Slowtrain

That could be cool. But you should try playing on higher difficulty settings as well. Both damage and accuracy appear to increase at higher difficulty levels (for the AI not for you ) . At veteran level (which is not even the highest setting) combat is really hard (at least combined with the patch changes). The AI is much more accurate and will shoot your face off if you poke it out from behind an obstacle. Its OK when facing two or three enemies at a time, but when you go up to six or seven it becomes really tough. There was one battle I was in where the AI was firing so furiously that I was litrrally pinned down and unable to move without getting cut to ribbons. I lost almost half my armor in just moments. It was kind of cool in its own way, but I'm not sure I woudl want to play a whole game like that. I am thinking of reverting to pre-patch and playing at Veteran level. I think that combo might work well.

That it is. Just an FYI that applying the patch makes a couple major changes to the game, and makes it more difficult. Mostly because of the change to armor implementation. After spending some time playing on different difficulty levels, I don't think it is well balanced. edit: If there was an easy way to go back to the pre-patched version I would. I'm not sure I feel up to uninstalling then reinstalling at this point.

Yes, he always (every time I've checked) has that rifle in stock until you finish the first story mission then it disappears, as far as I can tell for good. The challenge there is to raise enough money to buy it without taking the first missions. It can be done, I did it once, but it took a lot of work. The stalker suit was around after the first mission along with the other armor. But it has since disappeared though the other armor remains. ALl he used to sell armor-wise was lather jackets.

Well the trader in the first level is now selling armor, so its now more available. Its really expensive though. He was selling a stalker suit although that went away after his first invetory change. Now his top end piece is a merc suit, which is still pretty good. But yeah, I agree that it is a concern. Since you can't loot armor like you can everything else, you are totally reliant on finds and purchases. There isn't much else to spend your money on, so I guess that's not a huge deal. But I am now highly motivated to take every job and find every artificat to get enough money to buy armor. I wish the stalker suit had not gone away though. I could sure use it when I go into Garbage. DOes the stalker suit have radiation resistance? I can't remember.

I think it is great that a dedicated community has created so many good mods, although less so it seems than with Morrowind. OOO is outstanding though, as good as anything that was done for MW. But I feel a game shoould be able to stand on its own and not depend on mods to make it good. Oblivion does stand on its own, but it certainly teeters quite a bit. I'm sure I will buy the expansion eventually, but no rush for me.

Nope, not a bug. I bought a replacement leather jacket (which is all I could afford) and when I put it on all my armor values went back to normal, when I put on the damaged armor the damaged values returned. I swapped it a couple times to make sure. I like it. It never made sense to me that armor never took damage. What is the point of heaving an armor bar if the bar never changes, you know? And now I have something worht buying with my money. I'm curious to see if the trader at the bar north of garbage has an improved inventory as well. My question is: Is armor taking damage something that was changed in the patch? Or something that comes into play at the higher difficulty level.

Wow. Some interesting changes. I'm not sure which of these is due to the patch and which is due to a higher difficulty (veteran) leve: 1) Everything is 2x more expensive 2) Armor now takes damage. And pretty fast too. After my battle with the bandits at the factory, I noticed that my blue armor bar was down noticeably which was something I had never seen before. 3) The trader in the first level now sells more and better stuff. 4) Especially he now sells 4 types of armor: Leather Jacket, Bandit JAcket, Merc suit amd stalker suit. The freaking stalker suit costs 65,000 RU Those are definite differences I noticed after just a few minutes of playing. Differences that APPEAR to be the case: 1) Healing items now heal less, Can't confirm this for sure yet, have to play some more 2) Accuracy has been improved. I got four single shot head hits on the factory bandits with my silenced pistol. That seems a bit more accurate than previous, But maybe I'm just getting really good at the combat. That being said, I took the factory bandits down solo with almost no trouble, so I don't know much raising the difficulty to veteran increased the challenge of the combat.

I agree and I would do the same otherwise. small spoiler question for Garbage as I start my new game:

I agree with Spider on the respawn issue. Its really not annoying. Respawns have bothered me in other games, but no this one. ANyway, I decided to install the patch and start a new game. I'm going to try a higher difficulty level since I've been playing enough so that stalker level difficulty just isn't very difficult. I discovered that yesterday when I realized I was under attack by bandits but completely ignoring them while I was trying to puzzle my way through a couple close together anomalies to get at a stash. When you start ignoring attacks becaue they are so meanignless, its time to raise the difficulty level. I'm just hoping the patch doesn't create new bugs. Here's another link to the US patch. I couldn't get on the worthplaying link that mkreku posted. http://stalker.filefront.com/file/STALKER_...h_US_ONLY;77220 Good speed. 4 megs in 8 seconds.

