S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl

[Hatorade]

GameTrailers.com - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl (PC) - Media, News, Reviews, Previews

Just awesome loving it so far. More later before sleep.

[Wildstone]

Whoa, this fucker is finally out?

[Dom Devore]

Originally Posted by Wildstone

Whoa, this fucker is finally out?

Release date isn't until the 22nd, but he might be playing the German demo. There is a torrent for the full game out there, but who knows if it's legit.

[Wildstone]

Damn, this top my list of upcoming games. Guess I'll have to wait a few more days. Damn Europeans and their early release date.

[Hatorade]

It is indeed legit get it at uberguilds.org :: Coming Soon... I had 300-350 KBS on average and I was one of the first to grab it.

Have this badboy preordered but won't get it until friday

[Hatorade]

Some screens from the first 5 mins or so of the game....Settings are well below max for the framrate. Can crank them up for some nice eye candy.


Quick review:

It is a mix of Fallout FPS style. You have inventory management. Also you are not on rails like most FPS. It is mission based, you can explore if you wish at your own peril. Think Oblivion. Also there is some sort of disturbances that appear at random that kinda hurt. No idea what these are yet.

Started the game on second to highest diff. I promptly got owned quick. Until I get use to it I bumbed it down a notch. So far so awesome sauce. Back to killing.

[Vorph]

I was expecting something along the lines of Deus Ex and it's nothing like that at all. It's just a FPS with inventory and some randomized sidequests. Still a decent game, but nowhere remotely close to the hype they had built up before they started axing features (stats, vehicles, etc.) to release it before the next decade.

Runs like complete ass unless you bump it down to static (DX8) lighting too.

[Lyenae]

Getting mid 8's, not bad.

I forsee another hype year for computer gaming.

[Niber]

Pretty good game but nothing mind blowing.

The side quests are huge (boring) time sinks with little reward. I'd recommend skipping them. Also, if you're running Vista you'll want to wait for a patch to fix stability.

[gremlinz273]

Im not an fps noob, but Im finding fighting the humanoids rather annoying. Its like fighting bots in Nightmare mode in Quake 3. They always know where you are, and as soon as any part of you peeks into few, you get a taste of 100% accurate shotgun blast.
This is on Veteran difficulty, a middling difficulty.

Other than that, the game setting and openness are awesome. Havent left the first area yet. You are confined to a rather large area with barbed wire fences. You get a couple of main objectives and you can also pick up a few optional tasks for money, but then you are given a great deal of freedom (for an fps) for how you go about completing the objectives and in what order you do things. So. open ended fps, in a post nuclear disaster Fallout style world, sign me up.

Dynamic lighting is currently borked and poorly optimized, supposedly it is being addressed in a forthcoming patch. For now, setting it to Static lighting is mandatory for any reasonable performance.

Question, the world is based on some sci-fi novels by Russian authors Strugacky (sp?), I cant seem to find much information on them in the West. Does anyone know these authors, and can recommend some English-translated works to pick up?

[Vorph]

It's more like a low 7 imo. The gamespot guy who said it's "on par" with System Shock 2 and Deus Ex needs to be bitch-slapped two or three times for his insolence.

The AI is horrid, except when you're standing back watching it fight itself. You can't help but exploit the stupid behavior otherwise. I should go take a screenshot of the pile o' bodies I just amassed when I hid inside an empty barracks and picked off a long stream of soldiers who wandered inside one by one.

The sidequests, at least until you get to the point of choosing factions, are utterly worthless. You get some cash, which you never need even at the very beginning, for doing randomized missions that wouldn't even be called acceptable in a really bad mmo.

Overall, the game is just a Boiling Point redux, only with most of the bugs and most of the gameplay features removed.

[arkael]

I agree with everything Vorph said basically. I haven't decided if it sucks yet. It's just good enough that I don't hate playing it, but it isn't good enough to hold my attention very long either. I tried doing side missions and exploring the first area and got incredibly bored, ended up gunning my way through the next 5-6 areas without really paying attention.

Terrible AI, boring side missions, MMO-like travel times and the map/story is sort of confusing to me so far. Disappointing knowing there was supposed to be vehicles and rpg stuff in it. I've got over 30k money (whatever it's called) and I haven't found much of anything I needed to buy yet. All that aside, the one thing that pisses me off the most is the completely random firing cone the game uses. Even the first shot is completely off at mid-long range.

Sometimes it just feels really incomplete/unpolished, I've had a couple of those random radio call for help missions bug out, meaning I either couldn't see anyone to turn them in to, or I got them when I was so far away I couldn't possibly make it in time to help.

Anyone played far enough to know what the deal with these artifacts is? I've only found ones that either give me 600%/400% health (regen or max hp I don't know) or irradiate me in return for 2% damage resistance. Whats the point?

[Vorph]

There are artifacts that give -10 or -20 Radiation and usually take away some endurance to balance it. That way you can use the ones that are +Rad without getting sick. Kind of pointless though, since I've yet to see a +Rad one that had a positive effect on it that I cared about. What they are good for, though, is getting 5 +20's to make you immune to radiation completely. Course it's probably easier to just get the rad suit, but anyway...

Good artifacts I've seen are +400% health, +regen, and +192 endurance.

The cone of fire really pissed me off too. They should've just given guns a minor accuracy stat to differentiate an AK from, say, an AR-15 and a maximum accurate range, then had RPG-style stats for your character to affect how well you shoot (i.e. how tight the crosshair is). It's really goddamn frustrating to pop off 2 clips of AK ammo at a guy 60 yards away, firing semi-auto, and not kill him, while the whole time he's shooting back with a sawed off and still nailing you.

The respawn thing is beyond annoying too; by the time I can loot the important things from everyone I kill reinforcements are already arriving, and then I've got another pile of corpses to deal with, except bodies never decay so there's no telling which ones have items and stash locations...

Time to uninstall though, between all that stuff and the retarded head bob you can't shut off, there's no way in hell I'm buying this game.

[arkael]

I noticed respawns doing that first mission you get to defend the good guys junkyard. I was talking to the guy after killing them and he got shot in the face mid-conversation. Not cool...I just thought it was random. Guess not.

Forgot about the head bob, I was searching the console for a way to turn it off 5 minutes into the game. Got used to it though.

I'm not quite ready to quit yet, as bad as the gameplay is, the storyline got me hooked. I HAVE to know what the deal is with the crazy shit at the center of the zone the npcs keep talking about.

[Phoenix]

So then why the hell did it take 5 years to release?