kinda hard to tell since they have a whole separate folder for that but with no exe to start it separately like Wintermute has. I chose to start on the desert coast or whatever it's called in the southeastern part of the map maybe should have started on some region I didn't recognize from my survival play years ago before there was a wintermute story mode or just one or two episodes of it. Some of the 4 or so trainers work on survival mode, mostly not the latest one just cold I think the other ones work here and there so no cold, no hunger, and I'm playing the mode where animals don't come after you which is much more realistic then wolves constantly coming after you. Only if you were hurt or it was a particularly bad winter would they do that, rabbits, deer, carcasses and other animals are a LOT easier then a reasonably healthy human to go after. And one with a gun would scare the hell out of them with just firing in the air. Likely just the junk food you find scattered in the world could be used as either a bait to shoot them or to get them off your back.

And in such a cold winter bears would be in their dens unless they had broods to take care of, we never see that here so to say this is realistic is fantasy. Trappers in the yukon do it mostly in the winter time because of less bears around and the animals are much more desperate for food so their traps with food are a much larger draw then in summertime. Another aspect is that if I was caught in all that and came across a shelter that was in good shape, near a water source and wood source I wouldn't leave until winter was over or near spring, you're talking aug-sept to about april-may up there though so 8 months or so so you'd have to have water, fuel for fire, some sort of food source so being near a lake for fishing and some rabbit ptarmegan etc small game hunting, blankets sleeping bag, etc The more you move around the more calories you burn and the more likely you are to injure yourself so holing up makes more sense for weeks to months at a time. But that's thinking too realistic for a game and such lol

 

Eh survival mode in Long Dark gets old fairly quickly, it's just a micromanage-athon that is about atmosphere outside of the micromanaging. They gimp you like you're a woman or child doing all this, you wouldn't get cold while moving around and things to burn would be plentiful where there are buildings. Why can't you burn anything like if you're starting a fire outside you could burn anything on you really, no need for the "official" fuels allowed and like I've said anyone normal if they found a suitable habitation would just wait out the winter or most of it. You'd almost never see animals also just like real nature. I know it's a game but still vg logic gets a little too ridiculous sometimes. I'll likely just finish Ep4 and be mostly done for a long time like last time years ago.

I think a new game in the same vein could be set in a forested area with fully changing seasons, much more interesting. You'd do a lot of hunting in the warmer seasons and fall and mostly just hole up in the winter months. Lower latitudes also so not so long a winter time like in the yukon etc Think firewatch type of world just more foresty rather than deserty. Doesn't have to be some apocalypse theme just a mystery story and then a similar survival mode. Like I said about Pacific Drive it could be in a world like that with rain etc The buildings and such are the same just little variations no need for procgen when playing, do all that before to speed up development and I'm pretty sure huge open worlds get a few procgen passes before being passed on to human devs for handcrafting. Even easier with the cartoony graphics that won't go out of date like more realistic ones.

 

I finished a replay of wintermute episode 1 and it goes pretty quickly when you have trainers to remove lots of the grinding like finding food for the grey mother and firewood, lots of busy work looting and finding keys and such there. Episode 2 is a pain but has more to do that's not just grinding. You basically have to fight a bear with a spear you find a few times then when you think he's gone he mauls you a.ga.in and takes you to his cave where you have to play cat and mouse with him and find the spear. It's tedious stuff. I have shot this bear 20x from a distance with the hunting rifle but it matters not at all, there's no real freedom in the story mode to do things as you like. So you have to play a minigame to lower the spear and let the bear attack then push it into him until he goes away, rinse repeat 3-4 times before he runs away and you can get the dohickey from the radio towers for the old trapper.

And the devs are demented sadomasichists, you can't skip the bear mauling you to death if you get the timing wrong which is easy to do so you have to sit through a mauling and then kicked to menu for bloodloss. Really gross stuff and the devs are scum. Glad I've never paid hinterland anything. I was in the cave playing the find spear game and he caught me I just couldn't watch another mauling so alt-f4 out of the game. There's no way to skip mauling death scenes. Awful. I finished this years ago but forgot how tedious it is. It's just a freaking bear which SHOULD be asleep hibernating during winter btw. Only bears that come out during winter HAVE TO for either cubs or they didn't get enough calories fat during the rest of the year but that's a rare thing. Not realistic at all. And like I said I have a hunting rifle, should take 2-3 well placed shots and the bear would be down. Cheap stuff by hinterland imo.

After this I'm mostly done w the game finished 3-4 and the final episode, 5, is supposed to be out late 24 but remember this dev released this game in 2017 and the first two episodes were years ago, episode 3 was 2 years ago. So there' no guarantee they can even get the final episode and finish Wintermute any time soon. I don't know that I'd even download it probably but still you can watch the finale on youtube when it comes out anyways no need to bother.

Only other part of the game is the survival stuff and the Tales from the Far Territories which is like a lite story mode tied into the survival mode. You just find the right note and it starts, that's not even done though. This dev loves to milk this game with spread out content by years. They even have a trailer of a new game, this is all before they finish this game! take all that effort of the new survival dlc lite and the new game work and put it into the current unfinished game and you'd have a full story mode done for a long time now.