I don't know if I am going to install that patch. A lot of those are MP fixes which don't concern me. The SP fixes appear to be more inconvinces than game critical. I just don't feel like starting another game at the moment. Also the "balance issues" concerns me. I hope it is not making the combat easier.

The attention to details in the game is nothign short of astonishing to me. In that sense it feels like a real old skool crpg, where you would encounter something and you would just pause and say to yourself, "I can't believe the developers thought of that." It doesn't happen to me much anymore, but it used to be quite common.

I have not yet, and I've killed a buttload of animals, found a pseudodog's tail anywhere. EIther it doesn't exist at all, or its chance of appearing is so small that I just haven't seen it yet. There's on ekind of nasty savage dog thing that hasn't generated a part for me yet. They are somewhat rare so I probably just haven't killed enough. Or its in some very specific location that I haven't found. I'm actually really curious to see what the hell it is.

More STALKER pics. Non-spoilerish random moments from my game:

Fair enough. But that is the nature of the gameworld. Your goal is to survive as you work to uncover the mysteries of your amnesia and the zone itself. SOmetimes you fight, sometimes you run, always looking for anything that will give you an edge. You will never win. The zone is bigger than you. You survive by slipping through the cracks. Its an approach to game design that is somewhat unusual. I find it fascinating. Very little is "set in stone". Anyway, Technically the car port / factory mission is 2 missions. The trader wants the flash drive. That's all. Period. Probaly you could run in, shoot nimble in the head, loot his corpse for the drive and take it back to the trader without ever fighting the bandits. I've never tried it, but I'm quite certian it would work. Wolf wants the factory cleared. He doesn't care about the flash drive. WHether Nimble lives or dies, he won't care.

Carport/factoryits the same thing. The goal is only to clear the area once to get the flash drive from Nimble. Technically, It doesn't even matter if he is dead or alive. Take the flash drive off his corpse if you want. Once that is done you never need to go back there again, unless you want to.

Your squadmates are useless. Most of the time they die in the first few seconds. Although the last time I did it they all survived, so go figure. You can do the mission solo and if you do WOlf gives you much better stuff. Its not all that much harder solo either. The first game I played, I replayed this mission about 30 times just for the practice and figuring out what key mappings to use and to get a feel for the combat. The key I found just playing it again is ammo and health. Try to get as many bandages and as much ammo as you can. Fire off an entire magazine aiming for the head, then duck out of sight while reloading. Keep circling the buildings to avoid them flanking you. If you can get inside the building where they are holding Nimble theres a short flight of stairs that makes a good defensible position. Get to the top of the stairs, turn, and fill them holes as they try to rush the stairs. They will back off when they realize you are waiting for them, but you can eventually get them. Watch out for the one or two with shotguns. Keep them at range where they are much less deadly.

Bandits don't respawn in the factory itself, but pretty soon after you wipe one group another will move in from the north. The time is somewhat random, some times more bandits will arrive in minutes sometimes not for a while. Eventually the factory becomes filled with dead bandits and stalkers as they battling each other. Its a great place to go early to loot corpses for your first automatic weapons and ammo. Its important when playing the game not to look at the objective as to "clear" each area. If you try that you will only get frustrated because it really can't be done. Yes, you can have some short term success, but it doesn't last very long. Do what you need to do, go where you need to go, kill when you have to. The zone is an area of chaos and you just have to make your way as you can as you explore and gather information. To me that is its coolest aspect and what makes it so entrancing. On a side note, I started a new game. EVen though I am not near finshed with the other one yet. Why? Just because I don't want it to end! As I have gone back to being a rookie n00b in the first area, I am amazed how easy combat is now. I wiped out the military checkpoint with my silenced pistol. lol. I can't believe I thought this was so hard the first time I did it. It just goes to show how much easier things become as we get used to them and understand them. I found some awesome stuff in the first level that I missed the first time. I'd post a screenie of my stash, but I don't want to spoil anything.

