S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chernobyl Review
In the zone.
Version tested: PC
I feel like I should warn people off Stalker. It's a grim beast, with rough animation and that laggy, about-to-explode feeling you get from some less polished PC games. It's really hard in places, and half the text is gibberish. Worse still, it's going to run like a tired old alcoholic on lower-spec PCs... and yet in spite of all this I simply cannot stop talking about it. All day long I've been opening MSN windows to annoyed friends and trying to explain the really awesome thing that just happened in Stalker. More importantly, perhaps, I've been trying to explain to them just what Stalker is. It's like X meets Y meets Z meets oh I wish you were playing it too.
It's an open-ended first-person shooter. Initially this appears to be something like 'Half-Life with added wideness' - a series of objectives, linear enough, lots of violence, some nice physics, and with plenty of retracing your steps. But the further you play, the more the game opens up. Instead of being an on-rails FPS where everything takes place in one carefully scripted corridor, Stalker allows plenty of scope for exploration. Occasional scripted events are dropped into your path, keeping the tension high and the narrative blooming. The wide levels soon expand into huge interconnected spaces, each one randomly populated by interacting and competing factions. Could this, you wonder, be some kind of Oblivion With Kalashnikovs? Or are we just talking Boiling Point with no vehicles? All the baggage that games like Oblivion bring with them simply doesn't appear here, and it's far leaner, and more Spartan than Boiling Point. The Stalker lives a simpler existence: you fight the locals, and the local fauna, completing missions given to you by the various characters you encounter along the journey. Occasionally you'll hallucinate. You gain the trust of some folks, and the ire of others. It's all very shooty: killing comes first, other stuff second. It's not a bad FPS, despite the wobbly Counter-Strike-variant feel to the combat. And it's not really an RPG, despite the amount of time spent poking about on your inventory screen, map, and mission log, and the amount of time dealing with different factions. There's something different about Stalker. It's almost as if the most important aspect of it is not combat, or interaction, or story-telling, but survival.
But perhaps the precise position of this oddity on the proverbial Venn diagram of overlapping genre conventions isn't really important. What is important is the atmosphere.

If you're a PC using gamer and you don't buy Stalker then you'll be missing out on something unique: this cheery fellow.
This is a singularly bleak vision. The game takes place in a kind of radiation-warped ramshackle apocalypse. It's a world that constantly exudes feelings of gloom and dread. This particular experience is practically unparalleled in gaming. If you thought Half-Life 2's derelict environments were evocative then this is like a Ukrainian mind-bomb. Stalker's terrain is, of course, ripped directly from the real-world decay of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The tract of Soviet-era Ukraine that was cordoned off after the nuclear disaster of April 1986 has been transformed, with a potent dose of artistic licence, into gamespace. It's been chopped into a slightly more game-friendly geography, so that the most interesting areas of Chernobyl mapped by the team make up the game's numerous vast levels. Each of these areas is littered with the wreckage of life before the disaster - buildings decomposing and collapsing, trees withering and disintegrating, the clouds rushing wildly overhead. You Geiger counter crackles ominously, and occasionally even your vision begins to suffer. So yes, this is what is most crucial: atmosphere. No other game broods and rumbles like Stalker. The buildings, which do exist out there in the real world, are brutalist monuments to Soviet failure. Rotting train-yards, shattered factories, burned hospitals - bleak visions of the accidental ruin that decomposes in the heart of the Ukraine. Added to this is a powerful dose of science fiction: weird anomalous zones litter the landscape. Sometimes these dangers are mere radiation, but other times they're energy fissures or reverse gravity wells. Warped dogs and monstrous boars roam the wild spaces, and they'll tear you to pieces if you give them the slightest chance. Threatening noises echo across Stalker's damaged spaces, sometimes they're nothing, other times they're the snarl of a mutated abhorrence that has been lying in wait for you. Your job is to survive out there, to have enough food, to have enough ammunition, to avoid dying of radiation poisoning. It's darkly thrilling.
