S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chernobyl Comments by Jim Rossignol

Courage.

In the review you write:

"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.

i played the MP beta and i agree that the MP was skipped over in the review - probably because there's no one on the servers.

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.

some really cool videos on IGN here

the urban battle one is especially cool - gotta love the AI

finally

Most excellent review!

Jim is having trouble posting here, and asked me to tell you that none of the review code had quicksaves and it was only included in the gold code being played by naughty pirates. That is all.

The game will still be better off played without the use of a quicksave button IMO. Anyone remember the rather awesome FPS title project IGI? that game had you going from the start of a mission right to the very end with only a select few health syringers to aid you - and the amount of tension that built up in some of the missions was nothing short of immense. So I can only imagine what it will be like wandering around the zone.

That's right kids, quicksaves destroy games. Don't be a slave to it's quick savey charms.

What the hell Jim dude?
There IS a quicksave option in this game.

Don't put people on the wrong track.

"What the hell Jim dude?
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.

Reading comprehension FTW.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. just scored 8.5 over on Gamespot...

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker...

This first-person survival game is at times amazing and engrossing and on par with such classics as Deus Ex and System Shock.

so im confused - is there a quicksave in the Retail version, or not?

@ yellowtruck

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!

Yeah, I've said it before - THQ has become on of the best publishers in the last year or two. Top games, top support.

I wouldn't expect an answer from yellowtruck, though.

Not a lot of games lately hold my attention (the last one I got really into was Silent Hunter III...ooherr and SH4 is also due to be out soon ... yumm) but this one does...despite the barebones presentation, there's a gem of a game hidden under the cover. AI can seem weird at first, but enemies truly try to flank you and I was amazed to see things like a pack of dogs wanting to attack you but fleeing after I shot 2 of them..or human NPCs actively looking for cover and in some cases depending on your firepower (they seem to get a little braver when they get the impression you're an easy kill).

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.

"It's refreshing to see such a nice quality PC game amidst the MMORPG crap we get fed lately. "

MMO's only take up about 2% of released games u'know... Talk about chips. And shoulders. Or Something.

Play.com are selling S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for £17.99 if anyone's interested so I've just ordered it as at that price it's pretty much a budget game and well-worth checking out in my opinion.

10c for those scared about performances I tested a week ago the multiplayer beta on my rig, athlonXP 2400+, 1Gram radeon6800Pro just lowering a bit the texture q it runned smooth as oil (besides an occasional sound issue but there was in the unpatched halflife2 as well)
I'm hoping the same in the stalker (patched) retail box

but what beta did you play, because there's an older one which doesn't have the DX9 stuff and that runs smooth as silk, but the newest one with DX9 and dynamic lighting is pretty damn jumpy on max detail on my overclocked athlon 3000, x800

check out the IGN and gamespot video reviews if you're dribbling over this game like i am.

Yes, there is a quicksave - it's f6.

"Yes, there is a quicksave - it's f6."

Yes, we already know this...
Read the other comments before posting.

its my fault - i asked! I was getting confused with all the ppl talking about the leaked version, retail, and review code.

sorry!

EDIT: Thanks for clearing it up for me, Leonaedas.

If you understand Russian you are definetley getting a lot more fun out of STALKER, since throwing all kinds of insults at you is generally all that the oposition is doing in battles. In camps the other stalkers usually spread rumours and tell jokes. Definetley a plus for the Russian-speaking gaming community.
As of the other features - a solid FPS. Who would have guessed...

i'm going to do an intensive crash course in russian just for this game

I'm not a native English speaker, so the "heavy Eastern European accent" makes me worry a bit. Is there an option to enable subtitles for those parts of dialogue fully translated into English as well?

Eurogamer - brought to you today by MSN.

Hvor,

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.

By the way, I'm sure this will come out eventually, but if anyone out there DOES speak Russian and English, some of the incidental chatter will actually provide background story, information, etc., but none of it is game critical and you don't actually miss anything by not being bi-lingual...

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...

Got my pre-order today! Woohoo!

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?

Any chance of some ACTUAL screenshots?
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?

EG.DE has self-made shots.

@Egster
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...

There's another way through the tunnel - don't just charge through, but search the corpse outside and you'll get an update in your PDA about the anomaly there, as well as how best to avoid it... Be patient, essentially.

Yeah, time your movements and the anomalies disappear.

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.

people must off been drunk when they reveiwed this game or felt gutted and had to kid them selfs ,its got the potential to be a very good game ,and after x amount of year of dev you would expect it to be good on a mid range system ,3700 64 athlon 2 gig of corsair and a1800xtx,ok some of you may si but this rig plays pretty much any thing else about at good quality..im sorry but the game seems half finnished

I didn't like the game, specially the controls. The "feel" when you sprint is horrible, more like you hare hovering. And when you crouch istead of getting down is like the camera just jumps down, like no animation between standing.
I just played like 5 minutes, I may give it another chance, but the control is just awfull.

No bugs worth mentioning here, controls are perfectly fine, the game is absolutely terrific, and it runs very well on my rapidly ageing PC, with full dynamic lighting.

No dynamic lighting for me, but its running fine all maxed out on static with my year old midrange pc- tasty!
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

great game, runs 30fps at max settings with no bugs on my amd4400,2gig RAM, x1900xt system. This game keeps you constantly on edge, you never know when you're going to get murdered. Even when you think you're safe, you're not.

I'm about three hours into the game now, and it's been a bit of a mixed bag for me so far. There's a huge number of minor niggles and some more annoying ones so far - ranging from stuff like misaligned text on the PDA, over a completely incomprehensible mission system, to huge slowdowns in thunderstorms and graphical glitches in rain. A patch is very neccessary, and I think the bugs will continue to plague us for some time while the game matures.

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.

Installed it last night and had a quick look before I was summoned to the bed chamber. The usual niggles and such, I'm sure they've all been covered here already.

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?

I went for "Stalker" difficulty which I took as a medium kind of level, was that the second or third difficulty? - its been pretty challenging in places especially early on, maybe I'm just too gung-ho. You can change on the fly though right? If its too easy, crank it up a notch, bam!

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

http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?...

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..

I bought the Collector's Edition of this game and I can confirm that there is no mention of a Quicksave in the manual.

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.

I'd like to add some sentences to the comment I wrote earlier... some more hours into the game, I find myself warming up to it more and more. The A-Life-System really can make for some great encounters.

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.

I posted a lengthy 2 star review (titled "Ambitious, overrated, flawed") on the US amazon.com. The game seems to be pretty polarizing w/ actual paying customers. I went back and forth and wound up on the "hate it" side of the fence, but I imagine I'll give it another chance when I buy my next PC, with whatever patches are available by then. Anyway, if anyone wants an alternate opinion check there.

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.

This game needs a real patch soon, in the state it is now, i'd rate it a 6 maximum.
It's just unplayable for a lot lot of people..

I really want to like this game but the weapons are making it so hard for me to enjoy it. Basically, they're shit. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't find it fun to unload a full clip into a guy stood only a few feet away and yet only hit him once. I tried the stealth approach of sneak in close and go for the silenced head shot, only the first shot almost always misses or doesn't kill him, which alerts my target, who then alerts his friends, who then all hunt me down and kill me very quickly since every time I try to shoot back I miss!

played about 6 hours, and so far am loving it. i've found myself as immersed as i was in far cry, hopefully no horrible tunnel style levels like far cry. loving the exploration.
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 :/

the game is superb, the best atmosphere since fallout. plays very well (30fps) on my celeron + geforce 6600 (static lighting) i've found no glitches whatsovere, but maybe it's because im playing patched version (1.003). highly recommended. 9/10.