S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl Comments by Dan Whitehead

sounds good

Is it actually going to be any good? Thankfully, the answer seems to be a resounding "yes". In fact, lets make that a "YES", with capital letters and everything. With only a month and change before release, it's looking really good.


\o/

Good preview, pretty much the first one I've read that gave me a clear idea what to expect from the final game. Some remaining RPG stats would have been nice, though.

According to IGN's preview of (I assume) the same build, you can equip various artifacts in 5 belt slots which affect your character's stats - e.g. boost health at the expense of accuracy etc. and there are a load of different types of body armour with variable attributes, so some RPG elements are still there by the looks of things

sounds good, liking that ir uns on a 9800 pro, ill give it a bash since im more a 360 gamer and this aint coming to it in the near future, it seems.

Well, I've been going on about this being vapourware, but I must say I'm more than happy not only to be proven wrong but that it seemss to be turning out to be a spiffy little game as well.:)

Great preview - very much looking forward to this now. Not too sure about the weight management system though...

Consider me re-sold on this game! I lost faith when it started looking a little Nigerian but the worm has turned and I'm ready to open my wallet to these Russians. My credit card number is 6759........

Hmm..maybe there's hope afterall for this game.

One question , the preview mentions vast and big areas. We know there are no veichles in the game. Does the travelling part from one point to the other becomes boring and tiresome?

Toldyouso.

Sounds awesome and I'm now extremely excited! Straight to the top of my want list. FFXII and Okami may be brushed aside.

wow - if it turns out to be a cross between far cry cry, deux ex and oblivion, consider me sold - this would be the best game this year! However, I will dampen down my speculation until i see a few final reviews. Although it does sound promising...

I AM SO GETTING THIS!!

"Start thinking of it as a kinky radioactive threesome between Far Cry and Deus Ex, with a smidgeon of Oblivion's RPG trimmings, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what's coming your way in March."

I think I just came in my pants.. :|

Sounds like a winner. It's a shame, with some rpg type things like skill trees for weapon repair or camp contruction, it could have pushed the FPS to new ground.

It all sounds rather good.

I expect it'll be buggy as hell though (I think it was the guys on 1up yours that were complaining that they weren't able to get the preview build to run on their hardware).

I think I read that they were taken out, unfortunately. Not 100% sure though.

Much better than i feared it would be after all this time in development. I'm quite looking forward to it now. Nice article.

Hey quick question, you say 2gig of ram is now advised, have you tried it on a machine with "only" 1 gig? Is it just more loading times, or does it chug a bit as well?
Cheers,

Neil

The comparison to Deus Ex is enough to get me interested in this game again. The PC is suddenly looking like an attractive prospect for gaming this year, what with Supreme Commander, Spore (supposedly) and Crysis coming out this year. Looks like it's time for another wallet-busting upgrade :-(

oh - my interest in this has suddenly returned! nice preview :)

I ca't believe that Stalker took the last Haribo!

....

I need a new PC. :(

@ecureuil

Why do you have the revised specs? where can i find them?
Cheers pal.

PC GAMING IS DEAD.



Oh.

Haribo faux pas comment 'for the chuckle'.

I need to buy more RAM before I get this, apparently. But 512 really is too little these days. Also, I don't really like the sound of weapons requiring maintenance WHICH YOU CAN'T PROVIDE YOURSELF! :P WTF? I need to go to the "shopkeep" everytime my weapon turns manky? Why not give the player the option to take care of his or hers own weapons....?

Nice preview, i won't be able to play it though :(

>"I lost faith when it started looking a little Nigerian"

I'm not little.

'Is it actually going to be any good? Thankfully, the answer seems to be a resounding "yes". In fact, lets make that a "YES", with capital letters and everything. With only a month and change before release, it's looking really good.'

THANK FUCK.

/goes back to reading

"There's no character progression, no way of improving your stats, for instance. "

er, wrong?? on IGN's preview they said you could collect the artifacts and attach them to your belt (i think 5 slots in total?). these artifacts will augment attributes such as how many bullets you can withstand, how much radiation, how fast you can go, resistance to fire, etc - although they all seem to have negative side effects too. for instance, you might get 10% more health but have 10% less resistance to radiation.

how did you miss this? it seems to me that very game mechanic is indeed a "way of improving your stats"

[edit] just noticed ralphwolfenstein mentioned this

This is one of the few games I have been looking forward to and I'm so pleased with this article, near confirmation of a fantastic game. Life isn't supposed to work this way, it should be crushingly dissapointing.