While the physical spaces rely on the bleakness of Chernobyl for their authenticity, the game's fiction takes its inspiration from the novella 'Roadside Picnic', by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The novel tells of an mysterious event, where something strikes the Earth from space, leaving various contaminated zones across the world. The zones are filled with weird dangers, but also produce wondrous artefacts which certain desperate people, the Stalkers, attempt to retrieve. The novella's title is based on a metaphor by the character Dr. Valentin Pilman, who compares the alien contamination to the contamination caused by an everyday roadside picnic. After the people have departed from a picnic, the doctor suggests, local animals encounter human garbage that litters the area. The things they discover are alien to them, and often dangerous - like sweet wrappers and motor oil. With the event of the zones, humankind faces the same situation as those animals: something incomprehensible has visited the Earth and its presence has left behind zones of danger that we cannot hope to understand.

That guy on the left is wearing one of the most advanced Stalker suits.
Visually, Shadow Of Chernobyl is reminiscent of a film that was inspired by the same book, Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, which was filmed in a derelict hydro-power plant in Estonia. These two nightmarish Russian fictions are as important to Stalker's purpose and atmosphere as Chernobyl itself. Placing the ideas of these Russian artists within the man-made horror of the reactor accident is in itself a evocative piece of game design. Stalker is partly alien incomprehension, partly Soviet mystery, partly videogame artifice, and partly the real, scarred world of 2006. These ingredients combine to produce some of gaming's most potent experiences.
Early on in the story I was trying to find my way past a group of well-armed bandits. As night fell I circled their position. I could not get too close, since I was low on ammo, and my weapon was only a sawn-off shotgun anyway. It began to rain, and then thunder and lightning opened up, doing a haywire strobe light on the landscape. As I moved through the dark heaps of wasted masonry I saw movement: large things ahead of me in the valley. In the rain and dark I would not have seen them, except for the lightning. I sat there in the rain, terrified, watching these things move through dead scrubland. Should I just wait for morning? Could I just sit here in the rain, hiding behind some smashed concrete? At least that would be less terrifying that going onwards. I waited for a long time, paralysed with indecision. Finally the things made the decision for me: they closed, attacked, and ended the moment with a brutal close-range fight. I stumbled backwards into a nearby anomaly - my gravity-fluked corpse danced around in a tree.
Combat is vicious and clunky. Rather than the refined gun-juggling of something like Half-Life 2, this is a case of just putting the other guy down as quickly as possible. You're not going for headshots to feel good about your gun skills; you're doing it to save ammo, and to stop him from ending your adventure. It reminds me of Operation Flashpoint, where the tension mounts as you track down that last hostile and take his head off before he can remove yours. It's frustratingly hard at times, and the lack of a quicksave [true at the time of review, although apparently different for release code - Ed] means lots of ugly sorties to the main menu to save your location. Patching yourself up relies on the time-worn standard of health-kits, but also bandages and food, which can be applied in different situations to bump up your battered self. Getting hold of increasingly expensive Stalker suits is essential, since they protect you from radiation and give some armour against the increasingly high-calibre gunfire.
So anyway, what I should have done instead of trying to pass the creatures in the valley was head back to the trader who had given me my mission and purchased some more ammo. Derelict the zone might be, but it is far from abandoned. The stalkers rely on a network of traders to ply their zone-bound business. You'll start out doing jobs for one of the traders and end up dealing with a surly mafia barman, a vicious fascistic General, a beleaguered scientist, and other random, grizzled men. Each of these characters is trying to make his fortune in the zone, and many will have jobs for you, if you want them. These characters are almost all forgettable, lifeless creatures. Stalker's NPCs are far from the refined caricature of Alyx Vance; instead they're functional and two-dimensional, but they also seem to suit the game world completely. Who would make a living in the zone except for damaged, distant men? That's not to say that the game world is characterless, and there's plenty of subtleties that create weirdly rich moments with the NPCs. Coming upon a fireside camp, where five men in stalker suits sit and listen to one of their number playing an acoustic guitar, is quite mesmerising. Eventually he puts the guitar away and the stalkers chat in Russian, with occasionally laughter breaking out. I've no idea if the dialogue sounds crappy if you can speak Russian, but the use of language is striking for a Britisher like me. Nor is it all-Russian language, since much of what you need to know arrives simply in English text form, and vital bits of spoken dialogue are delivered in English, but with a heavy Eastern European accent. Otherwise it's untranslated Russian all the way, with warning shouts and incidental language all delivered in the motherland tongue. Another layer of atmosphere is laid down.

