s.t.a.l.k.e.r. shadow of chernobyl

[reorith]

have any of you played s.t.a.l.k.e.r.?
is it a quality game?
is the game play enjoyable?
how come stalkers wear ponchos?

[warty goblin]

have any of you played s.t.a.l.k.e.r.?
is it a quality game?
is the game play enjoyable?
how come stalkers wear ponchos?

1) Yes. Also, for the unmitigated awesome that is the Zone, please spell it right- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
2) Yes, provided you have a uniquely PC mindset about things. It's punishinglhy hard at the beginning, the tutorial verges on non-existant, the map and quest interface is unintuitive to the point of self-parody, and pretty much everything is in Russian. Personally I find that all this adds to the awesome, and makes it a really good survival horror type experience, but YMMV.
3) Yes. Shooting people in this game is hard, since the guns are nicely innaccurate, and you die very, very fast without any flashing junk on the screen, and occasionally bleed to death- something I consider karmic justice for all the Call of Duties in the world. There you get shot, hide behind a tree doing nothing for a few seconds and are fine. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R., if you try that you continue to lose health and possibly bleed to death. Also, nothing beats the feeling one gets when your gun jams in the dark, radiation filled cave as the mutents close in for the kill. It's not for everybody, but I personally really like it.
4) Because it rains quite frequently, and nothing sucks more than hiking around soaking wet. Dirt gets everywhere and then it starts to rub, which really is quite uncomfortable, trust me on this.

[rubakhin]

I haven't played the game yet. I bought it and it's sitting there in its little box gathering dust - I'm not the video game type, but the 1979 film by Tarkovsky, which is based off the same book as the game, is one of my very favorites. The sheer artistry of it is amazing ... there are some incredibly beautiful long takes, like one shot towards the end that lasts so long that a brief rainstorm comes and goes before anyone moves or says anything. (It sounds mind-bogglingly boring. It's not. Trust me.)

Has anyone else seen the film?

[Fri]

I'd like to watch it if I can find it. Anyway, how about the bug? Is it as buggy as the predecessor? The predecessor need a year until they made enough patch to make it playable.

[factotum]

Er, this thread IS discussing the "predecessor"--Shadow of Chernobyl was the first game; Clear Skies was the one that came out this year. (Although Clear Skies is a prequel, confusingly enough).

[Archonic Energy]

give it (clear skies) another couple of patches & it'll be playable,

intresting point, if you have a HD-DVD drive in your machine the copy protection thinks the disk isn't in the drive :smallfurious:

further intresting point, it's harder to get a laptop DVD drive than you'd think!

i loved the Original, and warty is right, there is no bigger "OH S***" moment than when your gun jams while you are surrounded by mutated boars...

[Arang]

i loved the Original, and warty is right, there is no bigger "OH S***" moment than when your gun jams while you are surrounded by mutated boars...

Your gun jams with 1 bullet left while you're surrounded by Bloodsuckers and Poltergeists AND Snorks.

And you're out of bandages.

[Archonic Energy]

Your gun jams with 1 bullet left while you're surrounded by Bloodsuckers and Poltergeists AND Snorks.

And you're out of bandages.

no that's a "quickload" moment

[Erloas]

I played the first STALKER a little bit after I got it for my brother, but I didn't get to play it that much.

I liked the game and have been thinking about getting it now that I have my new computer. But I was wondering if I should get Shadow of Chernobyl or if I could just get Clear Sky. With Clear Sky being a prequel I don't expect that you would miss much of the story by skipping the first one.

[Arang]

I liked the game and have been thinking about getting it now that I have my new computer. But I was wondering if I should get Shadow of Chernobyl or if I could just get Clear Sky. With Clear Sky being a prequel I don't expect that you would miss much of the story by skipping the first one.

Honestly, just get Shadows of Chernobyl. It was just ... better.

And the faction warfare in CS was broken.

[chiasaur11]

Honestly, just get Shadows of Chernobyl. It was just ... better.

And the faction warfare in CS was broken.

And CS is legendarily buggy.

I mean, one guy wrote, well, read it yourself (http://www.1fort.com/blog/review-stalker-clear-sky/)

[Semidi]

I haven't played the game yet. I bought it and it's sitting there in its little box gathering dust - I'm not the video game type, but the 1979 film by Tarkovsky, which is based off the same book as the game, is one of my very favorites. The sheer artistry of it is amazing ... there are some incredibly beautiful long takes, like one shot towards the end that lasts so long that a brief rainstorm comes and goes before anyone moves or says anything. (It sounds mind-bogglingly boring. It's not. Trust me.)

Has anyone else seen the film?

I have, and I thought it was amazing. My biggest complaint was the subtitles on the English version when at lightning speed, so I had to constantly rewind to either read what the characters said or look at the camera shots. But that's a complaint against the English version, not the original... anyway...

STALKER is one of those great games that will not be enjoyed by all people because it can be frustrating due to its incredibly difficulty and its unforgiving nature. It's one of the few games that I had to play on easy my first time through.

So yeah, if you're into survival horror/difficult-realistic games then STALKER is for you because it's the best FPS out there fitting those properties.

[Ziren]

And CS is legendarily buggy.

I mean, one guy wrote, well, read it yourself (http://www.1fort.com/blog/review-stalker-clear-sky/)

Also inhumanly hard. I beat SoC on Master and have to quickload ~5 times in any firefight with more than three enemies (mainly due to the A.I.s pinpoint grenade throws).