Do you know if there will be a demo? I'm really interested in the game, but I am not buying it before I've read reviews and, if possible, played the demo.

I actually would like to see a demo too. I never played FarCry, I never played Deus Ex and I never played Oblivion. So that kinky threesome does not do a lot to me at the moment.

er, wrong?? on IGN's preview they said you could collect the artifacts and attach them to your belt (i think 5 slots in total?). these artifacts will augment attributes such as how many bullets you can withstand, how much radiation, how fast you can go, resistance to fire, etc - although they all seem to have negative side effects too. for instance, you might get 10% more health but have 10% less resistance to radiation.

how did you miss this? it seems to me that very game mechanic is indeed a "way of improving your stats"

You can boost your stats in a given area - though only by small amounts - by equipping a limited number of artifacts, but that's not the same as levelling up your character. It's a temporary and finite effect.

My point was that, unlike an RPG, carrying out all the side quests doesn't make your character better or stronger to better tackle the story missions, ergo the incentive to carry out those optional quests is diminished.

wul this cum out on 360 thx

Thank god! I was afraid they were gonna fuck it up! :)

Oh, yes! I am overjoyed!

but the people previewing the game (i.e. IGN) haven't played far into it, so they might have just found a few artifacts. perhaps, and i'm just pulling this out of the air, the further you get in the game, the more powerful artifacts you can get - like 50% more health...

anyway, i can't wait for the game to come out. i've been following it since it was first announced and it couldn't be released a moment too soon IMO. although, i've read reports of frequent crashing which is a bit worrying with only a month to go...

Another FPS? Meh.

Yes, you can equip artifacts onto your belt (5, currently) that give you certain RPG-esque stat benefits.

Yes, you can wear various armour types that also convey stat benefits.

As with any game, the more RAM, the better!

RPG/side missions - although completing these won't boost any stats, they will inevitably give you certain rewards, be they faction advancements, better equipment, more cash for trading, etc...

I have the same worries like stoopidgreg. Read also that about the crashes and some annoying bugs. Yet in this preview I haven't read a word about it.

@Bleh : It's not finished.. You'd EXPECT there to be crashes and bugs. If there wasnt any, then it'd be on the shelves now!

I didn't mention any bugs because I didn't find any. At least, none that were worth mentioning. The code came with a list of known issues, and I didn't encounter anything that wasn't already listed as being dealt with.

Besides, there are always glitches and crashes when playing pre-release code, especially on the PC, and I've always considered bringing up bugs in a preview to be bad form. If it didn't have bugs, it wouldn't be beta code. If the bugs are still present when it's reviewed then that's the time to make an issue out of it.

I dont think anyone can post figures of PC gaming going smaller. I really doubt it. I think PC gaming is growing just not at the rate console gaming does.

Well a great preview, finally giving us some real info on how it plays. Looks great too. Can't help but think its a missed opportunity with this whole simulated world thing to not have some RPG stats element but looking very decent nevertheless...

co-op?

The preview was interesting insofar as the hardware requirements.

This is what Gamespy said:

"There's also the question of how the game will perform on a technical level. We tried running our preview build on high-end machine with a dual-core CPU and GeForce 8800, and would routinely take 5 minutes to load a level before unceremoniously crashing. We eventually ended up running the game at a low-res 800x600 setting on a older XPS Dell 500, getting maybe 20 frames a second and crashing every 15 minutes or so (which kept us from progressing too far into the game)."

Which worried me.

What settings were you running the beta at?

I got it running on a Pentium 4, 2Gb RAM, with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 1024x768 resolution using the game's default "high detail" setting - which is one down from the maximum sexypants graphical setting. Once I updated the ATI drivers, it ran just fine and only crashed a few times.

Cheers mate, much appreciated.

Nice article - finally we have some idea of what the game is going to play like.

This is sounding extremely promising. Might just be time for that upgrade I've been toying with the idea of.

Yes, nice preview - I'm looking forwards to this one now!

"@Bleh : It's not finished.. You'd EXPECT there to be crashes and bugs. If there wasnt any, then it'd be on the shelves now! "

but generally speaking, games should be ironed out this close to release. all that should need to be done is some gameplay balances and odd glitches. for the game to be completely crashing this late in development still worries me. seems like they're going to need to patch it like crazy because THQ have put this deadline on them

"I think PC gaming is growing just not at the rate console gaming does. "

the world's population is increasing too...