Definitely the most detailed preview I’ve ever seen of the title, with supposedly near-final code, and man it sounds like there’s a cubic assload of actual game in there. Could this actually be all that and a bag with chips inside???
It actually sounds a little hardcore for my modern I-don’t-want-hassle-in-my-games taste, but still… intriguing!
I heard they took out the vehicles :(
Is there gangs in this game?
Curious what the system requirments are gonna be.
After those initial jaw-dropping screenshots and a long amount of development time… now that this long-known-about game is “near-final”, it looks about on-par with other comtemporary shooter releases and not quite as good as the cream of the crop.
I call this the “Halo Effect”.
I’d be interested to know what the writer meant by ‘quests’. From what I understand, much of Stalker’s side-quests are WoW style, go there, kill 20 mutant dogs, and return. Which is a little bit ropy.
I’m also really, really disappointed by the artefacts being simple statistical modifiers. Lazy.
There are few things more pointless than listing the names of all the fictional guns in a game. That niggle aside, good preview.
It actually sounds a lot like what Boiling Point was supposed to have been, but in more disturbing settings. If they can deliver on that promise while keeping the combat fun and the bugs down, I’m sold.
And has anyone guessed what S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stands for? Anything like D.A.R.Y.L.? C.H.U.D.? C.H.O.M.P.S.? S.P.E.W.E.Y.?
I believe they will be rather modest as the game has been in development for over 5 years. The devs have said an Nvidia 6800 series or equivelent ATI card will run all the bells and whistles fine. It will also ship with a DX8 engine for those of us with weaker stuff. This thing has been at the top of my list since 2001. I never gave up and now it appears my patience will be rewarded. Of course people who thought it was vaporware will now get a pleasant surprise so no harm for them.
I’m pretty sure that - just like F.E.A.R. - it’s a way to get magazine editors to always print the name of your game in attention-grabbing caps. Again, like F.E.A.R. I’m sure it ‘stands’ for something, but mostly it’s to get attention.
F.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.U.C.C.C.C.C.C.C.C.K.K.K.K.!.!.!
As noted before, they’re ripping off, without attribution, a book and a movie which use the word ‘stalker’. So the . . . . crap fills me with nerd rage.
Better calm down… you might miss a period!
I heard STALKER got scaled down to human-limitation standards, with most of the cool stuff being vapor. Is the original game/dev still intact?
First Encounter Assault Recon.
Weee!
I heard a podcast about STALKER (you guys supplied plenty of periods for me) and it sounded pretty quest-ish, very unlike the shooter I thought it was gonna be (I think this was on the 1UP Yours podcast). It was actually the first time the game sounded appealing to me.
Best. Post. Evar!
Pretty sure it was GFW podcast and, yeah, it sounded pretty cool.
I thought at first this was an immasculating joke.
In other news, I enjoyed the herpes ad on IGN’s site. Does 20% of the population really have genital herpes? Also, that girl is hot. I’d give her the herpes.
MOAR DOTS NOW!
haha, period. That’s gross.
So uh… is it multiplayer co-op? crosses fingers