Slowtrain

I haven't enjoyed a computer game this much in a long long time. I am going to be sad when it is over.

STALKER pics: 1) Don't want to go in there. But I did anyway. 2) Eaten by a pack of mutated dogs. Sad 3) What a stalker does. This poor bandit walked right by me and doesn't even know what is about to hit him

spoiler question for start of second zone:

There isn't any way to repair them. I love it that way since it forces you to keep scavenging, even if you have something good. Also, you need to carry a backup to use for less critical combats to avoid wear and tear on your main weapon. The combination of weapon wear, ammo constraints, and inventory carry weight makes for a good deal of consideration overe what to carry and what to drop. Much more interesting than a standard FPS where you can carry three tons of munitions.

I was out exploring at night in the rain and I ran into a group of several well-armed bandits. They chased me into an abandoned farmhouse so I climbed into the attic, waited until all their lights were in the room below me, then dropped a hand grenade on them through a hole in the floor.

The flashlight is totally awesome. The low fences are silly as hell, but eh, its a game, they got to do something to limit certain things.

I think this is a totally awesome game. I'm still pretty early, not even at the Garbage yet, just crossed the railroad and met with Fox, because I've been doing every job and poking my nose into every nook and cranny. I finally realized you can break open those blue boxes that look like cases and they have stuff inside. I found out by accident when I was climbing around in the rafters of the old mill and kicked one of the boxes off the edge and it shattered three floors below on the ground and a bunch of stuff popped out. I've got three different types of armor, 7 different firearms, a ton of money and supplies, a variety of artifacts. Scavenging is awesome! Corpses are SO easy to find since their PDAs show up gray on your minimap, and since the zone is dynamic there are always new bodies to find. I love it. The attention to detail in the gameworld is amazing. I love how the wild dogs start to limp once they've been hurt and how the boars will chase them around and kill then and eat them. The boars also munch on dead stalkers. The wildlife AI is the best I've ever seen by far. Its great that the wildlife doesn't single you out for attack like it does in ES games. For the most part the wildlife seems content just to run around carrying out its own thing regardless of your presence. SOmetimes they wil run up close to you, like they are curious, then turn around quickly and run away. Gunshots will sometimes startle them, often scare them, sometimes draw the attention of some of the more unpleasant ones. Its cool how the vocalizations that the animals use change when they decide to attack you. EVen when they attack you, often a simple gunshot will scare them off. And if you actaully shoot them, many times they do break off their attack. I've been collecting animal parts as well though I haven't found a use for them yet since the trader doesn't buy them. I've found a couple places in the first area I can't go yet because of radiation levels, but I'll get there eventually. One thing I did which made a big difference in combat was a small remapping of the keyboard. Most importantly I bound sprint to mouse2 and use medkit to mouse3. Really helps having those critical functions all on one hand along with fire weapon rather than spread out all over the keyboard.

Yeah, it is. I was cruising around OK. But now I've hit this one area where I've reloaded about 20 times. argh. Actually I think it's me more than the game. It's like I can't shoot straight anymore. Guy is standing right in front of me, reloading, cause I've timed it that well, and I take 5 shots and miss all 5, then he finishes his reload and shoots me. gah. I think my bio-rhythms are low or something.

ahem. In the interests of fair disclosure and so I don't appear any dumber than I already do for not knowing the parts I put in my pc (too late for that though!) I dug up the invoice of my parts. Invoice date: 3//22/2006 (One year ago exactly -- Happy Birthday, little PC!) Intel P4 3.6 Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe 2 1 GB PC 4200 DDR2 553 MHZ (I don't know what brand. Probably Kingston. Maybe Corsair, but I probably wouldn't have bothered) 7800 GTX 256 MB PCI-E ( I was way off on this one. It was good at the time, damnit!) WD Raptor 150 Gig 10K Sata (I thought it was actually 160 GB, but whatever) The some other junk like dvd drives and what not. ANyway, on THAT system this game runs great at 1024*768 at the default settings.

I don't think there's such a thing as a 3950. But if it's a GTX (of anything) than it sure is way above the average GPU. And if it's a 7950GTX, then you have like.. the fifth most powerful GPU on the market, still. I'm sure you can afford to turn on FSAA. Yes, that is correct. a 7950gtx. I'm pretty sure. I can't remember if it has 256 or 512 though. I'm not at my pc so I can't check it. I'm not the most tech-minded gamer alive. I can't even remember what hard drive I put in there. SOme 10k SATA thingie. er Seagate, maybe. I've been outside in combats with 15 particpiants running around abandoned buildings shooting at each other and haven't noticed any frame drops. WHich is good, cause if it ran like Oblivion it would be hard to play. Maybe I'll try increasing the settings a bit, I just don't want to get visdually spoiled but then have the game be less playable and have to revert back to the uglier settings.

My pc is a year old and the game is almost glass smooth with all the default visual settings at 1024*768. A realief aftre the huge lagginess of Oblviion. No AA on though. I haven't even tried increasing any of the settings since I think it looks fine, although the jaggies are there when you lean. There is a very occasional hitch here and there when something appears to be loading, but its incredibly brief. my pc basic stats: 2gigs ram, Pentium 4 3.6, 3950 GTX

I've been trying a stealth approach to combat using a silenced pistol and a knife and its fairly effective as long as they don't see you coming. You have to watch your sight and sound meters fairly closely, And unlike Farcry, hiding in bushes ain't such a good idea cause the sound of you rustling in them sometimes gives you away. Early on it seems to be best to make combat as close range as possible since you don't really have the armameent to fight effectively at any sort of range. You'll just waste bullets and you don't have a lot. I like that the AI, when you are fighting in a building or other CQB area, isn't so stupid that it just comes charging around the corner into the muzzle of your shotgun, The AI seems to prefer to hang back, popping out periodically to take a shot, then stepping back. WHich kinda forces you to prosecute the encounter. It can be a little frustrating though if you are used to ecploting overanxious AIs. I'm assuming that combat will change considerably as new weapons are acquired. I would imagine that once I get an SVD I'll be able to do a lot of accurate damage at range, and when I get a Vintorez, I'll be able to do a lot of silent accurate dmaage. W00t. Stealth rules. Of course the AI will have them too and that's a little scary.

