Well I played a little longer, and a bit more variety of terrain, lighting and weather helped the looks a lot. I’m getting that desolation vibe now. The first couple of scripted missions I’ve done have indeed been a little more coherent than expected, so feeling pretty positive.
Thanks for the holstering tips! Does anyone know where Steam puts the manual? I can tell I’m being roughed up by the zone, but the PDA is sparse on details. Or rather, comprehensibility.
I’ve always considered it a fair tradeoff for also providing some of the damndest awesome sequences I’ve ever encountered in a shooter, but not everyone wants to make that trade with their time!
[EDIT] I’m probably sounding too defensive. I just like talking about this game. You guys brought up something I hadn’t thought about.
Hang on - this can’t be right. There is no Steam manual? If you root around online you find a pdf made from scanned images from the box copy docs? Someone tell me I’m missing the THIS IS HOW YOU PLAY OUR GAME link on Steam.
Edit - having read the manual it doesn’t seem I was missing anything.
This can’t possibly be true! It uses DirectX 11! It must be gorgeous!
This right here is, I suspect, another large part of how SOC earned so much hardcore gamer cred-- it’s actually HARD. As in, it has an actual learning curve that will kick your ass until you figure things out. Just like all games used to be before the namby-pamby, dynamic-tutorialing, bottom-wiping, oh-you-poor-special-snowflake-who-can’t-possibly-fail school of game design took over.
Stalker games are not so rough, imo, it’s a question of perspective. They are hard, ok, but not that hard and confusing. You just have to use common sense and be careful, like in real rifle. To immerse youself in the Zone, you could say. The problem is people who play the game unlike real life, instead try to play it “like a video game”, suppossing that just because you can walk everywhere, you should walk everywhere and you will be safe (and then the anomalies and the radiation kill them off and they wonder: wait, what killed me?*). Supossing the area you start isn’t going to contain any dangers, and other gaming conventions. A case of Oblivionitis, i would say. :P
*: real life case.
Well in Oblivion nearly everything that’s interactive in any way is entirely determined by the level of the PC, not environmental factors. Apart from the fact that that took any interest out of exploring for me, I can see how it would ‘teach’ gamers to play games a certain way. I think the fact that the Stalker games are so different and un-gamey in some ways is one of the reasons they are so appealing to some gamers.
Still, I tried to jump into CoP not having played any Stalker games for over a year, and found myself struggling. I decided to wait until I am totally done with ME2 (that game has me well and truly gripped), because I really want to like CoP, but making the investment right now is not going to happen.
I agree that there isn’t really a Stalker game that’s ideal for newbies to the series. You have to determine that you want make the investment, and then do it. SoC is the best place to start though, imo.
Yes, that was what i was trying to say. I agree with the sentiment it’s a hard game, but i think the frustration of some players also comes with the clash of expectations about how games have to play. I think there is space in the videogaming landscape for every type of shooter, linear, non linear, hard, easy, handholding or survival, etc.
It’s the issue i am having with some reviews of the new AvP, it seems some reviewers/gamers in general want to every game to be the same type, the notion of a fps not focused on plot and without realistic weapons, without health regen or cover and with some learning curve seems too much for them. “Dated” they call it.
Mods
Welcome!
They are hard, ok, but not that hard and confusing. You just have to use common sense and be careful
Very true. Being a cautious, paranoid adventurer is the mindset you have to be in for the first game, and it’d be a shame to discover this has changed for the third.
Is anyone else’s Steam version downloading a new update? I just tried to play my Steam installed COP and it is busy downloading files.
I hope it’s a patch.
Although my game crashes every time I reload (seems to be a memory issue according to the logs), the few hours I have put in so far have blown me away. The scripted missions are fun, and the random stuff that happens almost as much so.
I suspect this is my favourite computerised game world since Morrowind. Just keeping my fingers crossed that somehow they patch my woes.
I rather like the roughness, if not the bugs (I’m still getting persistent if infrequent “no NPCs here, gotta reload to spawn them” bugs in the base areas, for instance), and I’d definitely agree that the game is much more survivable if you play it scared. Don’t shoot people on sight, as many humans you meet are neutral and some even give quests, like the bunch of mercenaries I ran into who needed food. Avoid the wildlife an mutants if possible–it’s definitely possible to skirt packs of snorks and those pig things, the dogs less so. And if an area looks dangerous, it probably is–artifact hunting is not for the faint of heart or low on healing supplies.
One area I do think the game needs some massaging is in giving you a bit of guidance on where to go for stuff. The tools you need for the gun repair guy, for instance–you pretty much have to stumble on them by happenstance. And some of the quests are like that too, with only a vague “you need to find so and so” to guide you. But overall I prefer that to WoW QuestHelper-style follow the breadcrumbs.
There’s no time limit for quests as there was in the first game, so there’s nothing stopping you from queuing up a whole bunch at once and roaming around looking for shit to do. You need to keep an eye out for quests that trigger at specific times though. I just managed to spend ages hanging around looking for nocturnal chimeras during the day.
if you talk to every stalker, they will occasionally give you hints on where you can find stuff.
the second map i had to resort to a walk through to find the first and second set of tools simply because i had tread over hell and high water to find the damn things and they were in a location i never would have though to find them.
i’m currently on my way to the third area having, i think exhausted all my quest options for the second area.
the first area there is a quest chain which i just cannot figure out and it was driving me to distraction so i’ve essentially given it up.
edit: 21 hours in.
I got those last night - if you question the random “two-name” stalkers, they can tell you where to go find them.
hmm, i failed a quest to meet up with some other guys after i decided to go to bed instead. so maybe some of them are time dependent, even if the description doesn’t mention it.
Can you describe it without too many spoilers?
It’s too bad some of you are getting bugs. I had no crashes, and I don’t remember any quest/NPC glitches, except when I did the last part of the game a second time the scripting got stuck until I brought some enemies toward the group. And I couldn’t start the game until rebooting, probably due to DRM.
What I really like though is just roaming around, because there’s always a sense of dread. The sound and the dreary landscape helps in that regard, as does the prospect of an emission or whatever it is. And I’m too scared to stay out at night–I always go “home” for the evening!
Is it normal to find the bodies of dead Stalkers littering the landscape in CoP? I’m assuming they didn’t make it to cover in time during a blowout, or got killed by dogs or something, but I’m really finding that I can’t take more than a few steps without finding bodies to loot or tripping over a discarded assault rifle.
I had my first emission last night (other than the one at the very start of the game) while exploring the sawmill in the first map. The sawmill is unfortunately nowhere near appropriate cover, and it took me about 6 attempts to find somewhere to hole up as none of the buildings in the mill appear to be good enough. I eventually made it to an entrance to the cave under the burning farmstead. Very tense and frustrating but also oddly enjoyable.
Yes, I mentioned before it gets kind of silly how many corpses build up as the A-life patrols meet each other and fight dynamically. I noticed it mostly around the swamp areas in the first map so it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the game.
The sawmill is unfortunately nowhere near appropriate cover, and it took me about 6 attempts to find somewhere to hole up as none of the buildings in the mill appear to be good enough.
If you open up your PDA, the game actually puts a marker on your map for the closest (?) safe place.