A bleak Ukrainian environment, yesterday.
Dealing with the different characters in the zone is essential for your progress. The game is driven along by a core storyline, which you could follow unswervingly for a fairly linear experience. Where Stalker excels, however, is in the injection of random events and unforeseen side missions. You talk to someone and they need you to retrieve something, or you stumble upon a situation where you're told to help out - defending a camp or saving some lost soul. Most interesting still are the situations where things happen just because of the random 'living' nature of the zone. For example, I was coming back to the core 'bar' area from a nasty experience underneath a contaminated factory. On the way out I had seen some mercenaries lurking on a rooftop. I'd killed the ones who shot at me, but I knew others had survived unscathed. Gambling that they would still be in that position on the way back I scaled the building. On the way up I heard muttering: the mercs were still up there. I slaughtered them all and then, reaching the edge of the rooftop, I saw a patrol of men below. In my bloodlust I gunned them down too. On reaching the ground I realised that this second batch were from a faction I wanted to remain aligned to, and so I decided to reload. However, on my second pass through the same route things were very different. By the time I arrived at the building the allied soldiers were already engaged in a fierce gun battled with the mercenaries. They stormed the roof with me, gunning down the mercs to a man. Later, as the AI idled at the bottom of the building, I gleaned some information by talking to their leader.
In this way Stalker is occasionally brilliant. The AI can interact in such a way that fighting feels fluid and real. Other times they get stuck on a tractor or walk into each other infinitely. The game's vast possibility space is hit and miss, and occasionally surreal. One stalker I found was dead, but churning around grotesquely atop an oil-drum fire, while his mates casually sat around chatting. I looted the body and then carried on searching for a secret equipment stash I had marked on my map. If there's one thing that Stalker does brilliantly, it's lure you into exploring areas with the promise of loot and unveiled mystery.

These things are about thirty times scarier than they look.
However, and this is one of those chasm-opening howevers that can doom a game completely, the way in which missions are delivered, and therefore the way the story is told, is often entirely random, and occasionally completely useless. The story, such as it is, is largely told to you by NPCs, but that doesn't stop vital information, important clues and plot-turning events from cropping up, unseen in the map/PDA information screen that you occasionally access to figure out what mission you're on. Furthermore you'll probably notice some MISSION FAILED messages appearing from time to time as your wander about killing things. These are missions that, unless you were paying close attention to your PDA, you probably didn't realise you were undertaking. Context-based missions, set off simply by your being present in an area, regularly crop up and you might have no idea they were there, or not care even if you did know. In this way Stalker fails utterly as a story-driven FPS. It's simply not good enough. Your only motivation is to see what incredible scenery or brain-pickling challenge you'll face next - there's almost nothing to care about. The very fact that one of the crucial story missions asks you to walk ten minutes south, when the overall sweep of the game is heading inexorably north, smacks of bad planning. Several times I carefully followed the instructions of context-based missions, only for nothing to happen. PROTECT THE STALKERS, I was told. The stalkers stood silently looking at me for several minutes. Nothing happened. I moved on.
Disappointingly, there's no co-operative multiplayer option for Stalker. On playing through you can see why. The single player is crucial to setting off various events, and having two of you running around the zone would be a staggeringly tricky problem for the designers. What multiplayer there is uses the setting well. It's a slow deathmatch, with lots of (er) stalking, followed by some brutal gun-battles in the ruined factories and dark forests. I can't seen the multiplayer being a hit, but I can see some weird and wonderful user-fabricated mods emerging from the materials delivered here.
For some people the odd rough brokenness of Stalker will frustrate and annoy. It isn't finely polished, and it's not Hollywood; this is more like an antidote to the Americanised way of doing things. It's a warped behemoth from the Ukraine, and one of the scariest games on the PC. Stalker will remind you of all kinds of prior games, and yet it will also defy your expectations. Like the mythological Chernobyl zone it is based upon, this game is a treacherous, darkly beautiful terrain. Not everyone is going to enjoy venturing into the zone, but some of those who do will find what they've been looking for.