[warty goblin]

I have, and I thought it was amazing. My biggest complaint was the subtitles on the English version when at lightning speed, so I had to constantly rewind to either read what the characters said or look at the camera shots. But that's a complaint against the English version, not the original... anyway...

STALKER is one of those great games that will not be enjoyed by all people because it can be frustrating due to its incredibly difficulty and its unforgiving nature. It's one of the few games that I had to play on easy my first time through.

So yeah, if you're into survival horror/difficult-realistic games then STALKER is for you because it's the best FPS out there fitting those properties.

Indeed. The Zone also is noteworthy for being one of the most interesting settings for a game just about ever, with more atmosphere per stage than can be found in some entire series of games. I don't scare easily in games, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R. gets to me, particularly those zombies that cause brain hemorrhages, they are just plain freaky.

[Another_Poet]

Has anyone else seen the film?

Yes! I have. It is so incredibly awesome.

I didn't know there is a game based on it. What system is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for? If PC, how recent is it? I wonder if I can even play it...

ap

[SurlySeraph]

@^: It's for PC, and was released in 2007. If you want more info, read (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/index.html?tag=result;img;0).

[Semidi]

Side note from someone who loves the game and film:

The game is nothing like the film.

Well... sort of it has some of the same things and a bit of the same look in places, but for the most part it's completely different.

[reorith]

i kinda want to get my wasr-10 and go play s.t.a.l.k.e.r. irl in centralia, pa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania). would anyone else be interested in joining me? gas masks, sink holes, mine fires, trespassing. a good time, no?

[Breltar]

I am currently playing through it. My best friend told me of a mod called priboi story (sp?) that evidently uses the bits of the game that didnt quite make it into the final release as well as some different weapons. I will be playing it after finishing the normal game, then probably go on to try clear sky.

Definitely a good game if you like a mix of rpg and FPS. This is not a DOOM style game and more like what Fallout 3 could have been.

[Flickerdart]

The book was better.

Having said that, this game blows Fallout 3 out of the water when it comes to duking it out in nuclear death ruins. You do miss out a lot if you can't understand Russian: the jokes the Stalkers tell are so awful they're groan-worthy, and they often lampshade how there aren't any female Stalkers. But it's very nostalgic for someone who knows what Soviet architecture looks like. Fallout's Capital Wasteland isn't nearly gritty enough.

It is quite difficult, yes. You will die. You will die at the beginning of the game when you don't have any good guns, at the end of the game when you face invisible Bloodsuckers or worse, and anywhere in between from anomalies.

The anomalies are, however, as much a friend as an enemy. Seeing a bandit run into a Twister is hilarious. I just wish they wouldn't respawn so much, clearing the Cordon checkpoint every time I want to go through gets annoying.

Oh, and has anyone been past the checkpoint to the Zone's exit? There's a little padlock on the wire fence. A little padlock texture. All that stands between you and freedom.
That checkpoint's fight wasted all my ammo, but the corpses had enough to restock me.

[Blockhead]

I have S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl and love it to death! The sheer amount of things out there that kill your character, unsuspecting or not, is incredible, from radiation, to mutants, the army or bandit or just an anomaly.

Agreeing with what Flickerdart said above, anomalies can be funny or just plain mean. When you're sprinting down the road, carefree and you run into one, killing you instantly, is not a good feeling, especially if you haven't saved, which is another thing.

SAVE OFTEN. This cannot be stressed enough, the auto-save feature only saves when changing area and you're likely to spend quite a while in one particular area unless just passing through.

The game is fairly punishing on weight restrictions, meaning you could carry around 5 guns with ammo, but that's it, you're fully loaded up like a mule. The often annoying thing is clearing out an area of bandits and making the tough choice of deciding what to leave behind, which I can tell you is really difficult at first, but you get used to it as time goes by.

A really neat feature of this game that I like is the Noise and Sight meters. Although subtle, they play a key role in being detected and hiding.

Computer AI can be really smart, getting a group of army guys to sneak up on you without a sound or really dumb and jumping into a bonfire by mistake.

The atmosphere to the game is also top-quality and offers one thing many games neglect: persistant corpses. If you kill someone and there corpse isn't blown up or eaten, it'll stay there the entire game, which is terribly fun if you've just raided an army camp and see the bodies from a previous raid lying about, tons of grey dots (which represent dead people) about the radar. That's also another thing which should of been included in the AI, noticing corpses. I understand the fact that they may have seen death a lot, but seeing an outpost full of bodies would be off-putting to anybody, but these guys seem to not take notice and carry out their business.

When you first start playing, your character is pretty weak and you'll rely on luck and the enemies being awful to survive. If it's the first time you've played the game, try and tear yourself away from the usual 'grab every item you can see' routine and don't beat yourself up about dying, unless you didn't save, then you can :smallbiggrin:. Later in the game, when returning to the starting areas, you'll simply walk through without a care in the world, bullets bouncing off you, sighing as you pull the trigger once and the bandit falls dead. You don't even bother to loot his corpse, as it's got nothing useful anyways.

All in all, if you want a scary, punishing survival-horror, look no further than right here.

[warty goblin]

Also, wounded people. More games need to do this, it just adds a ton of atmosphere to get into a firefight and then find a guy lying in a corner bleeding to death. My only regret is that killing them is the only viable option, it'd be nice if I could heal them and send 'em on their way, but oh well. Yet another job for my trusty knife.

That reminds me of the time I was infiltrating an army base, which had those annoying lookout towers. So I crept in real quiet, climbed up one, and knifed the dude in the tower without him even noticing. Truly one of my prouder moments.

Also I think I once killed somebody with a ricocheting bullet. How cool is that?