As a rookie, exploration is a DEADLY affair. You learn very quickly to FEAR open areas and not to stray too far from the roads. :)
Once you get a new suit or two and some rifles with scopes, and learn how to deal with both packs of mutant animals and anomalies then it isn’t quite as bad.
Also, the geiger counter going crazy is great, and the first time you get the Vision it’s awesome. Also, the blowout when you pass out and wake up elsewhere it’s like “WTF DID I DIE, Oh wait I’m still alive!!”
Whenever the whole area starts shaking like crazy I start panicking.
SPOILARS AHOY
That huge mutant at the bottom of Lab X18 scared the shit out of me the first time when it came charging… The room shaking around and roars, way scarier than Doom 3’s pinky.
Overall, it’s a fun game. With a patch I hope the AI will get polished a little (mobiles can get stuck on things or each other sometimes and just stand there twitching) and some of the quests failure stuff will be slightly less buggy. Definitely glad I picked it up for $29 at Fry’s.
The big coiled electrical stuff and the lab test equipment looks very cool… the whole game really does a very good job of capturing the vibe of a future world from a bombed out past.
Damn! That’s the thing I was trying to remember! Totally yes: climbing ladders in this game is pretty much perfect. No fiddliness, no accidental falls. You just walk up to the ladder and go.
I agree, except for the occasional invasion of a base by an enemy group, nothing much really happens with NPCs… I mean if the devs had time they could’ve made stalkers actually go around and you know collect/trade artifacts, like they’re supposed to. Which reminds me, it doesn’t make sense for stalkers not to want to trade for a better weapon than the crap they usually have ;).
I usually don’t have a problem with climbing ladders up, but a lot of games make it hard to climb down ladders, and I gotta say stalker pretty much nailed it, not once did I fall down accidentally and die, and jumping off is as easy as pressing the jump button.
Far Cry did this, but so what? (as in, everyone seems to hate the fuck outta Far Cry)
Man, do I hate limited flashlight mechanics in games. The flashlight in this game really ratchets up tension in underground areas, too, because the beam is so narrow. I’m always hearing a strange sound, and then wildly whipping the beam around try to see if anything is hiding in the darkness. But you can’t look everywhere at once…
I also like the detailed ballisitics in the game. I like that you can shoot through some materials, making some cover better than others.
Again, Far Cry did this too.
I like that bullets richochet. I got caught by that once when I ducked around a corner to escape a hail of gunfire from three guys–I thought I was completely safe, but then one of the bullets hit me… from behind. It had ricocheted off the wall directly behind me.
I love the setting and the atmosphere. Definitely a strong Fallout vibe. The anomalies and the constant, invisible threat of radiation make exploration a tense affair.
Nothing wrong with FarCry. Next to Stalker and Half-Life 2 it is one of my all-time favorite FPS games and still worth loading up every now and then. Bring on Crysis ! ;)
The first time I sailed off on that hang glider in Far Cry I remember distinctly thinking “this is what all games should be like.” The view, the action, racing to get away, my pulse was literally pounding.
As for STALKER, I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I’m waiting for more free time ™ in my current game rotation.
STALKER? Last time I heard that there’s not going to be an SP demo. Only MP. I could have sworn there was some Russian version floating around, but the ‘normal’ demo should arrive around April/May, if I’m not totally mistaken.
EDIT: Some German website apparently got word from THQ two weeks ago that there won’t be a demo, but the original news seems vanished.
Stalker is awesome, at least what I’ve seen of it so far.
The guitar guys are my favorite thing so far, I hear music and start looking around for a boom box (ala Far Cry) and see this guy actually playing the guitar and singing.
I’m not very far in.
I’d easily put Stalker in the top 5 or even top 3 FPS games of the last 5 years based on what I’ve seen so far.
I’m very fond of the visual/sonic effects for radiation and anomalies. Trying to work your way between anomalies and radiation patches to reach a stash or artifact… The sound direction is great in general, imo.
Just wandering around the Garbage (which is far as I’ve gotten) is great from an aesthetic standpoint. It has that ‘wasteland’ feel. Very Fallout the FPS, as previously discussed.
Another cool thing is the way the sound of the rain changes depending on your overhead coverage. Stand by the trunk of a tree under the canopy and the rain sounds muffle. Walk out into the open and they pick up again.
The lighting effects outside in the dead of night in a thunderstorm are awesome. Suddenly seeing a snork jumping in your face when a momentary lightning bolt lights up the swamp scares the shit out of you.
If Mass Effect is anywhere as cool as the way this plays then my fears of Bioware moving to a FPS type view with squads and whatnot may be totally unfounded. I keep wishing I had a more permanent buddy NPC companion to go around with me; hell, even if it was Dogmeat. (sniff the Doctor has a pet pseudodog…)
I did a little experiment. I took out the three army guys that patrol the road south/southwest of Cordon. Didn’t see any immediate reaction, though I heard some loudspeaker talk (thought I’d heard that before). Go back to the trader guy and sell stuff. Hear some shouting. Go back up and the stalkers that normally inhabit the town have spread out evenly around the buildings. Then I notice, they’re taking fire from uphill. More army guys, this time with helmets, are shooting down into Cordon from cover and concealment. They’re wiping out the town!
And they didn’t fire on me until I started trying to fire from a flank, then they brought support. Sure, some of that is illusion, i.e., what I think the AI is doing. But it’s damned neat.
The other thing I’m trying to experiment with is making using the persistent corpses to make protective area, like a sand bag wall (though I wouldn’t tell that to any veterans of the British battles in Italy where they actually did that).
A less cool thing is the way the sprint speed drops back down whenever you have to step over a tiny obstacle, so suddenly you’re moving through treacle for half a second, at irregular intervals…