8 / 10
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Comments (153) Latest comment 3 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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With three games out on the 360 this week and the arrival of the PS3 with a further five games, I'm going to leave this for now but I'll definitely pick it up once Play.com start selling it for £19.99!
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!_?
/rubs eyes
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Thank goodness it didn't turn out to be a turkey after all those years of development.
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What does that mean?
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/sobs
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And what does EG say to me? Something to the effect of "If you like such games, you will like this one. But this is not for all of you. Buy it, but don't blame us if you hate it".
I know every gamer has to make a purchase decision himself, but still....
Also, what are the system requirements for it?
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The part about killing the soldiers on the rooftop, then reloading and seeing them engaged in another firefight sold it for me.
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Still buying it, probably.
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How is that even possible?
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A patch can't really fix what's wrong.
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And we should all do nothing more than savour the build up to when that moment arrives, anyone who gives in and downloads the leak IMO is a complete and utter dick.
So I really do hope people don't spoil it for themselves, afterall - we have waited this long and now it seems the wait was pretty much worthwhile, what's a few more days of waiting?
On a side note, I'm extremely pleased about Stalker not having to suffer from quick save madness. No doubt the atmosphere/tension the game creates will be heightened ten fold if you have to survive with every ounce of fight you can muster just to reach the next random checkpoint.
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I've played the multiplayer beta and basically the dynamic lighting crippled the framerate when using high res textures. However, turning the lighting option to 'static' enabled me to crank all the settings to max and play at 50fps + at 1280x1024. Oh and dynamic lighting looks ok but very blurry (overuse of bloom?). Turning the textures to medium was the answer but the game world looked 'muddy' compared to the 'static' option which was amazingly crispy sharp.
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"A patch can't really fix what's wrong."
I dunno it sounds like adding quicksave and making it more obvious when you've triggered a mission might remove some of the frustration.
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And new missions and obvjectives are not only highlighted in the PDA, they're also generally communicated via on-screen text and voice.
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No.
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I'm torn. I've been looking forward to this game for so long, buoyed by promises of a bleak, terrifying post-apocalyptic world to explore, but now I'm not sure if I even want to go there anymore.
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Still, I can't bloody wait to get it. Looks fantastic, just a shame the reviews haven't being quite as glowing as I'd hoped.
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Play.com have it listed at £17.99 already.
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For anything else, I feel quite reinforced in having preordered the limited edition!
Can't wait for wednesday...
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Too bad really, since this is one game I'd just LOVE to play with a friend.
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Needless to say I thought Boiling Point was an excellent game.
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And a huge PC update needed.
Sorry PS3, you'll have to wait for a few monthes...
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sounds like it was rushed out though, ahh well.
Behold the patch process!
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You've not played Company of Heroes or any of the Dawn of War series I'm guessing?
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Reducing the score because of a lack of polish (or reducing it even further, if it has been reduced) would be criminal, and a completely wrong signal. Unless the game is somehow broken, of course, which the review doesn't sound like at all.
We need this kind of game, let's be gald that stuff like this still gets made at all, not punish it because it's not perfect.
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+1 - Preach on brotha!
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And again, a patch will only solve minor problems, it's not going to fix the story.
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ie: the things that are important actually are.
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Wow- imagine a game where you *definitely* want to avoid some of the fights...
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Who said they did?
Ambition goes unusual, untrodden paths, with a higher risk of taking a path that might not lead anywhere and having to return, looking for another one. ;p
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I for one am really looking forward to it again, after having pretty much forgotten it for years.
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Explain.
Is it because its 2 less than 10 or 1 less than 9?
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Wait a minute.. did i just read that correctly? People are moaning because it's 8/10? Wtf?
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Oh yea, will my PC run this?
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"there's almost nothing to care about"
A lot of the other stuff sounded very interesting, in particular the atmosphere. But if you don't care about it then why play?
Reminds me a bit of what Pathologic was trying to achieve, in all it's broken potential.
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tru.dat
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They're moaning because the score might be too high, not too low.
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(Think review goes online tomorrow)
I'd have given it an 8/10 too on EG. It's not a nine, but it's a damn good eight.