When I went to Gamestop all they had on the shelves were the regular editions.

As I pointed out a couple days ago, it DID sound like Oblivion with guns more than anything else. I now think its better than Oblivion becaus the world feels more threatening and alive. Though not as pretty. You can tell if a mission is timed or not by checking the PDA. Timed missions will be noted with time remaining (however the time remaining is usually just 1 Day, so its not terribly precise) Combat is tough early (still tough for me since I'm still early) but I'm not sure how it could be better. If you shoot at a moving target 100 meters away with a crappy handgun and you're moving as well while they shoot back, neither one is going to hit the other, and that is pretty much happens here. If you wait for someone behind a wall and shoot them at point blank range with a shotgun, they die. WHich is also what happens here (mostly to me! lol) And I freaking love that everywhere I go people are speaking in Russian and everytime I get in a fight they are yelling (either at me or someone else, who knows?) in Russian. Its awesome. I have no idea what they are saying, but who cares, the general gist of things can be gathered from context. My big caveat would be for people who want a linear story-based game with a nice progression neatly laid out. This ain't it. This is about trying to survive while figuring out what to do next. I'm still trying to understand a lot of what is going on: the manual isn't very good (and its way short), a lot of text has a difficult English translations which renders some instructions kinda unclear, and everyone is talking Russian. Like I said! Shooting charging boar mutants with a sawed of shotgun is teh awesome. QUestion: As far as I can tell there is no way to repair a weapon. When it starts to jam a lot and the condition is down, you just have to replace it? IS that right?

This is defintely a dynamic game. I got a job to kill someone who was causing a problem and as I was tracking him down in the zone, he ran into some bandits as I was gettign close and they killed him for me. And I still got the reward! However, I wanted to get close enough to check his body for stuff, but there were a lot of bandits and they ran me off. I'm stil trying to figure out what the little number on the lower left corner of the minimap is supposed to mean. I'm noticing that you have to check your PDA a lot since info and locations and notes are constantly being added. This may not be a crpg in a conventional sense, but it is a heckuva lot more complex than any FPS I've ever played.

Its definitely an FPS. Lots of quests and stuff, but it feels like an FPS. As SPider says combat is tough, but it is also pretty smooth. I'm playing on average difficulty and once I got the feel of the interface, I had no real problem with the first combat thing you do. Took me a couple reloads to get the feel of it though. Theres a lot of different things you can do: walk, run, sprint, crouch, low crouch, lean, jump. Theres a stealth indicator and a fatigue meter. Different actions have different tradeoffs, sprinting is really fast, but you make a lot of noise and you can't shoot. Running is not as fast, but you can still shoot. It seems like the focus of the game is going to be combat related quests to gain better items and a lot of exploration. There does appear to be some sort of overarching story, but I'm guessing it won't be the games strength. There's stuff to find all over the place: dead bodeis, abandoned vehicles, wild dogs. Graphics are not the high point, but they are good enough. A coupel random screenies non spolierish from the early part of the game. Note the PDA interface:

So far I am impressed. The graphics are decent, framerate is smooth on the default settings, voice acting is tolerable (Better than Oblivion already!) Sound is very good. A lot of ambient sound which really adds to the mood. Controls are interface are a pretty standard WASD FPS setup. Information is conveyed through a PDA system with different tabs, kind of liek the system in Deus Ex. Map interface is nice. So far I feel like I am playing a cross between Deus Ex and Fallout. The thing that strikes me immediately is the atmosphere. Once I came out of the startimng bunker, you reallu feel it. The color pallete and ambient sounds really really are sweet. Here are a couple screenies of the openign camp. Without the sounds though the screenies don't do justice to the atmosphere that you feel. There's a real sense of desolation, but not an empty desolation. It feels alive.

W00t! The stalker in the opening cinemtaic is carrying a Vintorez! That's totally awesome. I want one. This may be epic.

I'm heading out to the local Gamestop to pick it up in a few minutes. It's arriving with the afternoon shipment. I hope it doesn't suck.

You have to remember that numbers like these are relative to context: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/02/05/100741.php The simple fact is that the sci-fi channel can't compete with the major networks on an absolute scale.

That's meeeeeeeeeeee!

Well, at least there will be a season 4, which was a subject of some debate not long ago.

I'm hoping it is in locally today. what cracks me up is that more than anything else it sounds like Oblivion with guns. lol. I'm so there.

If something is important in that sense, that usually means it is good though, right? People still talk Doom because while HL and so forth may have refined the gameplay, they still aren't appreciably different. They certainly do look better, no doubt, but graphics are really of no consequence in this sense because newer games will always look better due to the advancing technology. The physics implementations that are possible now are also cool, but that is still a refinement of the core gameplay.

Could someone please explain to me how being influential or important qualifies it to be among the best games? It's like confusing Best Actor with Lifetime Achievement. Qualifying as "Best Game of All Time" should imply that it is a terrific game, even by today's standards, not merely influential or important or best once upon a time. Doom is drastically dated, the original Half-Life less so, but still a bit dated, and not merely in the graphical department, but in the gameplay. To me the fact that people still use Doom as a reference point after all these years says a lot.