My trainers only partly work with survival mode since it uses a different exe file so there is a lot more grind to survival like no infinite sprinting making it a slog to get around, the biggest turnoff really. Trainers do god mode and such but not infinite items, stamina etc So it's more of a challenge. I play on greenhorn easy mode so the wolves avoid me like IRL and so I don't need to worry about them swarming me and thus a gun is largely not needed. The trainers also take care of calories so food isn't needed. All that I need for survival mode is infinite stamina for sprinting or a speed multiplier which isn't available in any trainer that works. Eh I do enjoy survival mode since it's exploration mostly but can get very boring with the slow walk and limited sprint I have.

 

Apparently this bear cave sequence isn't loved too well by past gamers and this is years old never changed by hinterland. I mean how hard is it to put in a skip button prompt after seeing one of these awful bear mauling scenes? It's gross and the devs are sickos. So yeah I plan on trying again today and maybe just going into some survival mode since the part of episode 2 I'm on is likely near the end of it anyways so I played all episodes available. May as well try to get into the Tales From the Far Territories lite story stuff included in the survival mode.

 

So yeah I started a new survival mode and read where the closest regions to the Tales from Far Frontier are, which it's at the broken railroad bridge now fixed then into the new regions to then find the forsaken airfiled map and then find the handheld radio and fix the transponders in the regions needed. It's tedious frankly. I don't mind new regions and such but there's not much different there including the airfield which is some new buildings and planes and such but not much else there.

Thankfully I looked up how to get to it and once you get to the transfer pass or whatever and the vacant depot it's fairly easy to get to the airfield but it's a LONG walk. Even on easy mode and with trainers it kinda sucks to hoof it to the airfield. The devs were just doing a filler type of thing for the money. So yeah got the radio, fixed airfield transmitter and now have to trek all the way back to old zones to fix other transmitters. There's some story in here in text form I'm sure but wasn't too interested wanted to see some real video game content. This is 2024 a couple years or so since release and we have I think 3 parts out of 6 so far but not too interested in much more of this game.

I couldn't see how this is considered fun by people, and not using trainers and such would make it awful frankly. I cut out the food, cold, sprains and such w trainers and it's still a grind to sleep, run/walk, collect fire making items, weight management. I don't know that I have the interest in trekking back to old regions to activate radios for finding more loot, I thought there would be some more content then that and some mostly empty new regions. Maybe some new npcs and more idk. Again glad I didn't pay hinterland for any of this.

 

The biggest draw for me with TLD is the mystery of the world, the calm beauty of it, some of the hunting is fun when not fending off wolf attacks. Similar to Far Cry 2 and it's heart of darkness mystery aspects of the Jackal and such that was a big draw for me. The world was mysterious but needed balancing afa the enemy checkpoints and when I found the Jackal Mod it was great. Balanced the checkpoints by removing the enemies, enemy cars slower and such. But TLD is just a lot more tedious than FC2 which isn't strictly survival game to be fair.

 

I was doing some of the TLD tales from the far territories but like I said in the open world thread I just lost interest in it when searching for the transmitter tower to fix in the the Forlorn Muskeeg map which is supposed to have one, somewhere. This game relies on filler and limiting you to then add time to it artificially. Give me a dang map that shows where I am on it, it can be dark and I have to fill it in with the charcoal fine, but at least show a little dot where I am when I do it.

After wandering around enough I don't have much interest in finding a transmitter in 2 or 3 more regions to fix for some lite story which from what I've read isn't too interesting just some weird thing in the new mine in the contaminated zone etc I may just go back to the new regions and explore there instead. Tales Far Frontier isn't worth the hassle for those looking for more directed stories.

It's likely worth it to niche junkies who have done all the other regions and maps to death and want more new maps which this has 3 of them.

I might explore the huge mine building and the mine at the bottom of the trench just for kicks, the other regions I've been to briefly before but I'm no long term lover of this survival grind, that's a very niche radical type of gamer who is likely highly autistic. It isn't fun for more than an in between to other better games and to come back to for the chill ambiance at the easy mode with a trainer. If you do this before bed you don't want some pumped up action heavy game, this would be a better fit for relaxing if you do the easy mode and also grab a trainer to cut out a lot of the tediousness.

 

I could see this just being a browser game tbh, an updated version of the old Oregon Trail game which is loaded into a browser window to play around with, like a version of solitaire while doing something else, watching tv or some audio book or something. When you have to use autowalk as much as you do in this it's not that fun or attention grabbing lol

 

Ok so I found a working speed mult cheat for Long Dark. Use fearless cheats ct file for the game and use it in cheat engine. It has a few other useful cheats also but the important one I hadn't found was to speed the normal walk speed and this one does it. You can also define the speed mult I use 5x walk speed and it's really nice. Opens up the exploration aspect a lot more so you're not just slowly humping it with auto walk when you run out of stamina which gets really old fast.
https://fearlessrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?p=278078&sid=8ea940ad6c7410851925d6d51b9074c5#p278078

https://www.cheatengine.org/

 

There are a few different ct tables for TLD and newer ones seem to be way too complicated for their own good. I use an old 206 version which is simple and easy to use, has the speed mult and others in a short easy list to enable. Not all of them work but I got most other things covered with a couple trainers at the same time.