KG
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I mean, I was initially playing it* on a shitty machine (P2.6, 1 Gig, 9500 or something) and with stuff turned right down - and still looked okay. Had to turn it *right* down though.
(Were I to call, I think the memory is going to be the issue. You'll want at least 1 Gig.)
My general rules of games reviews is to only talk abouts something if it's an issue. By it not being mentioned you can generally assume it's not a problem, at least compared to the more obvious ones.
KG
*Before swapping to a better one.
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you can get the limited edition for £18 with delivery on http://www.blahdvd.com
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you can still get the normal one for £17.99 though
link here
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MrWonderstuff won't be a happy bunny.
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Microsoft® Windows® XP (Service Pack 2)/Microsoft® Windows® 2000 SP4 ; Intel Pentium 4 2 Ghz/AMD XP 2200+ ; 512 MB RAM ; 10 GB available hard drive space ; 128 MB DirectX® 9c compatible card/ nVIDIA® GeForce 5700/ATI Radeon® 9600 ; DirectX® 9 compatible sound card ; LAN/ Internet connection with Cable/DSL speeds for multiplayer ; Keyboard, Mouse. ;
RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400/AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ ; 1 GB RAM or better ; 256 MB DirectX® 9c compatible card/ nVIDIA® GeForce 7900/ ATI Radeon® X1850.
does that help anyone?
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KG
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Well, they both have a 7 in the name. I can see why you got confused.
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Tomorrow: Duke Nukem Forever.
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Yeah.. about 3 years worth of time! That's long enough amount of time for microsoft to release 2 consoles in!
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Now where's that damn review copy THQ promised me? >
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Regarding performance, you obviously get the best out of the game with a kick-arse PC, but there's a huge amount of scalability in the options.
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After all if you knew what you were going to do and where you were going I think you'd lose the suspense. The thing I didn't like about HL in it's various forms was you were on rails no matter how good it looked. I felt I was steared from one set piece to another.
Guns - Check
Chernobler - Check
Spooky weird shit - Check
SOLD!
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Hmm.. ah well.. soddit.. lets give it a bash..
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From what I have exprienced of the MP, and what this review tells me about the SP - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. sounds like it should be one hell of a worthy package considering the long wait. And that will do me just fine.
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IMHO I think the directx 9 renderer is badly implemented.
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"It's frustratingly hard at times, and the lack of a quicksave means lots of ugly sorties to the main menu to save your location."
Incorrect, F6 is quicksave, F7 is quickload. Next time you should make sure and ask around before possibly turning people off with writing such statement in a review.
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it's like a slightly slower paced CS because the maps are so big and there's so many places to hide. the guns feel great with just the right amount of kickback. i couldn't get it working online but i can tell you i spent many many hours just running about the empty levels gawping at the visuals. there's so much attention to detail, compared to games like CS:S.
as for the dynamic lighting slowing it down - it's very true. the game runs reasonably well on my PC (athlon 3000 overclocked, radeon x800, 1GB RAM) but when the lightning starts, it's slideshow city.
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the urban battle one is especially cool - gotta love the AI
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That's right kids, quicksaves destroy games. Don't be a slave to it's quick savey charms.
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There IS a quicksave option in this game.
Don't put people on the wrong track.
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There IS a quicksave option in this game. "
Look two posts up. And buy a copy, you cheap cunt.
"That's right kids, quicksaves destroy games. Don't be a slave to it's quick savey charms."
Bollocks. You won't be saying that once you've played this for a while.
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[link url=http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/review.html?sid=6 167650&tag=topslot;title;1&om_act=convert&om_clk=topslot
]http://uk .gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker...[/link]
This first-person survival game is at times amazing and engrossing and on par with such classics as Deus Ex and System Shock.
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Any reply to whether or not you've played any of THQ's other PC titles? I have to admit I'm curisous to hear the answer.
Or are you simply holding on to a years old presumption that all they can produce is an never-ending stream of putrid, shameless kids license cash-ins?
The public want to know your views, oh wise one!
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I wouldn't expect an answer from yellowtruck, though.
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The graphics ... well, everybody calls them dated, I don't really care since they ooze atmosphere. HDR is pretty much mandatory though...without it, they do look dated quite a bit.