Its quite similar, main differences are: No skills or leveling, instead you make your character better by collecting items such as weapons and armor and medkits an an assortment of things and artifacts which have special abilties (its not as goofy as it sounds) No linear structure. There are missions, many in fact, some you have to ask for , some are just given to you. but they all occur in the same gameworld (the zone). All of the optional missions are not required and can be failed and or ignored and the game will continue anyway. Exploration is a big part of the game since it enables you to find things that will improve your character. You can get some awesome stuff right in the starting village if you want (and can find it) Combat is the name of the game. There is a lot of dialogue, but most of it is just reading and then saying OK, sure or No, I don't want to, or OK thanks. You will be fighting pretty much all the time sinze the zoen is filled with unpleasant things. The combat is very good however. AIs are excellent. It seems hard at first but once you get used to it, its not that bad. There is a reputation system and factions that are available to join if you want. Its a very fluid and dynamic game. No place is ever really safe. You get used to living on the move.

Hey Pidesco I did a little experimenting. Without the game running my page file size is 240MB. Once the game starts it grows to 1.04 GB Without the game running my available RAM is 1734250. Once the game starts available RAM shrinks to 968000. So the game uses a lot of page file space but it also uses almost a gig of RAM on my system (I have 2 Gigs total). If you only have a gig (or less) of RAM maybe that is causing a some performance issues. Or maybe some apps are running that are sucking memory up so the game can't use it.

My computer woudl explode if I tried to run this game 1280 * 960. Have you lowered the resolution down to 1024 * 768? That's where it runs great for me. Have you tried turning off dynamic lighting? That seems to be a major hit for some people, although for me its not a problem. ANyway, if you cranked all your video settings way down and there's no improvement, then it would seem to indicate that the problem is not with the video settings as such. I've have noticed a lot of constant hard drive access on my system (the little red diskette icon in the lower right hand corner is always flashing on and off, I assume it is indicating hard disk access, although I am just guessing there, since its so small I can barely see it. At first I thought it was indicating regenerating health, but that didn't seem to be right). But for me the disk access doesn't appear to be a problem since the game is always smooth despite the constant access. Do you have anything else running that might be hitting the drive? ANtivirus or such?

Relatively random. Weird. I was wondering because when I was down in the catacombs beneath the Agroprom Research building, I found that corridor that has all the lightning anomalies in it, and there were a few artifacts there, which I snapped up. Then a bunch of bandits came in through the door I had just entered, which forced me to run down the lightning corridor, and I came out lightly wounded. The bandits, being not smart, pursued me and got slaughtered. I came back around about 3 minutes later and there were new artifacts where the bodies had been. Interesting observation, Pop. Like Tale, I was under the impression that artifacts were randomly created simply as a by product of an anomalies existence. That appears to be the lore of the gameworld. However, its hard to fully comprehend some of the details due to the not so great English translation of a lot of concepts in the game so it could be that the anomalies require some material to work with to create the artifacts. Perhaps a dead body will increase the probability of an artifcat appearing by a large percentage or make it happen more rapidly. Who knows. Nobody in the zone seems to really understand them either.

total agreement, except I didn't love Fallout 2. but that's just a minor detail! Oh wait, I wasn't really expecting anything from obsidian so I'm not really disspopinted with them as developers. But, Down with Suffocating Games! I'm so there.

I'm playing Oblivion now, using OOO. Do you use it and if so, any issues? I wouldn't think so. Mods usually conflict with other mods either because two mods try to change the same thing or because something a mod changes now longer works with another mod. Mods usually don't conflcit with the core game itself. Unless the patch makes massive changes to the underlying game, I can't see it being a problem.

I think a better example of problematic game design in Oblivion is not so much that long and short blade were combined, but that Speechcraft is so poorly implemented and totally useless as well. The argument for folding the blade skills together was to reduce the number of skills in the game and make them all meaningful. Well, blade is defintely meaningful. However, given the way Oblivion was designed, with its focus on combat rather than dialogue, it would have made more sense to keep the blade skills seperate and fold speechcraft and mercantile together. SHort blade goes into the stealth category, long blade into the combat category and you still keep your nice symmtry of seven skills per category. My point being that I don't think that the blade issue is a good example of dumbing down; I do think its a good example of short sighted and not very good game design, however.

I can't blame developers for making games that they hope will sell/rent and make them money. imo, the problem is that the frustration level of many gamers is very low. Is that different from the way it was 20 years ago? I don't know. I was over at the STALKER forums and there are a ton of complaints about the game and almost all of them are that the game is too hard because I can't instantly be awesome. Most of the people posting those threads haven't even played more than 20 - 30 minutes into the game before deciding it is too hard and therefore sucks. I do find it quite depressing, personally, since part of the fun of a game is learnign how to meet the challenge the game presents. Sure, sometimes things are frustrating, but frustration in things we do is a part of life. Generally when we stick to something and work with it for a while, we get better and what was once really hard and confusing isn't so much so anymore.