Have to say that without a story in the survival mode 5x speed does kind of take out a lot of the appeal of the game a bit. Without the need for food or never getting cold and no sprains it's kinda boring. Tales from far frontier I've fixed all the needed towers but they don't mention too clearly that you won't get any signal unless the aurora is present which is kinda a pain. This part is void signal or something like that and involves 3 of the regions which you fixed the signal boxes in. Really wish this had fast travel to regions because it's a slog going and getting back even w the speed hack. Online maps are necessary for min wasted time. Prob going to abandon that for the time being and go explore the contaminated regions mine. I have a no inhalation cheat so shold be fine if a breathers necessary. So just to do wandering and the ambiance might dial down the speed mult at some point say 2 or 3x instead of 5x.

 

Here's a backup search link to tld cheat tables.
https://fearlessrevolution.com/search.php?keywords=long+dark&fid[0]=4

 

I am trying to get an aurora to load so I can go find the bunker from Tales From the Far Territory in The Long Dark, may as well since I fixed all of the shortwave transmitters. It's kind of stupid that you fix these transmitters, including a car battery for power, but the little radio tracker doesn't work outside of an aurora. Why they don't put batteris in this game is beyond me, you loot a ton of different stuff and there would be batteries in gas stations, houses etc to power a little handheld tracker radio. I guess it's tied into the signal emitter at the bunker not working except when the aurora emp powers up things.

Auroras are random at night so you're stuck until one loads in. Anyways I'm going to upload a cheat table that has the essentials working for the 225 version of TLD. I've tested it on survival mode only, you can get a trainer at gamecopworld for the story mode but the cheat tables probably work on wintermute also just haven't gone back since the obnoxious bear cave sequence, I finished it years ago so it's no big loss. The devs are sadistic aholes tbh, to not have a skip button for a long bear mauling when he catches you is awful.

So yeah the file is really just a backup for me I guess. It's just a merged cheat table for cheat engine for TLD, the old v206 version which has the speed mult and others and also a newer one from a few days ago which mostly works and gives more options. Just grab cheat engine and then load this into it. At the bottom the options will show up and tick boxes you want. NOT all of them work but the essentials work. You need to also point CE to the exe running of the game.

 

I'm now on episode 3 of the Tales from the Far Frontier of the Long Dark. Void Signal episode 2 is where you go find all the bunkers on the other side of the map, makes little sense other than the obvious padding by the devs of this minimal dlc they want 20$ for. There's no cutscenes so far it's all just text and treasure hunt using the shortwave radio on aurora nights only. So yeah I'm passed the helicopter with the clue in the Zone of Contamination with the huge mine and now it tells you to go into the above ground mine buildings to find more clues. The mine is.HUGE. both underground and above ground been all over and probably not seen the whole underground part but a lot of it anyways.

So yeah found the clues inside then found the confusingAF way up to the upper mine entrance AND THEN. you can't enter it without some damn key you have to GO BACK into the huge mine building and find. How TEDIOUS. After all this you have no other choice but to turn around and go back into the huge building or wherever to find some damn key to even get into where it told you to find, the upper entrance from the track! WHY tell us to go to some place then tell us to turn around and go back to find a freaking key?! These devs are just so irritating with their padding for the whole TFTFF!

Firstly unlike most other zones where they connect with short tunnels or just above ground passages the new zones, the airport and the mine, are gated via a few LONG train tunnels and caves and such. It takes forever to get to the Transfer Pass hub that connects to both the airport and mine zones. THEN the airport features a LONG boring road which is between two cliffs, I mean it's VERY LONG. Second there was no reason to put the bunkers in the zones on the other side of the map, why the hexx would those who made the bunkers do that? The shortwave towers you fix are in the central maps mostly like Forlorn Muskeeg, Pleasant Valley and I think Blackrock which isn't central. IT TAKES FOREVER to trek all over the world for this. THEN they pick three out of the way zones for the stupid bunkers which can only be found during aurora so you have to trek there, then hole up until an aurora happens then wander in the dark with your reciever to find them. Talk about filler time extenders in place of a real DLC story with cutscenes, npcs and such. Terrible glad I don't pay for games. The three are the bleak coast or whatever, the very awful Hushed River Valley with nothing in it but confusingAF wilderness and rope climbing and such and I think the other one is in Pleasant Valley.

THEN to really stick it to you you have to trek all the way back to the airport, across the world, to then find a.n.other bunker which then tells you to go to the mine. Where you have to find a bunker, then go find a downed helo for another text clue. THEN you go into the above ground mine building maze THEN you get to the locked upper mine gate. UGH. Terrible.