I can't wait for the SDK to be released and the community start modding the hell out of this one.
It's refreshing to see such a nice quality PC game amidst the MMORPG crap we get fed lately.
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MMO's only take up about 2% of released games u'know... Talk about chips. And shoulders. Or Something.
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I'm hoping the same in the stalker (patched) retail box
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check out the IGN and gamespot video reviews if you're dribbling over this game like i am.
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Yes, we already know this...
Read the other comments before posting.
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sorry!
EDIT: Thanks for clearing it up for me, Leonaedas.
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As of the other features - a solid FPS. Who would have guessed...
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Although there are quite a few accents in the game, they are not too hard to understand. Besides, all key mission and game information is also presented in text format, either through on-screen pop-ups, dialogue print outs, or failing all of that the in-game PDA is very comprehensive.
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As I'm lead to believe it here's an example: there is a helicopter circling fairly soon after the game begins, and you overhear the radio chatter in Russian. I believe that they actually say "I've spotted him, shall we move in for the kill now?" to which a response is given "No, not now, we'll get him later". Now as to who that relates to and who might be speaking I'm not going to tell, but it's interesting that the military already know something about someone...
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Installed and so far it is quite good.
However.... although I have an Audigy 2 ZS with 7.1 surround, I am only getting audio out of the three front speakers.
Anyone else able to get 3D audio to work?
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As much as I enjoy looking at lots of concept photos and people sitting about playing the game a few months back, I'd prefer to see a good selection of in-game shots now.
Please?
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Don't go through the outpost, go uphill, over the rails, right hand side, next to the outpost - no hassle with the bandits now. The world of Stalker is truly incredible, the scale of it...
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However, the part past that I fuck up. There's the 2 guys at the house who start shooting the soldiers at the bridge, then after that there seems to be a patrol of guys heading down the road. There's no way I can avoid them so I'm forced to take them on. And by god they're f*cking hard...anyone else got an easier way? I seems to run out of AK ammo before long and then I'm f*cked.
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I just played like 5 minutes, I may give it another chance, but the control is just awfull.
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I feel compelled to urge people to get this- like the review says I can't stop thinking about it.
The first 6 hours i wasn't convinced - still really hard, kept getting slaughtered, irritating glitches in places, constantly doubting if you're on the right track etc etc - then after a while the game had opened up so much and I had such a meaty gun, it was all good- realised I'd been feeding myself in game but not in real world. The bandits are going down with headshots these days- but now the creepier things are popping up in previously "safe" areas and even creepier things are to be found in the dark corners... its just awesome. Now to push further north, still havent even reached Pripyat yet..
I do hope any expansion pack includes some kind of vehicle mind, my dogs are barkin.. if ever a game needed freeman's buggy its this.. its huuge- makes collecting rewards a pain in the ass
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I think what's been bugging me the most is that the game just doesn't line up with my expectations. I was more or less hoping for the proverbial "Oblivion with guns".
As the article says - STALKER isn't that sort of game.
You can't roam freely, the levels are not exactly small, but not huge either. It's not a seamless world, and the game seems to be more or less linear.
I do believe there's a lot of fun to be had in this game, if you approach it with the right set of expectations. It's not Oblivion nor an FPS Fallout... but it might work as an atmospheric shooter yet.
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Just one question. What difficulty should this be played on? I got the feeling I was getting a bit of an easy time of it for the first half hour. I think I opted for the second of the four difficulty levels. Any thoughts?
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Also turns out I can run dynamic lighting after all, not sure why it was stuttering first time round: maybe just a restart was needed - so now it looks even better- flashlight battles in thunder storms ftw.
Apparently there's a patch around already
[link url=htt p://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=41711
]http://ww w.worthplaying.com/article.php?...[/link]
I wont bother yet personally as you lose all your save games, and it seems geared towards multiplayer which I haven't even tried yet..
I could def handle starting over though..
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Also, it says that F12 is the button to press for screenshots.. but the manual fails to mention exactly where these screenshots end up on your hard drive. I've been pressing F12 like crazy (and the game seems to pause for a short second when I do) but so far I've been unable to locate these screenshots. They're like stalkers on my hard drive, hiding from me..
Other than that, this game ROCKS! I'm having the best time I've had with a video game in a very long while. Unfortunately, I think I've hit a nasty crash bug in the Army Warehouse area.. Hoping for a patch to come around soon.
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For example, just now I was following two bandits into that ruin where you first meet Nimble, with the intention of murdering them and taking their weapons. I managed to sneak up on the first one as he was warming himself on a fire - blam, insta-kill with my lowly starter pistol. Heard the second one rummaging upstairs, so I went up and killed him too in a nasty close-up fight.
Suddenly bullets are impacting around me... turns out those two were just a sort of vanguard, and four or five more are now shooting at me from outside through the windows, closing in from multiple directions on my building... a few minutes and a heck of a tough fight later I'm a few AKs and MP5s richer. Thanks, A-Life-System!
If you're not too far into the game, I'd also really recommend installing the patch. It makes the traders much more useful. The one in the beginning now sells ammo and even the occasional weapon that you can't get yet otherwise. I just hope they don't pull that save-game-breaking patch again.
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Amongst all my complaints, the biggest by far is the wonky mission-presentation and story arc (or seeming lack thereof). Maybe the solution is to ignore half the senseless content thrown at you until some coherent sense emerges later in the game? But how am I to know when to start paying attention. Basically it's a lot of chaff and it puts me right off.
But here's another glaring problem that I *didn't* mention in my Amazon review: the first "ooh scary" thing I saw in the game was some unnamed creature blasting energy/ magic/ pixel-mojo at me in a dark underground place (spoiler avoidage.) This was accompanied by a little scripted animation and a goofy sound effect, and I'll admit: it did scare me when I first saw it. I then saw it another 20 times while it repeated over and over without explanation. I was getting hit but taking no damage. I got less less and less scared. Then, I walked up and shot the thing in the forehead and it fell down. What was that all about? I'll never know. I'll probably never care.
And despite its many strengths, that has been the very essence of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience.
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It's just unplayable for a lot lot of people..
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stealth is working for me.
not really understanding the comments about 'nothing to care about' it completely fits the atmosphere.
this is what i was hoping for from hl2, it had the very decrepit environment and brooding atmosphere, but no freedom, long live STALKER!
my enjoyment also benefits from not watching development for 6 years :/
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Oh okay then, sorry. you did did you? Well isn't it just so brilliant?! I mean, the wind gusts! The rain that falls less when under a tree! What about those dogs - the AI is incredible isn't it?! I love those major battles with half a dozen allies against a dozen enemies - and of course how SCARY is this game?!
Man, we are so lucky to have ignored the reviewers that just 'didn't get' this game, eh?! I mean we are so lucky to have this experience that only comes along every 5 years or so!
Let's go down the pub, i'll buy you a beer - not everyday I meet and intelligent gamer who understands about intelligent games, like STALKER!
What did you score it by the way? Hey! same as me, but I went a little higher with a 9.6 score!
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The underground segments are really stressing me out! I find myself lumbering around only grams below the weight limit, hoarding 50 health packs 'just in case.' I am finding the helth packs to be more than abundant while ammo is scarce. Highly reccomended overall.
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I'm playing at the hardest level, headshots are hard but torso and head-area are the important places to hit in gunfights and I love how long they last. No gung-ho AI, they flank quietly, stand ground, hide in bushes or pull back.
The more I think about it this deserves a new review since people aren't that much in the "shadow of specs" anymore.
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Things felt a bit rushed in the end, but then the actual ending was all alone in the core of the melted plant, the artistic design of that room was a bit of a pleasant surprise with the almost 2001: A space oddysey kind of weird ending, beautiful lighting and atmosphere.
Having spread my gameplay over about 3months on this game I had no trouble with the game ending in a video well knowing that I will probably finish the game one or two times more and try to explore all the endings.
The ending I got was probably not the best one, and that find STRELOK stuff just disappeared in the end of the game. Probably due to me not exploring all possible side missions in the end before pripjat. I've found a "map of the zone" (by googeling) showing most secret stuff and this map also states some stuff you need to have or do before the last map for "best ending".
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